Throw the borders open

Sir, - When Mr. Vajpayee and Gen. Musharraf meet at Agra, the second agenda, after whichever is the first on their list, should be open borders. The security and suspicion industry should be dispatched to oblivion with all dispatch. It was Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, who, as Foreign Minister, had walked into the Mumbai passport office and exhorted the bureaucrats to let our people go abroad.

Mr. Vajpayee's term as Foreign Minister in Morarji Desai's Government saw the opening of the flood-gates to the Gulf emigrants to seek their fortune. India too has benefited from the huge inflow of NRI remittances. The same bureaucratic closed mind-set has been keeping India and Pakistan perpetually prepared for war rather than for peace. It is for the preparation for peace that Mr. Vajpayee should now make decisive moves and initiate steps to achieve open borders not only along the LoC in Kashmir, but even across the international borders on the lines of the old India-Nepal traditions.

In this age of liberalisation and globalisation, free flow of goods, capital as well as labour must be ensured. India, under Mr. Vajpayee's leadership, could take the lead in ushering in the new age within its own neighbourhood and reap the benefits of open borders, as a first step towards the formation of a SAARC union for the peace and progress of the subcontinent. To the security fadists should go the resounding message: we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Ghulam Muhammed

Mumbai

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