Context

The national security policy statement issued last week by the government of Pakistan acknowledges the need for change.

Why does it matter for India?

• India’s stakes in a stable Pakistan are higher than anyone else in the world.
• Therefore, Delhi must pay close attention to the internal debates within Islamabad on the imperatives of major change in Pakistan’s national direction.
• But as critics in Pakistan insist, the policy offers no clues on how to go about it.
• The classified version probably has a clear strategy on how to accelerate economic growth, build national cohesion, and revitalise its foreign and security policies.

Overview of India’s transformation after 1990s

• The crises that Pakistan confronts today are quite similar to those Delhi faced at the turn of the 1990s.
• Economic challenge: India’s post-Independence old economic model was on the verge of collapse.
• Political instability: The era of massive domestic political mandates was over and weak coalitions government were in place.
• Challenges in International relations: The Soviet Union, India’s best friend in the Cold War, fell off the map and the Russian successor was more interested in integrating with the West.
• India found that its political ties with all other major powers — the US, Europe, China and Japan — were underdeveloped at the end of the Cold War.
• Pakistan, meanwhile, was running proxy wars in India even as it mobilised international pressures against Delhi on Kashmir.
• Within a decade, though, India was on a different trajectory.
• . Its reformed economy was on a high growth path.
• India was hailed as an emerging power that would eventually become the third-largest economy in the world and a military power to reckon with.
• Delhi also cut a deal with Washington to become a part of the global nuclear order on reasonable terms.
• This involved a series of structural economic reforms, the recasting of foreign policy, and developing a new culture of power-sharing within coalitions and between the Centre and the states.

The economic transformation of Bangladesh

• The economic transformation of Bangladesh has been equally impressive.
• Since Sheikh Hasina returned to power in 2009, Bangladesh focused on economic development, stopped support to terrorism, and improved ties with the larger of its two neighbours — India. 
• As a result, Bangladesh’s economy in 2021 (GDP at $350 billion) is well ahead of Pakistan ($280 billion).

How Pakistan missed the opportunity

• Pakistan chose a different path.
• Having ousted the Soviet superpower from Afghanistan in the late 1980s, Pakistan was ready to apply the model of cross-border terrorism to shake Kashmir loose from India and turn Afghanistan into a protectorate.
• Supporting jihadi groups was seen as a low-cost strategy to achieve Pakistan’s long-standing strategic objectives in the neighbourhood.
• These grand geopolitical obsessions left little bandwidth for the much-needed economic modernisation of Pakistan.
• Islamabad, which relentlessly pursued parity with Delhi, now finds that the Indian economy at $3.1 trillion is more than 10 times larger than that of Pakistan.

Factors that explain change in Pakistan’s policy

• Diminishing role in geopolitics: In the past, Pakistan had much success in pursuing a foreign policy that not only balanced India with the support of the West, but also carved out a large role for itself in the Middle East and more broadly the Muslim world.
• Today, barring the United Kingdom, Pakistan’s equities in the West have steadily diminished.
• Weakened ties in the Middle East: Meanwhile, it has weakened its traditionally strong ties in the Middle East with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
• Weakened ties with the US: Although its all-weather ties with China have gone from strength to strength, the unfolding conflict between Washington and Beijing has put Pakistan in an uncomfortable strategic situation.
• Pakistan’s support for violent religious extremism has also begun to backfire.
• A permissive environment for terrorism has now attracted severe financial penalties from the international system.

India’s changed approach towards Pakistan

• Delhi, which was prepared to make concessions on Kashmir in the 1990s and 2000s, has taken Kashmir off the table and is ready to use military force in response to major terror attacks.
• Delhi’s attitude towards Islamabad now oscillates between insouciance and aggression.
• Unlike in the past, the West is no longer pressuring India to accommodate Pakistan on Kashmir.
• The US is eager for India’s support in balancing China in the Indo-Pacific.

Conclusion

All these shifts together have compelled Pakistan to rethink its policies.  There is no guarantee that the change will be definitive and for the good. But if it is, Delhi should be prepared to respond positively.

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