I had recently been in Islamabad with a group of fellow MPs to meet our Pakistani counterparts under the aegis of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency. This was the fifth round of our dialogue initiated in January 2011. The purpose is not to solve anything. After all, the only reason we are back-bench MPs is that we are not in the government. It would, therefore, be pretentious on our part to attempt any solutions. But it is a learning experience to hear out the Pakistanis and, perhaps, get heard by them.
Nearly 50 members of the National Assembly of Pakistan came to interact with us, bringing with them their mellifluous Urdu which we attempted to match in halting Hindustani, laced with interventions in English. We discussed water, wading into the subject with two experts, Ramaswamy R. Iyer, former Indian secretary of water resources, and Mirza Asif Beg of Pakistan, the serving Indus Waters Commissioner.
Illustration: Bhaskaran
Parliamentarians on both sides unanimously agreed that the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), signed in 1960, which has survived three wars, guarantees secure water supplies to both the countries and, therefore, must be preserved. We also agreed that joint studies need to be undertaken on issues like climate change and environment impact assessment. The lesson to be learned is that if there are arrangements for the two sides to meet, and procedures are undertaken to resolve disputes, only then can future progress be ensured.
It is, alas, a lesson lost on those in charge of the larger India-Pakistan dialogue. Knowing full well that the dialogue will be resumed however often it is broken off, India has persuaded itself that the dialogue is a lollipop that India will allow the Pakistani child to suck at if she behaves properly. If she doesn’t, mummy will punish Pakistan by sending her off to bed without a lollipop. Pakistan, on the other hand, has decided that just getting India to the dialogue is victory enough, irrespective of whether it serves any Pakistani interest or not.
Fortunately, there is a striking progress on the trade front, where the two-way trade has soared from virtually nothing, a few years ago, to over $2 billion today. Provided minor obstacles in the two-way trade and investment are removed, it could top $10 billion in the immediate future.
Remember China? Until Rajiv Gandhi’s breakthrough visit to Beijing a quarter century ago, trade between the two Asian giants was nil. Today, it is $80 billion. Then, remember Pakistan circa 1948? At least 90 per cent of Pakistan’s imports were from India. Last year, Indian imports from Pakistan crossed the half billion dollar mark for the first time.
The official dialogue is somehow being linked by us to the promise of good behaviour on Pakistan’s part. This is not diplomacy. I have always been amazed at South Block being so proficient in making friends with Paraguay but totally bewildered over what to do about Pakistan!
Those of us who went to Pakistan went only because we are failures in politics―a gang of has-beens and never-will-bes. But if those who are successes in politics were to participate, then the official India-Pakistan dialogue would be re-structured from a game of low-level one-upmanship to becoming “uninterrupted and uninterruptible”.
That is how Vietnam was resolved by the every-Thursday talks in Paris (1969-73), even as the Americans were relentlessly bombing the North from the air and the Vietnamese were giving the Yankees as good as they got in the South.
Also, that is how the armistice in Korea has been held for more than half a century at the border village of Panmunjom. The table is laid across the cease-fire line at fixed periodicity, and whatever their differences, the North Koreans and South Koreans come to the table for discussions. If we had a tithe of the wisdom the Koreans have, we, too, could schedule talks without interruption at the Wagha-Attari border.
Aiyar, former Union minister, is an MP and a social commentator.