While promises are all well and good however, it will take a lot more than financial packages to convince the lakhs of the Kashmiri Pandit families who were forced to flee their homes.

The Narendra Modi government’s promise of a new package for the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley and the financial commitment of Rs 500 crore in the Budget for their return seems to have failed to enthuse members of the community.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh told Parliament on Monday that “In view of the past experience, it has been felt that the new package for return and rehabilitation of Kashmiri migrants should be carefully finalised in consultation with the state government and the representatives of the migrants. Our government has already started the process of drawing the contours of the scheme.”

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Modi speaking at the inauguration of a hydro-power project in Kargil reiterated his government’s commitment to the cause of the Kashmiri Pandits.

While promises are all well and good however, it will take a lot more than financial packages to convince the lakhs of the Kashmiri Pandit families who were forced to flee their homes at the height of militancy in the Valley in the 1990s to return, say leading members of the community.

An oft repeated example of the sole elderly Pandit family that has opted for the government rehabilitation programme in the last six years stands as a stark reminder of the total failure of previous rehabilitation programmes.

In 2008, the UPA government had announced a Rs 1600 crore rehabilitation package to encourage and support Kashmiri Pandits returning to the Valley.

“The exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley was never an economic migration. So money is not what is going to take us back there. The government has to first address the concerns of the community. One, in the last 25 years there has not been a single conviction of any terrorist killing of Kashmiri Pandits despite clinching evidence…The government will first have to ensure security there and that feeling will come only if the government first delivers justice,” says Amit Raina, coordinator of a youth initiative called Roots in Kashmir.

Holding up the recent controversial decision of the state government to cancel permission to the All Pandit Migrants Coordination Committee to go on a pilgrimage to Kousar Nag as an example of the dire state of security for Pandits in the state, Raina said, “If the government cannot manage a yatra of 40 Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley, how will they manage 4 lakh Kashmiri Pandits?”

But is there a strong desire among young Kashmiri Pandits to return and work in the Valley?

“We are trying to figure out the answer to this question ourselves. There will be those who want to go back and there will be those who won’t be interested…Uprooting one’s life is not easy. But yes, for the survival of our religion, our culture, our traditions, we will have to take the challenge. We have been working on this. My feeling is that at least 50 per cent of youth living outside the state would like to go back,” says Raina, who is an entrepreneur.

For a rehabilitation programme to succeed, says New Delhi-based engineering graduate Netri Bhatt, the government will first need to ensure the “security and dignity” of the families who return.

Rejecting the government’s Rs 500 crore budgetary allocation for rehabilitation Pandit families as being grossly inadequate, Bhatt says that for young people like her to be convinced to return there would need to be opportunities for education and employment that are otherwise available to them in the cities that they have grown up in.

“If I am sacrificing the blood and sweat of my parents of the last 25 years of living in exile, then I must at least be ensured of my dignity, security and the freedom to have a say in the political and social matters,” says Bhatt. Until those guilty of crimes against Kashmiri Pandits are not punished and brought to justice, any rehabilitation package is doomed to fail, says the IT engineer.

Expectations nonetheless are riding high on the Modi government to go beyond mere financial packages to begin the process of a meaningful rehabilitation of families who were forced to flee their homes 25 years ago.

“For sure, we are expecting a lot of new things from this government. We are very optimistic. Post 199o, this is the first time that a government has said that the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits is their primary agenda. But there is a challenge. Before any package is floated the government should take inputs from the community in terms of what their requirements are. Otherwise, there will only be a few people who are willing to go back,” says Rahul Kaul, national coordinator of the youth wing of Panun Kashmir, a leading socio-political group of Kashmiri Pandits.

So far, successive governments have only sent out ‘feelers’ of rehabilitation packages but never drawn up a comprehensive long-term plan for repatriation of Kashmiri Pandits, says Kaul.

“Unless there is a fool-proof and comprehensive rehabilitation programme wherein the geo-political aspirations of the community are met, there will be no permanent solution".