A chance to bring down the India-Pakistan hostility

Sana Adnan. 

Ever since parting ways in 1947, Pakistan and India have largely remained hostile to each other. Although the government of the military ruler General Pervez Musharraf brought about improvement in their bilateral relations, the romanticism of peace was short-lived. Despite Kashmir being a constant point of conflict between the two countries, somehow both India and Pakistan have now managed to let sanity prevail.

The year 2019 started with the Pulwama Attack in the Indian Occupied Kashmir, pushing the bilateral relations between the two neighbors at the lowest ebb ever since 1999. Both countries had been blaming each other of border violations and warmongering.

The Kartarpur Initiative

Amidst the rising hostility, Pakistan has opened a corridor for India’s Sikh pilgrims at Kartarpur in the country’s Punjab province. The corridor is meant to connect the Dera Nanak Sahib Gurdwara in India with the Darbar Sahib Kartarpur in Pakistan. Visa-free access has been granted to India’s Sikh pilgrims to perform their religious rites.

Sikhs in India had been demanding access to Kartarpur since 1947. For the first time now, the proposal was pushed by Pakistan despite resistance from India. On November 9, 2019, PM Imran Khan inaugurated the Kartarpur corridor which was viewed by many as the beginning of a peace process. 

Indian Response

Unlike the governments of the past, the current poster boy of Indian politics and a leader of the hardline Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Narendra Modi, built his entire election rhetoric on an anti-Pakistan sentiment. Many of his critics believe that the Pulwama attack was an inside job orchestrated by the BJP to win the elections amidst their declining vote bank.

Interestingly, the buck does not stop at the anti-Pakistan rhetoric. Modi is known for the infamous state-sponsored Gujrat riots in 2002 when he was the Chief Minister. The investigations and independent sting operations that followed one of the bloodiest communal riots in recent South Asian history exposed the Modi-RSS nexus.

The right-wing RSS political group, or the Rashtriya Samayamsevak Sangh, aggressively supports a Hindutva ideology and has been campaigning to declare India as a Hindu nationalist state, questioning the current secular status of the country.

Modi’s coveted support for the Hindutva ideology was further endorsed with the controversial abrogation of Article 370, dissolving the special status of the Indian Occupied Kashmir on August 5th, 2019. Kashmir has since been under a total lockdown and Pakistan has been aggressively voicing its concerns on international platforms. Despite all the heat, Pakistan went ahead with Kartarpur and India was forced to give in because it cannot afford to lose the support of its Sikh minority.

Interestingly, as India signed an agreement with Pakistan over the corridor, the Indian Supreme court passed the judgment on a disputed piece of land in the city of Ayodha in favor of Hindu claimants who had destroyed a mosque there in 1992. Observers believe that passing the controversial judgment on a Saturday, and on the same date as of the Kartarpur Corridor’s inauguration, India gave a message to its archrival that Kartarpur is an isolated favor.

What to Expect in the Future

Regional stakeholders such as China and Russia have welcomed the Kartarpur project and hailed it as a beginning of peace. But unlike the past, Pakistan is dealing with a government that firmly disagrees with the idea of a secular India.

The BJP-RSS nexus has recently come out openly with its extreme ideology and has systematically used mass media to shape public opinion to align with its ideology. The Indian government is skeptical of Pakistan’s intentions. On the flip side, Imran Khan’s critics in Pakistan believe that he is being way too generous. Under such conditions, the possibility of immediate improvement of ties looks bleak but Kartarpur corridor’s opening is going to bear positive long term effects.

The smog in Pakistan is a warning of larger crisis

Bismah Khan. 

Earlier this month, a dense layer of smog in Pakistan forced the government to announce a shutdown of all private and government schools in the eastern city of Lahore. The smog forced people to gasp for air and resulted in numerous respiratory cases at hospitals.

Before the smog took over the city, there were complaints on social media over a pungent smell in the city with a reduced visibility. #LahoreSmog continued to trend in Pakistani Twitterspace. The change in air was caused by burning of rubbish and crops in the fields of the outskirts, smoke from vehicles, industrial releases, construction sites and brick kilns.

Specialists believe that the unexpected rise in the Air Quality Index (AQI) was due to a change in wind direction which brought in further smoke and toxins from neighboring India, whose capital New Delhi is said to be facing the same extraordinary of smog. Other than that, huge traffic jams in Lahore were also blamed for the situation.

AQI is used to measure how polluted the air is or how much it will be polluted in the near future. According to media reports, an AQI of 640 was recorded late Wednesday evening, which crossed the line of the ‘hazardous’ stage of air quality.

Recently, a list of world’s 20 most polluted cities with their AQI status was released. Lahore stood at 19th position. But less than 24 hours later, it ranked the 2nd most polluted city on 29th October. A few days ago, adviser to the Pakistani Prime Minister for climate change admitted that smog was a serious matter. He stated that Pakistan had taken steps to halt the burning of crops which was one of the largest factors of this situation. The situation, however, continues to remain dismal.

Due to the smog and a windstorm, driving is considered next to impossible as well as dangerous. As much as it was a tough task for the drivers to look across the windscreens of their cars, wipers were seen running but to no avail. Even with these AQI levels, citizens of Lahore continued with their daily lives.

With the air pollution, millions of premature deaths are recorded in Pakistan and this year it had a major effect here in Pakistan. According to Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection, an AQI of 300 and further, i.e. level 6, means that the quality of air is extremely polluted. Public health is exposed to risks and even healthy people suffer loss of stamina, often lead to severe symptoms.

The government has taken some measures like prohibiting burning of crops, tyres and waste to mitigate the effects of smog in Pakistan. It has also ordered to use zig zag technology in brick kilns. Meanwhile, there is a dire need of educating the masses for the disastrous effects of generating hazardous smoke on climate in the long term. Despite contributing fractionally to rising global temperatures, Pakistan cannot absolve itself from its environmental responsibilities.