Peace Process in Pieces

The Peace Process between India and Pakistan which began it's journey in January 2004 is still where it was then. Nothing worthwhile mentioning has actually taken place between the two governments.

The Peaces Process has two aspects to it - one is the people to people relations and other is the relations at the levels of the governments of respective states. In the past two and a half years we have certainly improved people to people contacts but it is important to understand that nothing can go well between India and Pakistan unless the governmental relations improve.

Pakistan has for long been holding any measure between the two governments at ransom to the solution of the so called core issues. So we had the issues of trade relations, transit to Afghanistan, conferring of MFN status on India, the SAFTA, and the list is countless. Raise an issue and Pakistan will say "Oh we'll talk about it later, let's go further with the core issue."

The core issue it must be understood are not going to be resolved in a year or two. So should we believe that until that happens we will not be able to talk over other issues. In fact the whole Peace Process had its beginnings on the word given by the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf that Pakistani soil would not be allowed to be used for furthering acts of terrorism in India in any form. And if anyone wants any proof over the sanctity of those words then we have examples to cite like Diwali blasts in Delhi, Coimbatore blasts, Varanasi, Ayodhya and now finally Mumbai.

It is surprising that just like India's policies on Economic Planning, the so called Peace Process seems to have achieved only beautiful text work and really no ground work! Diplomats from both countries meet regularly and present beautifully drafted communiqué, but the blasts that follows are just the opposite. So it's time we take a stock of where this Peace Process is going, or is it really going anywhere at all?