India’s Pakistan groove

Fresh from a recent Track II event with India, what abides from the engagement are the four ‘Ts’ that make India’s policy towards Pakistan: Terrorism, Trial, Trade and Transit. You could actually club these into two subheads — terrorism and trade — the two planks that India is willing to anchor its engagement with Pakistan on. Oh yes, Pakistan too could add subjects of interest in a proposed agenda for engagement, and the Indians might even give Pakistan a hearing on those, but to them what will Tango will but be based on the two or four that are of prime interest to them. You could else dance a Samba for all they care, or a Flamingo if you please.



Terrorism first. If the earlier manifestation of their concerns on terrorism centered around Mumbai, and what got officially repeated the world over by them, cross-border terrorism — now has newer mutations. The Line of Control (LoC) takes the prime spot; and this is based around the 2013 spat across the LoC that went on for a better part of 10 months. Without a doubt, the 2003 ceasefire across the LoC was a key confidence-building measure that sustained a sense of normalcy between the two nuclear neighbours, but what remained enigmatic was its 10-month long negation by both sides even as they alternated barbs of fire with words — sans a political or a military objective.

But then nothing in this historic land of poetic imagination comes without a method. Simply put, the Indians were preparing grounds to pre-empt a speculative induction of the militant groups into Kashmir — a la 1989 — as the war in Afghanistan drew down with the departure of the US/ISAF, raising the possibility that those employed there would soon need to find a newer occupation. Hence, the intended conflation of both cross-border terrorism and the eruption of the LoC, and the obvious coining of it as Pakistan’s preparatory manoeuvre to re-enact and exploit a past Indian vulnerability.

Without a neutral body to ascertain facts, such allegations fly with little check. Pakistan feels that India violated and vitiated the relative calm on the LoC to make a pre-emptory case for such an apprehension that at best was only speculative and imagined. The fact is that 2014 is not 1989; and the strategic context is a lot different. Incidents of cross-border intrusions are far less and have gone down considerably according to India’s own record of such events; as are indeed recorded incidents of militancy-related violence, which have come down infinitesimally in Kashmir compared to 2003. In this Track II, Herat — where the Indian consulate was attacked on the day that Narendra Modi was inaugurated in Delhi — was consistently repeated as an exhibit of Pakistan’s collusion with terror; without for a moment recognising the possibility of other agents who would rather see any effort at rapprochement change back to confrontation simply to divert Pakistan’s focus away from its operation in North Waziristan. India’s characterisation of Pakistan is not only stuck in a groove, it remains patently insidious.

On to trade then. Without a doubt, trade is the modern equivalent to familial bonding that used to come with intermarriages among ruling families of competing states. Through such relationships, one bought influence while leveraging stakes. In the India-Pakistan context though, the amount that such trade will add to India’s GDP, by one account, will be minute. That is to reinforce, if you missed the point, that really, trade too is a favour that India makes for Pakistan. The current trade figures of around $2.7 billion will be augmented to a figure of around $10 billion even if all trade is made free and without any accompanying barriers. The experts are quick to point out that this too shall only be the regularisation of the indirect trade that goes on at around $5 billion, through Dubai mostly.

They also suggest that trade — like water — will find its own course in due time and will regulate in volume depending on the space it finds. ‘Space’ is the operative word here; ‘finding’ it in India is the crux. What will remain a challenge will be to dampen traders’ excitement with producers’ interests, which really means that uninhibited trade will only enrich traders while impoverishing producers. Indian experts sweeten the theory of free trade with the possibility of creating a value chain where all linked can create a specialised niche brought together elsewhere as a product. Translated, it means India will assemble while the rest of the world will provide the parts. It took decades before the European Union reached that level of interdependence, and then with a capacity matrix in technology that more or less mirrored each other. Before that, they became a Union. South Asia, in comparison, remains the least integrated region in the world.

What will interest Pakistan in trading with India is an accompanying treaty on investments that should permit each to invest in other’s economy; to begin with, in preferred areas, before gradually expanding the portfolio of choices. But $10 billion and 0.1 per cent of GDP-rise is not what India is so persistently chasing with Pakistan. To it, trade with Pakistan is akin to breaking into a closed system where when apprehensions are fairly soothed and Indian presence is a matter of fact, the door to riches ‘beyond Afghanistan’ will open. It isn’t only the oil and gas in Central Asia that India will covet, or the market that the stans have on offer; it is the accompanying influence that charts India’s geopolitical rise in the region. It will then compete with China in Central Asia, recreate the magic of a Silk Route relationship, and establish its credentials as a bonafide contender in the larger game of dividends.

Neither then it is ‘transit’ to Afghanistan alone India so vehemently pursues. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan are but ‘two serial keys’ to the grander opening beyond. At this Track II, Pakistan linked what India seeks as ‘deliverables’ to what Pakistan seeks as ‘dividends’. The two henceforth will move in unison. The plate on that count remains hopelessly empty with numerous Indo-Pak issues still begging resolution. Corollary: Pakistan ain’t letting India in on Afghanistan any time soon. It has its interests to secure. ‘Deliverables’ and ‘dividends’ are inalienably linked.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 28^th, 2014.

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