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The rake's progress

From next month, the Samjhauta Express between Amritsar and Lahore will not chug alone across the border between India and Pakistan. Once a week, the Thar Express will bridge 2.5 km of desert terrain to connect Munabao in Rajasthan to a purpose-built station called Zero Point in Sindh, before moving on to the town of Khokhrapar another 10 km away. Although both Governments agreed in principle to start the new link a year ago, it was really the completion of more than 140 km of gauge conversion on the Pakistani side (from Mirpur Khas to Khokhrapar) in a record time of eight months that enabled the two countries to set February 1 as the launch date. Belying earlier fears that bilateral negotiators were deadlocked over the possibility of the entire ensemble of engine and wagons — rakes, in railways parlance — crossing the border, India and Pakistan have sensibly agreed not to inconvenience passengers by forcing them to disembark at no man's land and trudge across to a waiting rake. As in the Amritsar-Lahore rail link, Indian and Pakistani rakes will alternate every six months. When the new train service begins, Pakistan-bound travellers will go through immigration and customs formalities at Zero Point en route to Khokhrapar, where they will find a link train to Mirpur Khas waiting for them. India-bound travellers will clear formalities at Munabao before boarding a link train to Jodhpur. Through booking facilities to Mirpur Khas and Jodhpur will be available to passengers at the two points of origin.

While the Thar Express will make life easier for those Indians and Pakistanis in Rajasthan and Sindh who have family and friends across the border, the true significance of the new train service lies in the wider economic and political externalities it will generate. Simply put, the rail link must be developed as a trade and transit link between Pakistan and India, or, more specifically, between Karachi and those regions of north-west India for which there is no closer outlet to the sea than the great Pakistani port to which they were connected before 1947. If the sole purpose of the Munabao-Khokhrapar link was to provide a less circuitous route for family reunification, the goal would have been much better served by simply opening a land border crossing point. Instead, both Pakistan and India have invested in costly rail infrastructure and this can make sense only if trade and the flow of passengers from a wider catchment area are enabled. In the future, for example, the two Governments should look into the possibility of running passenger trains between Mumbai and Karachi as well as Delhi and Karachi. Indeed, once Iran completes a short section of its domestic rail network to connect up to Zahedan in Iranian Balochistan, the long-dreamt-of India-Europe rail link will become a distinct possibility. For the full potential to be realised, however, India and Pakistan must begin practising a rational visa policy that aims to encourage rather than restrict the flow of the people between the two countries.

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