As Shehbaz Sharif takes charge as the Prime Minister of Pakistan this week, the focus inevitably turns to the prospects for ending the current freeze in bilateral relations with India. However, the expectations for a new beginning must be tempered for several reasons.
For one, improving bilateral relations is not an urgent priority for India or Pakistan. For Delhi and Islamabad, bilateral engagement is a high-cost and low-reward exercise. In addition, the higher the ambition for a productive bilateral relationship, the greater the political costs of organising it. The costs are higher in Pakistan, where the new government is weak and hobbled by multiple domestic challenges. PM Narendra Modi, expected to begin a third term at the end of May following the general elections, is in a much better position to take risks in engaging Pakistan. Still, he also insists on terms of his own.
Under Modi, Pakistan has dropped down the list of India’s foreign policy priorities. He has demonstrated that India can live with the freeze in bilateral relations. He has also helped India break free from the terms of engagement with Pakistan that were negotiated in the early 1990s when India was at one of its most vulnerable moments.
Pakistan, in contrast, continues to be obsessed with India but has tied itself in knots over bilateral relations. It has put pre-conditions on the engagement. In public, Pakistan insists that India must roll back the 2019 changes in the constitutional status of Kashmir. This is asking for the impossible from the Modi government.
There might be some room for finesse here; but not too much. In essence, any resumption of talks would need Pakistan to get off the high horse it had climbed onto in August 2019. In February 2021, the then Pakistan army chief, General Qamar Jawed Bajwa, when negotiating the ceasefire on the border, was signalling some flexibility on Kashmir. But Imran Khan had vetoed any steps towards the normalisation of relations without Indian concessions on Kashmir. It is unclear if General Asim Munir and PM Sharif have enough political capital to move forward with India amidst their bitter battle with the immensely popular Imran Khan. Any positive movement in Pakistan on relations with India would involve swallowing the bitter pill that Kashmir cannot be the main focus of engagement with India. Can Pakistan continue to throw good money after bad in promoting the Kashmir insurgency? Does it have the political room to normalise ties with India by putting the Kashmir issue on the back burner?
In his first speech, Sharif talked about improving ties with neighbours but also referred to “freeing” the people of Kashmir. It is not easy for Pakistan’s leaders to shed the “ideology” of liberating Kashmir even as that goal looks ever more unrealistic. For Pakistan, the real challenge is coming to terms with the shifting balance of power with India. While Pakistan has always seen itself as equal to India, the last three decades have magnified the rapid divergence in their relative power in favour of India.
India’s aggregate GDP at $3.7 trillion is now 10 times larger than Pakistan’s, struggling at barely $350 billion. This gap will continue to expand in the coming years. If success breeds success, failure tends to beget failure. While India celebrates its status as the fastest-growing major economy, Pakistan is brooding over its relative economic decline.
In his first address after being elected as Prime Minister, Sharif underlined the need for “deep systemic surgery” in Pakistan. According to Sharif, the stark choice is to “get rid of the life in debt” or forever keep the head down “in shame”. He insisted that the new government will help Pakistan rise and stand on its own feet. But talk is cheap; serious economic reform is hard even in the best of circumstances. India, which began its reform and opening up at the turn of the 1990s, took over a decade to stabilise and grow its economy. In theory, Pakistan could do the same. However, the Sharif government lacks the political legitimacy to embark on a serious reform programme. Nor is it clear if it has the policy competence.
Imran Khan’s supporters, who form the largest bloc in the National Assembly, brand the government as a “mandate thief”. The populist Pakistan People’s Party, one of the coalition partners, wants to dissociate itself from the pain-inducing reforms. Cynics could argue that army backing is more important than popular legitimacy or political support. Still, the fact is that long overdue reforms will inflict enormous economic pain on the people. Army Chief Munir is all in favour of reform. But the army-led deep state in Pakistan is arguably at one of its weakest moments, and questions remain about its ability to persist with reform.
History does not offer much reassurance — Pakistan has rarely completed reform programmes negotiated with the International Monetary Fund. But there is always a first time, and Pakistan may get it right this time. There will be consequences — intended or unintended — whether Pakistan succeeds or fails in its internal reform plans.
Unfavourable balance of power is an unforgiving condition. It demands internal change and external reorientation. In the past, external geopolitics often created enough space for Pakistan to defer and delay serious internal reform. Today, Pakistan finds itself in an unfavourable situation. Rawalpindi is struggling to navigate between China and the US — Pakistan’s two long-standing friends — now at each other’s throats. Its traditional friends in the Gulf — Saudi Arabia and UAE — are now best friends with India. Four decades of Pakistan’s investment in controlling Afghanistan has gone awry, with the US withdrawing from the country and the Taliban returning to power. Put starkly, Pakistan’s problems with Khorasan are a lot worse and more immediate than its historic grievances against Hindustan.
Pakistan has headaches other than those generated by India. Delhi, then, has no option but to continue with a minimal engagement with Pakistan. What Delhi could build on, though, is a very counter-intuitive development in Pakistan — the grudging admiration for PM Modi. Reconnecting with the divergent social, political and economic formations of Pakistan could serve India well if and when Rawalpindi is ready to try out a positive approach to Delhi.
The writer is a contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express
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