Shahzad Chaudhry, a political, security and defense analyst, writing an opinion piece in The Express Tribune, said: “If I were Henry Kissinger, I would write a treatise ‘On India’. Such has been the monumental turnaround in the fortunes of India as a state and a player primarily in Asia and generally on the world stage”.
Notably, last year India took over from the UK to become the world’s fifth largest economy and aims to be the world’s third largest economy by 2037, while Pakistan’s economy runs on financial assistance from the world community.
The generous response from the international community pledging more than USD 8 billion is a great relief for Pakistan, which is suffering from liquidity problems and struggling to rebuild in a climate-resilient manner after devastating floods that killed 1,739 people and affected 33 million last year.
Furthermore, Chaudhry praised India for having foreign exchange reserves of more than USD 600 billion, fourth in the world while Pakistan currently has only USD 4.5 billion.
Pakistan is in the midst of the most serious crisis it has faced since 1971. The political economy has been wracked by self-inflicted wounds, its international stature has diminished.
Comparing India to China, the world’s second-biggest economy after the US, he said: “Its GDP growth rate is in line with the best-performing economies in the past three decades after China.” in 2004 from a paltry 9.2 in 1992. Under Manmohan Singh, India increased its reserves to $252 billion in 2014. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, these have skyrocketed to more than $600 billion and GDP exceeds three trillion dollars. progress that makes India a preferred destination for all investors,” added Chaudhry.
Meanwhile, foreign investors avoid bringing money to Pakistan due to various factors such as political instability, macroeconomic policy discontinuity, terrorism, corruption, and energy shortage.
Over the past two decades, Pakistan has tried to implement various FDI-friendly measures. The country attempted far-reaching structural reforms to attract multinationals that could become facilitators of economic growth and job creation in the country.
However, the effective implementation of such measures remained slow due to basic problems in the country, including red tape, bureaucratic lethargy, rampant corruption, misguided ideology and extremism, Islam Khabar reported.
Heaping praise for the “coherent and functional policy” that Pakistan has lacked since its formation, he said, “India is among the leading producers of agricultural products and in the IT industry. Its yields per acre in agriculture match the best in the world”. And despite being a country of more than 1.4 billion people, it remains a relatively stable, coherent and functional system of government. His system of government has stood the test of time and has demonstrated its resilience around the essential foundations for a resolute democracy.”
Rubbing salt in Pakistan, he also spoke about his allies Saudi Arabia, he said: “Saudi Arabia, Pakistan’s brother brother, has announced an investment of more than $72 billion in India, even as we plead with it to invest the $7 billion promised to Pakistan.”
He said India outdid Pakistan politically in Kashmir by rescinding Article 370 of its constitution, which gave special, if not contested, status to the region.
By the way, India’s global footprint is remarkable. He is invited to the G7 and is a member of the G20. He is leading a movement from the global South to represent what is critical to equitable progress in times of climate change, pandemics and technological encroachment. He has a plan to establish his own dominance on the foreign policy front, and he sticks to it assiduously.
“Russia is under US sanctions, and no one can trade freely with Russia except India, which buys Russian oil on preferential terms and then re-exports it to help an old boss make dollars indirectly. Two opposing world military superpowers claim that India to be their ally. If this isn’t a diplomatic coup, what is?” Chaudhry said.
Furthermore, he advised Pakistan to “recalibrate its India policy” by “breaking the conventions” to “turn geo-economics into a strategy” or else Pakistan “may be reduced to a footnote in history.”
