Indo-Pak peace process to restart, what’s in store for Kashmir?

NEW DELHI - Since India and Pakistan have agreed to resume peace talks, Kashmir’s peacemakers are legitimately asking: what next?’

The peace approach comes at a time when a subtle generational change is taking place in South Asia. And it is propelled by rising income levels, access to technology, increased connectivity.

This new approach was also visible in the way New Delhi and Islamabad reacted to the Mumbai incident. Unlike the past, both the countries did not cut off air links or mobilise forces along the border.

Despite the media frenzy, many Kashmir-specific confidence-building measures such as the intra-Kashmir bus-service and cross-border trade kept moving, and people-to-people contact remained active.

Secondly, the appointment of Shiv Shankar Menon as the national security adviser to the Indian prime minister is being seen as a good omen for the peace process.

Menon is reviled for his pro-peace inclination; he belongs to a new generation of diplomats that see the dividends of peace in a broader context.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had recently said that he failed to find any paper trail of earlier deliberations by his predecessors.

He, perhaps, meant that his government would like to do it all over again, in a different way - which, under the circumstances, is plausible. (ANI)