NO KNEE-JERK RESPONSE

The Modi Government is steadily but surely changing the Indo-Pak dynamics. The usual pattern of a jihadi attack followed by a period of Indian sullenness and then a slow crawl back to the jaw-jaw at the diplomatic level is being broken after the Uri attack. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has injected a new purposefulness and energy into the handling of the perennially hostile western neighbour. Even though the shrieking television anchors have stopped whipping up a war hysteria, which soon after the September 18 attack on the army camp was at its loudest, the Modi Government is engaged in tightening the screws on the rogue neighbour in several covert and overt ways. Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj’s address to the UN General Assembly on Monday was pointedly meant to bring out yet again the unwholesome character of the Pakistani State. And she did that effectively. She told the global community how despite repeated overtures of peace and friendship, Pakistan had indulged in a series of perfidious terror attacks against India through its non-State actors. She was forceful in painting Pakistan as a failed State which patronised jihadi groups and rode roughshod over the basic rights of its own people. Laced with popular phrases and colloquialisms, Swaraj’s address in Hindi was meant as much for the international community as it was for the domestic audience. Yet, back home the Prime Minister was exploring ways to translate the tough words India had used in the UNGA into possible action. Presiding over a meeting of senior officials dealing with the implementation of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, Modi said that ‘blood and water cannot flow together.’ It was an evocative phrase meant to send a message to Pakistan that it can no longer expect the release of water even as it continues to export terror. Experts would now explore ways and means to divert the waters of the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab rivers away from Pakistan. India in its generosity had granted Pakistan more than eighty percent of the waters of these rivers in the hope that a grateful Pakistan would behave itself. It did not. In fact, such pusillanimity persisted years later when India abandoned its half-complete Tulbul project on the Jhelum in Kashmir. Monday’s meeting decided to resume work on the project which was suspended following Pakistan’s protests in 2007. Notably, despite three wars and scores of terrorist attacks India did not suspend the flow of waters to Pakistan it had undertaken to release under the 1960 agreement. Admittedly, storing and/or diverting waters may be problematic in the short-run but given the will and determination it could well be possible. The argument that denying water to Pakistan will hurt its people, especially farmers, more than it would hurt the generals in the Rawalpindi GHQ is fallacious. Unless ordinary Pakistanis shed their innate hatred of India, which is majorly responsible for the jihadi project, the myopic generals will refuse to see reason.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister was set to review the grant of the ‘Most Favoured Nation’ status granted unilaterally to Pakistan in 1996. A meeting of top officials is scheduled for Thursday. Though Indo-Pak trade does not amount to much, the symbolism of MFN is all wrong and needs to be reviewed, especially when Pakistan refuses to reciprocate the gesture. In sum, a comprehensive approach short of a military response is in the works post Uri. The familiar pattern in Indo-Pak relations which saw a cooling off period after every terror attack followed by resumption of talks, at diplomatic and political levels, was slowly yielding to a measured but tough riposte. This is welcome.