The EconomistJuly 22nd 2017 11INDIA AND PAKISTAN2
1SPECIAL REPORTFOR TWO COUNTRIES so much atodds, India and Paki-
stan remain remarkably alike. When their national cricket
teams clashed in June at the Oval, a hallowed ground in London,
passions on both sides ran equally high. The star-studded Indian
team was tipped to win, but when Pakistan bowled out India’s
top players in short order, millions of Pakistani mobile phones
gloated with snaps of a spectator atthe match wearing a T-shirt
inscribed “Winner takes Kashmir”. In Kashmir itself, revellers lit
the night sky with firecrackers. Outsiders mistake the Kashmiris’
tradition of cheering Pakistan as a sign of love; in fact they are
teasing the half-million Indian soldiers encamped in the Vale.
Even after 70 years as an independent country, India has
still not quite gelled into a unified nation, and Kashmir is not the
only chronic hotspot. Insurrections have simmered in India’s re-
mote, neglected north-east for decades, and Maoist guerrillaswho started fighting in the
1960s still rattle tribal regions
in the eastern states of Jhar-
khand and Chhattisgarh.
Pakistan is no better. Its
officials gleefully condemn In-
dia’s abuses in Kashmir. But on
one day last winter when Paki-
stani newspapers ran big head-
lines about a single civilian
death in the Indian-adminis-
tered Vale, a curt army commu-
niqué was relegated to smaller
print: “Over 100 terrorists have
been killed since last night.”
The deaths were widely seen
as revenge for the murder by
suicide-bomb, a day earlier, of
some 90 worshippers at a Sufi shrine, one of many attacks by
Sunni extremists. In the pastdecade Pakistan has suffered about
55,000 casualties from terror-related violence, a third of them ci-
vilians. Whatever India’s troubles in Kashmir, they pale next to
such murderous attacks on targets ranging from Pakistani school-
children to Shia Muslims.
Whereas India’s men in uniform face intense scrutiny in
Kashmir, Pakistan enjoys a far freer hand. In trying to stamp out
terrorism along its north-west frontier, its army has demolished
whole villages. Balochistan, a province of rugged deserts that
takes up 43% of Pakistan’s area, has been in sporadic revolt since
independence; one local NGO estimatesthe numberof suspect-
ed separatists kidnapped by security forcesthere from the high
hundreds up to 18,000. In 2016 alone,728 people across Pakistan
suffered “enforced disappearance”, as counted by the commis-
sion of inquiry that investigates them. Some reappear alive and
well, others as roadside corpses. The state flatlydenies any un-
pleasantness. In a meeting at the Pakistani senate in December, a
former interior minister insisted that the culprits in Balochistan
are Indian agents disguised in Pakistani uniform.
On other shortcomings the countries are more evenly
matched. Both have greatly underinvested in education and
health, for example, forcing even the poorest to resort to private
schools and hospitals. The formal economy generates few jobs;
in Pakistan 73% of the non-farm workforce is off the books, in In-
dia over 80%. Both countries have made great strides in reducing
poverty but remain starkly unequal, and indeed are becoming
more so. In 2016 just 1% of Indians owned more than 58% of the
country’s wealth, up from a 37% share in 2000. Earnings are
skewed geographically, too: India’s richest states enjoy four
times the income per person of its poorest, Bihar. In the smaller
towns of Pakistan’s Balochistan over 90% of the population lives
in poverty, compared with only 10% in Lahore.
On the harder-to-measure index of intolerance, on which
Pakistan used to be well ahead, India is beginning to catch up.
Since the 1980s Pakistan has seen more than 60 extra-judicial kill-
ings of supposed blasphemers. The death in April ofMashal
Khan, a Pakistani college student brutally lynched by his fellow
students after being spuriously tagged as a blasphemer, made
global headlines. Yet when Farook Hameed, a 31-year-old father
of two in the Indian city of Coimbatore, was hacked to death by
childhood friends for having repudiated Islam and declared
himself an atheist, there was little reaction from abroad. Ha-
meed’s death was a rare exception; Indian Islam remains rela-
tively diverse and tolerant. Yet the government’s failure to curb
murderous cow vigilantes or online trolls who brand dissent as
treason, even as it uses state institutions to harass critics, meansProspects for peaceDon’t hold your breath
To forge a better relationship, both countries need to
tackle their problems at homeCalming downSource: South
Asia Terrorism
Portal*Civilians, security
forces and terrorists†
To July 2ndDeaths from terror-related
violence*, ’000IndiaPakistan0246810122003 10 15 17†Pakistan to sustain the awkward status quo. “Indian leaders have
always calculated thatsooner orlater Pakistan would have to
seek a normal relationship with us,” says Ashok Malik of the Ob-
server Research Foundation, a Delhi think-tank. “CPECgives
them a new narrative: it putsthem in China’ssphere.”
Diplomatically, India has taken a tough line on China’s re-
gional initiatives. The CPECroad, it claims, runs through disput-
ed territory in Pakistan-held Kashmir. India has also sharply criti-
cised China’s broader, pan-Asian Belt and Road Initiative as a
boondoggle thatwill trap smaller countries in debt.
India and China have had cool but calm relations since
their brief border war in 1962. Each country claims territory the
other holds. India’s continued hosting of the Dalai Lama, who
fled into exile in 1959, riles Beijing. For its part, India objects to
China’s occasional use of itsdiplomatic clout, bolstered by a per-
manent seat on the UNSecurity Council, to block its ambitions.
“Our economy is growing faster and our population is about to
overtake theirs,” saysan Indian diplomat, “But they still treat us
like some poor, skinny appendage to Asia.”
Even so, the virtually impenetrable barrier of the Himala-
yas has generally allowed the rivals to agree to disagree. Bilateral
trade is around $80bn a year, five times as much as China’s trade
with Pakistan; China is India’s leading trade partner.
India is trying to preserve its own sphere of influence in
South Asia through projects such as building roads and bridges
in Bangladesh, hydroelectric plants in Nepal and ports and rail-
ways in Sri Lanka. But it struggles to match the largesse of China,
which not only has a GDPfive times India’s but also a leadership
that does not have to answer to voters. Last October Xi Jinping,
on the first visit to Bangladesh by a Chinese president in 30 years,
pledged $24bn in loans, credits and infrastructure projects. India
responded with a generous new aid package of its own.
In its effort to remain a strong, independent player, India is
trying to perform a fine balancing act. But Dhruva Jaishankar of
the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, reckons China may not
be taking much notice: “When they talk about how America has
declined and this has become a multipolar world, what they ac-
tually mean is, China is the new pole.”^7