Aman Ki Asha – Let’s bring Peace in this New Decade!

This is one topic I wanted to write since Jan 1, 2010, when I picked up the Times Of India and saw the title “Peace with Pakistan: Give Tomorrow A Chance”.

What exactly is Aman Ki Asha?

Aman ki Asha is a joint initiative taken by two very powerful Media Houses, Times of India (India) and the Jang Group (Pakistan), to bring the people of the subcontinent back together on social, cultural, emotional and economic fronts. The two countries have been in constant fight over various issues, ever since they got partitioned over 6 decades ago. India and Pakistan have fought many wars in the past over territory issues. After partition there were fights for Kashmir occupation, followed by fight in 1960s and 1971 (Bangladesh partition), followed by Kargil. The reasons of these fights may include few of the following views.

Indian View - We Fight for Our Protection
Time and again India has blamed Pakistani militants and terrorists of entering the border and creating havoc in our motherland. There is said to be strong anti-Indian sentiment in Pakistani army and ISI, which is wrecking the possibilities of peaceful ties between the 2 countries.

Pakistani View – We fight for Our Existence
Still there is a wrong notion in Pakistan that India split them into half, creating Bangladesh. There is also a lot of dissatisfaction due to the Kashmir issue. This sentiment of hatred is further aided by other issues like sharing of river water and sudden success of India.

Consolidating the Views to form a Real Picture

The hatred between the countries have now reached a height where, some people, unfortunately, highly educated and powerful people look at the people from the other side of the border with complete distrust. As an Indian, while I am disheartened to see the massacre of innocent masses on this side of the border by Jihadi forces (which we presume are from Pakistan); I am pretty sure, there will be someone else in Pakistan, feeling the same emotion for the deaths of innocent people due to the activists from RAW.
Though we know for a fact, that not all Pakistani residents are bad, and unfortunately, not all Indian residents are good, there is still a bunch of people who don’t acknowledge this fact, and hence the countries are unable to move on from the gory-past of the Partition.

Why Aman Ki Asha is a Good Initiative?
A large bunch of the new educated citizens of both India and Pakistan form their views from what the media feds them. In past, we have seen the horrific articles on some terrorist activity somewhere, missile testing to threaten the other country, various racist or nationalist articles and in some way, at least for a small period of time, we get stimulated by the tune of the writer. Unfortunately, instead of giving us good news, these media sources generally talked about pessimism and failed negotiations. But then, can we really blame the media? I guess not. Don’t we as readers tend to focus on the negative-sensational news rather than read an editorial of some philosophy? The negative emotion buried deep inside us keeps getting reinforced with each such incident and we start forming wrong ideologies.
Now, with two of the major Groups coming up with initiative to appreciate what we have in common, rather than why we are fighting, it will slowly trigger in changing the decades-old feeling of rage and hatred in the newer generation. Print media is one of the most widely reaching means of communicating with the masses and what we really need is wider and deeper engagement to tear down the walls that separate us, and clear the misconceptions we harbour about each other.

Why should we do it?

Most of the articles I read boil down to fundamentally these questions.
Why us?
They did wrong to us, why should we forget what happened to us?
Shouldn’t they acknowledge and apologize first to us?
Why do we even need them in the first place?
The answer is simple. It’s better “living together” rather than “dying fighting each other”. A politically-stable and developed Pakistan is as much in an interest of India, as it is for Pakistan. Unlike the past, waging a war is not even an option now, and both the countries are now facing internal chaos because of the radicals and terrorists taking over. Also on the monetary side, if Kasab (the 26/11 lone surviving terrorist) is to be believed, he did not take to arms because of hatred for India, it was just because, it would have brought prosperity to his family. What we don’t realize is that, the amount of money both countries can save by not fighting each-other can actually push the two countries much faster and much further on the list of the “Developed Countries”.

Final Take

I have read a small number of blogs on this topics (both Indian and Pakistani), and found that there is more optimism than pessimism in the views of the people. To quote what Kamla Bhasin wrote in the Times of India.
“I always found it strange that leaders who will unleash wars and decide to cut off contacts between people continue to meet, while those who think Wars are absurd can’t meet.”
Should the good intentions of hundreds of millions of Indians and Pakistanis be subverted by a few hardliners and radicals? Certainly not.
I read a lot of blogs, which seem to suggest that this is a marketing gimmick and nothing more; but all I wanted to comment is, marketing or not, it is a new start and it gives hope. We are not fancying endless optimism here and saying, the two countries, aided with just this one initiative of two groups (which again is neither the first, nor the most ambitious) will kiss and make up. However, it may be just one of those “yet-another-small-steps” which finally helped us complete the journey of a thousand miles.

I am not sure if we are all ready for the plunge as yet, but,
I hope that there will be a day when we will have that trust and friendship back,
I hope a time will come, when Indians and Pakistanis won’t need be suspected as terrorists if they went to meet their brothers across the border.
I hope there will be a time, when we will be able to use the words “India, Pakistan and Peace” in one sentence without using any negative word in the middle.
I hope...

Bandra-Worli Sealink - An Indian Achievement or a Hoax?

On Wednesday morning, July 1 of 2009, the Indian Government finally rolled out what is officially called “Rajiv Gandhi Setu”. More formally known as the “Bandra-Worli Sea link”, it is believed to be one of the most complex and advanced construction endeavor ever in India. In simpler terms, this Sea-link is a 8-lane cable supported bridge which is built over the sea to join two of the most busy areas of Mumbai to provide ease to traffic congestion problems.

The History

Till this bridge was envisioned and even constructed, the only link that could connect the Western suburbs of Mumbai to the main city was the Mahim Causeway, which is a very old link (made sometime in 19th Century). The problem faced was that the existing Causeway is not scalable to meet the needs of the ever-growing traffic in Mumbai and there is very heavy congestion especially in the peak hours. The estimated numbers show that more than 120000 cars use this way for daily commuting and the stretch of 7.7 km from Mahim to Worli takes about 40 minutes. The vision was to reduce this time in commuting to just around 7 minutes. Moreover, having a parallel route would also divide the traffic and hence reduce the congestion.

Finally, in 1999, Shiv Sena laid the foundation of this ambitious project, which the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation awarded to Hindustan Construction Company with the initial deadline of Dec 2004 (which was later revised twice to Dec 2007 and then Dec 2008). However, the construction was stalled due to varied reasons like lack of funds, payment disputes, opposition from fishermen groups and other changes in design structure and finally, it is now partially finished after one decade of long wait in 2009.

Facts and Benefits
The length of the bridge is an astounding 4.7 km over the sea-surface and the weight is almost 670000 tonnes. The massive structure is held together by main towers of height 126 metres, which is roughly 43 storey (floors).

The bridge is going to have very hi-tech features like automated toll-collection lanes to reduce the turn-around-time and the vehicles using the bridge will be able to avoid 29 traffic lights. There will be automated systems which authenticate the toll pass in a matter of seconds and the bridge is also installed with 12 camera, which will be used to monitor the movement and ensure safety on the bridge. With an estimated traffic of 125000 vehicles, the bridge is going to save almost Rs 100 crore annually from transportation front alone.

The 8-lanes on the bridges (once all are functional), will not only reduce the traffic in the Mahim causeway, but will also add significantly to the Tourism image of the city, especially with the concepts of open-bus/cars giving the passengers a cool drive over the sea. On the same lines, the bridge is going to be fitted with various fountains and plantations which will beautify the jewel on the crown like bridge in the city of Mumbai.

The Criticism

Instead of just saying good things about the bridge and saying that India is doing great, we should also see some issues where things could have been better.

The initial cost of the bridge was estimated to 300 crore and the completion in 2004, however, the actual cost is now estimated to have crossed 1600 crores (almost 5 times the estimation) and this number dwarfs the amount of savings and hence the benefits of the sea-link by a great deal.

Also, according to various traffic experts, though the bridge will reduce the travel time from 40 minutes to 7 minutes, this duration is just from the end points of the sea-link. Since the impact and the handling of the traffic congestion at the Worli end is not thorough of yet, the actual travel time will be as high as almost 25 minutes, which kind of negates the very purpose of the bridge.

The last and surely not the least point that we have to consider here is that a toll of Rs 50 is going to be collected for each one-way trip on the sea-link, which per se, is going to dissuade many of the commuters, unless they see a real improvement in time.

Final Verdict

I feel that though the Bandra-Worli sea link project is hyped so much about and understandably it is a massive project which gives us Indians a sense of satisfaction. However, though a step in the right direction, the sea-link doesn’t live upto the expectations. There is still a lot to be learnt from this project and improve before we can truly proclaim that we too can have and build “World-class” infrastructure.