The second meeting of the Indo-Pak joint anti-terror mechanism (JATM), held in Delhi earlier this week, passed off almost unnoticed. Not that anything dramatic was expected to come out of the meeting; but rarely do matters Indo-Pak get pushed to the margins of our national attention.

There were weeks of build-up in Delhi and Islamabad and in the media in the run-up to the first meeting of the JATM held in the Pakistani capital just six months ago. But the meeting itself ended in a sort of anti-climax with no substantive outcome from it.

The reason is not too far to seek. In September, 2006, the decision to set up the JATM was taken to mainly keep aside yet another contentious issue – terrorism - and move forward along the path of normalisation of bilateral relations.

And it was done in the backdrop of the July, 2007 serial train blasts in Mumbai, whose roots were traced to Pakistan by the Indian security agencies. It is a repeat of the “Composite Dialogue” mechanism devised almost a decade ago. All existing contentious issues were referred to it for resolution and that paved the way for resumption of bilateral contacts in other fields.

So when senior officials from the two governments met under the JATM banner this week, they exchanged information on terrorist incidents that have occurred in the two countries since their March meeting and the status of investigations into them.

Neither side expected the other to do anything more. Genuine co-operation and joint efforts to combat terrorism are a far cry. Mutual mistrust persists. Perhaps the increasing terrorist acts in Pakistan in recent months could encourage Islamabad to use the mechanism for real co-operation.

As long as these mechanisms remain engaged with issues of contention for their eventual resolution and allow in the interim to pull down brick-by-brick the formidable wall of total separation built over five decades, they are actually good for both the countries.

They allow for progressively moving forward to expand people-to-people ties between the two countries. The evidence of this is already seen on the ground and it is there for the world to see. Perhaps one of the reasons why official level meetings like the JATM no longer evoke the kind of curiosity that it used to in the past is also evidence enough to suggest the positive change in the state of Indo-Pak relations.