Pakistan has handed over the report of its investigations so far into the Mumbai attack, put thirty questions to the Indian government and said India now has to respond to those queries and share its own findings for Pakistan to proceed further.

On its part, India has called Pakistan’s action a “positive development” but tempered that “praise” with calls for more action against the perpetrators of the Mumbai incident in particular and terrorism in general.

Where do the two countries go from here? Are there any lessons to be learnt from this episode? Let’s consider some facts without going into the details of what Rehman Malik, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s Advisor on Interior, told the media on Thursday.

It is now known, through reports in Pakistani as well as the western press, that even as Mumbai was happening and much before India sent its dossier to Pakistan, investigation agencies like the Special Investigation Group (Sig), the rather secret cell within the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) assigned to look into cases of terrorism, had got down to the job of finding out who had done Mumbai.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to determine that India and Pakistan could have avoided much bad blood if New Delhi had not chosen to shoot from the hip and if the Indian media, especially TV, had not gone overboard in the ratings game.

The calculus of a complex situation became easy. An Indian government, under pressure from the right wing and in the run-up to state elections, had to come across as doing something. But what?

... contd.