India and Pakistan are growing more and more distant from each other. They have never been normal neighbours, but after the attack on Mumbai in November 2008, both are intentionally moving apart.

Recent talks between the foreign secretaries of the two countries, more because of international pressure, have shown that they have no will to normalise ties.

What has suffered most in the process is people-to-people contact. New Delhi and Islamabad have always paid lip service to the concept. Now they are doing everything possible to dilute it, slashing the number of visas they issue and reducing the quantum of trade through the points at Wagah and Kashmir.

An academic conference in Delhi was abandoned because India did not give visas to some leading intellectuals from Pakistan. It was reportedly New Delhi’s retort to the denial of visas by Islamabad to India’s top professors.

The academicians who were to visit India and Pakistan are at the top of their profession. By no stretch of the imagination are they connected to terrorists or to the rhetoric the latter use.

The only inference I can draw is that the two governments or, more so, bureaucrats on both sides are determined to see that even limited contact becomes rare. Yet, these very bureaucrats, after retirement, will constitute Track II and meet outside their country at the expense of some western power and criticise their governments for spoiling mutual relations.

Were PIA to stop its reduced flights between Delhi and Lahore and Karachi, the connection between the two countries would be through the exasperating Samjhota Express and the unending journey by bus. What an average person goes through in a train or bus is nothing less than hell. Still both governments do not stop saying that people-to-people contact must improve. How? Whatever is there is because of the people themselves.

I recall the conversation I once had with the late Benazir Bhutto. She told me that the governments in the two countries would never be able to normalise relations but if it were ever to happen it would be because of the people. Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister at that time, was equally emphatic about the role of the people. Yet I wonder why he does not say anything positive about India-Pakistan relations.

My guess is that the Pakistan establishment, including the military, is against any kind of rapprochement with India because it has developed a vested interest in the status quo. This is probably the reason why President Asif Zardari, an outsider for the establishment, has become silent after expressing pro-India sentiments in public.

In India, the hawks, mostly retired foreign service hands, are so vociferous in their criticism — they are encouraged by leading TV networks — that the puny efforts the government tries to make get stalled.

It is an open secret that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wants to settle all differences between the two countries once and for all. But bureaucrats and advisers have always been in the way of any move the prime minister has contemplated, with some being too afraid to annoy the Indian establishment which is largely a caucus of retired civil and military officials.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said that it was no use having talks for the sake of talks. This is a fallacy because the very fact of having talks is a positive step.

I fear that the atmosphere of deep estrangement built in Delhi after Pakistan crowded it out from playing any role in Afghanistan may sour relations still further. The induction of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is telling upon Indo-Pak relations. He is regarded as an anti-India force.

I met him in Peshawar when he was in the midst of his jihad against ‘Russian infidels’. He was critical of New Delhi’s tilt towards Moscow. One remark that I distinctly remember is that the more India went closer to Afghanistan the less credible its credentials would be with Pakistan.

Now that the US has recognised the ‘strategic’ interests of Pakistan in Afghanistan, it is time that New Delhi directly talked to Islamabad on Kabul. That Afghanistan is an independent country and should remain so is not a matter of negotiation. What India and Pakistan can discuss is the increased pressure the Taliban would put on Afghanistan once the US forces quit.

Pakistan should be able to appreciate India’s role better because the fury of the Taliban would be hard to check. It has experienced the Taliban effect in the Swat valley. Fundamentalism, like terrorism, has to be fought tooth and nail, without any compromise.

The Taliban may have India as their target but before hitting it, they would have to create a favourable ground in Pakistan. Their bomb blasts in practically every major city of Pakistan makes clear that they want their version of Islam to take over. If this were to happen, as a top intellectual in Islamabad warned me, people in their thousands would cross into India. It is a scary scenario.

New Delhi and Islamabad have to sit across the table to bury the hatchet, not with the purpose of scoring points but with an honest endeavour at finding a solution. Tilting towards Saudi Arabia, as India is doing, or tilting towards Iran, as Pakistan is doing, is alright in terms of tactics. They do not provide the sinews for a settlement.

India and Pakistan have to sort out things between themselves. People-to-people contact is a sure way of reaching the destination of peace. When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani meet at the next Saarc summit they should ponder over concrete steps to expand people-to-people contact.

The writer is a senior journalist based in Delhi.