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Take the bus ride, but don't overlook the potholes...

Nothing that this prime minister has in the last 11 years of living dangerously has generated as much hope and expectation as his announcement -- impulsive as it may sound -- that the inaugural bus-ride between India and Pakistan will find him as a passenger.

Not the slew of path-breaking economic measures, not his political manoeuvrings against the Sangh Parivar, which have taken on shades of Indira Gandhi's own struggle against the Syndicate, have generated such an air of optimism. It is as if with this single announcement, the prime minister has put back months of mis-governance and non-governance on his part.

The timing is just perfect. There is a realisation that for the two countries to realise their potential, they need to move away from diverting their energies, currently expended on confronting imaginary foes across the border, into more fruitful areas.

I was witness to the eruption of public sentiment in Madras in favour of the Pakistani cricketers, despite the fact that Indian claims of being a lion at home had been demolished by Wasim Akram's men. It was a wondrous sight, something that will refuse to fade into the ages. That was quickly followed by the historic sight of Mohammed Azharuddin and Wasim Akram walking together to claim the Friendship Series Cup in Delhi on Sunday, a sight guaranteed to move even the stoniest cynics among us to goose-flesh. Obviously, the people have spoken, and it is green signal for the on-again, off-again dialogue between the two consanguineous nations.

Vajpayee's announcement, thus, reflects this popular endorsement, and if taken to its natural outcome, may well earn the two leaders, separated in years by a generation but in politics by light years, a Nobel for their efforts. It will also cement the popular belief that if at all peace were to descend across the Radcliffe line, it will have to be under the BJP's dispensation.

But, against all such popular elation, there are doubts that linger, and one hopes that the government, in its zeal to go into history books positively, does not overlook these.

It is as clear as Delhi's fog that this government is under enormous pressure, from its parent organisation and its cohorts, its allies, from the public who have placed on probation an administration intrinsically different from every one that has preceded it. No prime minister before him has had to combat the kind of all-round assault that Vajpayee is being subjected to.

And, going by the past, Indian prime ministers have had this habit of pulling out rabbits from the hat whenever they are overcome by a siege complex. Indira Gandhi's answer, for instance, to this sensation, was to clamp the Emergency on the nation while her successor chose to go gently into the good night. The next time round, Gandhi went one better, and sent the army into the Golden Temple.

Her son who followed suit, could come up with nothing more ingenious than assuring Ram Rajya to an electorate that had already written him off as a petty criminal. His successor, V P Singh, who had more exposure to Congress politics than him, turned to the Mandal report for succour when he felt he was being subjected to the night of the long knives. Chandra Shekhar was a comma in the nation's progress, while P V Narasimha Rao, thankfully, did not attempt anything dramatic once he realised that he had lost momentum after the Babri Masjid demolition.

Deve Gowda's fault was that he overlooked the tenuousness of the Congress support that kept him in office, so he went before he could leave his mark on the course of history. I K Gujral, more seasoned in Delhi's politics despite the air of suavity about him, tried something similar to what Vajpayee is attempting now.

In Gujral's case, the commitment to peace with Pakistan was transparent, since it was the land of his forefathers, apart from being his place of birth. But the Congress president at that time saw the attempt at seeking permanent glory, and put paid such dreams in the only way he could.

Today, Vajpayee stands on the same threshold as his predecessor. Peace with Pakistan could well become a reality, which, when achieved, could blow away the ill-wind that is threatening his administration, apart from putting him in the rank of statesman-prime minister, the last of which species India saw in 1964.

However, nothing in life comes free, and surely peace with Pakistan is not to be had through tokenisms like bus-rides and cricket matches, however frenzied the public acclaim these may generate. Peace is an ongoing process, and one that is nurtured only by a mutual policy of live and let live. It is a sobering thought, that even as the Pakistani 11 were being given standing ovation by the nation, Islamabad should choose just that moment to resume shelling on Kargil town. It shows the rough terrain that needs to be traversed by both sides, not just India, before peace can settle over the frontier.

With Pakistan, the process is rendered all the more difficult by the cruel twists of common history. Peace is always that much harder to attain when the process involves two sets of the same people. Vajpayee may mull over this fact before he ends up paying more than the market price for the elusive commodity, in his haste to go down in history.

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Saisuresh Sivaswamy