The geopolitics of indifference

Regional geopolitics as well as the global 'war on terror' have come together to ensure that the suffering of tens of millions in Pakistan is not generating the outpouring of support that one would have expected in response to the July-August 2010 Indus floods. There is a discernible lack of empathy out there, which compelled UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to call a separate meeting in the UN headquarters when the initial call for support garnered only a lukewarm response from member states. The niggardly coverage provided by India's usually hyperactive print and television media has itself been remarkable, with international networks the only ones covering the calamity in any detail. Yet the power and reach of the Indian media is such that its modest interest has meant that the public of India itself and the Subcontinent at large have been less than well-informed and empathetic.

There was a time when the 'Indo-Gangetic region' was seen as one long, continuous plain, though the two biggest rivers flowed into different seas. Evidently this is not the case any longer, with the people of the Indus being seen as quite separate from the people of the Ganga. The distancing of the people of Southasia over the six decades since Partition is evident in how little is being done to raise funds in North India, for example, for the nearby people along the Indus. If this distancing were not there, we would have had energetic fundraising drives in Patna, Gorakhpur and Lucknow for the Southasian cousins hit by inundation in Multan, Muzaffargarh, Sukkur and Hyderabad (Sindh). Similarly, if not for this distancing on the other side, would Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani have responded in such a lukewarm manner to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's offer of USD 5 million for flood relief?