IT’S TIME TO RE-IMAGINE SOUTH ASIA
Important points to be noted in this article are as follows :
Why has this issue cropped up ?
Despite being neighbours, India and Pakistan are among the least integrated nations in the world. Because of their unending mutual hostility, South Asia too has become the least integrated region in the world. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is in a coma.
Importance of China
• China, of course, has become a new factor influencing India’s negative attitude towards Pakistan, both among policy-makers and the common people. China can become a part of the solution, rather than being perceived as a part of the India-Pakistan problem.
• A three-way India-China-Pakistan cooperation is not only necessary but indeed possible, and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) provides a practical framework for such partnership.
Why should India not oppose China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)?
• First, CPEC does not recognise PoK to be Pakistan’s sovereign territory.
• Second, there is little possibility of India ever getting PoK, or Pakistan ever getting the Indian side of Kashmir, through war or by any other means. Therefore, connectivity, cooperation and economic integration are the only realistic bases for any future India-Pakistan settlement of the Kashmir dispute.
• Third, and most important, both China and Pakistan have stated that they are open to India joining CPEC. China has also expressed its readiness to rename CPEC suitably to both address India’s concerns and to reflect the project’s expanded regional scope.
How can CPEC prove beneficial to India ?
• By joining the CPEC, it would gain land access, through Pakistan, to Afghanistan, Iran, Central Asia and western China.
• If our leaders show vision, ambition and resolve, the CPEC-plus-India can be linked to the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Corridor, thus creating a grand garland of connectivity and integration for the whole of South Asia.
• CPEC is also indispensable for the success of two mega projects that are critical for India’s energy security and accelerated economic growth — the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) and Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipelines.
• CPEC would create strong new bonds of regional cooperation and interdependence, ans thus could also help resolve three long-standing geopolitical problems in the region, in which countless people have been killed — terrorism, Kashmir and Afghanistan.
Are recent Indian initiatives such as Chabahar comparable to CPEC ?
• India’s gains due to Chabahar port are modest, and nowhere comparable to those that would accrue by India having a direct land access to Afghanistan through Pakistan if it joins CPEC.
• “Quadrilateral” of the U.S., Japan, Australia and India. This is unlikely to take off. Even if it does, its developmental benefits to India will be limited since it will seek to keep China and Pakistan out.
Conclusion
If 1947 divided our subcontinent, here is an opportunity for India, Pakistan and all other countries in the region to come together and rise in shared progress and prosperity.
Relevance : GS 2
