Two nations, one childhood

Theirs is the story of one civilisation and two nations. It8217;s easy to cross the boundary between India and Pakistan, the boy-cattle her...

Theirs is the story of one civilisation and two nations. It8217;s easy to cross the boundary between India and Pakistan, the boy-cattle herders from the other side will tell you. The Thar desert and scrubland that fringes Rajasthan and Gujarat hardly respects fences. BSF and army patrols are more alert, picking up young cattle-grazers on suspicion, sometimes sending them back across the no-man8217;s land they had strayed from.

But there8217;s hope yet for 20 such Pakistani boys, who were not so lucky a couple of months ago and got arrested on the Indian side of the border. After the recent improvement in atmosphere between the two nations, the identities of seven of the 20 children were cleared by Pakistani officialdom last week. The Foreign Office is also rising to the occasion, handing them across the Wagah border on November 14, Jawaharlal Nehru8217;s birth anniversary, celebrated across India as Children8217;s Day. For a change too, neither country is playing politics. All seven about to be released are Hindus.

No thank you, we8217;re Indian

The Foreign Office has hardly learnt not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Turns out that the UAE bumper offer to visiting President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam last month to invest 200 billion in India 8212; just like they do in the US of A 8212; is being debated this way and that in the Foreign Office.

Instead of jumping with joy and announcing a plethora of projects, one somewhat odd school of thought now believes it might be better to refuse the whopping investment. Argument goes, if such big money comes into India, can the bloody rivalry between mafia dons like Dawood Ibrahim and Chota Rajan be far behind? Still, no final decision has been taken so far.

George and his guests

The Pugwash, a prestigious international organisation committed to nuclear disarmament, must be ideologically poles apart from the American Israel Political Action Committee, one of the most powerful lobby groups in the US. In the capital over the past few days, though, secretary-general of Pugwash Paolo Cotta-Ramusino and AIPAC members had one thing in common: a meeting with Defence Minister George Fernandes.

George patiently heard out the Pugwash prof8217;s ideas, including novel ways to allay New Delhi8217;s 8216;8216;third-party8217;8217; suspicions on a Track II workshop between India and Pakistan on n- disarmament shot down by the MEA a fortnight ago as well as another one on Kashmir, with Kashmiris from both sides of the LoC.

But back to AIPAC. Astonished members of the group heard Fernandes tell them how during the Sixties he could never openly talk about his admiration for the Israelis for fear he would be misunderstood, and how he was so happy things had changed. AIPAC was also supposed to have met the Prime Minister, but he had to catch his special flight to Russia.

Mr Mishra goes to Moscow

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Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra, who has been conducting a strategic dialogue with Russia since 1998, first met the Russians soon after May that year when he went to tell them about the reasons for India8217;s nuclear tests. Just as shocked as the Americans, the Russians were somewhat brusque. It was an uncomfortable moment in the relationship, with post-Yeltsin Moscow realising it couldn8217;t take New Delhi for granted. In many ways it was the end of the 8216;8216;special relationship8217;8217; of the Cold War era and the beginning of a pragmatic one.

P M Vajpayee was back in Moscow on Tuesday for his annual summit with Vladimir Putin, two lesser powers trying to make sense of a unipolar world. Clearly the two get along. Putin drove Vajpayee to his dacha outside Moscow for dinner on Tuesday, a special gesture he had earlier reserved only for the Chinese president, Hu Jintao. Last year when Putin was in Delhi, the prime minister had invited him for a very cosy, intimate dinner. Putin was returning the compliment.

Back to Mishra,who travelled to Moscow two days before the PM. Did he go there to finalise an energy security agreement that may have links with supplying nuclear fuel for Kudankulam? Mum8217;s the word, so far.