The Kashmir valley does not have the longstanding and sophisticated trading systems and infrastructure that Switzerland does, which make the Swiss a viable economic entity. Developing them would require decades of investment and subsidies from _somewhere_, as well as active supply of essential goods from either India or Pakistan or both. It's something both nations would need to sign up for. That's an impartial solution, but it would be hard to win political and popular support in either country. It's one thing to subsidise the support of people who are at least nominally your citizens, but quite another to do the same for people who've opted out.
Emotional reasons aside, the people of the valley would be better off choosing limited autonomy under either India or Pakistan. Cheers Divya ------Original Message------ From: Thaths Sender: To: [email protected] ReplyTo: [email protected] Sent: 21 Aug 2008 11:56 Subject: Re: [silk] Vir Sanghvi on Kashmir On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 2:06 AM, Divya Sampath <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > it would be immensely difficult for the new nation, land-locked as it is, > and completely snow-bound in winter, to survive without substantial > support (read: subsidies) from its larger neighbours. Switzerland? Thaths -- "I saw this in a movie about a bus that had to SPEED around a city, keeping its SPEED over fifty, and if its SPEED dropped, it would explode. I think it was called, 'The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down'." -- Homer J. Simpson Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
