ICYMI #TheTribuneOpinion: The ‘no handshake row’ and solutions to Punjab’s flood woes

Today’s Asia Cup match between the South Asian archrivals India and Pakistan will be their second meeting in eight days. With Pakistan cancelling its pre-match news conference one hour before its scheduled time and Indian skipper Suryakumar Yadav evading questions at a presser, the ‘no handshake’ row at the India-Pakistan match in Dubai continues to overshadow the Asia Cup.  The missing handshake was no more and no less than a muted protest. The deeper truth, perhaps, is that cricket cannot always carry the burdens we heap upon it. It is a game of bat and ball, not of treaties and borders, writes former Mumbai cricket team captain Shishir Hattangadi in his Oped piece Silence of an India-Pak handshake. Cricket has always spoken of its "spirit", but that spirit has never been fixed. It shifts with time, bends to circumstance, fades and reappears in unexpected ways, he writes.

A ghost from the past, jailed Kashmiri separatist leader Yasin Malik has stated in an affidavit filed in the Delhi High Court that many former Prime Ministers, Congress and senior Left leaders supported Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s peace initiative on Kashmir. The affidavit spans the many experiments tried by the powerful Indian state to bring peace to a troubled region, writes Editor-in-Chief Jyoti Malhotra in her Edit piece The inverted question of Kashmir. It’s no longer about ‘Ask what your country can do for Kashmir,’ but ‘What Kashmir can do for your country’, she writes.

Going still further back, sixty years ago, Pakistan’s plan to trigger an uprising in Kashmir came to naught in the absence of local support, says former Punjab CM and 1965 war veteran Capt Amarinder Singh in his Edit article How India foiled Op Gibraltar in 1965. A specialised force, codenamed Gibraltar Force, was deployed by the Pakistan army in various sectors in early August in 1965. Each of the six groups was assigned specific targets in Kashmir like sabotaging communication lines and infrastructure, triggering an uprising, etc to create conditions for a larger military offensive by Pakistan. By mid-August, 1965, Pakistan’s Operation Gibraltar had largely failed with two Pakistani officers being captured by the Indian Army.

Talking of wars, post-Independence India has failed to adequately honour sacrifices of the Indian soldiers who fought the World Wars bravely under the British flag. While nations like Russia, France and China commemorate their war dead with grandeur, India remains curiously silent, writes Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari in his Edit piece Honour Indian legacy of World Wars.  The arrival of 28,500 Indian troops in France in the opening months of World War I provided critical reinforcement without which the Western Front might have collapsed, he writes. Field Marshal Auchinleck, Commander-in-Chief of India, later conceded that Britain “couldn’t have come through both wars if they hadn’t had the Indian Army”, he writes.

Talking of the people’s uprisings in South Asia, the most recent being the Gen Z protests in Nepal, there is one common feature in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal (Afghanistan is in a different category): popular disillusionment with the established political elite. Former MEA Secretary Vivek Katju writes in his Op-ed piece India’s shrinking influence in SAARC that the political upheavals in South Asia give a message that India’s capacity to influence the course of events in its own immediate neighbourhood has shrunk. Second, these nations except Pakistan, need to maintain ties with India even in the midst of their anti-India sentiments and a desire for more equal relationships, he suggests.

Coming back to the problems plaguing our own nation, the most pressing one is unemployment, so much so that dealing with unemployment is being accepted as an individual responsibility in Bihar, says Distinguished Visiting Professor, Monash University, Australia Manisha Priyam in her Edit piece Despair, desperation over jobs in Bihar. Hopelessness, joblessness and desperation are all being managed in informal coaching enterprises, which lure subaltern aspirants with the guarantee of success in bharti (recruitment) for government jobs. In this backdrop, Rahul’s yatra is an organised expression of the Opposition’s voice. It occupies a civic space of dissent, foreclosing Nepal-like possibilities, she writes.

As floodwaters recede in Punjab, a stocktaking has begun in the state. We need to learn from states like Kerala, which has taken steps to make its rural health infrastructure disaster-ready, and Odisha, which has empowered its local bodies, writes science commentator Dinesh C Sharma in his Edit piece Plug the leaks to reduce flood risk. The State Disaster Management Plan (SDMP) has suggested district-specific measures for most flood-prone areas. To reduce flood impact, hospitals and schools must be made safe by adopting new techniques in construction and siting, he writes.

Another step towards alleviating the misery of the affected people, mostly farmers is to formulate a viable and attractive Crop Insurance scheme making it premium-free for small and marginal farmers, writes SS Chahal, ex-VC, Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology in his Op-ed piece Punjab farmers need a crop insurance cover. The announcement of compensation is projected as a favour extended to farmers; not as their right. That is so because they have no protection by way of insurance, he writes.

Without continuous river desilting and stronger embankments, Punjab will remain locked in a cycle of disaster and repair year after year, writes Kahan Singh Pannu, ex-secretary, Dept of Water Resources, Punjab in his Op-ed piece How climate change, dams & silt are choking Punjab’s rivers. Due to the very low slope of Punjab’s rivers, the flow of floodwater downstream remains a challenge. This is complicated by heavy silt deposition at dams and headworks.