Time is ripe for both the countries to collaborate and partner a stable cooperation with regard to disaster management
ISLAMABAD: South Asia is vulnerable to climate change, resulting in disasters due to increasing economic activities and growth rate and rising demand for energy. Pakistan and India both suffered colossal loss in the recent monsoon floods. I look at it as a godsend opportunity for both the countries.
This is the opportune moment for both the nations to turn this threat into an opportunity by relaxing travel across the border in order to facilitate relief and rescue work. This will serve as an assurance to the common people of both the countries that they are not being treated as mere pawns in the respective politico-military armouries of the warring neighbours.
Time is ripe for both the countries to collaborate and partner a stable cooperation with regard to disaster management. Both New Delhi and Islamabad can help each other, one through its economic size and the other through its fertile human resource in mitigating disaster by setting up an efficient information sharing and early warning mechanism to counter all natural disasters together.
Let this incident become a catalyst for the rise of a new dawn in Indo-Pak relationship and may peace prevail throughout South Asia.
Some see glass half-empty. I see the glass half-full!
Afzal Rahim
Published in The Express Tribune, September 27th, 2014.
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