INDIAN PAK POLICY NEED REVIEW

Bikash Choudhury

India always has had a reactive policy on Pakistan since Independence over a good sixty years. With recent developments, India aught to review its policy on Pakistan and that should be a “proactive” one keeping in view the complexity and attitude of Pakistan polity. In spite of recent success of democracy in Pakistan with election of one democratically elected Govt. assuming office and peaceful transfer of power; Pakistan, remains a very dangerous place in the World. As the “Frankenstein-Taliban” created by Pakistani establishment earlier to remote control Afghanistan is now attempting to engulf and take over Pakistan completely. Further, the conflict and turf war between three important wings of Pakistan along with abject poverty in the countryside, acute power shortages and poor economic growth could eventually drive the death knell into the Islamic State of Pakistan—could disintegrate sooner than later; which may not be in the interest of peace loving India and the World outside.

Unlike India, Pakistan has consistently followed one policy against India—that is of animosity; and wishes to hurt India deeply and extensively. After loosing face four times in the past in a direct conflict; Pakistan has realized its own limitation in conventional warfare and therefore, it has chosen to use ‘pin prick strategy of thousand cuts’ in Jammu & Kashmir with active promotion of insurgency through infiltration & terrorist strikes, further aiding and abating home grown terrorist in India to create mayhem in the Indian cities and towns while pumping fake Indian currencies to sabotage Indian economy.  Pakistan has also recently introduced a brand new policy of ‘deceit’ to hoodwink the Global diplomatic community by orchestrating their desire for “peaceful dialogue” while sporadically sponsoring heinous military actions on the borders to provocate Indian military and border security forces.

It is now about time for India to respond in ‘kind’ resolutely and matching “diabolic” tactics of Pakistan with equal or more “diabolical” strategy. India should continue the peaceful dialogue process with an objective to broad base its engagement with larger and larger social groups and Pakistan citizens with the help of economic, cultural and public diplomacy; insisting on results in a time frame. A strong trade and cultural ties could make conflict that much unproductive. At the same time India has to adopt a “take out strategy” impeccably followed by Israel to hurt the enemies (non-state actors) inside the enemy territory in planned tacit covert operations. At the end, India needs to explore and exploit the “fault lines” inside and between Pak Army, ISI and in the Political establishment. However, India should encourage and strengthen democratic Institutions in Pakistan; as a liberal democratic Pakistan would be in the larger and long term interest of India and World at large.