Should India talk to the new Pakistan Government? Imperfect peace is better than a crisis

Last month, India's former High Commissioner to Islamabad, Ajay Bisaria, revealed in his memoirs that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also skilled at communicating by not picking up the phone. Even as panic grew in Pakistan that India was planning missile strikes during the Balakot crisis—a move that would have ratcheted up the crisis—the Prime Minister declined a midnight call from his counterpart Imran Khan. The previous week, on 15 March 1969, People's Liberation Army troops had occupied the ice-bound Soviet island of Damansky, sparking off ferocious fighting . Fears of escalation grew, raising the prospect that China might end…