The objective of terrorists and extremists everywhere is to provoke the state to over-react, or to under-react. Either of these outcomes serves their purpose, and it is only measured and condign responses that defeat them. Such responses, however, cannot be achieved with the falsification of threat assessments.
There is a constant effort, alternately, to underplay or exaggerate the terrorist threat, to advance a partisan agenda, either of force reduction or supposed ‘rationalisation’, or of political polarisation and demonisation of the Muslim community in the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). This is a discourse, moreover, that occurs in complete ignorance or with a conscious neglect of facts and data, both which are certainly available to policymakers as well as to those who promote falsehoods.