Indo-Pakistani IT Networking

By Geoffrey Cook, MMNS

Los Angeles–Curiously, it is often when you meet your nearby colleagues, whom you rarely see at home; you only interact at gathering in other cities.  So it was with Madhavi Basin who is a Fellow with the Global India Foundation, and resides in Northern California.

This piece fits in well with last weeks’ on the new Islamic media and my upcoming report on follow up the follow up Conference on that same subject in San Francisco. Although Ms. Basin is not a Muslim, what conversing on is of concern to Islamic people, for it is about how the Internet is lowering the barriers between an Islamic society and a non-Muslim populace — with a significant Islamic population — that happen to be at nuclear loggerheads.

10.6% of the Pakistani population one way or the other has access to the Internet.  Although it is only an emerging phenomenon, it has made a difference in the confrontation between the two states, for the non-official –  and young especially — can talk to their cultural (in backgrounds the two hostile land s diverge from a common source,  What  divides them is religion  –not their commonalities in civilization.

The growth of IT (Information Technology) in India was 1,500% while the increase from Islamabad was 13,716% last year.  To use the Greek term, the Internet has begun to work as an “Agora” inaugurating an Indo-Pakistani dialogue at the “grass-roots” plane.

Blogs have become quite popular.  They are much like public diaries.  One side will comment on the comments of the other.  Blogs can become platforms for hate mongering, too, unfortunately.  Too often Indian bloggers will make disparaging anti-Pakistani remarks, but for the most part the “genre” has helped the two peoples to come together closer in a positive manner.

The Indian-Pakistani Friendship group (I.P.P.C.) has employ Orkut and Facebook (two Social Networking sites) represents the Civil Societies within their two hostile realms closer to resolving their differences, (and, thereby, making peace more acceptable amongst their  electorates).

There is a popular perception in India that all Pakistani citizens are terrorists.  The Internet is breaking this misconception down by creating (virtual) one to one relationships between Pakistan and New Delhi.  This is accomplished through t (the simple) new democratic means of (internet) communication.

12-28