Saturday, June 6, 1998
Into the Valley, again
Three has been a firm riposte to scaremongering on South Asia from the Prime Minister who said in Parliament that India-Pakistan issues can and would be bilaterally resolved. That has been the position since the 1972 Simla Agreement. Nothing has changed. Outraged by moves to internationalise the Kashmir question, Atal Behari Vajpayee may have overstated his case somewhat by claiming there was no tension at all in the region.
Desperate colabusters
Pepsi trucks being set ablaze in Gujarat, and now Delhi's students and High Court advocates parading their patriotism by boycotting American colas. Ramshackle Sixties agitprop that would be more at home in a museum of cultures past than in the streets of the Nineties. When it is used at the turn of the millennium, it only betrays an amazing failure of the imagination.
The democracy dividend
Srinagar was abloom and refreshingly cool, physically and politically, last week. Pokharan and Chagai seemed remote. Life was relaxed, security scarcely visible, markets bustling, Indian and western tourists on the flight from Delhi, some houseboats taken and shikaras on the Dal. A lively panchayati raj seminar debated improvements in J&K's 1989 Act before the panchayat polls in October.
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