India just witnessed it's worst terrorist attack where 42 soldiers were martyred in a suicide bombing. While this has filled whole country with anger, many in valley are celebrating this as a step towards victory.
On the contrary I believe the people of valley have started to lose the narrative. Normally when a region wants additional autonomy or more, there are many ways to do it. One is to gain the sympathy of the major powers which then force them to push the host country to offer concessions. This really accelerates if you have valuable resource or strategic location. This happened with South Sudan which was oil rich and Sudan was anti America.
Second way is to scale up the stakes so much which then forces the host to offer concessions. However in this case usually the area asking for additional rights needs to be of significant size as compared to host. Bangladesh was one such example. Components in Yugoslavia was also similar case.
Third way is when the economy of the host country decays so much that it by itself let's go off the steam
Finally the most sustainable is way is to moral upmanship on people of host country. This is challenging but is a very sustainable way of moving forward. Colonialism, Apartheid movt, East Timor as went this way.
Kashmir at this moment presently has nothing. It has taken path of religious terrorism a worst path to choose rather than ethnic militancy which will never have global sympathy. It's separatist leaders are also religious leaders (Geelani is Jamait Islami, Mirwaiz is a cleric. Only Yaseen Malik belongs to JKLF but has chosen wrong partners). This has lead to even street movements showing Paki or ISIS flags to tease normal Indians. Rather than doing so on the contrary, it reduces sympathy for them.
Now trying to up the game will only bring back more violence which rest of the country will be ok to have. The economy of India will not be majorly affected nor does valley have that size to raise the cost.
This blip of violence will pass. As time moves rest of the country will grow economically while valley lags behind even though due to tourism they could be one of the richest. Then the generation of the time will itself fight the extremists to bring back peace and economic development
