The new transport and energy backbone being put in place will start coming on stream from 2008 onwards. It is therefore appropriate that the Prime Minister has named a high-powered committee to prepare a long term development plan for J&K under Dr Rangarajan. The State needs a power utilization plan as much as a power development programme.

At present, horticulture suffers for lack of processing and control over the produce by wholesale merchants mostly located in Delhi. This leaves very little of the consumer's rupee in the hands of the producer. This unsatisfactory and iniquitous situation can be corrected by providing cold chains, wholesale warehouses and auction facilities within J&K.

Such market centres could become new growth poles, with industrial estates for a variety of processing units and broadband connections for internet-assisted services for which J&K youth could be trained. These centres could also become venues for the relocation of returning Pandit refugees, proxy-war widows, those maimed, "surrenderees" and other employment seekers in mixed, modern townships with appropriate security for those still to overcome emotional trauma.

All of this holds out an expanded vision of a new Naya Kashmir and Kasmiriyat for every region of J&K.

Meanwhile, the Composite Dialogue with Pakistan must continue hand in hand with the process of internal dialogue, reconciliation and development. There is no need to contest the fact that J&K is disputed. It is the nature and not the fact of the dispute that needs to be negotiated. Issues need to be de-mythified and Pakistan confronted with the core issue.

There is no reason to stall Baglihar and other projects, which are permissible under the Indus Treaty. Likewise on Siachen, agreement on redeployment of forces is possible, once Pakistan corrects its maps which commit cartographic aggression by projecting the extended LoC from NJ 9842, the last grid reference in the parent Karachi Agreement of July 1949, northeast to the Karakoram Pass instead of "thence north to the glaciers", as stipulated.

Once the Karachi Agreement defining the LoC and its northward extension beyond NJ 9842 is accepted, demilitarization and redeployments could follow and the entire region from west of the Karakoram Pass up to K2 declared a High Karakoram Glacier International Peace Park under joint Indo-Pakistan management. Hopefully, China might also be persuaded to enlarge the Park by agreeing to include the Shaksgam region.

The opening of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus route on 7 April could mark the beginning of more frequent services and trade along this alignment. This could be followed by activating more cross-border routes - between Jammu and Sialkot, Kargil and Skardu, Poonch and Rawalkot, Rajouri and Mirpur and so on. Each such move would further transform the boundary and establish a new era of trans-border relationships to mutual benefit.

Transactions across and management of such a soft boundary would require cooperation and coordination between the two sides with regard to immigration checks, crime prevention, phyto-sanitary controls, trade and monetary protocols, environmental management and so forth. Indus II would fit into such a scheme of things. Growth triangles could be envisaged and cross-border investments, educational, cultural and sporting exchanges, tourism and pilgrimage would follow. Arranging and organizing this range of activities could spawn cross-border institutions, leading to the evolution of cross-border mechanisms reporting to informal joint councils with oversight over these interlocking relationships.

Given such a framework, it is possible to conceive of an informal co-federal relationship between the two parts of J&K, each enjoying a larger measure of autonomy within their own jurisdictions, but cocooned undisturbed within the two separate sovereignties of India and Pakistan. Given agreement on these lines, one might dare think of joint defence of all of a largely demilitarized J&K by India and Pakistan, with the two armies nominally facing outwards.

Is this likely to be the picture in 2015? Perhaps not - or at least not in its entirety. Yet why not? Once things get moving, momentum might be hard to contain. This would yield a LoC plus-plus-plus solution that gives Pakistan far more than it could ever dream of - including legitimization of its conquest of "Azad" Kashmir and the Northern Areas, access to the Indian part of J&K and a sense of security and entry to the huge and growing Indian market.

The people of J&K - a highly plural political conglomerate of disparate parts - would enjoy a meaningful azadi, with the best of both worlds at low cost. Few appreciate that, accidental though it might be, the LoC does represent a broad cultural and ethnic divide - barring the vivisection of Baltistan - that has a powerful logic in determining the "self" and what is to be "determined".

However, to reach this not-so-distant goal, the first steps must be put right now. The direction must be set. There must be both Vision and Will. This has to be a non-partisan J&K and Indian endeavour based on the evolution of a local as much as a national consensus. Patience, firmness and perseverance will be required.

(An abridged version of a paper presented at the J&K Government and IPCS Conference on 'Jammu & Kashmir - Where do we go from here?' held on 4-5 April at Jammu)