By M D Nalapat
Participation in OBOR by India will have to be on the basis of equality of rights.
Unlike
several other analysts and commentators based in India, this columnist
has acknowledged the sweep of the geopolitical vision behind the One
Belt One Road (OBOR) project, although he is less sanguine about the
China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The only way the CPEC can
succeed would be (a) for the Punjabi-dominated Pakistan military to
ensure justice for those ethnic groups along the route of the corridor
that are presently being subjected to discrimination, and (b) ensure the
involvement of India in the project. Should the CPEC be made open to
Indian entities for purposes of trade and commerce across its length,
the financial viability of the scheme would substantially strengthen, as
would prospects for economic growth in Pakistan. Should these
conditions not be met, the CPEC would face increasing headwinds through
social disturbances and economic slowdown, and would eventually become a
ghost corridor, ferrying little but dust across most of its length. As
much for Pakistan’s sake, as for China’s, the participation of India in
the CPEC is essential, even while the fullscope entry of India and its
commercial and manufacturing entities into the OBOR project would be
desirable for its promoter, the People’s Republic of China. Given such
imperatives, it was self-defeating in the extreme for the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs (MoFA) in Beijing to seek to humiliate India by blocking
the entry of this country into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). This
repeated act of obstruction by the PRC on its most consequential
neighbour has given wings to the arguments of those who warn that China,
under its current leadership, will never accept India on equal terms,
and hence that a steady descent into conflict as took place during
1957-62 may be inevitable. Hopefully, President Xi Jinping will be able
to overrule MoFA and its backers in an India-negative policy, the PLA,
to ensure that China joins Russia, France, the US, Japan, the UK and
other major powers in welcoming India into the NSG, without making that
conditional on Pakistan being admitted as well. Only those who lack
knowledge of high school mathematics would place India in the same
basket as Pakistan. That would be similar to India equating Vietnam and
China in scale and heft, and deciding policy on the basis of such a
spurious equality
Assuming the ending of China’s obstruction of India’s
entry into the NSG, it would be desirable to examine the conditions
under which India could participate in OBOR, including in the CPEC
segment. The latter would, of course, be under the express condition
that it would do so without any prejudice to the fact of its sovereignty
over some of the territories passed by the CPEC and which are in the
temporary possession of the Pakistan military as a consequence of the
Mountbatten-Nehru ceasefire agreed upon in 1948, when as much as a third
of Jammu & Kashmir was still in foreign occupation. Those involved
in tracking the future trajectory of countries calculate that India will
be the third biggest economy on the globe within less than a decade,
which indeed is the reason why Prime Minister Narendra Modi is already
considered to be among the Big Four of global leaders, along with
President Donald Trump, President Xi and President Vladimir Putin. Just
as the US in the 1970s acknowledged that the future during the next
half-century belonged to China and gave it a status and privileges that
were as yet not matching its extant capabilities, it would be an act of
similar wisdom for President Xi to accept that the coming half-century
will see the blossoming of India as the third superpower after the US
and China, and ensure through suitable accommodative policies a close
and collaborative relationship between Beijing and Delhi. This would
include giving India and its commercial and economic entities the same
right of OBOR and the CPEC.
Participation in OBOR and in CPEC by India will have to be
on the basis of equality of rights and treatment with the other major
participating powers, including Pakistan and China. Over time, such a
pragmatic move on the part of Pakistan would translate into greater
internal stability for that country, as well as higher growth and a
long-delayed climate of normalcy in Pakistan-India relations. Hopefully,
Xi will be able to convince both his domestic anti-India lobby, as well
as the Pakistan military establishment, of the benefits of opening the
CPEC to India in a spirit of shared prosperity.
Indian companies in infra, software and fabrication would
be force multipliers for OBOR and ensure both timely completion of
stages as well as high quality of work. Similar involvement in CPEC
would, among other benefits, ensure that people in Pakistan became aware
of the potential for India to be an economically beneficial factor in
their lives. Over time, tens of thousands of citizens of India would be
working within Pakistan, employing and training hundreds of thousands
from that country in ongoing projects. Such a partnership would have the
side effect of weakening the hold of radicalism in Pakistan, given that
India is fully within the subcontinental ethos of moderation and
syncretic lifestyles, and Indian culture is already popular in Pakistan,
especially some of the products of Bollywood. Given the right
circumstances, it would be possible for Prime Minister Modi (perhaps in a
second term) to ensure a normalisation of relations with Pakistan, but
this will come about only after a similar process gets completed with
China. And for this to happen, the advantage of a close relationship
with the US is key. Hence the imperative of moving on a path of
leveraging a transformation in the India-US defence and security
relationship into a mutually beneficial commercial compact with China,
which would then be followed by the normalisation of ties with Pakistan
that has thus far been elusive. All this is within the grasp of
President Trump, President Xi and Prime Minister Modi.
Hopefully, they will create history in the form of a
concert of the 21st century’s Big Three, with India linking in separate
ways with both of today’s superpowers.
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