Harsh Kumar’s Weblog

We have so many problems in India. India is so poor. We think we are growing at a very fast pace, but that pace is not enough for millions who are still trapped in the clutches of poverty, hunger and disease. We need no wars. We need no spending on military. We need to stop spending on military and use the money for our people. We don’t need prestige. We shouldn’t think that Kashmir or any other part if given to other will cause our prestige to diminish. We require that our people are fed and clothed and they be given a decent standard of living. If we achieve that in future then we should think about our prestige. Our prestige and honor is in feeding our people. Do you think that when hundreds die of hunger and malnutrition and we spend all our resources on fighting Pakistan, we get honored among the nations. Will we be remembered as a great nation if we keep Kashmir under our control for 1000 years. No thats bullshit. We will be remembered as a great nation by our future generations if we are able to provide a decent standard of living to all the people and still we strive to improve lives of our citizens further. This is my request to everyone in this nation that please stop supporting government when it increases the military budget. Stop regarding Pakistan as our enemy. We have so many things in common with the people of that country. We are told to hate each other because it is in the interests of politicians to keep us fighting so that real issues are never addressed. A lot of people don’t regard Pakistan as enemy. A lot of well educated people consider Pakistanis as our friends. People of both countries can prosper if we forget our mutual difference, shed our egos and work towards a better, prosperous and peaceful subcontinent. People of Indian Subcontinent cannot afford to spend so much on military. We have much bigger needs.

Pakistan is in a very difficult situation at the moment. We should help it as much as we can at this stage. A good gesture at this stage can really reshape the public opinion. We must help Pakistan to over come the extremist forces that have taken control of their territories. This will not only help India to improve relations but this is also a requirement at this stage as the tensions in Pakistan can spill over into India. We have seen signs of this in the past few days when there were intelligence reports that Pakistani Taliban has started operating in PoK and a number of infiltrators have entered Indian territory during winters.

At the moment the situation may not appropriate due to increasing terror threats but we should have scaled down the number of forces on our western borders a bit 1-2 years ago when the level of tensions got less. This would help building confidence between India and Pakistan and would help Pakistan to focus on its western territories to fight the extremists.

India and Pakistan should resume the dialogue process and try to solve as many issues as possible by adopting a policy of compromise. We sometime get too stubborn and that is the reason that we don’t get to any solution.

Take as many confidence building measures as possible. India and Pakistan have scope of huge amount of trade due to our long shared border and close ports. We have similar demands of goods due to our shared culture and habits. India should take first step in this direction as India is a bigger country and has bigger economy which much ore stable. India needs to take radical steps like removing trade restrictions on all items (except ofcourse arms and related things).

We need to open as many trading routes as possible. This may pose security risk initially but as the time passes by people will gain trust and the situation will greatly improve. Trade helps a great deal in improving the relations by felicitating people to people contacts. Also trade brings prosperity to both the parties. Also if we get a volume of trade between our nations to increase to sufficient levels, then both India and Pakistan will not want to spoil the party as this will cause losses to both the nations.

We need people of both the nations to work towards improving the situation. People power has done wonders in the past. Recently we saw a great example of this when hundreds protested to restore Mr. Iftikhar Chaudhary. Also, if the concept of peaceful relations and brotherhood becomes the part of daily people’s life and if people start regarding Indians and Pakistanis as friends, any of the government will find it difficult to introduce policies which are against the interests of both of us.

Let peace and prosperity prevail and let us kill the demons of war, poverty and corruption instead of killing each other.