The writer is a social anthropologist and development professional.
He has thrived on politics of hatred and violence. He equates Muslims with puppies and is blamed for one of the worst massacres of Muslims in post-partition India. However, the prime minister of the world’s largest democracy is also a symbol of development and prosperity to his millions of followers.
Narendra Modi is the man Pakistan has to contend with at the crossroads of history and his rule in India is fraught with challenges for Muslims in his country and for Pakistan, both of whom belong to the same category in his scheme of things.
During his run up to the elections in 2014, Narendra Modi had repeatedly boasted about his “56-inch chest size” to attack the incompetence of his opponents. (According to a report by The Times of India, his chest is actually 50 inches.) His machismo has come under serious challenge from peaceful protesters and not so peaceful militants in Kashmir and he is more than willing to use indiscriminate force, bullying and bluster. He also wants to teach Pakistan a lesson by throwing security, diplomatic and economic challenges. His audience is internal but his actions may have far-reaching consequences.
Both India and Pakistan need peace and progress to catch up with the rest of the world and pull their people out of the abysmal poverty. In one odd speech that was instantly dubbed as a political masterstroke, Modi appeared like a statesman who had realised this fact.
At a public rally in the Calicut city of Kerala state, Modi challenged Pakistan to compete with it in a ‘war on illiteracy, poverty and unemployment’. Though the challenge was too good to believe, it impressed many commentators, at home and abroad, who praised him for following the policy of ‘strategic restraint’ and redefining the terms of victory over Pakistan.
Shivam Vij wrote in the Huffington Post: “By seeking to reshape public discourse on India-Pakistan relations, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech… is a potential game-changer. Not only did he make clear that war was not on the horizon, but also sought to change the definition of victory over Pakistan.”
A journalist in the Wall Street Journal noted: “Mr Modi’s cautious response to Uri is remarkable considering that before winning election in 2014 he castigated the previous Congress Party-led government for failing to take a tough response to Pakistan-backed terrorism.”
In Modi’s dictionary, restraint and provocation carry very different meanings. He had called the 2002 massacre in Gujarat a “remarkable restraint under grave provocation”. A similar restrain appears to be at work. A day after the public rally, he announced that he was suspending meetings of the Indus Water Commission that oversees sharing of water between India and Pakistan and stated that “Blood and water cannot flow at the same time.”
As Justin Rowlatt, South Asia correspondent of BBC noted, “The fear is that, by imperilling one of the few treaties that has successfully governed how water is shared between any nations, Mr Modi may have opened the floodgates to a new and potent source of conflict between India and its greatest enemy, and in so doing, have set a bad example for the rest of the world.”
Modi’s challenge of human development also sounds hollow. India has already lost a historic opportunity to China because of what Amartya Sen calls China’s social preparedness that India lacked. Sen noted in his 1999 book, ‘Development as Freedom’: “When China turned to marketization in 1979, it already had a highly literate people, especially the young, with good schooling facilities across the bulk of the country…In contrast India had half-illiterate adult population when it turned to marketization in 1991, and the situation is not much improved today.”
India’s current economic successes are based on the sheer size of its market, it huge middle class population linked to its size and its Brahamanistic model of education that prioritises high quality higher education, mainly meant for upper castes and elites, at the cost of literacy and primary education.
As K R Gupta, an India economist has noted: “Subsidies to higher (tertiary) education often corner away much of public spending at the expense of primary education. Since the students in the former stream are typically from higher-income category, such spending becomes unequitable. Scarce public money is squandered for purposes that should ideally be covered by private money.” Pakistan also followed the same model but has failed to ensure quality in its institutions of higher education.
Despite current economic successes, India’s statistics on poverty are not remarkably different from Pakistan. According to some reports of international organisations, the situation of poverty in India is much worse than in Pakistan. Can India sustain its current trajectory of growth without investing on its people and decreasing the disparities? Even if it does, will Indians be happy with an illiberal democracy with a majoritarian rule where all dissent is silenced and diversity crushed.
Anish Kapoor wrote in the Guardian last week, “Modi’s regime has effectively tolerated – if not encouraged – a saffron-clad army of Hindu activists who monitor and violently discipline those suspected of eating beef, disobeying caste rules or betraying the ‘Hindu nation’.”
Pakistan’s most serious challenges do not arise from India but are home grown. Even the challenges emanating from India get complicated due to our own policy choices. A full-blown war between the two nuclear armed countries is almost impossible – though we should not tempt the gods. However, substituting poison for the sword does not translate into peace.
Modi’s efforts at isolating Pakistan should give us an occasion to reassess our relationship with the rest of the world. As a responsible member of the world community, Pakistan must take pro-active steps to allay the fears and suspicions of the world community and back these actions with robust diplomacy to improve its image.
Our economy is not as good as the government claims. Our imports are increasing while exports are falling; large sections of the economy refuse to pay taxes and governments are not willing to invest on the poor. Pakistan missed a train in the 1960s and it can’t afford to miss another.
Development economists, during the 1960s, used to portray Pakistan as the ‘first Asian Tiger’ as the country was on a similar trajectory as other tiger economies. More recently, the country’s slow economic progress shows that the rest of South Asia may steam ahead.
Whenever tensions between India and Pakistan rise, religious parties and marginal extremist groups have a field day and jostle to get the centre stage. This should not be allowed. Now that Pakistan has resolved to tread a different path – the path of moderation, inclusion, peace and pluralism, we should stick to it. One Modi is one too many for South Asia.www.thenews.com.pk/print/154402-Pakistans-Modi-challenge
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