"The war-like situation will not harm India's economy," the Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha said when he spoke last week in Ambala,. Maybe. We have seen no dramatic change in the stock market nor any major upward shift in prices. Everything seems so normal; apparently, the war is not costing us anything and we go about our safe and quiet lives. Thinking back to other wars, one recalls how those conflicts actually fattened bank-balances of firms that moved into the business of producing for the military. It's chilling to think that wars can be "good for the economy". It doesn't make sense ... it certainly doesn't seem right.

The conflict that television news clips and newspaper reports and photos brings before our eyes has got "high cost" stamped all over it. In human terms, we know very well that people are paying up. Little children scarcely old enough to comprehend the loss are lighting the pyres of their fathers.

Then, when the shooting finally stops, who is going to pick up the tab for the folks of Kargil? Perhaps a thousand rupees would be enough to repair a shepherd's simple home and provide him a few sheep, but one suspects that rehabilitation for these people will be very low on the priority list. Soldiers and their families, people rendered homeless ... they are bearing a cost that no finance minister can calculate.

Despite reports and speeches about the soldier's distant hell of cold, hunger, pain and exhaustion and high risk of permanent disabilities or death, one suspects that the "warlike situation" will become real to most of us only if and when we are required to actually bear a bit of the cost. From the crowds gathering at railway stations to give packets of fruit or biscuits to soldiers en route to Kashmir, one sees that many people want to relate to the conflict in some way. One wishes that honest and reputable voluntary associations would start mobilising various kinds of contributions to help soldiers, their families and those displaced from their homes. Blood donation camps are an obvious response and so are relief funds and funds set up for specific purposes like the education of orphans. Some people may find it easier to donate their time. They could be organised to visit the wounded. Those from whom the war has already claimed its price would surely appreciate someone coming along and asking - sincerely -"is there something I can do?"