PAKISTAN is poised as a formidable regional contender alongside India. But due to mismanagement of its economy for some years by successive governments, piling up a huge amount of foreign loans and not creating enough export capacity and forex reserves to pay back the loans, Pakistan’s economy is now dependent on the IMF loan programme and friendly countries financial resources. This situation has caused a major devaluation of the Pakistani rupee, and very high inflation, which has badly hit the poor masses. Because of this, Pakistan is also facing difficulty in keeping pace with India’s economic, technological and military advancements.
Why it is necessary to remain a competing regional power with India? Indian leadership, especially the BJP government is always ready to harm Pakistan. In this context, while the Indian aggression to dismember Pakistan in 1971 should never be forgotten, the BJP government’s offensive policy on IIOJ&K of 5 August 2019, its brutal use of force in IIOJ&K to crush the freedom struggle and its key leaders’ statements about capturing even AJ&K are dangerous acts/signals, especially when the BJP is likely to keep ruling India intermittently.
It is also a matter of great concern that Indian Prime Minister Modi continues to blame Pakistan at all heads of state summits for sponsoring terrorism in the IIOJ&K/region even though Canada and the US’s allegations of the role of Indian intelligence officials in killing/murder plots of their Sikh citizens have confirmed that it is India which sponsors international terrorism. India’s hybrid war to hinder Pakistan’s CPEC-based economic progress is also dangerous, and Modi is doing it boldly after India became a major defence partner of the US.
Hence, it would be dangerous, for Pakistan if it fails to maintain itself as a competing regional power with India. And, why not pursue this objective resolutely, when Pakistan has a strong potential to compete with India? It is not a difficult objective. If India is bigger than Pakistan, it also has to maintain a large/poor population and manage very long borders with China, Pakistan and others. Hence, it would be good enough if we achieve a better economic growth rate than India and attain/maintain equal to 1/5 of India’s exports, forex reserves (120 billion USD, since India has 620 billion), and defence expenditure. It would be better if we do more, because if Singapore can have 337 billion USD forex reserves, why not we?
We will briefly discuss Pakistan’s power potential to become/maintain itself as a competing regional power with India. Pakistan has a large population, the 5th largest country in the world, in agriculture, it is 4th largest in the production of sugarcane, mango and guava,5th largest in cotton production, 6th largest in tobacco, dates and onion production, 7th largest in chickpeas production, 8th largest in wheat production, 9th largest in rice production, 13th largest in tomato production, 15th largest in citrus production and 16th largest in maize production.
Pakistan has a strong industrial base to expand and enhance production, with cotton textile production and apparel manufacturing, making up about 66% of all export items and employing approximately 40% of the country’s labour force. With its 64 percent young population, Pakistan has a large and talented labour force that stands among the top 10 largest labour forces in the world and is also an asset for its economic progress.
Pakistan is also rich in mineral resources. It has large deposits of gold, copper, chromite, iron, coal, natural gas, crude oil, gypsum, zink, marble/granite and gemstones. Balochistan has the most mineral deposits among the provinces of Pakistan, with Sindh rich in coal deposits and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa rich in gems. This mineral reserve needs to be exploited by attracting foreign investment.
Militarily, according to Global Fire Power, the Pakistan Army ranks as the seventh most powerful army in the world. Pakistan is already the 7th nuclear power in the world. Strategically, Pakistan is located at the confluence of South Asia, Central Asia, West Asia and the Middle East. And, from the CPEC-based international trade/connectivity perspective, Pakistan is now much more important for China, the US/its Western allies, Central Asia, Muslim countries and Russia.
Given the above information/discussion, to make Pakistan economically self-reliant, it is very vital that Pakistan’s political leaders now realize their past mistakes and agree on implementing a well-prepared economic revival/development plan for the next 15 years. This may be done by attracting foreign investment/technology using the country’s resources judiciously and exploiting its power potential, shunning corruption and malpractices, working hard and making the people of Pakistan work harder to attain the desired goals.
To achieve all this, Pakistan’s foreign policy will have to be dynamic to further strengthen its strategic partnership with China and build and maintain good relations with the US/its Western allies, the Muslim countries, especially the Middle East, Indonesia and Malaysia as well as Russia. If we achieve the above-stated objectives, Pakistan will have no issue in maintaining itself as a competing regional power with India, and only then India will feel the need to resolve all issues, including the J&K dispute with Pakistan through dialogue.
—The writer is also a former Research Fellow of IPRI and Senior Research Fellow of SVI Islamabad.
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views expressed are writer’s own.
