India and Pakistan at 70; Nawaz Sharif Rallies; Korea Crisis

[Riaz Haq]

How are India and Pakistan doing 70 years after independence? What are their successes and failures? What challenges do they face? What does future hold for them? Can Pakistani democracy evolve and grow to serve all of its people? How will Hindu Nationalist Modi's rise impact South Asia? Is India's secular democracy under threat? Could it lead to war? Is there a way to manage tensions between the two rivals? Will there ever be durable peace in South Asia?

Has deposed PM Nawaz Sharif really accepted the Supreme Court verdict disqualifying him? Should he really accept the verdict as Al Gore accepted Bush v Gore verdict after 2000 US presidential elections and go home quietly? What does Nawaz Sharif hope to achieve by his daily political rallies as he makes his way from Islamabad to Lahore in a long convoy of vehicles? Will his continuing public attacks on the judiciary undermine democracy in Pakistan?

What is at the root of the Korea crisis? Is it Kim Jong Un's fear of regime change if he agrees to denuclearize? What lessons have Kim and others learned from the way US first denuclearized Saddam and Gaddafi and then removed them that led to their deaths? Is President Donald Trump's fiery rhetoric making the crisis worse? Should Trump listen to the advice of US allies to cool it?

Viewpoint From Overseas host Faraz Darvesh discusses these questions with Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)


https://youtu.be/ffADNF3hgck





Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Pakistan Day: Freeing the Colonized Minds of the Elite

Pankaj Mishra's NY Times Op Ed on India at 70

Lynchistan: India is the Lynching Capital of the World

Nawaz Sharif Disqualified by Pakistan Supreme Court

North Korea Nukes and ICBM

Trump's White House

Talk4Pak Youtube Channel

Talk4Pak Vimeo Channel

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan's economy surging as GDP growth sees record with 5.3 percent

https://www.dailysabah.com/economy/2017/08/29/pakistans-economy-sur...

akistan's government said Tuesday that the country's GDP has seen record growth of 5.3 percent.

Per capita income increased to $1,629, according to government data.

In a briefing to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and other cabinet members, Finance Division officials said that during the current fiscal year GDP recorded increased growth.

Large-scale manufacturing achieved 5.6 percent growth and the fiscal deficit was reduced by 5.8 percent as percentage of GDP.

Almost 8,300 new companies were registered during the current year while FDI witnessed an increase of $2.4 billion in financial year 2016-17.

The World Bank in recent reports predicted that Pakistan's GDP growth in fiscal year 2017 was expected to climb to 5.2 percent, the highest in nine years and that the growth rate would continue to accelerate, reaching 5.5 percent in fiscal year 2018 and 5.8 percent in fiscal year 2019.

Local economists said the reports showed FDI was mainly being led by China.

[Riaz Haq]

India and Pakistan must learn to live together
New Delhi and Islamabad are locked in a dangerous triangular contest with Beijing

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/International-Relations/In...

HENNY SENDER, Nikkei Asian Review columnist
In the last year, Modi has been seemingly opposed to any conciliation with Pakistan. In September 2016, after gunmen attacked an Indian army base in Kashmir, he threatened to tear up the Indus Water Treaty, which provides for the orderly distribution of water between the two countries from rivers that flow first through India. The treaty has been in effect since 1960, yet this is virtually the first time that it has become hostage to cross-border sparring, according to analysts. Pakistan's apparent inability to control attacks from its territory across the border does not help.

Modi also claimed that counterfeiting from across the border was one of the reasons for India's "demonetization" exercise -- a major currency upheaval last November in which high value notes were suddenly withdrawn from circulation, causing chaos for Indian businesses that rely on cash transactions. Modi learned from elections in March in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, that uniting Hindus (who in the past had fractured along caste lines) against Muslims pays off at the ballot box, undermining domestic political support for reconciliation with Muslim Pakistan. He then installed a militantly religious Hindu figure, Yogi Adityanath, as chief minister of the state.

Meanwhile, India's relationship with China is in part hostage to its relationship with Pakistan. China has become Islamabad's closest ally. Pakistan will be the biggest beneficiary of Chinese economic and strategic initiatives such as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and is set to receive more than $60 billion in the next few years as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive Asian infrastructure program. India believes that such Chinese plans are a way to unload its excess capacity on the rest of the world and wants no part in its giant neighbor's ambitious programs.

This is short sighted. For example, Pakistan may well become the first country on the planet to run out of water. Its arid land struggles to support a population of around 200 million -- though nobody knows the exact figure because there has been no census in almost 20 years. Several of the China-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank's first projects (in conjunction with the Japanese-led Asian Development Bank) are aimed at supporting water infrastructure in Pakistan.

The continuing tensions between India and Pakistan are rooted in partition. But New Delhi also believes that a weak Pakistan is in its interests. There may be some truth in this, but only up to a point. A collapse of Pakistan's economy and institutions would pose a serious threat to India, which should welcome Chinese investment in Pakistan, including AIIB lending, as a way of avoiding the problem of a failed state on its doorstep.

Scholars continue to debate whether the events of 70 years ago that divided India from Pakistan were inevitable or not. Either way, however, New Delhi needs to accept that the fates of the two countries remain inextricably linked, for better or worse.