When the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) announced recently in Jammu that it was ready to discuss "an alternate negotiated settlement of the Kashmir problem", it went public with its desperation to break from growing isolation in the valley, and from its mentors elsewhere. But equally important, it marked a political success for the government of India which has more or less marginalized Hurriyat into irrelevance, and indeed may embolden the central government to pursue similar policies towards other elements of the Kashmiri populace who are unwilling to understand and participate in the Indian political process.