Aug 14: Today, we are catching up with a person who doesn’t have a million-dollar smile but gives a million-dollar effort to change people’s lives. Yes, you might have guessed it, it is Aditya Tikku. Read up on my encounter: –

Would you mind telling us something about yourself that we don’t know?

There is nothing to share just that I am in to textile business and writing, which is my passion.

You are a textile businessman, app developer, editor, and social worker; you are into counselling and organise spiritual shivers. Where do you get the motivation of doing so many things?

Ha! Ha! You are more updated on me than myself. Well, you are already aware of what I am doing. The only motivation behind it is good karma. Do your work and let the universe take its course.

Where do you see the position of India in the world after freedom of 75 years?

We are in an excellent position. The world has started listening to us. The world has started seeing us hoping that peace and humanity can come only through India. On the first day, we have got what other countries struggled with for centuries; the women’s suffrage movement was a decades-long fight to win the right to vote for women in the United States. It took activists and reformers nearly 100 years to win that right, and the campaign was not easy. Chinese are still dreaming of getting democracy. So, we have achieved a lot, and yes, there is still scope for many improvements.

Then why you have established your family abroad?

I have established my family!! My brother is struggling to get me established; I hope one day he will. Magazine to apps anything that I have ever done was just due to the support of my family. Moreover, my brother is working in Sri Lanka, but we all are Indian citizens and will always be.

Being a Kashmiri, what do you think about the removal of Article 370 & 35 A?

As an Indian and Kashmiri pandit, I will say this was one of the best things in 75 years of independence; it would have been great if it had been done earlier. The Centre paved the way for people outside Jammu and Kashmir to buy land in the union territory. In a gazette notification, the central government omitted the phrase “permanent resident of the state” from Section 17 of the Jammu and Kashmir Development Act that deals with land disposal in the union territory. However, the amendment did not allow the transfer of agricultural land to non-agriculturists except in few cases.

In July this year, the rules were changed to allow domicile certificates to be granted to the husbands of local women married to people from outside Jammu and Kashmir. The move will enable them to buy land or property in the Union territory or apply for government jobs. All people having resided in the UT for 15 years or studied for seven years and appeared in Class 10 or 12 examinations in an educational institution in the region are eligible for grant of domicile status along with their children.

After the abrogation of Article 370, the civil secretariat in Srinagar hoisted the Indian Tricolour while the state’s flag was missing. The rectangular flag – red background with three white vertical stripes alongside a white plough in the middle with the handle facing the stripes – fluttered next to the Indian national flag on the secretariat for more than six decades.

The CID wing of Jammu and Kashmir Police has ordered the denial of security clearance required for passport and other government services to all those involved in stone-pelting or subversive activities. The order was issued on July 31 and directed all the fields to ensure that the person’s involvement in law and order, stone-pelting cases, and other crime prejudicial to the state’s security be looked explicitly into during verification related to passport service and other government schemes.

In the early hours of August 5, hundreds of political leaders and workers – including three former chief ministers Mufti, Omar Abdullah and his father Farooq Abdullah – were detained. The Abdullahs were released in March 2020, and Mufti was freed in the second week of October last year. Since then, the leaders have come together – along with four other parties in Kashmir – to forge an informal alliance that aims to restore the region’s special status. It’s a Beginning

Sometimes, or I will say mostly, you support women blindly. Is it because you are a feminist?

Nothing as such, but yes, I try to stand with them. We need to be respectful towards women. We can claim anything we want, but the ground reality is women are still treated as second class citizens in many parts. We are narrow-minded people. Forget the outside world; in our homes, we send a girl to school and start feeling how great it is that we are educating girls. There is nothing extraordinary about that; it is the girl’s right as much as anyone else to get an education. Hardly do we support girls to choose their subject/career. We allow her to do a job till she gets married; after marriage, she can do what her husband and in-laws say. Girl can’t also cry for fear that family members will feel bad. Just imagine how much they do for us and how much we owe them; only then you will understand why it is necessary to stand with them.