Indo-Pak relations

The temptation to create a Pakistan and, by implication, a Muslim phobia was indeed very great. The stability of the government at the centre is crucially dependent upon the outcome of the assembly elections. For should the BJP fare badly, the rats will desert the sinking NDA ship in scampering hurry. The anti-Pakistan frenzy has also been helpful in quelling the reverberations of the Tehelka and coffins scandals. But the flip side of the strategic design is not easily avoidable: to achieve a strictly domestic objective, one still needs to lodge an appeal with a distant uncle.

The shrill rhetoric emanating from responsible quarters about using 'any and every weapon' to win the war against terrorism appears to be blind and deaf to the consequences of such an engagement. One way of getting out of the present quagmire is for India and Pakistan to first bilaterally put into practice the expressed desire of both India and Pakistan to persuade all nuclear weapon states to initiate steps for reducing the nuclear danger. This was the core of the UN resolution passed at the India's initiative with full support of Pakistan in 1998 and adopted by the UN General Assembly in October 2000.

Rhetoric and even platitudes are necessary notes of any official policy statement. But usually the notes are the overtones of a song/symphony – not though in the government’s draft science policy statement. Drafted by a group of eminent scientists/science administrators and bureaucrats the policy, the third such statement to be issued since independence, is content to construct fetching word pictures without spelling out the processes which can reverse the steadily decreasing interest in science in the country. Even the implementation strategy document that accompanies the policy statement – an innovation, to be sure – fails to grapple with the real issues.