Narendra Modi said in his speech from Delhi’s Red Fort that he wants to improve relations with other Saarc countries
BANGALORE: On August 15, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his speech from Delhi’s Red Fort that he wants to improve relations with other Saarc countries. On August 25, the India-Pakistan bilateral talks will resume at the level of foreign secretaries.
It will be an occasion for evolving an out-of-the-box approach to find solutions for the problems facing the whole Saarc region. First and foremost, the Saarc region has to realise that unless problems between India and Pakistan are resolved, Saarc cannot move forward.
At present there are three — seemingly — intractable problems between India and Pakistan: (i) India alone can’t progress on its own. Eighty per cent of Indians (oppressed, backwards, tribes and minorities) are still at a low level of development and this is a fact. (ii) Pakistan can’t solve on its own its damaging and destabilising homegrown jihadis problem. (iii) India and Pakistan can’t solve the core issue of Kashmir because neither can politically afford to part with whatever part of Kashmir is with them. And without unification of Kashmir there is no solution.
Therefore, the solution is to set up political parties at the level of Saarc, which have membership and office-bearers in all countries. India should be comfortable with this idea because there is a large constituency in the other seven Saarc countries which is in favour of their countries having good ties with Delhi.
Hem Raj Jain
Published in The Express Tribune, August 18th, 2014.
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