Comments on: Why Pakistan is Useful Just the Way it is

By: pankaj

pankaj — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 05:53:49 +0000

India should not take any unilateral steps for friendhship or trade with pakistan,as they are taken as a sign of weakness,pakistanis think rightly that indians are cowards.If a unstable pakistan is able to make such mischief what will happen when it becomes a rich country.

By: anuj

anuj — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:23:24 +0000

I agree, India shouldn’t take any unilateral steps to increase trade with Pakistan.
If despite receiving billions of dollars in aid from the Americans and help in fighting the cancer of terrorism, Pakistani public, army and politicians still hate the Americans more than the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Then, why would Indo-Pak trade, persuade the Pakistanis to change their minds towards the dark skinned Hindu banias, who they once lorded over.

By: Sundar

Sundar — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:40:53 +0000

Atanu,

Failure of Pakistan and disintegration into multiple countries will also be a jolt to Arab world especially UAE and Saudi Arabia. They pump in lots of money, if not more than the West.

By: vakibs

vakibs — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:59:48 +0000

Friends of Pakistan are not necessarily Enemies of India.

We Indians need to grow up and stop looking at our back every single moment. Nobody is out here to get us.

Agreed, we have been raped and pillaged for several hundred years. But the world is changing.

In the current era, nobody has a dire need to keep India poor. If we are poor, it is of our own choosing (you will agree with me here . It is not because of Pakistan. In fact, most Pakistanis are dead tired of terrorism, and they would like to have friendly normalized relations with a prosperous India. This is why we should encourage an economically strong and stable pakistan – the best bet to have a democratic state there.

By: sagarone

sagarone — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:55:18 +0000

The meltdown of Pakistan is good for India for another reason as well. Internal squabbling among the residual states formed by the disintegration of Pakistan will result in a reduction in cross-border terrorism and a reduction of material and ideological support for our homegrown terrorists, if not stopping it altogether.

By: Nitin

Nitin — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 23:57:49 +0000

Atanu,

I make a distinction between stable relations and peaceful relations.

It is possible to achieve stability through the use of instruments and shock absorbers. As for peace, well, that requires a lot of change in a lot of places among a lot of people, and as you point out, there is little reason to be sanguine about it.

The problem is that because most people conflate the two, we end up without having any meaningful “instruments and shock absorbers” that can help manage stability. Trade is a very good one for several reasons.