It’s a little difficult to answer this question in a simple yes or a no. Tried answering this quite a few times in the past and each time I have had a newer out look to the evolving situation, and will try and present a new angle this time as well which will revolve around a united Pakistan where in we weaken the power structure so that they eventually adhere to our demands.
What are the objectives that we want either way to be achieved through Pakistan? The answers should mainly revolve around three main concerns:
1). No terrorism,
2). No threat to the existence of India,
3). Break the direct linkage of Pakistan and the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) through land, which amounts to getting back Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), which also happens to be an occupied territory, that rightfully belongs to India.
Are these objectives achievable with a united Pakistan is the question to be pondered upon and will a united Pakistan serve the purpose.
1). No Terrorism:
Terrorism is a state policy of Pakistan which it started using post the ouster of the soviet forces from Afghanistan, with this policy they have been able to rack up the Kashmir issue at the international arena to close to two decades now, but looks like a policy which has really not carried the deliverables that it was supposed to, but off late this policy has been used in a different way by enhancing the scale where in complete India and not just Kashmir has been made the theater with the intent of destabilizing India as an economic destination.
In here Pakistan seems to be fighting a loosing battle, and to an extent India has been able to turn the tables on Pakistan, and has been quite successfully by getting the world to rally behind its point on labeling Pakistan as a terror epicenter, but Pakistan also has been able to scuttle the pressure by talking of rouge elements in the ISI and further by coining the term non-state actors.
India has pronounced a two point strategy to counter the above:-
A). Create a pressure point on Pakistan through international players who have a big say on international affairs and who have good enough influence on Pakistan. The countries being used here are the USA, the EU, and to a lesser extent the PRC, the KSA (both have been used post 26/11 on various occasions) and Iran, and it seems to an extent India has been successful.
B). Not differentiating between the state and non state actor, though for now we remain quite unsuccessful in this endeavor, and certain previous moves of ours have very well undermined it especially when it was accepted by the PM that there is a common threat being faced by Pakistan and India in the form of terrorism.
This does look like a point on which Pakistan will have to eventually either lower the support or completely cave in, as it seems they cant sustain it for long, especially when they are being cornered from all sides on the issue, and the way out is none other than diplomacy and for this a united Pakistan is in our favor.
2). No threat to the existence of India
The complete indoctrination of Pak Army (PA) has been to see India as an eternal enemy and their very existence revolves around the anti-India plank or they would have to give up on a most lucrative job in Pakistan which brings with it honour, lots of money, and a power setup that remains completely unchallenged and has no higher authority to which it is accountable to.
It is quite clear Pakistan Army wont give up on this no matter how much of diplomacy be used on this front.
The way I see this being fought is on three fronts:-
A). Bleed Pakistan economically:
The plan is quite simple. Pakistan Army has a psyche of one-upmanship under the disguise of “balance of power”. Lure them into an arm race which they will very readily do, and when we do that they will reciprocate by moving majority of their budgetary funding to the procurement of additional military hardware and software, much like what they have been forced to do as of today where a huge PKR600(+)billion has been diverted towards the defence budget of the total budget of PKR2,400billion. The main point to be noted here is, they have diverted their developmental budget (DB) to defence budget and now the DB remains a mere PKR270billion.
We can sustain this since India’s defence budget (32b usd) as a % of GDP (expected to be around 1.5t usd) will hover around 2.13%, of which the capex is 13b usd, so each year even if we increase the over all defence budget in accordance with the real growth we achieve (7-10%) we can quite literally force Pakistan to take to arms race and this will majorly be done by diverting funds from else where.
To accomplish this misson, we need to talk out with the 3 main world powers that feed Pakistan, the USA, the PRC and the KSA, and make sure they do not dole out financial aids or else in the end we would have achieved little success. The benefit of this is, the Pakistan awam gets adversely affected, with their miseries piling up which becomes a pressure group on Pakistan Army to not push their agenda which threatens the very stability and fabric of Pakistan and with that there remains a good chance of revolt against our grave threat, the Pakistan Army. For the success of this mission, we do not need to break up Pakistan.
B). Make them dependent on us for their day-to-day needs:
Use trade as a bargaining chip but that won’t be achieved till the time we do not have trade with them on a full scale, on a vast spectrum and for this we need to initiate talks around confidence building measures (CBMs) with trade as the critical component. The plan is very simple here, make them dependent on our dirt cheep goods and there are reports that have emerged which suggest that they have a fascination for Indian products unlike any other even though our products might be costlier than the Chinese or inferior in quality than those of best of the MNCs which gets highlighted well from the fact that their shaving blade market consists 80% of Indian made brands, and if that is the success story achieved through the smuggling route, I am sure if we have direct route which also means more revenue for the two countries, we will be able to capture more of their market and to an extent we will be successful on the diplomacy front in pushing across our points. In here again we do not need to break them up.
C). Push comes to shove – Breakup Pakistan:
There is no better way to engineer a break up of Pakistan than through Baluchistan, and if it were to come to it then this is the way out. People here do not associate themselves as Pakistanis and remain a highly disgruntled lot who seek independence, but before this is attempted I would like to see how have the other points worked out and the success rate, and we find no success and Pakistan continues harming our interests then engineering a break-up becomes an inevitable necessity.
3). Break the direct linkage of Pakistan and the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) through land:
I am not desperate for this piece of land if our two main concerns of no terrorism, and no threat to the existence of India, can be addressed to by Pakistan.
Coming to this solution, is there any other way other than breaking up of Pakistan, and this part of land remains very critical to the survival of India, 1). Because this is a direct land linkage between the PRC and Pakistan 2). Because this land divides the Kashmirs and if this land can be annexed and made a part of the republic of India, a lot of grievances of the people of Kashmir will be addressed to.
On the whole we can make do with a very weak united Pakistan, which remains bogged down within its internal chaos, which does not present a challenge to us.
To make all of the above a success, the main thing to be done is to secure Indian assets and interests which can only be achieved when we make India internally strong and our assets and interests do not just remain confined to Indian boundary, so we also need to think on a muck larger scale. Just like the PRC last year was threatened by Al-Qaeda of harming their people and investments in overseas countries similarly we might be threatened by the ISI and by their terror outfits.