Economics: Strategic weapon to resolve bilateral issues

[Yusuf]

Ejaz,

Yes, and absolutely no disputing the point.

The stress has to be on other neighboring countries more and there does seem to be a concerted effort on part of UPA II on the same, though our effective progress gets hampered by too much bureaucracy, as a result delay in implementation in what has been committed, which in turn has an effect on the trust on which these relations get build on.

Ideally we should be looking at FTA with all of them or move to the next level where we are ready to accommodate their exports to much greater levels, and we in turn create space for our goods and services. Factually something like this should be happening at a much faster pace than has been. And to make this much more meaningful we need to push manufacturing much more in India so that we can create an alternative to the Chinese imports for these countries. And as you have highlighted, we do need to become the center of their economic activity and the same needs to be extended to ASEAN through the NE.

Yusuf,

Fair enough, we might never have peace with them and it is perfectly fine, but there is still room between no peace and no war and much can be done and much can be achieved in between. It is this in between space that I see can be effectively filled up and we can in turn be the real beneficiaries.

If China can do a Taiwan with all the hostilities, we too can repeat the same, may be not to the same scale but certainly to the scale where we are the net gainers and where Pakistan doesn't get the room to act as a mad dog, where checks get built within Pakistan and we make use of those leverages to whatever extent, whatever those might be.

To the red highlight
1) Yes that is what i have recommended. Get them to earn money from India.
2) China and Taiwan are very sane actors. China is very calculative. Pakistan is not. We have only seen irrationality on their part. See we can do business with China because we both are sane actors.

I cannot but stress that making the Pakis money from us like how i recommend we do for BD and SL is pure madness.

 

[panduranghari]

1) Right. Thats what i suggested.
2) We do have our say in IMF and WB but we really dont need them in our bilateral relations with the countries i have mentioned apart from voting for some loans they may need. Point number 1 takes care of our interests
3) We have decent enough for the region in question.

Regarding point no.2 .> we have no real stake as we have been used by WB, IMF in the past and they will do that again if given a chance. WB, IMF are western stooges.
What we need is to mould IMF,WB to our needs. Investing heavily by given massive loans is a good start and in the future we must call in the loans. What that does to small countries like SL, Pak is they have no resources to manage the return of the loan given. They can hardly afford the interest let alone return on the investment. Why does a poor country like UK still give money to the IMF? yes its a founding member, but they have other intentions. I think we must take over the role of these countries. We have the resources, we have the might will a strong army as you also alluded to, what we need is a political leadership who can think long term. What we also need are institutes on foreign policy who have an AIM. CCP has an aim so things happen in favour of China. Adam Smith institute in the US is influential think tank whose policies are followed by the polity in the US. We need something like this.

I think with the changing times, we will get highly educated Indian nationals staying back in India and contributing to these changes. The good thing is we have a big population. We have the resource to draw intellectuals from. Only thing is missing is the nurturing.

God I sound like Kissinger.

 

[Yusuf]

God I sound like Kissinger.

Many of us have that pretensions.