With his equanimity, persistence and reticence, Atal Bihari Vajpayee got further with Pakistan than any other Indian Prime Minister. In this piece in Business World of 4 March 2004, I applauded him and passed on a few ideas to work on.
Let us not be modest
Prime Minister’s Vajpayee’s visit to Pakistan has opened
doors. He reached out to Pakistan many times before, every time to be repulsed.
But this time the process has moved some way without breaking down in bad
temper, rudeness and recrimination. Beginning last April with his speech in
Srinagar, the Indian government has moved with deliberation. Since the SAARC
meeting in January, the pace has picked up, but both sides are concentrating on
the process, made well aware by past experience that there is no quick fix, no
magic solution to their mutual problems. The joint secretaries in the foreign
ministries of the two countries met on February 16 and 17, followed the next
day by foreign secretaries. India now has a holiday season for serious talks
since a government is stepping down and the shape of its successor will not be
known till the elections are held. But the foreign secretaries have agreed to
continue to work on opening up roads and rail tracks, and to meet again in May
or June. That is when they will discuss Kashmir as well as nuclear weapons; and
they will prepare the ground for a meeting of the foreign ministers in August.
Before the Agra summit in 2001,
General Musharraf had insisted that there would be no preparations by bureaucrats,
no previously agreed agenda, and that Vajpayee and he would spend the maximum
time with each other. So it came to pass, and both regretted it. Having bitten
off too much once, both sides have been shy. Caution is the key, process rules,
and slowness has become a virtue.
This is how governments work;
ponderous as elephants, distrustful of initiative and innovation. And where
foreign policy is concerned, our government has historically worked badly – for
decades locked in hostility towards the US, Pakistan and China, incapable of
solving the simplest disputes such as the Sino-Indian border dispute.
Vajpayee’s achievement is that his impetuosity has overcome this monumental
inertia: it has repaired the deep rift with the US, taken the hostility out of relations
with China – and finally brought Pakistan around to talking.
It would be a historic error if
this flair, this willingness to take risks, this foolhardiness if you will,
falls victim to bureaucratic caution. It is important that the larger objective
of this entire exercise is not lost sight of. And that objective must be more
ambitious than mere lack of war. It must be integration – economic, cultural
and emotional. It must be to get so close that it no longer matters which side
Kashmir falls on. The two countries have tried out separate development for
over half a century; by doing so they have only fallen behind. If they were to
stand together, they would carry far more weight in the world, and would have
to spend far less in making a show of strength – for in a nuclearized world,
force can only be for show.
What matters is not trains and
buses, but the interflow of people. What matters is not so-called preferential
trade agreements, but movement of goods across the borders. What matters is not
so-called cultural exchanges, but exposure to each other’s cultural and
intellectual life. What matters is not orderly contacts by courtesy of
grandmother governments, but an uncontrolled flow of people, ideas and things.
And the way to achieve these
great aims is to focus, not on instruments, but on the volume of interchange.
Instead of negotiating the number of visas, the two countries should be
defining classes of persons who would be able to travel without visas –
businessmen, intellectuals, journalists, craftsmen, whatever. Instead of
writing down which items can be traded in 2011, they should be defining why
anything should not be traded. Instead of planning tariff reductions over a
decade and more, they should agree to free a third of tradable goods from all
restrictions every year. Both countries should agree to issue a large and
rising number of student and work visas every year.
In India as in Pakistan, a war is
being fought between the forces of autarchy and openness, bigotry and
tolerance, inwardness and outwardness. Politicians of both countries have taken
sides in this war, usually the wrong side. Despite their worst efforts, despite
Ayodhya and jihad, India is far more open – and more confident – than a decade
ago. It is in our interest to nudge Pakistan in the same direction. The
prospects have never been brighter. After two attacks on his life, President
Musharraf has lost his taste for subterranean violence. The exposure of nuclear
brigandage emanating has suddenly narrowed Pakistan’s freedom of manoeuvre.
Pakistanis recognize India’s better performance, and would love to emulate it.
This is the time to demonstrate the superiority, not just of peace, but of
brotherhood, not just of shaking hands, but of marching forward together.
