Jam and nuts

An observer who is not from the subcontinent, unfamiliar with India-Pakistan dynamics but au fait with diplomatic principles, would have been aghast on knowing, as this newspaper reported last Friday, that trade across a contentious unofficial border is a matter of disputes about jams and apples. How, he might have asked, do the two governments propose to promote commerce as a normaliser if the negative list of imports is longer than the list of permissible items? What disaster would have been wrought in Pakistan had it allowed tinned food imports from India? What would India have suffered if Pakistani walnuts arrived here? Those familiar with subcontinental norms of course know that we are, on both sides of the border, like this only. But even then we are aghast. Particularly at our own government.

True, Pakistan has been especially curmudgeonly about trade, making the simple issue of according 8216;most favoured nation8217; status to India a matter of strategic importance; MFN is a trade jargon misnomer, all it means is that two countries give each other basic trade rights. But India, as the bigger country and the bigger economy and with a private sector that is in parts world class and which is, in general, thriving now, should be the more adventurous negotiator. Plus, it is in India8217;s interest to promote normalcy in Kashmir, to take the focus away from whatever it is that militancy wants.

Undoubtedly, economic 8216;reasons8217; can be found for keeping Pakistani paper and carpets away. But real economics is what happens across the Indo-Pak border already. Smuggling flourishes. Across the LoC, it would have been so much better had legal trade in all the usual sensitive commodities been allowed.

Under the restrictive lists agreed to by both sides, there will inevitably be illegal trade. If there8217;s a good market for Indian-manufactured gold ornaments 8212; banned by Pakistan 8212; it will reach the consumer in PoK, and beyond. But the consumer will pay a premium and much of LoC trade will be shrouded in illegality. So no one will win and commerce as a real peacemaker will be handicapped. All of this is consistent with general India-Pakistan economic relations. To take just one example. Indian companies are spending billions acquiring and setting businesses abroad. But in Pakistan, Indian commercial presence is still a taboo. Not that India would be any more open either had Pakistan ambitious, world-class corporates. The two countries can8217;t even agree on jam and nuts.