India not falling for humanitarian trap in Pakistan
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, February 23: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar dashed on Thursday hopes in some quarters of India showing large heartedness to extend helping hands to sinking Pakistan. Jaishankar made it clear that it is not possible for any country to come of such grave crisis when the “basic industry is terrorism”. Pakistan is pleading the International Monetary Fund for the tranche of $1.27 billion loan to avert a certain sovereign default on the servicing of its foreign debts.
Pakistan has over $126 billion of external debt, with almost one-fourth accounted for by China. The strategic China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which was principally aimed to choke India on its northern frontiers, has seemingly taken Islamabad into the abyss of debt from where the Islamic country may not so easily come out. China has extended an additional loan of $700 million amid a firm build-up of anti-Chinese sentiments in Pakistan.
“There has to be clarity on the issue. There are political issues. There are social issues. But no country can certainly come out of a crisis if the basic industry is terrorism,” Jaishankar said during Asia Economic Dialogue in Pune. He is the first voice from the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government to have spoken on the ongoing Pakistani economic crisis.
Jaishankar stated that the economic crisis keeps visiting countries and they deal with the situation with system response as had been the vase with India about 30 years ago. He was referring to the 1991 Balance of Payment crisis in India, which had set off during the time of late Chandrashekhar when he was the prime minister, while taking a grave proportion after PV Narsimha Rao took the charge of the country. With Manmohan Singh as the finance minister, India had embarked on a market reform, which by the accounts of the economic historians set the country on an explosive growth path. India’s golden decade in India by consensus view is reckoned to be during 1999-2009, which began within eight years of the 1991 reforms.
Pakistan in contrast blew up its debt burden, which expanded almost 20 times in the last 25 years to the lever of over 62.50 lakh crore Pakistani rupees. Jaishankar’s remarks also made it clear that unlike Sri Lanka where India was the first country to reach out after Colombo declared sovereign default, Pakistan’s umbilical cord with terrorism will keep India an outside observer only.
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