The Rule of the 3/50

A novel by Chandru Jain, MD

Prologue

KJ Singh took his spectacles off with his left hand to emphasis that he was serious. He had just made a far reaching statement and needed the extra dramatics to drive home his point. He waited a few seconds  for the statement to further sink into the audience. The audience, consisting of a thousand or so young Indians who were considered the creme de la creme of the Indian diaspora, sat mesmerized, more by the content rather than the eloquence of the statement. KJ Singh, momentarily beamed with satisfaction that he had managed to awe the gathering of young Indians that were drawn from the best institutes of India, such as the IITs and AIMs, to name a few. He lugged his bi-rimmed glasses with his left hand and after transferring it to his right, he put them on again in a single motion passing his fingers straight behind the temples. He then made his finer adjustments so that he cud see from the center of the bifocal lenses so as to rid all the inherent chromatic aberrations that would marr this historical sight. Cameras were forbidden at this special emergency meeting and he sort of noticed  the absence of flashes exploding in his face. He had come with only one intention and that was to sell his plan to this gathering of the best brains of young Indians and that was enough to make him glow with a new found confidence.

“ The solution to the kashmir problem is the rule of the 3/50. Our think tanks have worked hard to come up with this solution. They have spent months and days constructing various scenarios and have dissected all the various possibilities to conclude that this is indeed the best solution. By the end of year 2015, each and every tehsil or sub-district of Jammu and Kashmir state will be ruled by 3 super-administrators supported by a 50 other ancillary administrators and this project is code named, “ The rule of 3/50 ”. You, are the chosen ones to spearhead this project in the capacity of super-administrators. It will be your responsibility that you will not fail India.” He finished off, tersely.

A slide of the map of the state of Jammu & Kashmir was projected in the background screen and the state was divided into 300 sub-districts or tehsils. Each tehsil colored with a different shade of color from yellow to blue. Each color implied the level of expected opposition from terrorists, separatists and the ISI. For example, Srinagar  downtown was colored a bright warm yellow to depict it as the hot bed of terrorist activity and its outskirts which were less densely populated and thus lesser targets were of cooler colors, red, green and blue. The detail of planning took into account the kelvin measurements of the color temperatures for far greater impact than the customary three threat levels that were in force in the rest of India. The map displayed the master-plan for the final Kashmir solution and the header had the title bearing , “ The rule of the 3/50 “ written in the tricolors of the Indian nation!