A noted American scholar has suggested that pak should shaker hands with India to overcome its economic collapse because of the natural calamity.

Steve Coll, president of the Washington-based think-tank New America Foundation said –Pakistan’s economic expansion has come, in part, by selling and smuggling consumer goods to India’s growing middle classes.

He further said –

“For Pakistan to overcome its many burdens, it must make peace or at least normalize economic ties with India, which would include resolving the Kashmir issue”

He added-

The US could benefit from a sense of urgency comparable to its focus on Pakistani terrorism. “In 2007, the governments of India and Pakistan negotiated the outline of an agreement that would have further opened their border to trade.

A final deal has proved elusive, in part because of evidence that Pakistan’s Army continues to support anti-Indian terrorist groups; the Obama Administration has the leverage in Pakistan to hold the Army accountable.