Baby steps into Indo-Pacific

India put its best foot forward in the Pacific last year. Some 600 Fijians were fitted with the -Jaipur foot that enabled them to walk.

- R. PRASANNAN

One more prosthetic camp is being planned in Papua New Guinea this year. Next year on, there will be two camps every year in any two of the 14 Pacific isles which are members of the Forum for IndiaPacific Islands Cooperation (FIPIC) initiative.

Not just the foot; India is also putting its fingers in the Pacific pie. We gave Fiji and Papua New Guinea's election managers about 22,000 pots of indelible ink, a unique Indian innovation by which a voter's forefinger is stained to indicate that he has voted.

The sun signs in the east are clear-India is returning to the Pacific.

Returning? Were we there ever? Of course, we were there more than three-quarters of a century ago-may not be in any of the 14 FIPIC states, but in the region as the guardians of the east. Believe me, it took the mighty Japanese army 18 days of fierce hand-to-hand fighting to dislodge a few hardy Punjabis and Rajputs from their Hong Kong garrison, before they could conquer the Pacific in the winter of 1941-42.