Opinion The house next door

If we truly expect a seat at the global high table,we have to act like it. We’re told,all the time,that the world is about to stop hyphenating India-and-Pakistan. But we re-hyphenate ourselves every time we show that we’re unwilling to break out of an older mould,shouting our complaints to the world,however justified,is all we care to do. The problems that we have with Pakistan’s establishment haven’t changed — or at least for the better. But how we approach them should have. And there is simply no way that we can ascend to a global high table of any sort if Pakistan is busily heading in the opposite direction,and we’re stapled together in the world’s —and,apparently,our — eyes. No country has ever risen to a stable greatness without making peace,one way or another,with its smaller neighbours.

Which is why,no doubt,we frequently hear,in anodyne diplomat-speak,that “India has a stake in a prosperous and stable Pakistan.” Wonderful. Then why don’t we work towards it? Instead of applying to be the Cassandra of the global order,we should recognise that,as people with a stake in the house burning down next door,we had better grab a bucket.

But India’s government never misses an opportunity to spit in the bucket instead. Consider this: at about the same time as the White House was finalising its assault on Abbottabad,our two commerce secretaries were meeting in Islamabad,supposedly to try and get trade working between us. We declared the meeting a success — because

we squeezed concessions out of Pakistan,and squeezing stuff out of desperate,bankrupt Pakistan is still,apparently,a New Delhi bhavan’s definition of success.

What concessions? A commitment that Islamabad would press for the essentially meaningless declaration of India as a “most favoured” trading partner — a declaration tough for the ruling PPP to get passed in the National Assembly,as several lawmakers from its new ally,the PML-Q,are set against it. And what shall we do to push trade along until the Pakistani government manages to act on this? Nothing at all,which could also describe,therefore,what the talks amounted to. And now,every indication is that the process will slow down further.

Most-favoured nation,or MFN status,is simply the assurance that a particular country won’t have special restrictions on trade with it built into law. Our commerce ministry is happy to self-righteously point out that we haven’t got any openly discriminatory trade regulations of that sort,while Pakistan has an India-specific “positive list” of items that can be imported from here. Except this smugness is unearned: our restrictions are theoretically non-discriminatory but,in practice,obviously and clearly discriminatory. Most glaringly,we restrict,from “all” countries we trade with,textile imports. In effect,that hits our textile-intensive neighbours hardest,everybody else not at all — and we know it. Meanwhile,Pakistani traders justifiably complain that “non-tariff barriers” to trade — onerous red tape,most of all — hit them more than those from other nationalities,but India wants progress on everything else before moving to fix them.

Forcing Pakistan to go the extra mile isn’t the marker of a strong state; it’s the act of an immature one.

Until we learn that it isn’t our neighbours but us who need to make more concessions,we will continue to be tied to our troubled,troubling neighbourhood. This is a lesson that China has learnt,and applies brilliantly; it hasn’t just placated Korea and ASEAN with trade agreements,but Taiwan,with which it has as fraught a relationship as ours with Pakistan,is being slowly won over through hyper-generous trade concessions. If we worry that we don’t have the leverage with Pakistan that America does,why don’t we try to acquire it? Ideally,by spending our money a little more smartly than the Americans have.

The Americans,after all,are separated from Pakistan by half the world. The thing about neighbours is that you live next to them,and you can’t expect that good fences will cure everything. You can’t stop talking to them,however badly they may behave. You can’t pretend they’re doing nothing wrong,either — but you need to make it worth their while to listen to us,too. The Americans will not be able to lecture them for us for ever.

If we eventually want Pakistan to take our concerns into account,if we want its middle class to throw off the shackles of its India-obsessed military establishment,then it is we who will have to help create the conditions for it. As China’s example shows,nothing succeeds in that like being people you depend on to do business with. India’s trade with Pakistan,if normalised,would go up ten,perhaps even thirty times. And what matters is that Pakistan makes money off us — money going directly to its middle class and poor,not diverted by a military elite to planes at our border. It won’t work overnight; but what sort of country denies itself even the opportunity of gaining such leverage?

We need answers on how Pakistan’s establishment failed us,and their own people,so badly. We,and Pakistanis,need accountability. But we can’t afford smug self-righteousness,either,until we get to work on making Pakistan a better place to live in — and to live next to.