Author: Ashok Malik
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: February 6, 2010
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/234149/PM-fixated-on-Pakistan.html
After weeks of hint, suggestion and manufacturing
media consent, the Government has finally announced the recommencement of
talks with Pakistan. The Foreign Secretaries of the two countries are likely
to meet next week and, in a sense, restart the composite dialogue, even if
some other nomenclature is used this time.
To be fair, the resumption of a 'normal relationship'
- the term is used very advisedly, with ample caution - with Pakistan could
not have been wished away forever. After 26/11, India attempted coercive diplomacy
but, in the absence of war and of further terror attacks, had to get back
to talking at some point.
True, there has been ambiguity and confusion
in the UPA establishment on precisely how to engage Pakistan. In 2009, the
Prime Minister publicly snubbed President Asif Ali Zardari - seen as conciliatory
towards India, though a lightweight in Islamabad. Only weeks later, he befriended
and agreed to a controversial joint statement with the relatively hawkish
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
If this was a tactical inconsistency, there
were also strategic questions. Should one talk to the Pakistanis at a time
when the American plans for Afghanistan (or for AfPak as a whole) were undecided?
What were the long-term objectives of such talks? Was Pakistan stable enough
as a country and was anybody in Islamabad in a position to deliver on a deal,
any deal? What were the red lines Pakistan would need to cross to demonstrate
it was genuinely shutting down jihad factories and working towards mainstreaming
itself?
These questions have not gone away and, to
a degree, they never will. Equally, it would be unfair to pin these conundrums
solely on the UPA Government. Its predecessors - and probably its successors
- as well as large sections of India's security and foreign policy establishment,
its political class and its public intellectuals, and even civil society in
the wider sense of the term, have been equally divided and ambivalent (or
multivalent, if that term could be used here) on what to do with Pakistan
and how to do it.
What does all this add up to? At a basic level,
there is no harm talking to Pakistan. It gives India some insight and leverage
into the thinking of stake-holders in Islamabad. Also, it conveys the accurate
impression to the world that India is not the problem, and New Delhi is willing
to go the extra mile. If the UPA Government is clear about this limited framework,
frankly one doesn't see a problem.
However, there would be cause for concern
if key members of the UPA Government develop an exaggerated idea of what is
achievable. It is here that signals from the Prime Minister's Office require
some decoding. They offer glimpses of Mr Manmohan Singh's grand strategy doctrine.
It is understood the Prime Minister believes
India will never realise its full potential till it settles its frontier disputes
with its immediate neighbours, specifically China and Pakistan. As a principle,
this is unexceptionable. It will require a genuine effort at cartographic
delineation. However, underpinning any map-making must be mutual political
will and the ability of leaderships to sell a sense of realism and compromise
to their individual societies.
What does this mean in the context of talks
with Pakistan? Thus far, traditional Western pressure has been on India to
talk and, particularly, talk Kashmir. Perhaps Mr Singh wants to turn that
force on its head and convert it to pressure on Pakistan to settle and, particularly,
settle Kashmir.
India has long been reconciled to making the
Line of Control an international border. If India formally puts this on the
table, it is conceivable the United States, the West and other regional powers
may push Islamabad - or some Government in Islamabad - into agreeing. At least
that may be the calculation in South Block.
There are three caveats to be entered here.
First, there is no guarantee that Mr Gilani, or whoever sits across the table,
will be an honest negotiator or have the capacity to persuade others in Islamabad
to buy his version of "peace with honour". Certainly, there is no
reason to believe the military Generals in Rawalpindi or the various strands
of Islamists will easily accept, to borrow a phrase from history, a 'moth-eaten'
Kashmir.
In the end, India may be left with nothing
more than a signature on a piece of paper without any broader security from
terror attacks or assurance of good neighbourly conduct. Nevertheless, if
a Pakistani Government formally agrees to view the LoC as the international
frontier, then it will suggest an advance. That piece of paper will be useful.
The second caveat is more troublesome. What
will India be required to give up or otherwise relax restrictions on? It would
be understandable if Pakistan sought some sort of an open border between the
two Kashmirs, with free movement of goods, families and people. This in itself
may seem fair and harmless but several doubts could emerge.
Would free movement from Pakistani Kashmir
into Indian Kashmir inevitably end up in free movement of Pakistani non-Kashmiris
to India outside Kashmir? What would be the implications? How would India
reconcile a soft Kashmir frontier with an otherwise hard Radcliffe Line, with
Indian business not allowed access to Pakistani markets?
A combination of determination, hard bargaining
and astute thinking can get past some though not all these issues. However,
all that is presuming Indian negotiators are not being given, say, a two-year
deadline and then told to work backwards.
Finally, if he is indeed keen to push such
a settlement through, just how much energy and bandwidth will the Prime Minister
end up expending in convincing his own party and other sceptics within the
Indian political and security system? Will this enterprise consume all his
precious political capital? Will it leave him time and leverage for unfinished
domestic business: Restructuring Indian agriculture; creating a genuine land
market for farmers who want to sell and industry that wants to buy, and so
rationalising the mess that is land acquisition; overhauling India's command-control
education system? These are only samples of reforms that face entrenched political
challenges.
In other words, is mission Pakistan essentially
a cop-out? Those who hoped the stable mandate of 2009 would lead to purposeful
governance at home must wonder.
