(This is the 17th in a series of insightful reports from the ground, titled The Race From India to Bharat. The author travels all across India as 960 million voters get ready to celebrate the largest festival of democracy in the world: the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. What do ordinary Indians think and feel about the past, present, and future of India? Are they convinced that the old fault lines are healing?)
(Read part one here, part two here, part three here, part four here, part five here, part six here, part seven here, part eight here, part nine here, part 10 here, part 11 here, part 12 here, part 13 here, part 14 here, part 15 here, and part 16 here.)
Rajbagh is a typical bustling small town in Kathua district that you see as you drive from Pathankot towards Jammu. Construction work is happening at a furious pace for a new expressway with diversions every few kilometres. A large number of shops and small business establishments in Rajbagh will disappear when the expressway is completed.
Gurinder Singh, who owns a mobile phone shop on the highway, says business is not bad. His family was forced to migrate from the Punjab province, which eventually became part of Pakistan in 1947, and he still holds on to the agricultural land that was given to his family as compensation back then.