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India, Pak develop villages jointly
Published on Sun, Mar 18, 2007 at 19:33, Updated on Sat, Jun 16, 2007 at 14:15 in 
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New Delhi: India and Pakistan are taking interest in each other’s villages and local governance methods like never before.
And for the first time an official Indo-Pak Joint Working Group will be meeting first in Delhi and then in Lahore.
India takes more interest in Gah village in Pakistan than possibly any other because Manmohan Singh grew up in that village.
But this village – along with 6,000 others Pakistani villages – is on the radar of the Panchayati Raj Ministry.
"In this naya daur, it's not just Pakistan who are coming to us, we also plan to interact with them. And people at the local level are the ones who are talking and meeting for the first time," said Panchayati Raj Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar.
It’s this naya daur, that is making visits of the Pakistani women delegates possible but there are differences.
Thirty six out of every 100 representatives in India are women but in Pakistan out of the 6,000 union council leaders only 14 are women.
Decentralised planning is 10 year old in India but in Pakistan it began in 2002.
Five per cent seat in local bodies in Pakistan have been reserved for minorities.
A joint working group of the Minstry of Panchayati Raj and National Reconstruction Bureau of Pakistan will be meeting in Delhi in April.
And as long as the grassroot representatives from both countries keep visiting to pick up a tip or two or share local governance secrets, both countries can keep smiling.
"In both the countries, more than 70 per cent of the people are in the villages. So, if the local government institutions come together, there will be nothing better than that," said Institute of Social Sciences Director George Mathew.
So the simple belief – that if the people of India and Pakistan keep talking to each other, relationships will improve – definitely takes a step forward with the Panchayats in India interacting their counterparts in Pakistan.
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