Build Bridges, Not Bombs

Beena:

...the alternative to peace is ghastly... continued army occupation of the country...

Ms. Sarwar:

It`s not going to happen in our lifetime, that is for sure...considering the fact that majority of the Pakistani populace consider India as an enemy state in a recently Gallup survey and I am sure that the feelings are mutual...so why all this hoopla when we know the outcome...it ain`t going to happen!

Beenaji,

Do we really need the bridges right now?

Can we not just call it off for a decade or two? Complete silence. Khamoshee?

It is going to be very very difficult to argue and make any positive case for Pakistan in India, at least in my part of the India. Same may or may not be true in yours.

This is a ploy of your dictator to disctract so that he rules... that is what common Indian feels. I do.

Let us just be apart and alone. And respect each other.

If and when we meet, we will do so as a dost with open arms.

Yogiraj Patil

There is no point in blaming the politicians and the bureaucracy... it is the army that doesn`t want peace..

There was this Geo-TV programme we saw in Delhi yesterday. It had Hamid Mir, one Sikh MNA/Pakistan, one retired General Masood and one Pak Minister of I&B from the Pakistani side. From the Indian side it had Rajdeep Sardesai, General Vijay Oberoi (retd.) one MP from Bhilwara in Rajasthan and Rajat Shukla, an MP cum journo.

I would advise people to try to get hold of the transcript if they can from Geo-TV in Pakistan.

It is quite apparent that if the path forward is left to leaders then it will come apart on the issue of Kashmir - 194? resolutions and Muslim lives in India, as far as the Pakistani side is concerned. From the Indian side, Kashmir ditto. Unfortunately, the Siachen issue runs paralel to Kashmir, otherwise that could have been a good starting point.

If the path is left to ex-soldiers, then it seems as though it will come apart on the fact that serving soldiers think radically differently from retired soldiers in India, while in Pakistan it seems as though serving and retired soldiers think along the same lines.

Media will, obviously, go for the larger ``noise`` values. Yuck.

Commerce across borders seems to be one aspect where there appears to be some common ground. Here again, existing commerce of the un-organised sort bears some mention . . . these are street figures I get from buzz.

a) Smuggling a cow across from India into Pakistan costs about 4500/- to 5000/- rupees for Pakistan, while it costs about 500 taka into Bangladesh. As a result cows go increasingly to Bangladesh.

b) A new Maruti-800 made in India costs about 1.5 lakhs in India and same thing from Suzuki/Japan almost 4 or 5 lakhs in Pakistan. The Pakistani I&B Minister was really surprised to hear this. ``Stolen`` cars moving into Nepal has been old hat, will they move into Pakistan too, soon?

c) Medical tourism is now open domain, but has actually existed for years. That Pakistani patients are reaching South India in increasing numbers for treatment is new.

To my untrained eye, it will be the unorgnised business sectors that may provide some momentum.

Indian media seems to be picking on these stories lately. What about Pakistani?