Let the People Meet

From one that was finally able to make it to ``the other side``

this people to people contact has to continue.

Pakistanis and Indians have to know each other better

and let us not forget about split families which bear

the brunt of this visa problem.

And Pakistani-Americans should at least be issued visas

to visit India as fast as other Americans.

Ras

``My secretary had to sit in Delhi for four days,” says noted Bombay-based actor Om Puri, in Karachi for the Kara Fest.``

Pakistan should open up visas for Indians completely. In the long run, this will serve Pakistanis. Pakistanis tend to assume that Indians have the same knowledge about Pakistan, as vice-versa. This is definitely not the case. I am basing this on over ten years experience of meeting with Indians on a daily basis. The standard picture of the typical, ``Pakistani`` in India is quite different from reality.

Interestingly, I read an article in Daily Times that Om Puri remarked that when he was coming to Pakistan, he packed only shalwar kameezes. He did not know whether he would be able to wear pants in Pakistan!! Om Puri must be one of the more, or most, well-travelled Indians in India.

Indians should also open up visas to Pakistanis. The affect of that will not be as dramatic as the opening up of visas to Indians by Pakistanis. But it wouldn`t hurt..........

Alongwith this, and equally importantly, both countries should open up their countries to each others` press and to human rights organizations..........

Thanks for a timely article!! It is really important for the two countries to increase the people to people contact, so that they can view each other as human beings. Just check out the other board of Yasser Hamdani, where so called ``educated`` people from both sides are saying some of the most outrageous and ignorant things to each other. I hope the Indian government unilaterally opens up the visa regimen for Pakistan by allowing 10 year multiple entry visas, substantially increasing the number of visas to satisfy the demand and cutting down the cycle time for visa applications to less than a day.

During 2004, Pakistan surpassed India in CBMs and practical measures to increase ``people-to-people`` contact (as opposed to just talking about it).

Pakistan has issued 19 visas for every 10 issued by India: PTI

ISLAMABAD, April 27 (Online): This year`s Pak-India peace process may have broken many myths and records but the thaw ended up setting off a silent race between the two countries on the ``visa track`` in which Pakistan has claimed ``victory`` in the first quarter. The restoration of transport links, the ice-melting Vajpayee-Musharraf meeting at the SAARC summit in January followed by the cricket bonhomie forced open the flood gates on the visa front with two countries together issuing an unprecedented 30,000 visas in first three months of the year .

As the people-to-people contact became the byword in the otherwise tense bilateral relations, Pakistan officials claimed ``victory`` on the visa front by saying that Pakistan has issued 19 visas for every 10 issued by India, reports PTI .

The total number of visas issued during this period by India and Pakistan stood at around 10,000 and 19,000 respectively, Pakistan foreign officials said .

The number of visas issued by both sides in the first quarter of 2004 was 10 times higher than the visas issued in the first quarter of 2003 .

Nevertheless this was the highest number of visas the two countries issued to each other`s people in a quarter since the Kargil conflict in 1999 and it reflects the tremendous goodwill generated by the recent peace initiatives taken by the two neighbours to improve relations, they added.