KARACHI, March 8: Peace activists from India’s second largest state, Rajasthan, have called for increasing two-way people-to-people contact and trade relations through the recently re-opened Khokhrapar-Monabao route, besides resolving the Jammu and Kashmir issue, nuclear disbarment and non-proliferation, and reduction in the military might in the region.
Mr Pars Ram, leader of the delegation, while talking to media men here at the WSF secretariat on Wednesday said that the opening of new land route would benefit the artisans on both sides of the divide while stepped up economic and trade activity would lead both Pakistan and India to prosperity.
He was of the view that nuclearization was not in the interest of the people of South Asia, and called for making the region free of the menace. He urged a reduction the military strength by at least by 25 per cent, to begin with.
Engineer Jawahar Lal said that the Indo-Pakistan friendship agenda should be based on humanitarian and environmental issues. Cooperation between the two countries demands friendly attitude and confidence, which cannot be built in an atmosphere of mistrust, suspicion, tension and confrontation.
He called for finding an amicable solution to the Jammu and Kashmir issue to defuse the principle global flashpoint and to put an end to the waste of public funds on unnecessary arms race between the two countries. He pointed out that India and Pakistan, due to their unbearably high defence expenditure for 50 years, had become marginal in terms of development and social welfare on the global scale.
Both the countries have great potential in human and natural resources, yet these are the most backward area of the world. Both these countries are characterized by a geographical contiguity, one-fifth of human community, with a shared history and socio-ethnic affinity, second largest railway network after the US, the largest irrigated land in the world, a large number of scientific and technical personnel surpassing even certain developed countries, and a rich stock of bio-diversity and natural resources. All these characteristics can form the basis for development plan in the region.
To eradicate poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and for developing much-needed infrastructure, agriculture, health system, etc., a huge amount of finance was needed, but the ruling elite pursues its own priorities. The internal and external conflicts, generated by wrong official policies, devour much of resources of India and Pakistan.
Engineer Jawahar Lal outlined the humanitarian and environmental agenda which included resolving all contentious issues, particularly Jammu-Kashmir, through peaceful means.
He called for involving people in decision-making at all administrative levels concerning environmental, political, economic and cultural processes. He stressed on working out a concrete plan to alleviate poverty and contain begging, unemployment, child labour, child malnutrition, gender inequality, illiteracy, dangerous diseases (like Aids, cancer, bird-flu etc.), unsustainable rise in population, black money, border smuggling, lawlessness, crime, and corruption, besides ensuring human rights, making India-Pakistan a nuclear-free zone area, reducing defence expenditure, trading in all sorts of essential articles, building mutual infra-structure, etc.
In the context of environmental issues, he called for planning to reduce the level of all green-house gases. Filtration of all types of polluted water and checking waste of water.
