It is also incumbent on the people to follow the SOP and avoid gatherings. After a year of dealing with the pandemic, both the administration and the people are expected to be sufficiently experienced and aware about what’s needed to be done to prevent the spread of virus.
India-Pakistan detente assumes some significance in this context. A normal relationship between the neighbours would go a long way to usher in the regional peace.
The economy is barely emerging from the recession and the government can hardly afford to undermine the recovery. One more lockdown will thus be disastrous. The only way out for the government is a strict implementation of the Standard Operating Procedure in public places, something that is not happening.
A virulent third wave of the Covid-19 has made the education a tricky trade-off between re-opening schools and the health of children. But given the existing situation, it is important that the schools remain closed for now.
Significantly, Jaishankar and Qureshi didn’t meet as had appeared likely earlier. If anything, the absence of the meeting has revealed, the countries are exercising some restraint as far as the dialogue. There’s no haste about the open dialogue.
The win in Bengal for either party would be expected to make a massive difference to their political fortunes going forward. A Banerjee back in Bengal would certainly halt the BJP in its tracks, momentarily though.
The only thing that can defeat the pandemic is the vaccination. The urgency of administering jabs to people can’t be over-emphasised. We can hardly afford the steep spike in the cases that could force the government to go for yet another lockdown.
Now, both countries are putting onus on each other to take the first step towards resuming dialogue. And what that step would be is still unknown.
There are huge expectations on both sides of the border about the talks. At the same time, there is a huge constituency that is not happy with the engagement. There’s also a significant population that is cynical about the prospect of dialogue leading to some positive outcome.
Since the end of last year, the tourism department has been trying hard to bring more visitors to the Valley by organizing tourism promotion programmes
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