Reports about the deployment of the Prithvi missile in Jalandhar have once again provided the hardline elements in the Pakistani establishment with an opportunity to recreate the ``Prithvi-specific'' scare. The Indian response has been weak, ineffectual and more importantly, the political leadership appears to have lost its finest opportunity to put into practice relevant elements of the Gujral Doctrine as well as the recent agreements made between Nawaz Sharif and I.K. Gujral in Male.

In many ways, the unburdening of the Prithvi controversy was ideal to set the tone for the forthcoming round of Foreign Secretary-level talks. Where the Indian political leadership has come short is in not following up with the hot line agreement between the two Prime Ministers. Gujral could have easily picked up the phone to speak to Sharif and given him a first hand assurance.

Tactically too, a quick tete-a-tete with his Pakistani counterpart would have ensured that there would be no third parties in an issue which essentially has connotations for South Asian security. This would have frustrated Islamabad's objectives in using the Washington Post story to create a common wavelength with Washington. By missing this opportunity to test the efficacy of the Gujral Doctrine, New Delhi allowed the routine three-way dialogue to take place. The Pakistanis have as usual got away with the propaganda advantage.

For its part, New Delhi continues to be fixated with the idea that the development of the Prithvi is indigenous and therefore no country has the right to question its deployment. This might be an ideal situation, but the fact that there have been reports of private assurances given at the highest political levels about its nondeployment as well as the go-slow on the development of the Agni means that such public posturing counts for little.

If we have accepted the notion that security is a seamless web in our neighbourhood, then the Gujral government would have been well advised to suggest to Islamabad that both countries could take steps to remove any misapprehensions that both share on the missile issue. We could have allowed a Pakistani team to visit the Jalandhar cantonment to verify that no Prithvis have been deployed as alleged in the Post story and in turn, we could have asked for reciprocal facilities to visit Sargodha air base to ascertain whether the Chinese M-11s, which Pakistan claims not to have received, have been stored and deployed as per the subsequent Jane's Intelligence Review story.

Such an approach would surely draw fire from elements in both countries that their respective sovereignty has been compromised, but in the long run it would prove more effective in building trust and mutual confidence. Resuming the dialogue and being ready to talk on all issues including Jammu and Kashmir will not lead to any solution. There is need for movement on the ground that in turn will build trust and enhance mutual confidence. This can happen only when small but concrete steps are taken in that direction.Asking for mutual verification does not mean that both countries have given up their right to ensuring their security. India's indigenous missile development programme can fructify into a deployment of the missile produced by DRDO, but there should be no ambiguity, which allows either third parties or hardline elements in Pakistan to vitiate the atmosphere in which Indo-Pak talks are being held.

To avoid US sanctions for the M-11 missile deployment story, Pakistan would like to somehow inveigle India into a ballistic missile race. At the same time, they had to take care to ensure that the hype did not affect Indo-Pak talks. The propaganda was designed to play up the threat, without triggering another round of sanctions, which would have spelt doom for the Pakistani economy.

Through inaction on our part, a valuable opportunity of testing the waters about Pakistani intentions has been lost.

The writer is a research associate at Institute for Defence Studies & Analyses, New Delhiert¬Ut›°5¼Tt›is siege mentality, even the pro-reservationists seem unwilling to acknowledge and remove these flaws. The caste issue you have raised is a mere bogey. There are far more serious issues at stake.The present bill proposes a system of rotation through a draw of lots for determining one third of the total number of constituencies to be reserved for women candidates at every election. This system will be calamitous both for the women's cause, male politicians, as well as for the country.The constituencies chosen at random will rarely match up with those where the most meritorious women candidates are strong. Good women candidates in the prime of their political career will find themselves deprived of the possibility of contesting elections simply because they can't contest from their own preferred constituency.Thus it would become extremely difficult, barring a few otherwise privileged women, to get elected from unreserved constituencies.As a result of the lottery system for earmarking reserved constituencies, it would become a rarity for any woman to get elected twice to the Lok Sabha or any State Assembly. Similarly a large percentage of male MPs whose own constituencies are chosen for reservation will be uprooted from their chosen constituencies. This will make our politics very unstable. Since women legislators will realise that they are not likely to be able to contest from the same constituency in the next elections and men legislators would know that they would now have a considerably reduced chance of contesting from the same constituency, they will all have less incentive to serve their constituencies.Moreover, the present bill allows only one-third of the voters in the country to exercise a vote in favour of women. The bill's method of implementing reservations for women will ensure that they enter the electoral battle only against other women and never get an opportunity to contest against men, a sure way to perpetually ghettoise women's politics.The negative fallouts of the rotational system are already evident at the zila parishad level where it has been in operation for some years now. It is unfortunate that the simplistic polarisation of opinion on this issue is preventing a meaningful debate on far more basic issues than the spectre of upper castes capturing a substantial number of seats through the women's quota.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.