The economic damage from the floods is staggering: more than 5 million homes destroyed, 7,000 schools washed away, 8,000 kilometres of roads and railways ripped up, hundreds of thousands of bridges, culverts and electric pylons uprooted, millions of hectares with standing crops inundated, thousands of factories rendered non-functional. Among the worst-affected areas are the normally desert-like or semi-arid parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (formerly the Northwest Frontier Province), Sindh and Balochistan, besides Punjab, which have very little natural drainage.

It will take Pakistan many years to recover from this disaster and rebuild its infrastructure. Only half of the $460 million needed in immediate relief has arrived. There's a strong case for cancelling Pakistan's international debt.

Even worse than the economic devastation is the human tragedy that continues to unfold relentlessly. Its greatest victims are the poor and underprivileged. This is true of most natural disasters everywhere, whose social impact is always unevenly distributed. Not only do the poor live in vulnerable and insecure areas. The infrastructure of their habitats is inferior. Above all, their reach to relief administrations and the bureaucracy is far poorer than that of the middle class.

It's heart-rending to see Pakistan's already battered people being attacked by water-borne germs amidst horrendously unhygienic conditions. Equally distressing is the plight of children, who account for two-fifths of the victims, and are especially vulnerable to dysentery, cholera and malaria. The paucity of safe drinking water is making things worse.

The world must respond to Pakistan's crisis with urgency, sincere concern and generosity—as it did to the Asian tsunami. Elementary ethical considerations and an affirmation of our common human bonds, call for nothing less.

This also applies to India. This disaster could well have occurred here. India and Pakistan belong to the same geographical region, agro-climatic zones and ecosystem, and share the waters of six rivers of a single river system, the Indus. Both are more vulnerable to long-term climate change and short-term erratic weather patterns than much of the world—which too has witnessed extreme weather conditions this year, including a harsh winter in the Western hemisphere, followed by one of the hottest summers in living memory. Indian and Pakistani administrative structures are inherited from the same colonial bureaucracy, notorious for its hostility to people and reluctance to treat them as citizens, not subjects.

These are all strong reasons why India's government and citizens must reach out to Pakistanis in a spirit of solidarity and shared grief. But there are other reasons too—social, political and strategic, as well as regional and international.

What happens to Pakistan's society and state as a result of the present calamity will heavily influence the way South Asia evolves and India-Pakistan relations are shaped for many years. Pakistan is absolutely critical to the fate of Afghanistan, which is itself part of the crucible in which world history is being made. The United States cannot prosecute (or even securely end) its nightmarishly fraught war against al-Qaeda without Islamabad's cooperation. Afghanistan will be pivotal to relations between the West and Islam, with obvious consequences for global security and terrorism.

The floods will aggravate and intensify all the factors that have contributed to making Pakistan an extremely strife-torn and fragile country, which meets many standard Western criteria of a failing (if not failed) state. Its failure is in nobody's interest, least of all India's. A Pakistan that explodes and disintegrates will disgorge a flood of extremely serious problems (and their carriers), including religion-based extremism, on India's borders, with consequences that are too horrifying even to contemplate.

We must all hope and work for an outcome where Pakistan succeeds in stabilising its democracy, quelling jehadi extremism, constraining its Army to its legitimate role under civilian supremacy, and achieving balance in the distribution of power across different ethnic groups and provinces.

The present crisis will probably lead to greater social distress and discontent, weaken Pakistan's unity, and possibly change the civil-military balance. The floods have destroyed numerous physical links that bind Pakistan, including roads, electricity and telecommunications. Large-scale flight of people from inundated areas to distant cities is creating new tensions. If Pakistan doesn't receive enough aid, there could be food riots.

How Pakistan's feeble civilian government copes with relief provision and rehabilitation will decide if its credibility survives or not. Already, there are strong protests against corruption in the distribution of relief. If the civilian leadership cannot control this through resolute action, the gainers will be the Army and, worse, Islamic extremists.

Like the RSS in India, the extremists have mobilised themselves in full strength to give shelter and reach aid to people. Jehadi groups, from Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Jaish-e-Mohammed to Harkatul Mujahideen and Sipah-e-Sahaba, are exploiting the crisis to build their bases.

The Pakistan Army's rescue and relief operation has been relatively efficient, like in most countries. But this couldn't have endeared it so much to the people that they would respond enthusiastically to the call for martial law by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement's Altaf Hussain. The public wasn't impressed with the Army's record in displacing 2 million people from the northwest in its major offensive against militants since 2009. Their resettlement has been agonisingly slow and produced anger.

Mr Hussain's startling demand for martial law is probably attributable more to his wanting to curry favour with the Army than a shrewd political calculation to broaden his appeal, which is confined to Urdu-speaking migrants (mohajirs) from India.

Preoccupation with relief and rehabilitation will considerably increase the burden on the Army, limiting its role as the principal fighting ally in the US-led war in Afghanistan. This could enormously complicate matters for the US. Pakistan remains a central pillar of its plans to fight al-Qaeda-Taliban. The US's options in Afghanistan and North Waziristan are extremely limited.

Washington has no strategy to deal with the emerging situation, but reckons that it's best to donate aid to Pakistan to prevent it from collapsing and to earn some goodwill for itself. This won't be easy. According to opinion polls, a clear majority of Pakistanis regard the US as an “enemy country”—in some cases, a far higher percentage than those who describe India similarly.

Domestically, Pakistani commentators like Ahmed Rashid fear that “an unparalleled national security challenge” has emerged: “Large parts of the country that are now cut off will be taken over by the Pakistani Taliban, and affiliated extremist groups, and governance will collapse. The risk is that Pakistan will become what many have long predicted—a failed state with nuclear weapons ….”

Adds Rashid: “All this will dramatically loosen the state's control over outlying areas, in particular those bordering Afghanistan, which could be captured quickly by local Taliban.” This may not have happened yet. But the plausibility, even likelihood, of the Taliban growing in influence cannot be denied.

It goes without saying that the international community must do its utmost to help Pakistan prevent this. It should offer generous material and logistical assistance and personnel support and reach some understanding with Pakistan's rulers that the aid won't be routed through Islamic radicals and that one of its functions is to provide a moderate secular alternative to extremist-run relief operations.

Besides a humanitarian obligation, India has a high stake in such a programme. India is uniquely placed to quickly deliver foodgrains, vegetables, clothes, tents, rubber dinghies and other material to Pakistan. Yet, India has only offered a miserly US$5 million (since raised to a paltry $25 million). And Pakistan hesitated for weeks before accepting it under US pressure. It says it will take the aid if it's routed through the United Nations.

Neither government has shown moral clarity, dignity, maturity or grace here. India, which is incomparably better off than Pakistan—which is marked by sputtering growth—and has Superpower ambitions, diminished itself with its paltry offer. Pakistan's rulers have no moral right to refuse aid for their citizens whom they can't look after. The people come first. Narrow political considerations of “sovereignty”, which detach it from the people, are irrelevant.

India must redeem itself by raising its offer to the hundreds-of-millions level. India can afford it. It's India's neighbourly duty to help the Pakistani people. In the process, India could earn their goodwill, or at least temper hostility towards itself.

Even if that doesn't happen, India must show generosity and genuine solidarity with the Pakistani people—regardless of the state of bilateral relations, Islamabad's covert support to extremists in Afghanistan, its own northwestern tribal areas and elsewhere, and the recent breakdown of Foreign Minister-level talks. Solidarity with people is never wasted. (IPA Service)