Transcript
DR. RIZVI: Two people conducted these surveys, and the interesting point about the two surveys is that the two gentlemen were not in communication with each other; however, there are several findings more or less went in the same direction. That is there was general support for the idea of making the Line of Control irrelevant, the idea of encouraging interaction across the Line of Control, there was support found in the two surveys.
However, there was also a lot of skepticism, there was also doubt. This skepticism was will the two governments really do that? Is it going to be true or it is yet another propaganda effort by the two governments and not address the question, and then different people approach the notion from the perspective of their point of view or their interest, and I’ll come to that subsequently. And on the Pakistani side, we also examined what are the problems or what are the steps you have to undertake before you can travel on the buses that go from the Pakistani side of Kashmir to the Indian side, and I will talk about those problems later on, and the notion of making borders irrelevant in Kashmir has been examined in the historical and contemporary context, and you will find a lot of material in the report regarding the classical position of the two governments, how does a position change?
But the report is not a kind of paper that talks about the whole issue in unrealistic manner. There is a full and complete recognition of the issues and problems that are involved; that is the difficulties that are likely to come in the way have been fully identified so that it becomes a kind of realistic and down-to-earth analysis of the new trends-data emerging in Kashmir.
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