Aman Ka Tamasha

[FuturePAF]

@M. Sarmad
@brational
@Chute


Yes, we know. We have our hyper-patriots too, sitting abroad and willing to fight to the last resident Indian.

It also doesn’t make sense to sell raw materials and undermine your own textile industry. The sunk costs into the power plants and promised consumption need to be paid back.

Also, India has high tariffs. In the US, India is said to have the highest tariffs. It is called the Maharaja of Tariffs. So everyone knows india is using protectionism to build itself up. Pakistan building up india only builds up Indian hegemony.

If Pakistan had products of equal value and of similar level in the value added chain it would make sense, but Pakistanis are not interested in becoming an Indian vassal. Sure the common man would benefit in the short term with lower food prices and other cheaper consumer products, but look at what deindustrialization has done to the US, with raw materials shipped to China, and finished products being shipped to the US. Opening up to India would be the same. Besides, slowing down Indian growth over the next 20-25 years (by 2047) will minimize how much they can benefit from their demographic dividend and that will limit India’s ability to spend on their military. Sure it will slow down Pakistan’s growth, but our demographic dividend looks to last a further 15-20 years (by ~2065) beyond India’s demographic dividend.

So the sooner Pakistan hits rock bottoms, elects a government that actual represent it, re-industrializes and has finished products to export, only then would trading with India make sense.

It’s not in Pakistan’s overall long term economic benefit to open up trade with India to soon.

 

[Joe Shearer]

One of the most frustrating things about the discourse with Pak/India relations is that it's hard to hold civil conversations with the majority of either Pakistanis or Indians. When it comes to relations between the two countries, most people immediately start with the position that "their" side must dominate the other, or win some sort of plaudits for their exploits. There is little utilitarianism thought, little of mutual respect or empathy, and no desire to actually find any solutions.

Trade, dialogue or other social interactions between the two at a national level is governed by these ideals. There is a weird expectation built in the mindset of both sides that when two individuals engage with each other, one side must come out on top.

I see people here blaming shady actors or the "establishment" of respective countries as being the ones behind the derailing of approachment but the reality seems far more grim and ugly. South Asian psyche in general is a cesspit of unwarranted reactionarism, vindictiveness and pettiness.

The solution? I ofcourse present none, since the above symptoms are also rife within me. Maybe one day, after we've nuked each other, and destroyed our future generations, some people, somewhere may see sense in living side by side in peace without the desire to dominate the other.

You have a point.

Those of us sweating away posting have a point too.

If you stop feeling full of despair, and try to do a teeny weeny little bit to change that despair into something positive, it would help.

Some teeny weeny bit like engage with the subject, for starters.

 

[Krptonite]

Benefit of free trade will help the consumers the most i.e. the general population on both side. That is the very fundamental of free trade is that it benefits the consumers as the one who produces more efficiently replaces the in-efficient ones and passes the delta of that efficiency to itself and the consumers.
With trade the Pakistani citizen will get the cheap Indian goods, this will reduce overall inflation of the state. India too will get some of the niche items like cottons or rock salt that it produces. But the Pakistani producer will suffer for sure, unless the Pak government put some tarrifs/ Quota on Indian imports.

With Trade the relationship will also get better and Pakistan will have a powerful ally in the form of Indian traders who would try their best not to escalate tensions better two countries.
Finally if things gets good enough, Pakistan may take part in various energy pipelines from Central Asia & Iran, which India desperately needs. Pakistan will gain a lot just by taking a transit fee.

I would posit that trade is not such one dimensional.

Consider this, is it cheaper for a business to manufacture products in pakistan and then forward to central states or to manufacture them in India.

Supply lines could be optimised so that each manufacturer can focus on their own competencies to maximise benefit.

Think not of indians producers and pakistani producers but a business choosing each component of its supply chain on their economic benfit regardless of whether it is in India or Pakistan. This type of cross national supply chain logistics provide returns in multiples of what was invested in. The european union and its flow of trade depicts a working model of such a system.

Many members have also not pondered on the implications on cost of capital for Pakistani businesses. It would reduce, making it easier for fledging businesses to establish themselves and innovate. Theres more than materials that are traded, financial services are capable of changing the economic landscape of a country.

 

[migflug]

One of the most frustrating things about the discourse with Pak/India relations is that it's hard to hold civil conversations with the majority of either Pakistanis or Indians. When it comes to relations between the two countries, most people immediately start with the position that "their" side must dominate the other, or win some sort of plaudits for their exploits. There is little utilitarianism thought, little of mutual respect or empathy, and no desire to actually find any solutions.

Trade, dialogue or other social interactions between the two at a national level is governed by these ideals. There is a weird expectation built in the mindset of both sides that when two individuals engage with each other, one side must come out on top.

I see people here blaming shady actors or the "establishment" of respective countries as being the ones behind the derailing of approachment but the reality seems far more grim and ugly. South Asian psyche in general is a cesspit of unwarranted reactionarism, vindictiveness and pettiness.

The solution? I ofcourse present none, since the above symptoms are also rife within me. Maybe one day, after we've nuked each other, and destroyed our future generations, some people, somewhere may see sense in living side by side in peace without the desire to dominate the other.

It stems directly from our creation of two nation. Both need to justify their ideology as better just like capitalism vs communism. Pakistan must defend the two nation theory while India must upheld itself as the secular. Mixed with the religious cocktail of Hindu vs Muslim, this hinders any development of peace between the two states.

 

[Joe Shearer]

A good read ..

Biker takes India by storm​

Abbas Nasir
May 7, 2023


WHILE the visit lasted barely a day and a half, the ‘analysis’ generated by Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s decision to attend the Shanghai Conference Organisation’s Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in Goa will outlast any reasonable time frame.

You will have noticed the word ‘analysis’ was used in quotes above. One can be sure you have also figured out why. What we have a flood of is partisan comment and very little genuine analysis on what was always going to be a visit in pursuit of multilateral, rather than bilateral, goals, as the foreign minister himself stated.

This vitriol towards Pakistan and its foreign minister was unleashed by the right-wing Hindu nationalist government’s foreign minister Dr S. Jaishanker: “As a foreign minister of an SCO member state, Mr Bhutto -Zardari was treated accordingly. As a promoter, justifier and spokesperson of a terrorism industry which is the mainstay of Pakistan, his positions were called out and countered including at the SCO meeting itself.”

Mr Bhutto-Zardari may have calmly and firmly spelt out Pakistan’s stance on both India’s unilateral annexation of Indian-held Kashmir and how it was an obstacle to any bilateral dialogue and also rebutted New Delhi’s accusation of being a state sponsor of terrorism, but hyper-nationalists on the right in Pakistan attacked their own foreign minister rather than India.



Myra MacDonald, Reuters’ former bureau chief in Delhi and an author of three books on the two countries including one on the Siachen dispute, saw the Jaishankar diatribe thus. “I am sympathetic to India’s complaints about terrorism emanating from Pakistan. And I am very dubious about CPEC. All that said, the choice of words here seems unnecessarily undiplomatic and focused on a domestic audience.

“There’s an element of being rude to a guest that India would not have done before. But it’s also striking that Jaishankar reserves his harshest language for Pakistan (the far weaker country) than for China (the far stronger country) nibbling away at its borders.

“All in all, it looks to me like a government that is letting its own nationalist domestic political imperatives get in the way of intelligent choices about foreign policy.” Her tweeted response was more aligned to independent thinking on the issue. This argument carried weight as Karnataka state elections are scheduled for next week and even national elections are due early next year.

However, the bulk of the Indian media reflected its own domestic political loyalties and priorities as well as regional and domestic polarisation, with many outlets and journalists shaming themselves in the process as they churned out partisan rubbish in the name of ‘informed analysis’.

Our own ultra-nationalists were not to be left behind. You have consumed enough of their garbage including objections to why the Pakistan foreign minister reciprocated his Indian counterpart’s greeting by holding both palms together with fingers pointed upwards because it was a ‘Hindu namaste’.

Of course, the peddlers of this nonsense have never travelled in Sindh, parts of Balochistan and further afield in Bangladesh and even Thailand just to cite a few examples of that gesture not being indicative of faith but more of a cultural tradition in each case. Russian as well as other SCO member states’ media had no such objection to their foreign ministers exchanging the same greeting, rather than a handshake, as they arrived for the formal sessions.

Let me now draw your attention to what happens when people (including Indians and Pakistanis) meet, unhindered by official positions and a media craving for controversies. Abrar is a Pakistan-born German national whose family lives in their Lahore home. Abrar does a travel vlog on social media and has over 1.2 million followers on YouTube alone.

I have watched his travels across Europe, the Middle East, West Asia and our own subcontinent. A truly soft-spoken, unpretentious, handsome young man in his 20s, with an endearing demeanour, he rides a BMW trail bike and films his travels with helmet-mounted/ hand-held professional cameras.

What is staggering is that within hours of his uploading the latest episode, views run into hundreds of thousands. His most recent series after ‘I somehow got lucky enough to be finally given an Indian visa’ is an eye-opener. Yes, an eye-opener because one seldom gets to see/read anywhere the sort of content Abrar presents through his ‘WildLens’ YouTube channel.

He has a huge fan following in India as well. This cuts across faiths, ethnicity, language and gender. His staggering visual accounts of his journey from the southern-most to western, central and north Indian states and most urban centres along his route hold you glued to the screen. He takes you to historic sites and shows you people in their own cultural environment as a good storyteller would.
He posts on social media more than once a day sometimes and also schedules ‘meet ups’ with followers along his route. The adulation he gets from young and old, men and women, girls and boys is a sight to behold. He can’t obviously carry a lot of luggage on his bike and gets overwhelmed by gifts.

While many insist on hosting him for a meal (he was treated to Sindhi biryani in Surat by a family originally belonging to Sindh), others show their affection by riding alongside on their own bikes or by waiting for and greeting him along his planned route that he posts.

I am almost tempted to suggest we should get Abrar (and a few more like him) drafted into the Foreign Office because he seems to be winning more Indian hearts and minds than anything else we seem to have tried.

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
abbas.nasir@gmail.com

What people don't 'get' is that visitors to India are generally treated with the greatest cordiality. Look at how Shoaib Akhtar is treated in Calcutta, for example. Or ask Kaisar Tufail, who travelled to India with his wife. Any Pakistani coming into India will do. There was that Pakistani young woman who came to Kerala because her husband is a Malayali. It's on YouTube, too.

 

[Krptonite]

It also doesn’t make sense to sell raw materials and undermine your own textile industry. The sunk costs into the power plants and promised consumption need to be paid back.

Also, India has high tariffs. In the US, India is said to have the highest tariffs. It is called the Maharaja of Tariffs. So everyone knows india is using protectionism to build itself up. Pakistan building up india only builds up Indian hegemony.

If Pakistan had products of equal value and of similar level in the value added chain it would make sense, but Pakistanis are not interested in becoming an Indian vassal.

Would it surprise you to note that Pakistan currently is more protectionist than India as far as trade inhibition mechanisms are concerned. There are policy mechnism that recognise such a scenario and help buffer local industries for the short term. Its commonly used by developing countries engaging in trade with developed countries.

What i can state from observation is that the current status quo has disincentivised innovation for your local industry the same as what licence raj did to ours.

The benefits of engaging in trade are compounding and to build capability up the value chain you'd have to work your way up. Bangladesh did it, you can too.

It is not that Pakistani products need to have an equal value before trading, its that trading will incentivise your industry to compete to similar degree a win for the consumers.

 

[migflug]

I would posit that trade is not such one dimensional.

Consider this, is it cheaper for a business to manufacture products in pakistan and then forward to central states or to manufacture them in India.

Supply lines could be optimised so that each manufacturer can focus on their own competencies to maximise benefit.

Think not of indians producers and pakistani producers but a business choosing each component of its supply chain on their economic benfit regardless of whether it is in India or Pakistan. This type of cross national supply chain logistics provide returns in multiples of what was invested in. The european union and its flow of trade depicts a working model of such a system.

Many members have also not pondered on the implications on cost of capital for Pakistani businesses. It would reduce, making it easier for fledging businesses to establish themselves and innovate. Theres more than materials that are traded, financial services are capable of changing the economic landscape of a country.

I wasn't getting into supply chain because it will take a long time to develop. It takes a lot of patience and trust to develop supply chains. So initially, the two nations will mainly trade simple items or materials, which they can easily export.
Creating supply chain is a tricky business. Even though Indian traders say get cheap raw materials like cotton from Pakistan , they won't lean on it for time being. Because if for some reasons the trade stops, they will find themselves in a precarious position. You see, once they shelve their Indian counterparts to Pakistani one, there will be a sense of mistrust between them, which will be difficult to overcome. Most likely if the Indian traders import the raw cotton from Pakistan, they will use the bandwidth they have to use them, they won't be replacing or significantly reducing the Indian counterparts inputs just because they are cheap.

 

[FuturePAF]

Would it surprise you to note that Pakistan currently is more protectionist than India as far as trade inhibition mechanisms are concerned. There are policy mechnism that recognise such a scenario and help buffer local industries for the short term. Its commonly used by developing countries engaging in trade with developed countries.

What i can state from observation is that the current status quo has disincentivised innovation for your local industry the same as what licence raj did to ours.

The benefits of engaging in trade are compounding and to build capability up the value chain you'd have to work your way up. Bangladesh did it, you can too.

It is not that Pakistani products need to have an equal value before trading, its that trading will incentivise your industry to compete to similar degree a win for the consumers.

Our “industrialists” don’t follow market forces, they would rather import Indian products and relabel it as their own to sell to the domestic market.

This is why we need the SEZ to do real industrialization, shame the domestic industrialists, and maintain the protectionism until we can catch up to a decent enough level that opening to India would further incentivize development.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Sure the common man would benefit in the short term with lower food prices and other cheaper consumer products, but look at what deindustrialization has done to the US, with raw materials shipped to China, and finished products being shipped to the US.

Don't you think that a little pampering of the common man in the short term would be a good thing? There has been no lack of sacrifice on his part for the last 75 years; why grudge him a few decades of comfort?

Besides, slowing down Indian growth over the next 20-25 years (by 2047) will minimize how much they can benefit from their demographic dividend and that will limit India’s ability to spend on their military.

This is sometimes called cutting off your nose to spite your face.

If we stay miserable, our neighbour will not get rich at the same pace, and that will make him unhappy.

Brilliant thinking.

 

[FuturePAF]

Don't you think that a little pampering of the common man in the short term would be a good thing? There has been no lack of sacrifice on his part for the last 75 years; why grudge him a few decades of comfort?


This is sometimes called cutting off your nose to spite your face.

If we stay miserable, our neighbour will not get rich at the same pace, and that will make him unhappy.

Brilliant thinking.

Look at the benefit the last 15 years of outsourcing have gotten America vis a vi China.

The common man won’t benefit, the rich nonproductive fat cats will benefit and the. Common man’s labor will become more and more uncompetitive.

In principle, I don’t disagree with trading with India, but there needs to be a long term benefit to the common Pakistani, including in employment.

Even the projects Pakistan is borrowing from China to build with Chinese labor and materials is something I would have hoped was done by Pakistani companies, with Pakistani labor and Pakistani materials. Not only to employ people, but to do and finance the expansions themselves.

It’s the Pakistani “industrialists” we need to fix before we can afford to open up to India. Currently we are in a worse state of elite capture then India during the license raj.

 

[Krptonite]

I wasn't getting into supply chain because it will take a long time to develop. It takes a lot of patience and trust to develop supply chains. So initially, the two nations will mainly trade simple items or materials, which they can easily export.
Creating supply chain is a tricky business. Even though Indian traders say get cheap raw materials like cotton from Pakistan , they won't lean on it for time being. Because if for some reasons the trade stops, they will find themselves in a precarious position. You see, once they shelve their Indian counterparts to Pakistani one, there will be a sense of mistrust between them, which will be difficult to overcome. Most likely if the Indian traders import the raw cotton from Pakistan, they will use the bandwidth they have to use them, they won't be replacing or significantly reducing the Indian counterparts inputs just because they are cheap.

Can one really predict the outcome of a war?

Why so sure of the aftereffects of trade then?

I agree with your points about the short term position of Pakistani industry and trust deficit between us being untenable but economic activity begets more economic activity so long as the potential in untapped. The european union, today, accounts for one of the biggest markets on the global stage. It started off as a coal sharing agreement between 4-5 countries suffering from post ww2 effects. Look at what that led to.

 

[Kaniska]

Fair enough, you hate us and cannot conceive of a scenario where trade is possible. I'm not considering the political aspect of it in this thread, if you'd have given my post a read, you'd see this is intended to be a thought experiment. This is not intended to be a big kumbaya for all, so rest assured.

Having said that What if Trade was war though?

Like if there was a possibility a Pakistani exporter could benefit himself, his nation and get the Indians to pay to do it, would that not be a double whammy. Getting your enemy to pay for your prosperity.

And why would you think India would be inclined to do trade if we do not see any long term benifit from Pakistan?

Anyway…even if Pakistan audiences do not admit, Indian goods trade in Pakistan through Dubai…

 

[Krptonite]

Look at the benefit the last 15 years of outsourcing have gotten America vis a vi China.

The common man won’t benefit, the rich nonproductive fat cats will benefit and the. Common man’s labor will become more and more uncompetitive.

In principle, I don’t disagree with trading with India, but there needs to be a long term benefit to the common Pakistani, including in employment.

Even the projects Pakistan is borrowing from China to build with Chinese labor and materials is something I would have hoped was done by Pakistani companies, with Pakistani labor and Pakistani materials. Not only to employ people, but to do and finance the expansions themselves.

It’s the Pakistani “industrialists” we need to fix before we can afford to open up to India. Currently we are in a worse state of elite capture then India during the license raj.

I would opine the primary reason for elite capture is lack of competition.

Trade between us would not be limited to commodities but also inevitably expand to services as well. Industries such as raw material processing which have started to mature and would likely shift overseas would find it economically enticing to shift next door.

No one is asking one to hand the other a red carpet. Let us do what we can in our own self interests.

Not trading is not in our self interest, a point this thought experiment tries to expound upon.

 

[Neelo]

Oh wow this brings back memories. “Aman ka Tamasha”….this was like the first social media trend that brought all “pAkIsTaNi pAtRiOtS” together against “liBeTarDs”….it’s so old that it had it’s own Orkut page! LOL.

That being said, I recall Aman Ka Tamasha being pushed heavily by SAFMA….South Asian Free Media Association? Beena Sarwar? Mir Jaffar Khalil-ur-Rehman? That old guy who talks too much.

LOL…is this still a thing?

 

[Kaniska]

Are you gonna teach the Quran to Khalid ibn Walid ?

"There is no compulsion in religion" means we won't force anyone to accept Islam at gun point. But it doesn't mean we won't humiliate those who refuse to accept Islam.

What counts as Humiliation ?

Their land will be under Muslim control and we will establish Islam all over the world. Islam does support imperialism for it's own sake, not for the sake of Arabs or non-Arabs. They will pay Jizya to receive our protection.

Who told you Islam prohibits offensive warfare ? It doesn't. The Rashidun and Ummayad Caliphate did enagage in offensive warfare. It's 100% allowed for the supremacy of Islam.

Man seriously….You are not well based on your such kind of posts…I mean you are propagating forced conversion and justifying it even if you need to do war…What kind of mindset you belong to???