Prominent Pakistani business leaders have urged Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to initiate trade talks with India which would benefit the cashstrapped country’s economy. In Lahore, Punjab Province Assembly Speaker Malik Ahmad Khan said on Thursday that enmity with India should be ended and talks for the resumption of trade the two countries should be initiated. Khan’s call for the restoration of trade ties with India came a day after Pakistan’s business leaders, during an interactive session in Karachi, urged Sharif to initiate trade talks with India. ... S UCH desperate voices are no longer new to Pakistan. At least for the past 2-3 years, lobbies of open-minded sections of the larger Pakistani society have been insisting upon sincere efforts from the country’s leadership to to resume at lest trade ties with India -- so that the country’s dwindling economy would get some support to stand on its own feet. The present appeals, however, show that even political elements are chipping in to ask Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to resume trade ties with India. Possibly, as they may seem to suggest, such an initiative may act as a forerunner to similar resumption of ties with India in other areas.

 

For, such calls are coming from other sections of the larger Pakistani society -- including intellectuals and litterateurs and sportspersons (in addition to some political elements). This development shows the high levels of desperation to which Pakistan now feels having been driven in the past some years. The push in this direction is growing in strength every passing day. This was expected by countless numbers of Indian experts once Pakistan started sliding down the scale in every field in the past some years. Indian predictions that Pakistan would keep sinking lower in the pit of its own digging started coming true as desperation, too, grew in the Islamic country over the past few years. For, with each of its political experiments failing miserably in the past few years, Pakistan’s finances dwindled, the quality of its governance sank ever lower, the social texture started showing signs of rot -- even as its anti-India obsession grew menacingly. All these negative signs only kept adding to the overall sense of desperation and frustration in the larger Pakistani society.

 

However, the worst twist came around the political games Mr. Imran Khan played during and after his prime ministership. As Prime Minister, he took open anti-India positions that baffled even his supporters. For, possibly, he was not expected to go to those terrible distances to berate India. But as he was forced to demit office due to political circumstances, Mr. Imran Khan became the most vocal advocate of India and praised everything India did -- in economy, in strategy, in defence, in science, in industry ...! Nobody actually understood the benefit Mr. Imran Khan was deriving from his overtures. Yet, those assertions gave many a Pakistani from different fields the courage to start voicing their desire to restore ties with India in every possible area of so-called common interests. The trouble with all these people -- including Mr. Imran Khan -- is that India does not suffer from short memory visa-vis Pakistan. India has vowed not to forget all the wrongs Pakistan has heaped on it. If there are any sections of the Indian opinion that favour Pakistan even in distant hints, the larger society castigate those people in no uncertain terms. Any political element that favours Pakistan for whatever reasons gets the boot at the earliest moment. In other words, any restoration f ties with India in any field will be possible only when Islamabad makes a huge national effort to normalise relations by ceasing completely its engagement with terrorism as a policy-tool over a long, long time; and also alter its ugly philosophical commitment to disturbing the larger Indian society by meddling in issues of faith. And, all those efforts will have to be done say for quarter of a century and then expect India to budge a little. But then, there also is a major question to ask in this regard -- Will Pakistan survive for that long to conduct itself in such a gentlemanly manner?

 

That, however, is not the issue for India at all. No matter its predicament on several fronts, India has little to do with the internal atmosphere in Pakistan. Of course, in right time, India will act decisively and snatch back a complete control of Pakistan-occupiedKashmir. Minus that, Pakistan will have to take a relook at itself and decide what it wants to with itself. Going by the current signals, the efforts of some sections from Pakistan to push the idea of resuming multi-lateral ties with India will prove to be only intellectual day-dreaming that will produce no concrete outcome -- for two reasons: One, India’s disinterest; and two, the inability of the Pakistani leadership to make the decisive move and make it work over a long time so as to convince India -- and the world about its truly good intentions.