Indian media tends to be either silent or bullish, with trust highlighted as a key issue. ILLUSTRATION: JAMAL KHURSHID.
While Nawaz Sharif might be trying to convince us that India is the next trade buddy after China, it helps to ask the question: is the other side of the border’s media just as rosy eyed about potential trade as ours?
If you take a quick scan of Indian headlines, the answer is no.
The three largest English newspapers by circulation in India are The Times of India, The Hindu, and The Hindustan Times. Out of these in both The Hindu and The Hindustan Times there has been no recent reporting on any news related to trade with Pakistan.
Malala, not Nawaz, dominates the headlines.
Only the Times of India, along with its sister publication The Economic Times, had a lot more to say about trade with Pakistan. Headlines such as the “Nawaz Sharif has given ‘good signals’: India”, “With Nawaz Sharif in power, we are positive on Indo-Pak trade relation” and “Indo-Pak bilateral trade to benefit both countries” appear.
One story even discusses conducting trade in rupees not dollars.
On the whole, though, trade with Pakistan does not seem as widely covered as other news coming out of Pakistan.
Yet in contrast to the headlines, several journalists who work in the Indian media in a personal capacity seem to think trade is looking up.
Chetan Chauhan, a journalist from The Hindustan Times, for example thinks science and technology is an area worth exploring.
“Pakistan has 162 researchers for a million people as compared to 135 in India...but India has five patents for a million people, five times more than the Pakistanis.”
India could help Pakistan with improving its technological infrastructure, according to Chauhan.
Similarly, M K Venu, executive editor of The Hindu, points out that the trade relation between the nations has constantly improved throughout the 2000s.
“If trade between two nations could go up nearly five-fold during a period marked by such negative events in their relationship [Samjauta train blasts, Mumbai terror attacks], what would happen if there is relative peace and more openness in all round engagement?” said Venu.
In his article for the Indian Strategic Studies, Venu highlights a trust problem between the two nations, that when overcome could significantly reduce costs.
“A standard sea container taken through the Wagah border has a total transport cost of $391 but the same done through Mumbai-Dubai-Karachi costs close to $1,000 per container. So, one can imagine what will happen once the Wagah border becomes open to transporting items on a wider basis.”
Finally, the most positive view is held by Rahul Khana, executive president of ‘Bennett, Coleman & Company Ltd’ (BCCL). His article “Nawaz Sharif’s coming to power is an opportunity India must not miss” for the Times of India, which is owned by the BCCL, is mostly about better political relations with Pakistan but touches upon economic relations too.
“We may lament the recent slowing-down of the Indian economy, but from Pakistan’s perspective we are still on a roll. Conversely, the past decade has been pretty much a write-off for Pakistan economically and they would love to hitch their economic wagon to the Indian train, to whatever extent possible.” He wrote.
He sees economic cooperation as the new stabiliser between the countries: “Besides helping both our faltering economies, this would help lay a concrete foundation for lasting peace, capable of weathering future storms.”
So while major publications may seem to provide little as to talks with Pakistan as actually problem, several people within the Indian media can provide info otherwise.
Even so, in an update to the original article, Khana noted “Most of you feel that the scenario I’ve painted is hopelessly optimistic, that Pakistan can’t be trusted, that the ‘leopard won’t change his spots’ etc.”
Clearly then, for trade relations to improve, the trust level between the two countries is also going to have to improve.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 22nd, 2013.
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COMMENTS (24)
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These graphs are under reported. India's exports valued at USD 300.6 billion in 2012-13 with a drop of 1.7%, while imports valued at USD 491 billion.
@Arif Baluch: Like China and you should focus on them.
This subject and action is over due, this should be taken very seriously, it will benefit every Indian and Pakistani, and boost the economy of both countries, and definitely defuse the bad feeling which we keep for each other.
correction:NS should remove MFN (*hurdle and grant it),
Economy can not be revived overnight just like it takes years to go down it takes years to come up. Pakistani people are emotional people and business can not be done with emotions. The sole purpose of business is to make money preferably ethically within the parameters of the rule of the law of the country. Pakistan does not have infrastructure to be number one in the world. Religion, alienation against India, west,US, Israel, desperate urge to please Chinese, poor quality control of products, lack of rule of law, change of contract based on emotions and not facts is very common. There are numerous issues with agricultural export such as rice, mangoes, wheat etc These are signs of systemic rot in the psyche and it is showing up in the economy. It is possible to rise but need some good managers who are willing to rise above the emotions and create vote bank based on growth and development. NS should remove MFN, allow passenger and goods trains from Dhaka to Kabul and beyond and vice versa. Take a risk it is better than going to IMF. This will create goodwill all around and will secure next election on growth. When Obama asked MMS for advice on economy his advice was to support all sectors of the economy as one never knows what sector of economy may pull you out of recession. Similarly NS is putting all his eggs in Chinese basket. NS should spread the risk. Ask John Kerry for help in frecking technology and not in drone technology.
if these two countries joined the hands together, it'll once again become the golden nest....come on guys, why hate each other, why not love and start off with trade....every country has bad and good people, and let not the bad people influence our relationship. I live in the USA, and one thing people never looked, as to why US is being the super-power...well one of the biggest reason is, that it has good relationship with it's neighbors.
Those who has negative comments on the board here, they usually are the people who has no life, and stressed up with their own life....
@Naveen
Well said! We want more Indians like you here.
@@Naveen: Lol!
Thanks for sharing that link. I had no knowledge about that piece of information. It is my view that Government on our side will have to work a way out to ensure trade balance with rest of South Asian countries as otherwise the entire thing is unsustainable.
From Pakistan's viewpoint, one thing that I think Pakistan has not yet explored very actively is the option of acting as a transit hub for land trade between Central Asia and South Asia. This could earn it handsome revenue in long term.
Who cares? Our trade with them is negligible. They came running to purchase our ready made textile/fashion goods and some other value added goods; they have little or nothing to offer. If they don't want to cooperate then who cares? We have much more important trading partners
Trade with India is a regional issue for Central Punjab in Pakistan and the bordering Indian states with Central Punjab. Pakistan's business hub, Karachi, is already involved in a substantial informal trade with India and that trade is dominated by Guajarati's. if the Wagah corridor opens up then real estate values in Lahore and other industrial areas of Central Punjab will see a huge increase in values and hence the push by PML-N as this is where their economic interests lay. I still see Pakistan's overall future in a liberal trade regime with all their neighbors be the Indians or Chinese and being a transit point b/w China and ME as well as South Asia and ME/CA. For this to happen Pakistan's security establishment will have to curb their propensity to project an expansionist posture in the region without compromising on the basic tenets of national security but these tenets have to be established by Islamabad and the provinces and not Rawalpindi.
The Indian trolls are a dark cloud always raining, and the Pakistanis are waiting in the cave for the sunshine to return (this recession to end, so the expats get proper jobs again)
The stifling omnipresence of jingoistic trolls allowed to flood this website deters a good many Pakistanis from commenting and engaging in futile discussions that invariably lead to ''Jinnah waz evil'' ''Nawaj is evil'' ''20% to 2%!!''
I got distracted.
Obviously any sane Pakistani such as me is in favour of trade liberalisation. But Pakistan has already liberalised 97% trade with India. India, however, retains a ''banned'' list of 3000 trade items with Pakistan (MFN..ha ha)
http://tribune.com.pk/story/492712/despite-mfn-delay-pakistan-removes-almost-all-trade-curbs/
India does not have time to think if pakistan will trade with India or not.They will trade with us or not will not have much impact on our economy or business, but reverse in the case of pakistan.
India has historically been a protectionist economy. Though reforms have paved way for liberalization yet the strategic fit seems to be missing between India and Pakistan. For example. Pakistan's major imports are Oil, Machinery, Chemicals and Fertilizers which aren't the major exports of India. Actually even the trade offices of both countries have never worked on finding a strategic fit between the countries. For example, the Indian High Commissioner delivered a guest lecture about Pak-India trade at my university. He was stressing the need for expanding partnerships in IT sector. Now the IT sector hardly figures around 1% in Pakistani trade profile. How can you build strategic trade relationships on a thing that contributes negligibly to overall trade profile of one country? So most of the talk on the topic is just blah blah blah and Pak-Ind trade continues to and would likely to be confined to just Onions, Potatoes and Tomatoes.
actually in pakistan news media also rarely focuses on india except when katrina is being talkd about!trade with india benefits us as it is a huge market!we need to tap that!otherwise who cares whether their media publishes it or not! talk to their commerce ministry to open themselves for our products.
Oh hello Yooohoooo, Any Pakistani out here would like to comment? This is your news website guys, People like me don't come here to read the viewpoints of (mostly expat) Indians. We have plenty of Indian news websites for that purpose.
Poor reporting. Above graph represents only trade in goods and has not included trade in services.
ETBLOGS1987
As far as covering trade with Pakistan, for the last 2 years Pakistan keeps talking about MFN without actually following through. Why would any one cover words which have a tendency to never get converted to action? If and when Sharif gets the courage o honour his international obligation to India, surely I Ndian press will cover it.
@Ravi: When they talk about exports without any qualification in India, they mean mercantile exports which does not include software exports which is part of serv ice exports. Cheers
Guessing you haven't seen TOI's dedicated Pakistan News section on the website ... hahahaha
The Author wrote this line right at the start:
"If you take a quick scan of Indian headlines, the answer is no."Then the rest of the whole article described how Indian media is looking at trade relations with Pakistan positively.
"The three largest English newspapers by circulation in India are The Times of India, The Hindu, and The Hindustan Times. Out of these in both The Hindu and The Hindustan Times there has been no recent reporting on any news related to trade with Pakistan."Right after writing this line, the author referred to various articles written in those very same newspapers in India besides TOI which the author said had no mention of trade relations with Pakistan.
"Malala, not Nawaz, dominates the headlines."This line itself clearly says Indians don't "care" about what happens in Pakistan on a daily basis. India moved onto bigger ambitions years ago and it no more considers Pakistan as a "threat" to itself. Contrary to Pakistani media always comparing Pakistan to India, you will find no news about Pakistan in the Indian media. Unless its really important, like a terrorist attack, or cricket, or these trade relations - except for such matters, NO media in India is concerned about Pakistan.
Anyway, my point being - is the author really serious? He first says Indian media is looking at this negatively, then he describes how everyone in Indian media is taking this positively!
In India Security is a much bigger concern than Trade when its Pakistan ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ After all your Army is a major Business House!
the major hub of trade with pakistan is the waghah land and rail route .it is in east punjab .most of the traders, transporters and manufacturers involved in this trade are from punjab . and the biggest circulated english daily of punjab and adjoining states is The Tribune which you haven't even mentioned . trade with pakistan is covered with prominence in this part of india, particularly,the problems faced by the businessmen at waghah, the miles long convoys of trucks with pictures , the scarcity of rail bogies etc. every other day, there is a major news ,
@newspaper
Sorry but you didn't add software exports worth 60 billion US dollors.....
sorry, no trade till terrorism stops.
"If you take a quick scan of Indian headlines, the answer is no." True. There are 1000s of other news headlines in India and trade with Pakistan is way down the line. Food, internal Indian politics, Modi and hosts of other issue which make tope headlines in India. Trade, be it with Pakistan or any other country, is not the stuff for headlines. In fact MFN might be a big issue for Pakistan, but not for India. For India this is a matter for a section in ministry of commerce and nothing more. Man in street does not care with such matters in India. Pakistan has to decide what benefits her. MFN or no MFN, Indians won't loose their sleep either way.