Which is all to the good. Even the competitive cavilling that is presently crowding the airwaves, about ``our buses being better than yours'' is to be welcomed. After all, there's nothing quite like some old-fashioned competition toensure good bus services. So while India's Lahore-bound 36-seater is said to be equipped with efficient air-conditioning, pneumatic doors, velvet upholstery, a stereophonic music system, large video screens and the works, Pakistan, never to be outdone, has let it be known that their buses to Delhi will be sleeker and even have road hostesses in attendance. All this augurs well for the traveller, who could also hopefully look forward to adequate safety and some good, fresh food -- whether that's Amritsari or Lahori is of hardly any consequence. Hopefully too, these buses will also arrive and depart on time.

Buses, of course, need roads. The Pakistanis, basking in the glow of their spanking new Lahore-Islamabad motorway, have rather gleefully pointed fingers at the state of Indian roads, its numerous pot-holes and congested conditions. While this country may wince at the criticism, there's no getting away from the fact that there's substance to it. India has, for far too long, been dependent on the PWD'sprimitive efforts to get it on the road to the future. A 1995 World Bank study, in fact, pointed out that only a pathetic 4 per cent of India's two-lane roads meet international criteria. Prime Minister Vajpayee recently gave expression to his dream of linking Amritsar to Kanyakumari and Mumbai to Calcutta through a six-lane ribbon of cement. But thus far such a plan can only exist in the realm of the imagination. When the Ninth Plan has earmarked only Rs 9,000 crore for road-building projects nation-wide during its entire five-year span, it seems unlikely that the country can afford to spare the Rs 28,000 crore required to bring Vajpayee's super highway to fruition. It may be far more realistic to concentrate on improving those stretches of tarmac that are significant for strategic and developmental purposes. One of these, certainly, would be the Amritsar-Delhi stretch. The present Grand Trunk Road, linking the two cities, while it may have a distinguished history, is certainly inadequate to meet presentrequirements, forget future ones. Indo-Pak diplomacy may not have gone places but if it helps improve this vital stretch of road, that at least would be something.