On May 7, 2026, the first anniversary of Operation Sindoor, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the “remarkable valor and patriotism of the brave soldiers of the country” and also the “self-reliance in the defense sector.” Country-wide celebrations were organized by the government and the military to mark the “victory” achieved last year against the terrorists who responsible for an attack that killed 26 people in Kashmir’s Pahalgam on April 22, 2025.

Operation Sindoor, which targeted terrorist infrastructure deep inside Pakistan and triggered a brief war between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, has remained a critical part of the Indian government’s claims that it has brought normalcy to Kashmir. Nevertheless, while violence has certainly dipped, Kashmir continues to witness a great churning: of local hopes and expectations, stifled local politics, and New Delhi’s security-centric official policies.

At least 92 fatalities were reported in Jammu & Kashmir in 2025, 42 of them after the Pahalgam attack. According to the database of the South Asia Terrorism Portal, 46 terrorists were killed, of whom 32 died between May and December that year. Whether these included the actual perpetrators of the Pahalgam attack remains a matter of debate. Meantime, the first six months of 2026 have seen 12 deaths, 10 of them listed as terrorists, most of whom were killed during attempts to infiltrate into India from Pakistan. The month of May, which traditionally sees increased violence in the valley after the snow melts in the mountains enabling movement across the border, passed without a single terror attack. 

A week after the celebrations of Operation Sindoor’s anniversary, I traveled to Kashmir, first to Srinagar, Gulmarg, and then to Uri in the Baramulla district, to assess the change. I had coincidentally been at ground zero for the April 2025 attack in Pahalgam just two days before the bloody massacre of tourists. At that time , the popular meadow was completely unguarded, making it a soft target for the terrorists who descended from the surrounding mountainous terrain. The attack disrupted tourism in the valley. The economic lifeline of the local Kashmiris, dependent on tourism, had come to a standstill, raising the question: Will Kashmir regain its charm and attract tourists again? 

A year later, under beefed-up security, tourists indeed are back. The memories of the attack have faded somewhat. Incidents of stone pelting by youths, a crude mode of dissent at one level, and a sponsored act of destabilization at another, have come to naught. An independent member of the legislative assembly told me that youths and school children don’t show much resistance to singing the national anthem, which is a “positive development.”   

Still, what appears to be normal today co-exists with reports of continued infiltration by terrorists from Pakistan, pointing to the vulnerabilities along the international boundary and of the massive counterterrorism grid that provides security to the region. Sightings of drones that drop weapons, ammunition, and drugs continue. India’s home minister has claimed that the government “effectively eliminated separatist movements in Jammu & Kashmir,” but he travels regularly to the region to review security. The government has plans to implement its “Smart Border Security Project” that will form a “quadrangular security grid” to provide “territorial security” using drones, radars, watchtowers, and other advanced technologies.

In the Uri sector, I traveled to the Kaman border post that once held out the promise of better relations with Pakistan through trade, people-to-people interaction, and bus connectivity. The historic Karvan-e-Aman (Peace Bus) service between Srinagar, Uri, and Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which launched in April 2005 as a major confidence-building measure between the two countries, was halted in 2019, following a series of terrorist strikes and revocation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, ending Kashmir’s special status. Earlier that year, in February, a major terror attack in Pulwama had disrupted another attempt to build bridges with Islamabad. There always seem to be enough spoilers inside Pakistan to throw any India-Pakistan rapprochement off the rails. 

As I stood near Aman Setu (the Bridge of Friendship), it was clear that the possibility of a resumption of trade, as in the days of the old Silk Road when Baramulla (earlier known as Varahamula) served as a gateway to the valley from Muzzafarabad, had vanished. Even an acknowledged dip in terrorism hasn’t become sufficient catalyst for both nations to start negotiating normalization of relations.    

This stands in sharp contrast to the heightened expectations and muffled demands of the local people, who look to derive the economic benefit from sustainable growth and development. Seven years after the 2019 abrogation of Article 370, Kashmir still yearns for industries and investment to create employment opportunities for its people. Kashmir’s unemployment rate stands at 6.7 percent, which is significantly higher than India’s national average of 3.5 percent. A baseline survey held in 2025 revealed that nearly half a million people over the age of 15 years are “not working, but willing to work.” This repudiates the data of New Delhi’s official think tank, Niti Aayog, which claimed that the “multidimensional poverty index” in the region has dropped from 12.56 percent in 2013-14 to 4.8 percent in 2022-23.

Not surprisingly, my interaction with a range of people from various walks of life revealed that New Delhi’s repeated claim that the conflict theater has been fully integrated into India rings hollow to ordinary Kashmiris without stable incomes, especially in a place where living standards are prohibitively expensive. Kashmiri Muslims don’t all have secessionist tendencies, as believed by many outside the region; but at the same time, they want opportunities to be genuinely included in India’s development journey. 

The performance of the government in this sphere remains less than ideal. For instance, the 2024 plan to develop 46 new industrial estates in the region to fulfill the goal of “Made in Jammu and Kashmir” remains mired in delays without any concrete timeline for completion. Worse still, the impact of climate change has introduced significant uncertainties into the traditional sources of income, from the apple orchards to tourism. It seems even a centrally-controlled administration in Kashmir that supersedes a nominal and powerless provincial government isn’t able to ensure progress without improving governance, inclusion and sustainable development.  

Through its 2019 decision, New Delhi sought to correct the historical anomaly that kept Jammu & Kashmir from being integrated into India. Seven years later, and multiple Indian military counterterrorism forays into Pakistan notwithstanding, the region remains suspended between security gains and unfulfilled developmental promises. True integration, it appears, will remain elusive until New Delhi stops treating Kashmir as a security variable to be managed and starts realizing that its people deserve the same opportunities available to the rest of India, be it in politics or economic opportunities.