India stays aloof to worst natural disaster in Pakistan
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, August 27: Pakistan is facing the worst super floods since 2010-11, which has left over 1000 people dead and millions displaced. Southern Pakistan, including the Sindh province, has been ravaged by the floods.
Pakistan has been stated to be hit worst by the climate change impact, first by the unprecedented heat waves and afterwards by floods.
The devastating trails of floods in Pakistan remind of the Himalayan tragedy in Uttarakhand in 2013 which had reportedly left thousands of the people, including the pilgrims to the Kedarnath Temple, dead. The flash floods had washed away several homes, wiping out villages.
The Pakistani government officials have said that the country has seen seven to eight Monsoon spell against the normal three to four, which set off the floods in parts of Pakistan.
The videos doing the rounds on internet also suggest that the Pakistani-Chinese connectivity as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has also been washed away.
Pakistan has reached out to the international community for assistance.
There has been no official contact between Indian and Pakistan for several years, as the Pulwama and Pathankot terror attacks buried the bilateral relations into the cold desert of aloofness.
The only semblance of India and Pakistan maintaining normalcy has been in the holding of the regular Indus Water Commission talks, which were held in New Delhi recently.
India has officially so far not issued any statement on the natural disaster in Pakistan. The scale of destruction should in normal circumstances have been responded with humanitarian aids.
Additionally, India has an expertise that is unmatched in Asia of dealing with natural disasters, and evacuating people in a short span of time.
India had previously been quick to send its disaster management experts and equipment for aids in Nepal following a massive earthquake in 2015. India has also very promptly responded to such natural disasters in Afghanistan despite the fact that the Taliban regime there had been adversarial to the interests of New Delhi.
India by far would be one of the largest donors of the humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan by ending relief materials such as wheat, medicines, vaccines and clothes.
Even in the case of Sri Lanka, India again proved to be the first country to respond to the worst humanitarian crisis by extending a line of credit of $3.8 billion to stabilize the economy of the island nation, which defaulted on its foreign debt servicing.
With Pakistan, India indeed has maintained an air of aloofness, after Islamabad refused to mend ways of seeking to dictate terms with New Delhi by using Mullah-terrorist gunpowder for its terror canons.
In the run up to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit slated for September 15-16, Indian and Pakistani officials have been seen on a common platform, while maintaining a cold distance. India is seeking a collective efforts from the SCO member countries to weed out the scourge of terrorism from the region.
Pakistani economy is sinking, with snapping of the trade ties with India being stated to have further put the country in a spot.
Pakistani military elites have also seemingly lost the iron grip over the politics of the country, as their political experiment with Imran Khan has boomeranged.
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