TRAVEL: Dragging feet on senior citizens

After allowing the elephant to pass through, why hold it back by pulling at its tail?

In October last year, the foreign ministers of Pakistan and India agreed during their meeting in Islamabad to exempt senior citizens (65 years or above) from visa. The agreement implied that the two governments had considered all aspects of the matter and found no reason to deny the exemption.

All that was to be done next was to issue a notification so that the immigration authorities allowed visa-free entry to senior citizens. That was something that should have been done in a few weeks in the normal course. However, about five have passed and the notification is still awaited.

The senior citizens cannot wait indefinitely for the notification because they may not live long enough. They want to meet relatives and friends (perhaps for the last time), visit the places where they once lived or pay homage at some holy shrine. They certainly deserve special consideration on humanitarian grounds. In the same spirit, they should also be exempted from reporting to the police because it will become unnecessary after waiving visa itself.

The exemption from visa will benefit both railway and bus services between the two countries as the senior citizens will increase substantially the number of passengers. At present, the traffic is very low because of difficulty in getting visas.

What next after the notification is issued? The two governments should sign an agreement to reduce every year the age limit for visa-free entry by five years. For example, on January 01, 2007, the age should be reduced to 60 years. On January 01, 2008, it may come down to 55 years. And so on. In the meantime, the Kashmir issue will be resolved and the way will be paved for relaxation in visa procedures for everybody. The senior citizens may then take their children and grandchildren with them on their sentimental journey.

February 22, 2006

U.S. It’s not a mountain, stupid!

The journalists have a knack for sensationalizing even routine matters.
So much has been written and spoken about the body search of the journalists and some other members of the delegation that went with the Prime Minister to the U.S. recently. The refrain has been that the Americans humiliated our people. Some have even demanded that our people should not visit the U.S. at all. The funny part is that it happens every time but the journalists, the main complainants, never refuse to join any delegation accompanying the President or the Prime Minister. (So much for their own sense of self-respect!)
Do the Americans really intend to humiliate us? Are our country’s people alone at the receiving end? We may not like their exaggerated sense of security but the Americans have a right to ensure it in their own country. And we cannot blame them for it. Hayat Muhammad Sherpao, a minister of NWFP during the Z.A. Bhutto period, was assassinated with a bomb hidden in a tape-recorder, while he was addressing a meeting in the Peshawar University hall. It had been placed under the rostrum, along with other tape-recorders of journalists. Then, just before 9/11, Ahmad Shah Masood, warlord of Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley, was assassinated with a bomb hidden in a video camera that was carried to him by two North African TV journalists. If there is some lapse in our clearance procedures, criticism afterwards will be of no use. If their own security clearance fails, the Americans will know what to do and whom to punish for it. There are many things wrong about the U.S. policies but our liberty to criticize them ends where their own nose begins.
For a perspective, let us look at our own ways. We require even kings and queens, Presidents and Prime Ministers, to take off their shoes (or cover them) before entering our mosques and holy places. Is it not humiliating for them? After all, they don’t take off shoes before entering their own churches or anywhere else. Foreign women reporters, who otherwise never put on even a hat, are required by Iranians to cover their heads while interviewing. (It was the same in Afghanistan under the Taliban.) Is it not humiliating?
Our own security forces do body searches at our airport. For a long time, many self-conscious passengers protested, threatened, even refused to cooperate. They considered it humiliating. Was it really so?
Consider a widespread change in recent years among us, including the journalists. Time was when your house gate was always open. The friends would simply walk in. Your servant would come out to answer the doorbell and take them straight to the drawing room. (Even strangers got the same courteous treatment.) Only then you were told that so-and-so had come to see.
Now your gate is always closed. A friend presses the doorbell. The servant comes out and asks him to identify himself. Then the servant comes to you for clearance. All the while, the friend is cooling his heels on the roadside. Is it not humiliating for him? Is it not contrary to our traditional social etiquette? Don’t you give greater priority to your own security than courtesy to visitors? What is wrong if the Americans do the same in their own home?
The journalists should, by all means, report on what they see or what happens to them. They may also comment on the behavior of others. But they should also find out what lies behind it all. They should understand things and put them in proper perspective. They must observe objective standards of their own profession. When they make a mountain out of a molehill, they only humiliate themselves.