Editorial
Indo-Pak relations: Talks make no headway
foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee has not provided a breakthrough to overcome the impasse in reaching an agreement on concrete steps for normalisation between the two countries. To some extent this is understandable because Mr Mukherjee is part of a government that ends its tenure in another 10 months. For any democratically elected government to bind its successor to key decisions is neither fair nor feasible. On the other hand, unfortunately, the government in Pakistan is so unstable that any agreement reached will lack the sanctity associated with a government that has a clear majority.
None of this mollifies the aspirations of the people on both sides who have been seeking to bury the hatchet for many years. Expressions like composite dialogue or confidence building measures sound all very well, but do no add up to much in practice. Hence the concern about what happened at Samba on the Jammu border where a five year old ceasefire was recently violated with a single casualty on the Indian side.
Mr Mukherjee has rightly spoken of this incident and expressed his concern, lodging a protest with the Pakistani authorities. Yet this protest does not go very far because the Pakistani side has taken the position that no shot was fired from its side. It is possible that some freelancers may be responsible for trying to damage relations between the two countries. After all jihadis from various countries have been operating in this area for a long time.
One solution is to encourage joint patrols to avoid such incidents in the future. Again, there has been talk for some time about joint patrols, but this proposal remains stuck in the usual red tape procedures. Such delays suggest a loss of confidence between the two sides. In fact where successive governments in India and Pakistan have failed is that they have not overcome their mutual suspicions and mistrust.
Pakistan's elected politicians can rightly argue that the stranglehold of army rule has hitherto prevented them from taking any concrete steps towards normalisation. But India with its democratic government and liberal traditions has been equally cussed. Nor has New Delhi made any unilateral gesture. A No-War Pact initiated by New Delhi may revive old controversies, but a unilateral cutback of its armed forces by five per cent may convey to the new democratic government in Islamabad that India seeks a new chapter in bilateral relations. Such a gesture could also convince the government in Islamabad that trade with India which it badly needs should be allowed to start. So far Pakistan has not even offered India Most Favoured Nation status, some thing India offered three or four years ago and is a requirement of the WTO agreement.
Senior Pakistani economists have made the case for Indian investments in their country and there is no reason why this should not take place when Indian entrepreneurs are travelling as far as the US and China. The drawback is that Islamabad has not opened up all its facilities for trade and business. It could be argued that the playing field will not be level because Pakistan remains underdeveloped in comparison with India. But this is not an insurmountable obstacle. When the European Union was conceived, Germany went out of its way to accommodate the needs and requirements of its poorer European neighbours. India too can lower its tariffs to ensure that goods produced in Pakistan are not at an undue disadvantage when sold in Indian markets.
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