India border. As a result, Kashmir also enjoyed an unprecedented lull in militancy.

New Delhi failed to capitalise on these fortuitous circumstances and now several of them have faded away. New Delhi - with a flat refusal to review AFSPA, its inability to establish dialogue, and its insensitive handling of the Afzal Guru hanging - is providing the fuel for resentment to flare. The recent fidayeen attack on a CRPF camp shows that militants retain their capability to strike once popular support rekindles. And with no dialogue initiated with the "moderate separatists", the hardest-liner leaders will command the attention of the street.

Complicating that inaction in Kashmir, New Delhi's relations with Islamabad (and Rawalpindi) are also spiralling downwards after the beheading of an Indian jawan on the Line of Controllong range (1000-2000
kilometres), subsonic (below the speed of sound, 1,236 kmph) cruise missile.
For the military this is a crucial system that flies into heavily defended
enemy airspace, where anti-aircraft missiles, guided by a thick radar network,
would quickly shoot down a manned fighter. But a cruise missile, flying at
treetop level and with a smaller radar signature than a fighter aircraft, would
be far better equipped to survive the flight to its target.

This was the missile that the DRDO tested on Tuesday.
Describing the test to Business Standard, senior scientists who were present
say the Nirbhay was launched just before noon from the Interim Test Range at
Chandipur, watched by an array of DRDO scientists including the chief, Dr VK
Saraswat. The launch was perfect and the booster established the missile in
cruise mode correctly. The Nirbhay