Why India should watch Pakistan stumble along the road to perdition

The World Bank/IMF estimates the size of the Indian economy in 2016 at $2.28 trillion, making it the world’s 7th largest. At $270 billion in 2015, Pakistan is the world’s 38th largest. India’s export of merchandise has powered past $300 billion and is closing on $500 billion if you count services, despite a slowdown in 2016. Pakistan’s exports are straining to get past $30 billion. India’s foreign exchange reserves stand at $367 billion; Pakistan’s is at $20 billion.

On almost every economic measure – industrial output, power generation capacity, foreign direct investment, etc – India has expanded its advantage to a factor of 10x or more vis-à-vis a country that is one-fourth its size, has a sixth of its population, and poses as an equal. Yet, India cannot rid itself of Pakistani pestilence in the form of episodic terrorism.

If it fights a war with Pakistan it risks a stalling of its economy (although war is good business for many), and undermining its cachet as a peaceable country. But if it doesn’t fight one to disabuse Pakistan of its belief that it can inflict a thousand cuts of terrorism under a nuclear shield, then it invites escalated provocation. It will confirm the dubious Pakistani notion of parity on the basis of a single metric: nuclear weapons, of which both countries have about equal numbers.

What then should India do?
For starters, New Delhi has signalled it is calling Pakistan’s nuclear bluff with a public announcement of a “surgical strike” across the LoC following the attack on the Indian brigade headquarters in Uri. Whether the strike actually took place, how deep and decisive it was, whether it involved crossing the LoC (all of which Pakistan has denied) are less consequential than the expression of intent, not just to Pakistan, but to the world community: India will not be deterred by Pakistani nuclear cover.

Pakistan may already be testing India’s updated doctrine with a follow-up attack in Baramulla. Doubtless more pinpricks will follow directly or through jihadi proxies on either side of the LoC in Kashmir if India does not respond. India should, while avoiding the provocation to rush headlong into conflict before it has deployed its many leverages. Pakistan has nothing to lose in the event of a full-scale war; India has plenty to lose.

Before she went in for the war to liberate Bangladesh, then PM Indira Gandhi invested considerable time, effort and resources in preparing the ground for it, travelling the world and showing the kind of forbearance that won over hardened critics, many of them blind in the pre-internet era to Pakistani genocide. “When Hitler was on the rampage, why didn’t you say let’s keep quiet, and let’s have peace, and let Belgium die and let France die,” she asked one interviewer who preached peace talks with Yahya Khan, her eyes flashing angrily. He shrivelled up.

New Delhi has much to do by way of diplomatic and public outreach to sensitise the world to Pakistani depredations not only against India, but also in Afghanistan, Balochistan and indeed across the world, including in the West as demonstrated most recently by the pressure cooker bomb in Manhattan. Its brazen hosting of the world’s top terrorists and its nourishing of ecosystems that has exported countless jihadis overseas has already made Pakistanis the Great Unwanted across the globe.

Pakistan’s own Ministry for Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resources told the country’s legislature this week that Saudi Arabia and UAE together hosted nearly 90% of the total Pakistani workforce of 9,48,000 sent overseas last year. Jobs provided to Pakistan by some other countries: Germany 44, Turkey 57, Singapore 68, Japan 84, UK 261 and USA 350. If those numbers look suspiciously low, square it with the 2016 visa restriction index by Henley & Partners that shows Pakistan passport placed at 103 of 104 countries surveyed, in the company of Somalia and Syria.

Pakistan’s dismal global reputation was best captured in a recent internet meme that pointed out India is known for producing CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Pepsico, Mastercard, Deutsche Bank, etc. And Pakistan? For hosting heads of al-Qaida, Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammed, Haqqani Group, etc. Both countries export IT services, goes another gag – Information Technology from India, and International Terrorism from Pakistan.

Islamabad has only itself to blame for its downward spiral. Cleaved from the same geographic entity, India and Pakistan took different roads to nationhood, one going uphill through the tough path of democracy and empowerment and the other on downhill ride on freebies and rental money through security pacts, mainly with the US.

The difference in the outcome is best illustrated by the effect of the US presidential elections on the two. For India, it makes no fundamental difference whether it is Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton who wins; it will thrive in either event, its strength and character recognised by bipartisan support. For Pakistan too, it does not make a difference – it will be in the pits in both scenarios. Hillary has spoken about Pakistan’s poisonous fostering of terrorism and Trump’s poll pledges could see Pakistan punished in ways unimaginable, with the US off bounds for its population.

It is a consequence of the choices Pakistan has made for itself with its embrace of toxic Islamist extremism. So India should prepare for war by all means, but without firing a shot in anger, it can watch Pakistan stumble along the road to perdition.