India has to amp up its strategic engagement and economic presence to neutralise Gotabaya’s pro-China tilt

In a multi-polar world that’s grunting through protectionism and a slow economy and where every nation is trying to steer its course, each has been unanimously electing a muscular leadership to helm its destiny. In that sense, the victory of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the nationalist strongman of the Sri Lankan People’s Party (SLPP) and the brother of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in the island nation’s elections does not come as a surprise. Particularly in the aftermath of the Easter bombings, which showed how scattered IS modules were choosing virgin targets, the Sinhalese Buddhist majority consolidation has been complete. And from the citizens’ perspective, they elected a militarist who was responsible for the clean-up of the Tamil movement and its fighters earlier and whom they believe can tackle terrorism as well as execute what’s best for them. At the same time in a revisionist throwback, they have entrusted their collective fate to the Rajapaksa clan. For with Gotabaya as President, he is sure to bring in brother Mahinda as Prime Minister (he has been President before but can still be PM) and as is their wont, the power structures are expected to be concentrated in a family that has been punishing to Tamils, worrying for India and benevolent to Chinese strategic interests and investment. Going by India’s troubled relationship with Mahinda and the Tamil wipeout, there are stressors no doubt and apprehensions about Gotabaya. Apart from taking down Tamils, Mahinda  sought to reduce dependence on India by aggressively pursuing the Chinese, accusing New Delhi of intervening in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka by propping up his own protege Maithripala Sirisena against him and ensuring he lost the elections. Sirisena’s SLFP and ally UNP, whose leader Ranil Wickremesinghe became Prime Minister, formed a coalition Government which was pro-India. The Indian establishment was also too overt rather than being covert about its interventions. So a hurt Mahinda never settled down, his party scoring in local elections till he forced a coup last October, subduing Sirisena, getting him to sack Wickremesinghe and becoming Prime Minister for 51 days. Gotabaya took charge of Defence and Security, kept the Tamil-majority areas under strict military vigil and put Indian diplomats under surveillance. It is this distrust that needs to be healed now for geo-strategic reasons if we don’t want China to run far ahead.

Of course, India’s latest diplomacy in the neighbourhood has factored in the pragmatism by smaller neighbours, who have successfully played on its anxieties with China and are negotiating the best of both worlds given the competitive muscle-flexing by two Asian majors. Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka are all happily walking the trajectory of “trade ties” with China and “historical linkage” with India to buttonhole both nations into giving concessions. Gotabaya, too, has seized the PR advantage by calling India “our relative” soon after his win and holding his oath ceremony at Anuradhapura, the city born out of our historical linkages. The Modi Government has changed tack over the last year and is pushing proactive participation over historical assumptions in its Lanka policy. The Chinese are way ahead here and we cannot be immune to their growing footprints. They have a 99-year lease on the Hambantota port after Sri Lanka’s failure to repay loans and are using it to enhance their military arc in the Indian Ocean region all the way to east Africa. The Chinese have even created an island off Colombo, a new financial hotspot and a key conduit to east Africa, besides securing hold of the island nation’s infrastructure sector, hospitality and supply chains. And while we may be debating about the adoption of Huawei’s 5G technology in the country, Sri Lanka has made it abundantly clear that it has no security fears about the new-generation mobile telephony technology. India has, therefore, got to do a very tightrope act with Lanka if it wants to protect its strategic interests amid a Chinese swamp. That, too, without compromising too much on Tamil and minority interests. Economics is a good starting point. We need to work on investment and project partnerships, encourage soft diplomacy via people-to-people contacts and strengthen an institution like BIMSTEC to ensure a more multi-layered communication. Thankfully, Gotabaya has good personal equations in the power corridors of Delhi and will be amenable to negotiations. But for a win-win, India has to be a respected stakeholder, not appear like an exploitative neighbour.

Brexit has exposed the Remainers’ contempt for the working classes. Who can blame them for switching sides, asks JANET DALEY

It’s certainly true — as everybody says — that Brexit has divided the nation. This is generally regarded as a sad thing: A story of friendships renounced and families locked in unforgiving discord. In truth, this apparently bitter phase in our civic life may one day come to be seen as a golden age of popular political engagement when apathy and cynicism gave way to real passion and conviction, when people in the shops and in the streets argued openly about the importance of their institutions and the integrity of those who represented them.

In other words, it has been an era when politics mattered to ordinary people and the value of a free democratic polity had never been so clear. But there is another sense in which the great Brexit question has had a positive, and possibly more long-lasting, effect on British political arrangements.

Two major opinion polls published recently showed that the Conservatives now had more support among the working class people than middle class ones. This is thunderous in its implications. Nothing like it has occurred since the 1980s when Thatcherism broke the mould of traditional party loyalties. Clearly, this is directly related to the fact that the Tories are now the party, which unambiguously advocates leaving the European Union (EU) as expeditiously as possible, which is what more working class voters than middle class ones wish for.

But to dismiss this phenomenon as a simple, momentary preference for the party that endorses leaving the EU, is to miss its real significance. This is an earthquake in the electoral landscape and almost certainly a moment of liberation for a whole swathe of the British population which once had an almost feudal loyalty to the conditions of its birth.

I struggle to find words excoriating enough for the smug, patronising interpretation — that the rejection of Brexit among the educated professional classes simply proves that “Remain” is the enlightened position, and working class Tory supporters are ignorant bigots. This seems to me a species of malign class hatred, which I never expected to see so shamelessly disseminated in this country where snobbery has been, for generations, a benign (often guilty) and largely affectionate social force.

Another tributary of the argument that working class “Leavers” are idiots who were duped by populist lies is now doing the rounds: That it was a programme of systematic Russian interference that swung the referendum result. Can anyone seriously believe this? That Russian propaganda (which was saying what exactly) persuaded voters who had enough experience, in real life, of the catastrophic decline of their own communities, to reject all the apocalyptic warnings of Project Fear and choose what they were told was economic suicide? Oh please.

What is going on here? If it isn’t just about Brexit, and there is a true re-structuring of party affiliations, what does this mean — and how did it happen? Of course, it has something to do with the peculiarly unappetising present Labour leadership but this has been anatomised to exhaustion elsewhere, so let’s leave it aside for the moment.

What must be understood by anyone who genuinely wants to learn from this phenomenon is that the working class “Leave” vote was not just about dislike of EU diktats, and it was not just about immigration. It was a quite justifiable cry of outrage at having been effectively written off by a callous and selfish (unlikely word I know, for a social coterie that thinks of itself as, above all, compassionate) metropolitan bourgeoisie. So, in a way, this is still about class but it turns the old way of thinking about which party is on your side, on its head.

In this, it is very much like the Thatcher era when a new Conservative philosophy created a completely different political identity and message: Rather than being the party of those who already had property and prosperity — and all the freedoms, choices and self-determination that those things provided — they became the party for all those who longed for them.

Where Labour’s message to working class people had been, “Stay where you are and we’ll look after you”, the Tories were saying, “You don’t have to stay in the station to which you were born. We’ll help you move on.” Paternalism went out, aspiration came in.

So resoundingly successful was this theme that it was appropriated, digested and re-marketed — in a less coherent but more endearing form — by Blairite New Labour.

But this isn’t, I hope, just a question of changing sides — of maintaining the class division, but picking a new team to champion your sectarian interests. To leave behind the long hereditary link with a political body that was once seen as the voice of your community is quite something. It opens up the possibility of more choices, more freedom to do what you believe to be in your true interest rather than being locked into limitations which can never be escaped.

It gets you past the almost superstitious belief in the inherent goodness of socialist solutions and the inevitable wickedness of those who oppose them. Whole new vistas of understanding can be opened to you.

Words like “selfish”, as I used it above, can be re-examined in a clear light: Are those middle class, highly qualified people, who are so enthusiastic about the EU, really more generous and open to the world? Or do they simply have a lot more to gain from the advantages offered to their professional and business interests by membership — rather like the chief protagonists, Tony Blair and Nick Clegg, whose global careerism knows no limits?

The immediate effects of this dramatic shift are pretty obvious: If so many working class people have got beyond their resistance to voting Conservative, then Nigel Farage is not going to have much impact on this election. But the long-term consequences could be stupendous: Millions of ordinary people, who can look at today’s arguments and the reality of their lives, and make their own judgments about what they believe.

(Writer: Janet Daley, Courtesy:  The Telegraph)

If you are going to rig the vote, do it from the start. Don’t wait until the count shows that your candidate is not doing well and then intervene

Democracy is in danger in Bolivia as the result of legitimate pressures from the poor. We cannot generate economic growth and well-being for a few and then expect that the large majorities that are excluded will watch silently and patiently.” A recent President of Bolivia said that, but it wasn’t Evo Morales (who has just quit, plunging the country into chaos). It was Carlos Mesa, the man whom Morales tried to cheat out of the presidency in last month’s election. Mesa said it in 2005, the last time he was President, just before he quit and Morales won a landslide victory in the election triggered by the former’s resignation.

Most outside commentators used to stick to a simple script when talking about Bolivia. Evo Morales was the good guy, because he was the country’s first indigenous President (he grew up speaking Aymara, and only learned Spanish as a young adult) and because he looked like and seemed to care about the poor majority of Bolivians.

On the other hand, Carlos Mesa belongs to the privileged white minority (15 per cent of the population) who have always controlled both the politics and the wealth, so he must be the bad guy. But his face doesn’t fit the frame: He is an historian and television journalist and he resigned from the presidency in 2005 after trying and failing to nationalise the country’s gas industry.

Evo Morales took his place, and he did better. Morales nationalised not only oil and gas but the tin and zinc mines and key utilities as well. He got away with it, where Mesa couldn’t, because he paid out good compensation to the owners — and he could do that because Bolivia was riding a commodities boom that tripled the country’s Gross Domestic Product in 15 years.

The boom has been over for a while now and a more cunning politician than Morales might have decided to let Mesa win this election. Then, as the country’s income dropped further, Mesa would have got the blame for downsizing the welfare State Morales built, and Morales could return to power triumphantly in five years, claiming that Mesa had betrayed the poor. Morales’ mistake was to believe that he was the indispensable man. He clung to office too long, and now he is toast. He will retain enough of a following to be a permanent political nuisance but he has embarrassed his country and he’s unlikely ever to hold high office again. Under the new constitution of 2009, promulgated by Morales himself, a Bolivian President is entitled to only two five-year terms. But as he got closer to the 2019 deadline, Morales changed his mind and in 2016 he held a referendum that proposed to allow the President any number of terms. He lost. So Morales went to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, which is dominated by his own party. Unsurprisingly, the tribunal agreed that the two-term constitutional limit violated his ‘human rights’ — so there he was last month, seeking a fourth term as President in a race with eight other candidates.

Everybody knew that Morales would lead and Mesa would be the runner-up in the first round of voting. Many suspected that Mesa would pick up more votes and overtake Morales in the second round — so his advisers decided that he had to win in the first round. He could do that only if he were ahead of Mesa by at least 10 per cent of the votes cast.

On October 20, the ‘fast count’ of the national vote went smoothly until 84 per cent of all the votes had been counted — at which point it became clear that Morales was not going to have a big enough lead over Mesa. So suddenly the counting stopped, and did not resume for 24 hours. It then showed Morales with a 10.1 per cent lead over Mesa, so no second round was needed. All hail Morales’s fourth term!

But the vote-rigging was just too blatant and for almost three weeks the protesters have been in the streets. By last weekend even the police were refusing to defend Morales. When the election monitors from the Organisation of American States delivered their verdict on Sunday, saying that there were “serious security flaws” in the computer systems and “clear manipulation” of the count, Morales resigned. The election results were cancelled and it’s pretty clear that he will not be a candidate when the re-run happens.

How much damage has all this done? Not much. Bolivia used to hold the world record for military coups, but everybody behaved reasonably well this time. Most of the good things Morales did, like entrenching the rights of indigenous communities in the constitution, will survive him. Carlos Mesa, who will almost certainly be the next President, has a very different style, but he is not hostile to most of Morales’s goals. And here’s a take-away for everybody in politics: If you are going to rig the vote, do it from the start. Don’t wait until the count shows that your candidate is not doing well and only then intervene to fix it. Amateurs!

Courtesy: The Pioneer

Regional economic integration remains the only option for addressing the long-standing, protracted interstate tensions in South Asia

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Chamber of Commerce recently hosted a conference on “Regional Economic Integration: A Catalyst for Socioeconomic Prosperity in South Asia.”

I welcomed this timely forum. Afghanistan, a country-participant and member-State of SAARC, has long been advocating for an acceleration of regionwide efforts to jump-start the process of regional economic integration. Doing so can indeed be a catalyst for the sustainable development of all South Asian nations, which hold so much promise in terms of both natural and human resources that should be harnessed for lifting the whole region out of poverty, disease, environmental degradation, and other challenges that directly feed terrorism, extremism and criminality in the region.

At the same time, regional economic integration remains the only option for addressing the long-standing, protracted interstate tensions in South Asia. We know this from the bitter experiences of Europe during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, where the pursuit of zero-sum foreign policies and militarism eventually led to the utter destruction of the whole continent in the two world wars.

But, in the wake of World War-II, Europeans realised that what unfortunately remains the status quo in South Asia would no longer serve their shared best, long-term national security and economic interests.

That is why they gradually but steadily moved toward long-term economic integration, which they understood could help address their short and long-term human and protective security needs, which were increasingly intertwined. Those needs could no longer be ensured by the pursuit of the same zero-sum approaches that caused two devastating wars.

These harsh experiences and Western Europe’s resulting adoption of a common economic market soon, began inspiring other regions of the world to form such regional groupings as the SAARC, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the African Union (AU), and the Union of South American Nations (USAN), to name a few.

As we know, however, not all these regional groupings have achieved their dream of meaningful economic integration on a par with Europe associations.

SAARC stands out in having lagged far behind others because two of its key member-States remain hostile to each other. This continues to hinder efforts by the other member-States, including Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, to make steady progress toward regional economic integration, which underpinned the vision and mission of SAARC when it was established in 1985.

As we continue advocating for cooperation against confrontation among our neighbours, Afghanistan has consistently pursued a foreign policy that promotes regional economic cooperation against zero-sum hedging strategies.

We strongly believe that the replacement of confrontational policies at the regional level, with those of cooperative, win-win partnerships would gradually minimise the existing interstate tensions in South Asia. And this would enable SAARC to realise its vision, knowing that South Asia is an extremely young and naturally-endowed region where our youths demand jobs and a secure future in a common, interdependent neighbourhood.

Indeed, this won’t come to pass unless South Asian Governments learn relevant lessons from pre and post-war Europe, that would encourage them to make tough but necessary policy choices against the status quo for achieving shared peace and prosperity across the region through economic integration.

The Government of Afghanistan has done its part and continues to do so. Despite the imposed security challenges the nation is facing, Afghanistan  has put forth a strategic solution for adoption and implementation by its near and far neighbours: The Heart of Asia–Istanbul Process (HOA-IP) on Regional Security and Cooperation for a Secure and Stable Afghanistan and the Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan (RECCA). These Afghanistan-led processes were established to help secure regional cooperation for Afghanistan’s stabilisation and sustainable development, thereby ensuring regionwide stability and prosperity, which SAARC strives to accomplish.

Even though HOA-IP and RECCA remain underutilised so far, it is in the best short and long-term interests of the countries — including India and Pakistan — that participate in the two processes, to achieve the shared goals of the two platforms. Of course, every tangible step they take to utilise these interconnected processes will help minimise their own and other nations’ security and socioeconomic vulnerabilities against the terrorist-extremist-criminal nexus that  victimises Afghanistan more than any other country in the region.

This constructive thinking underpins our growing ties with the friendly Government and people of Sri Lanka, with whom Afghanistan shares an ancient civilisation.

Since I took up my assignment as Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Sri Lanka last year, we have worked to further expand our bilateral relations with a focus on promoting full-spectrum connectivity that builds deeper economic, defence, cultural, and people-to-people ties between Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the rest of South Asia.

In this light, we have met with numerous businesses, including members of Sri Lanka’s chambers of commerce, to discuss the vast bilateral trade potential that needs to be realised.

More recently, high-powered Afghan delegations have met with the representatives of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce; the Colombo Chamber of Commerce; the National Chamber of Commerce as well as the International Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka to discuss the formation of an Afghanistan-Sri Lanka Business Council to promote exchange of trade teams, business-to-business meetings and business match-making conferences, which should facilitate bilateral investment between the two nations. To this end, we look forward to finalising and signing with Sri Lanka an memorandum of understanding (MoU) on trade and investment promotion and protection.

This step, together with our bilateral air services agreement, should facilitate the establishment of a direct passenger and cargo flight between Kabul and Colombo. When this happens as one of the country’s key goals, Afghans and Sri Lankans should be able to reconnect with their shared heritage through tourism, trade, investment, education and cultural exchange.

Indeed, the achievement of this bilateral goal will help South Asia as a least connected region, make a giant leap forward towards regional economic integration — effectively connecting SAARC’s northernmost member-State, Afghanistan, with its southernmost counterpart, Sri Lanka.

And this necessary connectivity will undoubtedly benefit the rest of South Asia where the challenges that face our nations and the opportunities that we must exploit to our shared advantage are increasingly intertwined. That is why others in the SAARC should consider doing away with the prevailing zero-sum approaches and join Afghanistan and Sri Lanka to operationalise the vision of SAARC for the common economic benefit of all of its member-States with increased interdependencies.

Writer: M Ashraf Haidari

Courtesy: The Pioneer

I fled the East for West Berlin and found out that my ‘friends’ had been informing on me to the Stasi, recalls Fanny Melle

I’ve lived in Berlin for 30 years — but have never gone near the Wall or what’s left of it. I spent so long trying to escape over it that I can’t bear to be near it. Like most West Berliners on that night in November 1989, I sat at home alone watching East Germans flood through the gates at Bornholmer Straße on TV.

I found that moment bittersweet: Having finally managed to escape the East in 1985, abandoning my family and friends, it fell just four years later, producing revelations about my life as an East Berliner just four years earlier along with the rubble.

I had grown up in East Germany near Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz), but at the age of 28 I was granted permission to leave; East Germany had signed up to the Helsinki Accords, which made it theoretically possible for citizens to apply to emigrate to the West. In reality, though, the process was tortuous and opaque: You had to apply in person every year and usually your application would be declined without explanation.

The first time you applied, you were immediately blacklisted by the SED (the East German Communist Party),  making it difficult to get things like jobs and flats. If, years later, your permission did finally come it came without warning and you were given just four weeks to settle your affairs and go.

So on December 6, 1985 my parents drove me and my then-husband to Friedrichstraße Station, which straddled the Berlin Wall, with platforms in both the East and the West. My parents were very political, both members of the SED. My father was a head teacher and my mother worked as a typist for the party’s Agricultural Department. They were dedicated to East Germany and couldn’t comprehend why I was leaving. It really broke their hearts. They left us at the cavernous glass departures hall at Friedrichstraße station, which we called the “Tränenpalast” (the Palace of Tears). In a very narrow corridor, the GDR authorities stripped me of all my papers, making me officially stateless, and I was free to go.

As artists in the East, my ex-husband and I couldn’t exhibit or publish our work, we weren’t allowed to study and we were under constant surveillance. We knew nothing about West Berlin. All information about the western half of the city was suppressed: on our maps, West Berlin was just a blank white space in the middle of East Germany. When we arrived we drove through the city — it was Christmas and the bright lights made me so dizzy that, on my first night, I didn’t sleep a wink. For months afterwards I had a recurring nightmare that I was visiting my parents in Karl-Marx-Stadt, and when I went to get the train back to the West the door of the station was locked. There was, of course, joy at having left, particularly having the freedom to paint and draw and the fact I had access to proper artists’ materials for the first time, rather than having to paint on old sheets stretched over a bed frame. But there were things I struggled with in the West.

People seemed so uptight to me. Because almost no one in the East had their own phone, if you wanted to talk to someone you just turned up at their flat. Sometimes friends would knock on the door at three in the morning and you would pull on your clothes and head out with them for a drink. I had also never experienced sexism before I left East Germany. When I had my first job interview in West Berlin as a window dresser, they said they liked me but I was 28 so would probably get pregnant soon, and gave the job to a man. It took me months to find work. Although we were free, the Stasi continued to watch us. I later discovered that they had tapped my phone calls back home to my family; one time an old friend from Karl-Marx-Stadt turned up at my door saying that he had been given permission to visit the State Library in West Berlin and could he borrow 10 marks. It turned out he was also working for the Stasi and wanted to check on me and my husband’s whereabouts. Not that we had done anything particularly seditious — we just wanted the freedom to do our work. But in East Germany you didn’t need to do much wrong to attract the attention of the secret police.

The biggest change for me when the Wall fell was that I could see my family again. My sister-in-law came over and visited me in West Berlin and was disappointed by how modestly I lived — I was a window dresser and an artist and earned very little. Where was my video recorder, she wanted to know. Where were my fitted wardrobes?

I went straight over to our town near Chemnitz to visit my mother and father, although my mother was very sick by then. They were still sad that I’d left, but we talked everything through and the best point we could reach was to begrudgingly agree that neither the East nor the West were perfect.

The fall of the Wall meant that the Stasi files were opened up and I was able to apply to the new Stasi Records Agency to view all of the files that had been kept on me.

I’d been part of a large artists’ circle in the East and my first solo show at a local youth club was a sell out. My files, though, revealed that the Stasi had paid the director of the club to buy the drawings to keep my artists’ circle together so they could keep spying on us all, hoping, I suppose, that our subversive meetings and publications would lead to one of us doing something really treasonous. I was devastated. But what really broke my heart was the amount of fellow artists and friends who had informed on me. I cut out anyone that had betrayed us.

Thirty years on, Berlin is still changing so fast that I sometimes wonder how long I’ll have a place here. But I’ve been in the West longer than I ever lived in the East and I don’t see myself as East German anymore. I suppose, finally, I feel like a West Berliner.

Writer: Fanny Melle

Courtesy: The Pioneer

Provocative gestures and doublespeak on the pilgrim corridor show the Pakistani Army’s new designs

Guru Nanak is not just a Sikh guru in the sub-continent but embodies a consciousness. As scholars have chronicled his travels across Saudi Arabia, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, India and Pakistan, he spread what is called a “Nanakpanthi culture.” Its practitioners were syncretic groups of people in the Indus plains who followed Guru Nanak’s teachings, irrespective of them being Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. A community of believers, they broke down barriers of faith and cultures and were undiluted even by the Partition in 1947. So the Kartarpur corridor, connecting Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan, where Guru Nanak spent his last days, and Dera Baba Nanak Sahib in India, in that sense, is a symbolic leap of faith in humanity. And probably the antidote that could have helped reconcile the wounds of Partition and set up a communication channel in the Indo-Pakistan dynamic, given the current stress it is under. But Pakistan has been using Kartarpur’s iconic value to further its separatist agenda of indoctrinating and radicalising Sikhs in India and reviving the Khalistani movement all over again. And for all the sweet talk by its Prime Minister Imran Khan, it is just an elaborate trap by the Pakistan Army and Inter-Service Intelligence to refuel militancy in Punjab and give us another security bother. There’s a deliberateness of mixed signals, be it in wooing the Sikh community worldwide through its grandstanding of allowing pilgrim access and provoking us at the same time. Hence the use of pictures of Khalistani separatist leaders Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Maj Gen Shabeg Singh and Amrik Singh Khalsa in its promotional videos on Kartarpur. The video, which prominently conveys the harmony between Sikhs and Muslims, also features former Punjab Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu and Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, in a crude attempt to project Khan as welcoming of religious minorities in the sub-continent. Pakistan is hell-bent on denying a sense of comfort to the Indian side, forcing last minute changes that are intended to portray us as the spoiler of expectations.  Despite having assured visa-free passage, Pakistan now wants pilgrims to carry passports and permits which defeats the purpose of a dedicated corridor. No Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI)-card holder can make it through Kartarpur, the implication being that Pakistan wants to address only a section of Sikhs in India. While India sought 5,000 pilgrims daily, Pakistan has limited that number to 500 per day. Pilgrims cannot travel on foot, as is ritual, and instead of an annual flow, our neighbour intends to restrict seekers to just “visiting and special occasion” days.

Clearly, now that its level-playing field has been upturned in Jammu and Kashmir, and with both the West and the Islamic world supporting India’s position on its changed status, Pakistan doesn’t want to isolate the Sikhs or lose the trumpcard of Khalistan. Particularly, after its Prime Minister Imran Khan’s “cry wolf” threats of a nuclear war have dented the nation’s credibility at international fora. So the Pakistan Army, without whom Khan would not have been in the chair, has decided to up the pro-Khalistan extremist agenda and foment trouble in Punjab. In fact, this divisive agenda has been in the works over the last 15 years or so. And though the Pakistani leadership has been cool to the Manmohan Singh government’s overtures on Kartarpur, fact is it had been using it as a neo-axis of Sikh separatism since 2003. The gurdwara had been abandoned till then and served as a cattle shed. Pakistan even allowed rampant encroachment but now the land owned by the gurdwara has also been quietly acquired by its government. While announcing the Kartarpur project, Pakistan appointed several Khalistani separatists on the committee, much to India’s discomfort. Its former Army chief Gen Mirza Aslam Beg openly advised the military and the government to use the Kartarpur corridor for Khalistan terror and “create trouble for India.” Recently, the Pakistan Army even got pro-Khalistani supporters to challenge the reorganisation of Kashmir. No matter how hard India may try to make Kartarpur a matter of people-to-people concern, it will never be free of our neighbour’s insidiousness. India has to be alert that the base camp on the Pakistan side doesn’t become a hotbed for Khalistani propaganda in the name of allowing faith congregations. When Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Bajwa stood in Kartarpur, shaking hands with known Khalistani face Gopal Singh Chawla, it was clear he was starting a new front in the proxy war.

Courtesy: The Pioneer

Ashton Hayes is a village in the rural area of Chester in the Northwest of England. The village became a model globally for fighting “climate change,” the world’s most pressing issue. The community-led initiative that started in 2005 aimed at making the village the first carbon neutral community in England. Residents banded together to cut greenhouse gas emissions —they used clotheslines instead of dryers, took fewer flights, installed solar panels and glaze windows to better insulate their homes. By now hundreds of towns, cities and counties around the world have reportedly reached out to learn how the villagers in Ashton Hayes did it. The year 2019 marks 15 years since a small village set out to change the lives of its residents forever.

Why did they do that? When Ashton Hayes villagers assembled to discuss the climate change plans, many expressed a desire to make a difference for the next generation. Village elders did not want to leave a problem to their grandchildren and ignore a real issue. If the story so far emerged interesting, interesting still is the Ashton Hayes residents’ resolve not to allow politicians meddling with their initiative. The village has kept the effort separate from party politics, which residents thought would only divide them along ideological lines.

What does this narrative indicate? It indicates a lack of trust in politicians. Villagers believed that they would take short-term views, which run counter to their long-term focus on climate initiatives. And it is this long-term focus Ashton people recognise as central to advancing their pioneering community initiative. However, in India, while many have reasons aplenty not to trust politicians given their role over the last few decades, Indians lack conviction or nerve similar to that of Ashton Hayes inhabitants. Incidentally, the lost trust is not restricted to a single political party but covers parties of all hues, regardless of their public stance.

In an era of diminishing ideology and in a democracy where people uncritically embrace politicians lacking credibility, one can expect nothing but mediocrity that knows nothing higher than itself. The outcome is quite obvious, from academic and social institutions to sport bodies and temple authorities, many of which are hardly run by individuals with capabilities and vision as no political party/politician is going to let that happen.

Many engineering and management and medical education institutions are controlled by politicians. While there are reportedly 15 politicians in 32 Olympics sports federations of our country, 47 per cent of presidents in Indian sports federations are politicians. Likewise religious entities like trusts of Shree Siddhivinayak Ganapati Temple, Shirdi Saibaba Sansthan, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam are headed by politicians.

Individually, as also politically, all of them may be eminent, confident, articulate and telegenic, but none are among the best for the positions they hold. Politicians helming well-known establishments undeservingly remained a long-standing legacy in India. Voices against this trend have been feeble; a few write-ups floating around in some dailies and blogs have failed to stir up political parties. We have failed to become Ashton Hayes inhabitants who forced politicians to listen and learn in their community meetings instead of allowing them to address the gatherings.

One may well question how the example of Ashton Hayes is relevant to India and its state of affairs. It is significant in the Indian context because its long-term sustainability, like many community-led initiatives, depended on how it could fit with wider political agenda and whether these agenda have the punch to deliver the resources and opportunities necessary for genuine community engagement. It succeeded with flying colours. It’s a classic case of how a people’s initiative could do well by keeping politicians at bay and yet find government support.

Now let’s consider the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) issue in particular. Former India captain Sourav Ganguly taking charge as BCCI president, ending an eventful 33-month reign of the Supreme Court (SC)-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA), didn’t come easy. The SC’s intervention, which eventually resulted in cricket’s administrators losing control of one of the richest sports bodies in the world, was necessary as BCCI continued to be involved in controversies followed by political interference, corruption, match-fixing/betting and so on.

While fans and analysts generally welcomed the Lodha Commission recommendations, it was BCCI that initially steadfastly refused to implement reform measures aimed at transforming the entire power structure in the cricket body. Former BCCI president Anurag Thakur once said, “If political leaders can lead the country and the states from the front, then what’s wrong in leading sports bodies. We have proven our worth and worked for promotion of sports.” While it’s true a number of political leaders demonstrated inspiring vision and helped propel the country’s growth and development, it’s also equally true that the country under its political leadership slipped to 102 position of 117 in the Global Hunger Index 2019 behind its neighbours Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

If the focus is on promoting and developing sports in a country and strengthening socio-cultural, religious establishments, then it should best be run by full-time administrators/domain experts instead of part-timers whose priority remains politics. Political leaders are mandated to run political establishments, represent the government at all levels as also deal with people’s basic needs and social ills. In a country like ours, these are the areas where lies an ample opportunity for the politicians to serve, contribute and deliver with all earnestness.

On another plane, there are umpteen examples of individuals with political affiliations or leanings grabbing prized positions in government and semi-government entities. There are also reported cases of political leaders’ kith and kin occupying prime positions in various institutions. It’s not that political leaders’ relations are not entitled to head institutions but it should be beyond the intervention of those craving power, pelf and pleasure.

What is significant is how successive governments have remained chronically disinclined to help institutions reclaim organisational traits /establish or enforce rigorous accountability. Also successive governments have inflicted their top-down decisions/ choices upon various non-political entities rather than following best practices. Had there been a positive government approach and well-laid out accountability framework, there would have been less scope for irregularities in academic and socio-cultural institutions, sport bodies and religious trusts.

Sadly, politics hogs the limelight, floods the media, fills our Twitter feeds and animates our cabin discussions. While some politicians are relevant and essentially public-spirited, some are made out to be relevant in patronage-based politics and many are irrelevant or self-serving. The political leaders, who head organisations and associations that are non-confrontational and apolitical, mostly fall into the middle category. And they will continue to occupy the posts meant for others till we learn to appreciate the courage of Ashton Hayes inhabitants and reject unworthy ones outright. Here lies the secret of increasing the number of medals in the Olympics and removing temple practices such as maintaining a fleet of luxury vehicles for the use of VIPs. Here also lies the secret of enhancing organisational capacity, controls, strength and glory.

(The writer is former Deputy General Manager, India International Centre, New Delhi and General Manager, International Centre Goa)

Writer: Debasish Bhattacharyya

Courtesy: The Pioneer

If North Korean hackers are indeed behind the break-in at our nuclear plant, we must find out who they were working for

The hacking incident at the Kundankulam nuclear plant ought to scare the living daylights out of India’s security establishment as well as the rest of the world. As much talk as there was about “air gapped” systems, that is controlling computers that are not connected to the outside internet, our extreme vulnerability has hit home. Remember the way the Israeli security services, along with the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), sabotaged the Iranian nuclear programme at the Natanz uranium-enrichment plant by destroying the electro-mechanical devices there, particularly centrifuges? There was also an “air gap” at Natanz, so the question is how was the virus loaded into the system? The bureaucratic response by the Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-In) to this crisis and the WhatsApp malware row makes us wonder if Indian officials have read up, let alone learnt lessons from previous incidents. A basic understanding of such computer break-ins will show that no matter how advanced the control software — and Stuxnet was according to several computer programmers a “work of art” — it is a human in the chain who, thanks to lust or lucre, breaks the security fence. Almost every major hacking incident at high-security establishments, either in the military, government or the corporate sector, has broken down barriers. Investigations have to be conducted into them and the individual, who let the hackers gain control, must be weeded out and tried. In fact, this and not silly letters to the Prime Minister is what sedition and treason is all about.

Then there is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea as we know it. What was the rogue nation’s interest in Indian nuclear facilities? While India does not have a friendly relationship with that nation, our relationship is not adverse either. That said, North Korea has often worked at the behest of China to do its bidding, whether it was to escalate tensions with the United States or transport missile technology to Pakistan. Besides, North Korea has frequently used compromised computers in India to hack Western targets, including banks. It reportedly cracked the financial systems of Bangladesh to steal $100 million a few years ago. There is little doubt that North Korea is a rogue State that presents a clear and present danger to India as well. It has taken advantage of our lax protocols surrounding cyber security and one can only hope that it has not done any more damage than is now apparent. And an attack of this nature on a N-plant could have disastrous effects, especially if the software controlling the nuclear reactor is compromised. It could trigger a theft, even a meltdown. Cyber security researchers have flagged the North Korean malware DTrack, which was used by hackers to attack financial and research centres in India. Its earlier version ATM Dtrack was apparently designed to hack our ATMs and read and steal data of cards that were inserted into these machines. India has to up its cyber defences in a hurry and should not find itself trying to desperately get out of a quagmire. At the same time, even though it is likely Kim Jong-Un won’t care, India should make it clear to North Korea that such activities are not welcome, and should start finding out where its agents are active in the country. If a report by Subex, which tracks cyber-security, is to be believed, then between April and June alone, cyber attacks jumped by 22 per cent.

While we must be aware of global threats to our freedom, we should recognise that the road to prosperity lies in our commitment to values that shape a forward-moving society Ever since Italian explorer and coloniser Christopher Columbus landed in the Carribean in 1492, a string of colonies was set up across the world, all founded on violence, genocide and dispossession of the indigenous people. We were ourselves victims of colonialism for four and a half centuries.

After World War II, the colonies attained political independence but many of them remained economically subordinated through supranational finance and trade bodies such as the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Today, most of the former colonies remain the backyard of developed countries — a resource-base (natural, cash crops and cheap labour), a recipient of arms and a venue for recreation and distraction of tourists bored with the industrial routine. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has become politically correct, particularly in the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) to enunciate the “new imperialism.”

Robert Cooper, a British diplomat and adviser, who is currently serving as a Special Advisor at the European Commission for Myanmar and is also a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, rationalises the need for unity of the Western World in order to ensure their collective domination over any potential rivals, even if they are just regional powers at present.

Cooper, who was one of Tony Blair’s closest policy advisers, in his book The Postmodern State and the World Order, cautions that powerful States such as India, China and Brazil have the capacity to become “destabilising actors” and a threat to “global stability.” Hence the objective should be to keep these countries in a state of constant instability and dependence.

In our times, America leads the West and takes Britain in particular, under its wing as a “junior partner.” The late Edward Said, who was a professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of post-colonial studies, asserted that “the primary objective of the US strategy is to ensure a favourable climate for investment including unimpeded access to resources. Its military expansion is designed expressly to allow the US-led West to enforce the stability of its global hegemony anywhere, anytime, without obstruction and on the slightest sign of an emerging threat. The source of these objectives is the US corporate military-industrial complex, probably the ultimate centre of power in the new world order.”

The war against Iraq was an apt example. It was an assertion of America’s “vital interest” in controlling the nationalised oil industry of Iraq, which is the second-largest reservoir of oil in the world and accounts for more than ten per cent of the global oil reserves.

Said, a foremost expert on the Arab and Muslim worlds, said, “Every empire including America, regularly tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires and that it has a mission certainly not to plunder but to educate and liberate the peoples and places it rules directly or indirectly. Yet, these ideas are not shared by the people who live there and whose views are in many cases directly opposite”.

India’s economy is growing but economic inequality is also amplifying. This is certainly better than the reality in most Latin American countries where there is economic stagnation coupled with growth of economic inequality. We are doing better but not well enough. Economic growth does stimulate human development in the key areas of education and health, yet determined efforts are essential for the required level of advancement.

While we must be aware of global and other threats to our freedom, we should also recognise that the road to liberty and prosperity lies first and foremost in our own commitment to the values and attitudes that shape a forward-moving and progressive society.

The late Lawrence Harrison, an American scholar known for his work on international development, who was also a USAID (United States Agency for International Development) mission director to various Latin American countries, co-authored a book with late American political scientist, adviser and Harvard academic Samuel Huntington tiltled Culture Matters: How Values shape Human Progress. Here Harrison identifies 10 such values or mindsets that distinguish progressive cultures from static cultures.

First, progressive cultures emphasise the future while static cultures accentuate the present or the past.

Second, work is central to the good life in progressive cultures but is a burden in static cultures. In the former diligence, creativity and achievement are rewarded not only financially but with satisfaction and self-respect.

Third, frugality is the mother of investment and financial security in progressive cultures.

Fourth, education is the key to development in progressive cultures but is of marginal importance, except for the elite, in static cultures.

Fifth, merit is central to advancement in progressive cultures, whereas connections and family are what count in static cultures.

Sixth, community. In progressive cultures the radius of identification and trust extends beyond the family to the broader society. In static cultures, the family circumscribes community. Societies with a narrow radius of identification and trust are more prone to corruption, tax evasion and nepotism.

Seventh, the ethical code tends to be more rigorous in progressive cultures. Every advanced democracy, except Belgium, Taiwan, Italy and South Korea, appears among the 25 least corrupt countries on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Chile and Botswana are the only Third World countries that appear among the top 25 nations in this list.

Eighth, justice and fairplay are universal, inter-personal experiences in progressive cultures. In static cultures, justice, like personal advancement. is often a function of whom you know or how much you can pay.

Ninth, authority tends towards dispersion and horizontality in progressive cultures; towards concentration and verticality in static cultures.

Tenth is religion. The influence of religious institutions on civic life is small in progressive cultures while its influence is often substantial in static cultures. Heterodoxy and dissent are encouraged in the former, orthodoxy and conformity in the latter.

The above factors offer an insight as to why some countries and high achieving ethnic/religious groups like the Mormons, Sikhs, Basques, Jews and East Asian emigrants do better than others, not just in economic terms but also with regard to consolidation of democratic institutions and social justice.

These factors explain as to why for a substantial majority of the world population prosperity, democracy and social justice have remained out of reach. The above values and mindset should permeate the national ethos. They should be taught at school and at home so that we ensure a prosperous community free from oppression of any sort, where justice and fairplay do indeed prevail.

(The writer is a former Union Minister)

Writer: Eduardo Faleiro

Courtesy: The Pioneer

The Army remains the ultimate protector of the Sri Lankan people but there’s a need to track down human rights violations. The country must also stop demonising Muslims

Last month, the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) held its ninth annual defence seminar under the shadow of the tragic Easter Sunday bombings in Colombo, the much-discussed appointment of Army Commander Lt Gen Shavendra Silva and the political reverberations of a presidential election that might return Sri Lanka to a securitised state under the Rajapaksas.

Thirty years after the Eelam war started, on May 19 around 9:45 am, the 53 Infantry Division of SLA killed LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran around Nandikadal Lagoon. Colombo has celebrated that day  by proudly declaring not a single terrorist attack since then. This achievement was marred by the April 21, 2019, terrorist bombings, raising the question: “What happened” after the SLA had eliminated root and branch, LTTE insurgency and terrorism, and ushered in a decade of peace and development but without addressing post-conflict resolution, including transitional justice and accountability.

SLA used the post-victory period to consolidate and savour the fruits of battlefield triumphs earned with heavy human losses. It shared lessons of its incredible success with other countries facing domestic terrorism in the form of annual defence seminars. Lt Gen Silva highlighted “learning from debacles as well” referring to the Easter Sunday bombings. From my privileged position of being a permanent invitee since 2011, it must be said that the proficiency the Army displayed in defeating the LTTE is equally visible in the organisation of the seminar. The cultural evening presented by the versatile men and women of the SLA is getting better every year, especially its innovative themes and special effects.

In the defeat of the LTTE and other insurgencies, what cannot be forgotten is the key role played by India and Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in preventing Eelam, protecting Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and integrity, preserving democracy by conducting three sets of elections: provincial, parliamentary and presidential in the north-east; promoting 13th Amendment on devolution for Tamils; and undermining the military capacity of the LTTE. While IPKF fought LTTE in north east, SLA was enabled to crush the JVP revolt in the south. In the 1970s, too, Indian troops helped SLA in subduing JVP rebels. The IPKF memorial in Colombo is not only Sri Lanka’s salute to 1,200 Indians dead and 5,000 wounded but also the foundation on which stands the defence relations between the two militaries.

Today, defence cooperation includes counter terrorism, maritime security in the Indian Ocean and a trilateral coastal security mechanism with the Maldives, whose Chief of Defence Force attended this year’s seminar.

The “what happened” question about the Easter Sunday bombings still being investigated came up at the seminar. It is simplistic to attribute it to the dysfunctional Government sourced to the 53-day Constitutional crisis starting October 26, 2018, with the President and Prime Minister working at cross purposes. Sharing of parallel intelligence was conspicuously absent. It was total and complete systemic failure. On the sidelines of the seminar, one picked up that India baiters in Colombo, including Pakistanis, were asking how did India “know so much” about potential bombers — it knew their names, cell numbers and details of weapon caches — and why did the suicide bomber earmarked to trigger off his explosive device in India-owned Taj Samudra hotel walk out ostensibly after some malfunction?

The then Army Commander Lt Gen Mahesh Senanayake is reported to have told BBC that some of the human bombers had travelled to south India and Kashmir for training. This was denied by India. Elements within the Army were extremely unhappy with the Constitutional crisis and its aftermath, leading to speculation of a military take-over but was quickly discounted as SLA has a history of civilian control.

Two enquiries are underway: One, a presidential commission and the other, a parliamentary inquisition. Presidential hopeful Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has said that he will order an enquiry if he is elected. In his earlier comments, he had criticised the Government for dismantling after the war, the intelligence network he had set up before it. This is only partially true. Several military intelligence officers and soldiers are being investigated for omissions and commissions.

Intelligence agencies ignored some of the leads at the behest of political leaders. Mention was made of growing polarisation of society, religious and ethnic tensions at the seminar. One could pick up the palpable fear among majority Sinhalese about radicalisation of Muslims, which is not a new phenomenon. At another level, it is the envy about the prosperity and wealth enjoyed by Muslims as a trading community leading to anti-Muslim sentiment. The Muslims, too, live in fear of the Sinhalese Bodu Bala Sena, allegedly responsible for anti-Muslim riots in Amparai, Kandy and Colombo. Fortunately, only two Muslims were killed in the post-bombing riots when SLA swiftly put a lid on the violence and rounded up nearly 100 suspects.

A reorganisation of intelligence and security has taken place. The Chief of National Intelligence, who coordinates seven different intelligence agencies, is an Army officer, Maj Gen JR Kulathunga. Previously, this appointment was held by a police officer. Maj Gen Dayasiri Hettiarachchi, former Jaffna commander, has opened a new department for deradicalisation of Muslims. The new Defence Secretary is Lt Gen Shantha Kottegoda, a former Army Commander. This post was traditionally held by a civil servant. All these new appointments have been placed under the Ministry of Defence, reflecting the great trust in the Army.

In the aftermath of the Easter bombings, national security and the pivotal position of the Army in Sri Lankan society, never in doubt, is soaring high. Colombo’s shrinking Galle Face Green is towered by highrise five-star hotels and a future port city rising from the depths of the Indian Ocean. Soldiers are back at vantage locations “protecting the people”, one of Lt Gen Silva’s top missions. Similarly, checks at the Bandaranaike International Airport have been enhanced. Tourism, which took a big hit after the bombings, has picked up and is expected to return to the 2018 high.

Elaborate inter-faith harmony programmes have been launched by the National Peace Council. The demonising of Muslims has to end if Sri Lanka has to return to the path of sanity, peace and development. The defence seminar has proved SLA remains the ultimate protector of the Sri Lankan people but tainted with alleged human rights violations. The air on this should be cleared soon.

Special Forces’ HS Kumarasiri, Sri Lanka’s most highly decorated soldier, was killed this month in his 681st free fall attempt during a multinational exercise in the east, proving that fear is unknown to SLA.

(The writer is a retired Major General of the Indian Army and founder member of the Defence Planning Staff, currently the revamped Integrated Defence Staff)

Writer: Ashok K Mehta

Courtesy: The Pioneer

There’s no reason to be alarmed about a report of Masood Azhar being released as it is just a repetition of past drills

Howsoever persistently we may counter Pakistan’s adventurism and militarism, challenge the terms it sets, defang its threat threshold, one thing can never change. And that is its export of terror in hydra-headed manifestations. So a report that Pakistan has secretly released now UN-designated terrorist Masood Azhar, obviously to raise a batch of fidayeens and push them into India, doesn’t come as much of a surprise. With India’s clever reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan’s isolation on the subject in world diplomacy, the latter is clearly left with no option but to engage in local level offensives, be it diplomatically, militarily or surreptitiously. Since the first two have hardly worked, the last is its only dependable recourse. Given the current alienation in the Valley, it is not difficult for it to prop up home-grown militants as spontaneous fighters for a cause. In fact, Pakistan has sensed that the terrain after the abrogation of Article 370 is most conducive for jihadi operations. It won’t abandon its terror factory simply because it knows that it is not affecting the homelands of countries that matter — namely strategic partner US and all-weather friend China. On the international stage, the big majors may talk about stopping terrorism and resuming dialogue for India’s sake, even crunch their funding somewhat, but beyond that, they do not have to deal with terror as a quotidian fact of life as we have to. And since we are the victims, the actionable solutions are on our heads. Pakistan understands that apart from censures and condemnations, India wouldn’t want further internationalist intervention. And no matter how many preventives we may take, slipping in a terror module, especially one as practised and rehearsed in Indian conditions as the ones by Azhar, is easier for Pakistan. Resiliently dealing with a hit is a tougher act on our part. Everybody knows that arrests of globally declared terrorists like Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar typically involve a seizure of assets and house confinement, a camouflage for subterranean operations. What doesn’t stop is the ideological propagation through a baton relay at seminaries, the funding that continues through religious charities and the re-emergence of the same breed of terror through new nomenclature. Worse, Pakistan has never convicted terror group leaders and has diluted their cases over such time as to allow a memory lapse, citing inadequate evidence. Even the US admitted that the previous arrest of Saeed had not made a difference and the Lashkar had been able to operate freely. Clearly, Pakistan will choose to keep and blow the cover when the heat builds up, particularly of the kind involving the Financial Action task Force (FATF), which tracks terror funding and is empowered to cut off international loans and aids. Besides, the US won’t shortchange a strategic ally in the region completely, given Pakistan’s facility with the Taliban in Afghanistan.  India must realise that the US, therefore, won’t look at Pakistan’s proxy wars against us beyond a point.

So what must we do? For starters, we must realise that no amount of retributive justice or punitive action from our side will stop Pakistan from pursuing its old but effective “thousand cuts” operations across India. While we have beefed up counter-insurgency operations in recent years, eliminated Pakistan-exported militant hives in the Valley and seemingly avenged a Pulwama with Balakot — at a great cost one must admit —  the point is these won’t be decelerators of Pakistani ambition, rather animus. We would have to keep a tautness of preparedness, which means sharpening our alertness and counter-terrorism protocols with technology upgrades and an emergency-level efficiency. Politically, therefore, we cannot force the hand of Kashmiris with an extended lockdown of basic amenities of life and alienate them further. There must be civil engagement and a basic semblance of normal life that must be restored. Otherwise, we are just giving Pakistan enough reason to make deeper cuts. We may have won the diplomatic round but are yet to size up the reality on the ground.

Writer & Courtesy: The Pioneer