Subcontinents Year of Hope
5 January 2010 Can the media give peace a chance? All those who woke up on New Years day in India and Pakistan, woke up to the front pages of the Times of India and the Jang Group celebrating conjoined doves outlined in saffron and green (presumably the colours of predominantly Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan), a common Editors note that professed the possibility of friendship in a terror-obsessed subcontinent and even a trans-national agenda for food, music, travel and trade over 2010.
Overnight it was okay to be part of the candle-lighting brigade at Wagah, the land border between India and Pakistan, which has been witness to lonely peaceniks nimbly sidestepping warnings of nuclear holocaust, disregarding armed intrusions at Kargil, Kaluchak and Kashmir and keeping faith with Sisyphean stories of beginnings and ends, to keep their annual date with hope rather than reality.
Aman ki Asha, the slogan read, translated as the hope of peace. In a country still reeling from the aftermath of the Mumbai horror, here were the sub-continents biggest newspapers (over 500,000 daily at the TOI and about 300,000 at the Jang) extolling their huge readership to make babies, not bombs.
So what gave? One throwaway line in a story in the Jangs English-language daily, The News, talking of having brought all the stakeholders on board by both media houses in their respective countries, pointed out that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had been sounded out about the campaign and that hed agreed.
So let me make a prediction or take a bet or do both this year, especially since were still in the brand new week: 2010 will be the year that India and Pakistan resolve their major differences, whether over Siachen or Sir Creek, and arrive at some sort of a deal over Kashmir.
2010 will be the year that both countries, India and Pakistan, will move on and rejoin the sub-continent the litmus test being open borders and freer travel, spurred by Punjabi entrepreneurship and uniting 
mohajir families.
For the first time since 1947, when the partition of India sundered all ties, the glimmer of an economic coming-together union is too strong and loaded a word for the time being of the Indian subcontinent, it seems, will mark the new decade.
For the first time it is slowly becoming clear that India, whose economic growth has remained at 8 per cent despite the worldwide recession, will power nation-states like Pakistan in the west and Bangladesh in the east, Bhutan and Nepal in the north and Sri Lanka and faraway Maldives in the south, to greater economic prosperity, thereby softening the regions political angularities and caprices.
Of course, 2010 hasnt started in the best way possible for some of the above Bollywood-like scenarios: Nepals Prachanda is at loggerheads with Delhi and the political scene in Sri Lanka in the run-up to its January 26 presidential elections is a potboiler as India is dragged into the 
presidential sweepstakes.
But check out the following: Bangladeshs Sheikh Hasina is coming to Delhi next week, a conquering heroine who in recent weeks has picked out ULFA terrorist Arabinda Rajkhowa and others from their safe havens, like rats, and sent them packing to the mother 
country, India.
Delhi is sure to reciprocate on the economic front, whether it is over unifying the electricity grids or sharing the Teesta waters.
Meanwhile, Bhutans reigning monarch, Jigme Wangchuk visited Delhi in the Christmas week, amid a flurry of accords on power and water, making Bhutan the richest state in the Indian subcontinent, second only to India.
To return to the whys and wherefores of India-Pak friendship, truth is theres too much at stake here for the experiment not to succeed and some of it is centred on the Afghanistan anvil. Meaning US President Barack Obamas successes in that country will be hugely dependent on Americas abilities to neutralise the Afghan Taleban, some of whom have taken refuge in the Pakistani cities of Quetta, Miranshah as well as in the North Waziristan areas.
The Pakistan military will demand its pound of flesh on Kashmir in any case, the Musharraf and the first Manmohan Singh regime were close to a secret Kashmir deal in 2007, in which Kashmiris were given real political autonomy in exchange for joint India-Pakistani oversight on issues like the management of watersheds, forestry and the environment.
A deal on Kashmir may not neutralise the hardline elements in Pakistans army and intelligence agencies, especially those who have been nurtured on an anti-India diet.
It will, however, remove the excuse several Pakistanis see in the Kashmir dispute and Islamabads ostensible inability to withdraw forces from the eastern border to fight the Taleban in the west.
Imagine what a peace deal between India and Pakistan could do: It would hugely strengthen the elected government, even if the Pakistan army remains the most powerful national institution. It would embolden the moderate face of the Islamic republic, confirming Pakistans place as the geostrategic lynchpin between South Asia and the Gulf on the one hand and with Central Asia on the other.
Meanwhile, real estate prices in Lahore and Karachi, Amritsar and Ghazipur, would rise and rise. It is also clear that Manmohan Singh, having put his personal reputation as well as his prime ministership on line over the Indo-US nuclear deal, now wants the Pakistan issue settled.
Check out his attempt to give respect to Pakistans Prime Minister at Sharm-el Sheikh last year. Methinks the abortive attempt at peace has only strengthened Prime Minister Singhs resolve this year. It helps that Manmohan Singh has his roots in Gah, in the heart of Pakistan Punjab.
So whos better qualified to cut a deal with the enemy than a refugee-turned-prime minister?
Even Bollywood cant come up with a better story. Perhaps thats why you need journalists in the Times of India and in Pakistans Jang group to write it.
Khaleej Times Online - Subcontinents Year of Hope