Special/India-Pakistan Track II
‘Pakistanis now realize that the big player in the region is India’
AZIZ HANIFFA
“The Pakistanis now realize that the big
player in the region is India,” Mohsin S
Khan, a senior adviser to the Pakistani
government, said last week.
Khan, senior research fellow, Peterson
Institute of International Economics,
Washington, DC, and an adviser to the
Pakistan government who also served for
decades as a senior International
Monetary Fund official, added, “It’s taken
them a long time to admit it, but that’s the
case. And maybe in some public fora they still won’t admit
it, but it’s true. They recognize it.”
Khan was among the discussants of the new initiative put
forth by Sunil Khilnani and Arvind Subramanium at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies conference
on India-Pakistan Trade: Opportunities and Potential
Payoffs, under the aegis of the new constituted Wadhwani
Chair on United States-India Policy Studies.
Khan argued that India “is the big player in the region and
Mohsin S Khan
it is in India’s own interests to make sure
that it doesn’t have a dysfunctional state
on its border with 200 million people...
So, it is in India’s own interest to make
grand gestures and India can afford to
make grand gestures.” For starters, he
continued, “India could eliminate its high
tariffs on Pakistani goods. That’s the kind
of gesture that is needed — for India to
say, ‘OK, what does Pakistan want to
export to us?’”
Pakistan, he claimed, was much more
efficient than India in producing agricul-
tural goods. “It’s much more efficient in producing surgical
equipment and so on and so forth,” he added. “These are not
big deals overall for India from and an economic stand-
point, but for Pakistan, they are... a big deal.”
He admitted: “This might be heretical to say this as an
economist who has spent a career at the IMF and now at
Peterson, that a gesture (from India) could very well be,
eliminate the tariffs on agricultural exports from Pakistan
and if your (Indian) farmers are suffering in India, subsi-
dize them in order to take the hit, (because) that’s what the
worry has been.”
He agreed with the proposal by his Peterson colleague
Subramanium and Khilnani that Indian industry could
help India and Pakistan move away from government-to-
government relations to private sector cooperation to get
the bilateral relationship on a more positive level.
Can Tata, Premji, Murthy lead
rapprochement with Pakistan?
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dialogue and probably also the Indian private sector in some ways taking
the lead on this,” because of the gravitas and clout it has.
Subramanium said, “The Indian IT sector would replicate what it’s
done in India in terms of English language education, the technical train-
ing, and the kind of really big idea we had here was where the Indian IT
sector would say, ‘Look, we have a stake in creating a Brand Pakistan,
which means that any international contract that we get, x percent of the
value-added in that contract will be sourced in Pakistan’.”
The aim, he continued, “would be that the IT sector would take on the
reputational risks associated with the kind of fledgling sector in Pakistan,
but it would do so because of the broader principle that in India, the pri-
vate sector has a stake in a stable and prosperous Pakistan.”
Why IT? Because, Subramanium said, “The IT sector is less demand-
ing of government, less demanding than infrastructure… So, perhaps,
that’s the way to get this thing started — where the Indian IT sector and
the private sector could dare to tread where governments have not tread
in the past before.”
Subramanium, who has also served as an adviser to the Indian govern-
ment, most recently on the National Security Council, said that in the
post-Mumbai attack environment, “the Indian government is less able to
make these grand gestures than it would be when the general atmos-
pherics are slightly better. Thus, therefore, in today’s context, it is still
easier for the private sector to take the lead — at least from the Indian
side — and Mahindra and Tata to take the lead.”
Some of the participants at the roundtable discussion suggested enter-
tainment diplomacy in addition to cricket diplomacy.
Subramanium said, “In some ways, I do think the entertainment indus-
try offers scope for this kind of interlinking, but it’s kind of episodic... it
doesn’t create some sustained dynamic... and doesn’t add a social benefit
that we were talking about in terms of what the IT sector can do.”
Khilnani agreed: “Certainly there should be a much more liberal visa
regime for people involved in the entertainment industry and also writ-
ers, journalists — people who are clearly not security threats in that sense
— and there should be much more of an open exchange. But whether or
not it would actually be a transformative thing, I am more skeptical
about.”
Karl F Inderfurth, former assistant secretary of state for South Asian
Affairs (Clinton administration) and former professor of international
relations at George Washington University, who occupies the inaugural
Wadhwani chair, lauded the proposed private sector initiative.
Cohen pessimistic, others upbeat
about IT as India-Pakistan salve
AZIZ HANIFFA
Stephen P Cohen, the doyen of South Asia experts
in Washington, DC, disclosed that he was very
much aware of expatriate Indians and Pakistan
information technology professionals doing joint
work outside of their home countries.
Cohen, senior fellow and head of the South Asia
Program at the Washington, DC think tank
Deepa Ollapally
Stephen Cohen
Brookings Institution, was among the participants at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies Wadhwani Chair in US-India Policy Studies roundtable on a Track II
India-Pakistan initiative via trade, and specifically through the IT sector.
Cohen, author of several books on India and
Pakistan including The Idea of Pakistan, was not
too optimistic about Sunil Khilnani and Arvind
Subramanium’s suggestion that India Inc — and
especially the IT sector — could lead the way
toward better India-Pakistan relations.
“I’ve talked to Indian firms about going to
Pakistan and I’ve talked to Pakistani IT people
about dealing with India” said Cohen. “But the
Indian initiative, at least the one that I know of,
came to nothing. I can imagine why. The
Pakistanis simply didn’t trust the Indians. And,
they can get software from the Chinese, among
others. Also, there was some suspicion of the
quality of the Indians... That the Indian software
firms are good, but there are others that were bet-
ter. There were also Pakistani concerns about get-
ting involved with India’s IT sector and probably
the military may have intervened.”
But, he pointed out that “more than one
Indian IT firm went to Pakistan and on the
Pakistani side, the Pakistanis were eager to
do this, but as far as I know, nothing came
of it.”
“Political considerations by the military
among others,” had torpedoed such enthu-
siasm to work together, he added. In the
meantime, he said, “Pakistan is declining.”
But he warned: “Even a declining, failing
Pakistan still has 100 nuclear weapons and
that’s what the Indians are concerned
about.”
Deepa Ollapally, associate director, Sigur
Center of Asia Studies, George Washington
Ollapally said, “If we just go back about 15 years
ago, clearly there was a huge trust deficit (between
New Delhi and Beijing) and there continues to be
a trust deficit. But in that case, the relationship in
the economic sector came really from the private
sector. And, it went against a lot of the apprehen-
sions of the government and we know the top
people for instance, like Infosys were the ones
who took the lead on that.”
She added: “It may not have transformed
China-India relations, but it’s a very important
part of what they have to factor into in their polit-
ical relations.”
University, and professor of political science, took issue with Cohen’s pessimism. She
pointed to the success of India-China trade amid
the political and diplomatic tensions.
