Srinagar, Oct. 3 -- By Dr. Fiaz Maqbool Fazili

Official power ends in small subtractions. The office is vacated, the nameplate comes down, the files are closed and the corridors of authority fill with other people.

The chair disappears, but the voice acquired beside it survives, and for some retired officials it grows into a second career in representation.

Yesterday they exercised authority through an institution, but today they claim legitimacy through a letterhead.

The method is common.

A few known faces gather, an organisation is formed and a grand designation is coined. A handful of agreeable voices become a forum, the forum becomes civil society, and civil society, rendered as concerned, conscious or sensitive citizens, becomes...