NEW DELHI: It is customary to have high-level visits from Delhi to Srinagar if there is a crisis to defuse or when the Valley is up in flames. And all these crisis-dousing missions — whether they be all-party delegations or ministerial teams — have the sole aim of fire-fighting and the root issue is forgotten once the fire is doused.In this context, the present four-day visit of Home Minister Rajnath Singh to Jammu & Kashmir, at a time when the state is relatively calm and not facing any immediate crisis, has broken this pattern and is a refreshing start to address key issues that the Narendra Modi government has been facing ever since it entered into an uneasy alliance with the PDP to share the spoils of power, feel senior government officials who spoke on conditions of anonymity.The biggest issue or rather the thorn has been why the government is not talking to the separatist leaders, although the BJP-PDP’s ‘Agenda of Alliance’ clearly spoke of continuing the principles of the Atal Behari Vajpayee government of talking to all groups, including the Hurriyat Conference, the officials pointed out. The separatists have boxed themselves into a corner and foreclosed any option of talks by calling for a strike and boycott during the Home Minister’s present visit, officials in Delhi say.This stemmed out of the on-going action by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) against separatist leaders who exposed their ill-gotten wealth and links with terror funding from Pakistan. The separatist leaders cited “harassment of the leadership and use of military might against the people” for calling the strike. However, senior government officials say the separatist leaders have only ended up exposing themselves as the message has not been lost on anyone that they have opposed the Home Minister as they faced action on their personal front. However, the view in the separatist camp is that their leaders are only gaining ‘sympathy’.But Singh did play the cards right by saying on the eve of his visit, when the strike was called, that he was “willing to meet anyone who will help us in finding solutions to the problems facing J&K.”He reiterated the same once he was in Srinagar, by saying that his doors were open to all. The government feels that the NIA action serves two key purposes –– one to expose the separatist leaders in the eyes of Kashmiris that the former are amassing wealth and promoting terror in the name of freedom struggle. This, the government feels, will erode the credibility of separatists, especially when the entire ambit of NIA’s probe becomes public in acourt of law.Secondly, the government believes that the NIA action has had a direct impact on reducing stone-pelting incidents in the Valley this year as funding channels from across the border have been neutralised. In the sum-all game, stone-pelting is down in J&K this summer; separatist leaders are facing the heat at NIA’s hands and a record number of terrorists have been gunned down. Singh has also been able to somewhat address concerns over Section 35-A during this visit by terming it a “non-issue” and specifying that the Centre had not approached the Supreme Court on the issue.The approach is clear — strict security and investigative action against terror and separatist elements but at the same time offering the olive branch of jobs and a better life to the common Kashmiris, feel government officials. Achieving PM’s idea of a permanent solution to the J&K issue “through hugs and not guns or abuse” will be achieved if the common Kashmiris believe that the Centre does not want to keep Kashmir under its thumb but wants to freely engage with it as Singh did during his visit. The Centre feels the pre-requisite for that is to make the separatist leadership irrelevant, and it is aiming to do just that.