Skip to main content

It’s Time We Had a Policy Framework to Deal with the India-Pakistan

Summary of the opinion:

  • The Jaish-e-Mohammed’s attack on an Indian air force base is a reminder that the factors underlying the rollercoaster nature of our relationship with Pakistan will not disappear overnight.

  • What is needed, therefore, is a policy framework that weathers the periodic storms of the relationship, enables us to sustain the peace process and obviates the extreme swings of the past in our responses.

Earlier breakthroughs in our relationship with Pakistan have run aground sooner or later, largely because of :

  • The inability of the dysfunctional Pakistani state to deliver on its promises, especially putting an end to terrorism against India.

  • The dominance of the army in the Pakistani polity.

  • The resulting stranglehold of the security state paradigm – that regards India as an enemy – over policymaking in Pakistan.

  • Pakistan’s description of Jammu and Kashmir as the core issue is not justified by the priorities of its people. 

  • Kashmir and India-baiting are no longer big vote getters in Pakistan. Jammu and Kashmir is the core issue for proponents of the security state paradigm, who have no hope of changing the territorial status quo, but exploit it to sustain the India bogey.

Problems to tackle:

  • Cross border terrorism has been on top of our agenda.

  • A related problem is tension along the Line of Control and the International Boundary in the J&K sector.

  • Discussions on conventional and nuclear CBMs under the rubric ‘peace and security including CBMs’ have remained sterile in recent years because of Pakistan’s insistence on proposals that seek to tie us down to bilateral arrangements, while ignoring our larger security environment.

  • There is scope for significant progress in developing mutually advantageous linkages in the remaining two areas: trade and economic relations, and people to people exchanges.

By,

Sharat Sabharwal was India’s high commissioner to Pakistan, April 2009 to June 2013.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE COMPLETE OPINION


Lahore: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is greeted at the residence of his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz at Raiwind in Lahore on Friday. PTI Photo (PTI12_25_2015_000230B)

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

India Tech Vision-2035

India Tech Vision-2035 India's technology thinktank under the ministry of science & technology has come out with `Technology Vision 2035' here at the ongoing Indian Science Congress, identifying the challenges ahead and how they can be dealt with through technological interventions while realising the dream of a developed India by the year 2035. The thinktank -Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) -in the vision document lists a technology roadmap for India, giving details of 12 sectors and technologies that in some cases exist but need to be deployed, some in the pilot stage that must be scaled up and technologies in R&D stage. It, in fact, talks about many future technologies, ranging from flying cars, real time translation software, personalised medicine, wearable devices, e-sensing (e-nose and e-tongue) to 100% recyclable materials among others which may be used in different areas to solve day-to-day problems “The trajectories del...
Post a Comment
Read more

Points to Remember for World Geography-AFRICA

Sirocco is a type of hot wind blowing from Sahara  to Mediterranean. Swahili is the oldest surviving African language. The country Zaire has the maximum Hydro- electric  Power  potential  in Africa. The country Djibouti is facing the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb. Dar-es-Salam is the easternmost terminus of Tanjara railways which begins from Katanga  mineral  belt. Ostrich is the flightless bird of Kalahari Desert. Ethiopia is the place of origin of coffee. Pretoria is the administrative capital of S. Africa. Nilots are the aborigines of upper    Nile. River Zaire is the only river that crosses the equator  twice. Nubian  desert  lies  in Egypt. The countries Ethiopia and Somalia form  the  Horn  of Africa. High Veld is the temperate grassland of South  Africa. Africa is the most tropical of all   continents. Most part of Kalahari Desert lies in Botswana. The Farmers of the Egypt ar...
Post a Comment
Read more

India’s challenge of securing the seas

Three recent events underline India’s efforts to highlight its growing maritime interests and ambitions in order to secure them unilaterally and in partnership with others. The first was the quiet release of the Indian Maritime Security Strategy (IMSS) titled  Ensuring Secure Seas   in October. The second was the holding of the combined senior commanders’ conference, with top officers from all three services, on board   INS Vikramaditya , the Indian Navy’s latest aircraft carrier and its largest platform, in December. The last and most recent was India’s hosting of its second International Fleet Review (IFR) at Visakhapatnam in early February. While the pomp and circumstance as well as the photo-ops of the IFR, which attracted naval vessels from 50 countries, predictably, created the biggest splash, its significance is best understood in tandem with the 185-page IMSS-2015. Although the document is simultaneously comprehensive, conservative and cautious, it conveys on...
Post a Comment
Read more