Horse, horsepower, buffalo: from Punjab to Punjab via Dubai

It’s been 10 months since Pakistan Punjab’s Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi, trying to set a healthy pace for relations with India, g...

It’s been 10 months since Pakistan Punjab’s Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi, trying to set a healthy pace for relations with India, gifted Sultan, an Arabian thoroughbred, to his guest and Indian Punjab counterpart Capt Amarinder Singh.

To Sultan, the distance from Lahore to Amritsar wouldn’t have called for much galloping. The horse would have crossed Wagah in one swift leap had it not been for the trade rules.

And last week, when Amarinder reciprocated the gesture by presenting Elahi some horsepower in the form of an 85-HP Sonalika tractor, the same trade rules came in the way: like the horse, the tractor too doesn’t figure on the list of items that can be traded across Wagah.

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Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala, in the meantime, has also added to Elahi’s kitty by presenting him a Murrah buffalo, an Escorts tractor and some jalebi.

No problems with jalebi but Elahi too is realising that in the matrix of IndiaPakistan relations, a gift is always easier given than sent.

So, barring the jalebi, Sultan, the Sonalika and Escorts tractors and the Murrah buffalo all have to take the long route: leaving one Punjab to enter the other Punjab not via Wagah but Dubai.

	DUMBAS HAD IT EASY

			For the five dumbas, a sheep breed, gifted in 1999 to then Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal, it was a cakewalk across the Wagah. They were allowed entry via Wagah because Badal was then accompanying Vajpayee on his Lahore bus. Last heard, the dumbas were doing fine at the Badal farmhouse in Badal, Muktsar.

With the Punjab government managing an import permit from the Centre, the princely horse is all set to fly down by February via Dubai. Punjab officials are in contact with their Pakistani Punjab counterparts so that Sultan could clear the 14-odd mandatory tests to rule out diseases such as African horse sickness.

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For his tractors, Elahi will also have to tackle miles of red-tape. It’ll include permission for import from the Pakistan government and a yes from the Punjab government here which will write to New Delhi to export the tractor to Pakistan, declaring it as a gift with ‘zero value’.