The World Bank’s “neutral expert” has determined that India has a right to build the Baglihar Dam and that its design is, in principle, fine. However, as a concession to Pakistan, he has said that the dam’s spillways need to be lower by about 1.5 metres and the capacity of the reservoir should be about 5 million cubic metres less than that planned by India. This is a remarkably insignificant finding, given that the dispute has simmered for years and provoked much passion on both sides. Equally interesting are claims made by each country’s spin doctors that its stand has been vindicated. Indeed, the “expert” was forbidden from holding a press conference and answering “nationalist” queries because each side wanted to feed its own media a suitably doctored version of its victory. In the event, the media on both sides have obliged their respective states and each has claimed victory for itself. There are two conclusions that we can draw from this episode.
The first conclusion is that, excluding the dispute over Kashmir, India and Pakistan are inclined to make mountains out of the molehills of their “outstanding disputes”. Surely, if both had sincerely wanted to resolve the dispute over Baglihar swiftly instead of dragging the issue and scoring childish bureaucratic points, there would not have been any need for a neutral foreign expert. In fact, in this case, it turns out that Pakistan was being unnecessarily suspicious of India’s “intentions”, despite the fact that India has never tried to squeeze Pakistan’s water lifeline even during time of war and conflict.
Much the same can be said of the dispute over Siachin. Both sides agreed in 1989 to pull back to pre-1984 positions but India has not yet signed on the dotted line. The matter is pending the settlement of the legal status of India’s current troop positions, which is ridiculous if the status of the glacier itself is clear. Indeed, if Pakistan’s intentions are noble, it shouldn’t matter if India’s stance on annotating its troop positions is accepted. Equally, India shouldn’t peg its be-all and end-all on its troop positions if it sincerely wants to mend fences with Pakistan – after all, it was guilty in the first place of changing the status quo unilaterally in 1984. This rigidity on both sides is in sharp contrast to their flexibility in settling border disputes with China.
The problem of attitude demonstrated by the civil-military bureaucracies of both countries is also reflected in the media of both countries which are inclined to trip over themselves in being “patriotic” – the “my country right or wrong” syndrome is still alive and kicking, the biased press commentary on Baglihar being only the latest manifestation of this malaise of “tailism” in foreign policy and “national security” issues. In 1989, the Pakistani media was egged on by the civil-military establishment to hound Benazir Bhutto when she tried to make peace with India. In 1997, the Indian media forced IK Gujral to retreat from opening discussions on Kashmir. In 1998 the Indian media was overjoyed with India’s nuclear tests and challenged Pakistan to follow suit. In 1999, the Indian media pushed Mr Vajpayee’s bus all the way to Wagah but was later quick to embed itself with the Indian army in Kargil and bay for Pakistan’s blood. In 2001, the Pakistani media bucked up General Musharraf when he walked out of Agra in a huff but in 2003 both media “tailed” their governments in advocating cricket diplomacy. Recently, the Indian media played a particularly nasty one-sided role at the behest of the security agencies in the case of Afzal Guru, the former Kashmiri militant who is on death row because of an unfair and rigged trial. And so it goes on.
Under the circumstances, one of the central recommendations of a recent SAARC editors conference in New Delhi merits attention if the peace dialogue is to yield any lasting dividends. “It calls upon journalists and media organizations in the SAARC countries to maintain their independence and keep a healthy and critical professional distance from their foreign policy, security and other official establishments as well as from vested interests of any kind, so that journalism can play an independent, democratic and progressive role in making inputs into or shaping foreign and other vital national policies”. But in order to take the lead in opinion-formation rather than opinion-confirmation, the media in both countries has to be freed from the ban imposed on travel and reporting in the region.
As matters stand, General Pervez Musharraf has twice publicly announced multiple-entry, non-police reporting country-wide visas for senior accredited journalists from the SAARC countries, including India. But Pakistan’s foreign office is still awaiting a nod from its intelligence agencies. On the other side, the Indians never tire of saying that they are ready to push for greater people-to-people contacts “unilaterally”, yet they too are dragging their feet on SAARC visas for senior journalists. Who will take the first step? Why can’t both countries use the next SAARC summit in April to launch a liberal SAARC visa regime for bonafide media persons, businessmen, traders and artists instead of making mountains out of molehills?