Strapped for aid, Pakistan shuns India's sympathy

NEW DELHI: Flood-ravaged Pakistan maybe appealing to the world’s generosity but it is not so hard-up as toofficially reverse its policy of refusing help from individual Indians inIndia.Less than 48 hours after Hollywood star Angelina Jolie asked people everywhere to donate "cash, something, anything to make the situation better" for Pakistan’s 21 million flood victims, an official at the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi told TOI it was impossible for Indians to help in any way."We are not allowed to accept any aid from India in cashor in kind as there is no channel in place through which the aid from Indiacould be routed to flood victims in Pakistan," said the official, who refused toidentify himself but said he was authorized to tell it like it is to anyone whorang to ask.He added, "Right now, there is no policy under which wecould accept anything from Indians be it an individual, an organization or anNGO."He agreed that large numbers of Indians were ringing to offerhelp. The Pakistan mission’s brusque response is that they direct theircharity to the UN. It sits oddly with Pakistan’s September 3 appeal in NewYork, jointly launched by Pakistan’s permanent representative to theUnited Nations, Abdullah Hussain Haroon and Rajmohan Gandhi of IllinoisUniversity.Haroon said there is going to be a humanitarian crisis ofa sort the world has never seen and pleaded, "A million tents (are) needed; weonly have distributed about 100,000 so far. That’s 900,000 more tents. SoI was telling the Indian ambassador, I was saying, please sendtents."Wealthy peaceniks Suresh and Mala Vazirani in Mumbai wouldsend this and more in a flash if Indian and Pakistani officialdom would onlyallow it. The Vaziranis are typical of the Indian who wants to helptheir neighbour. The couple wants to dispatch medicines worth Rs 1.5 lakh to"fellow Sindhis" and insists this should be "through India — not throughoverseas channels — as there is a special significance tothat".The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), which wants to send 25 trucks loaded with relief material but is unsure how and when it will manage this, agrees it is symbolically important not to route aid through any external agency.The Vaziranis, whom the Mahatma’s grandsonquoted as having "given", say they are yet to despatch their donation. They areworking overtime to procure an exemption from the RBI to send their "parcels ofpeace". But Mala is forgiving about Pakistan’s churlish refusal of Indianhelp and RBI regulations forbidding it. "Each country has his thing called anofficial line. Once there is reconciliation of hearts and minds, the officialline will be dissolved."But there was no sign of that on Saturday,six weeks after the waters washed over Pakistan, leaving an estimated 2,000 deadand a million homeless, exceeding the combined total of individuals affected bythe 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2005 and 2010 Kashmir and Haitiearthquakes.