How do we ever achieve peace in the region then, especially when no stakeholders want it?

Where do we start?

Doves would have to take charge. They would have to withstand criticism from all ends. They would have to endure the storm of vitriol that the hawks would spew.

They would have to be vigorously proactive, and for both the nations.

Currently, marked at 2.4 billion dollars, the trade worth between the two countries, according to the Jinnah Institute research, has a potential of growing more than 10 to 20 times the current value.

That will be further consolidated by the vanishing of informal trade flows via Dubai, resulting in a decrease in prices of commodities; and transit access to Afghanistan and Central Asia via Pakistan to India, and to Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh via India to Pakistan.

 

Also read: 6 things Pakistan and India can do instead of fighting

 

It is indispensable for the security and strategic paradigms as well. If the two nations were to look beyond their differences and establish a friendly relationship, the major threats for either one would cease to be threats.

That should allow the two countries to focus inwards, enabling Pakistan to deal better with the Talibans slowly permeating its metropolises, as well as empowering India to extirpate its own terrorist organisations, such as the Naxalites and its many offshoots.

Peace would allow better appreciation of reason to reign in the foreign policy of the two republics.

Until now, the foreign policies of the two countries have been spurred by the necessity to assume a pugnacious façade, and on the premise of ‘the enemy of the enemy being one's friend’.

When peace prevails, the two can set parameters that actually matter for progress as the bedrock to establishing relationships with a foreign country.