India is providing development assistance to Afghanistan but it has similar serious issues troubling it at home. Many of the same things that Afghanistan needs, from infrastructure to education, India is having troubles providing for many of her citizens, even without the regular threat of attacks from the Taliban.
India’s state-run power industry struggles to get enough fuel thanks to mismanagement and bureaucracy, even its brightest youth can’t land a spot at a good university and almost a half of its citizens live in destitute poverty, with hundreds of millions malnourished. The current central government is grappling with a growing deficit, shrinking economic growth and an increasingly dissatisfied voter base.
It’s no surprise that India’s Afghanistan assistance is even greeted with some skepticism in Afghanistan as well as in the world.
As someone said, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
There are 3-4 major projects that India had started in Afghanistan.
Zaranj – Dilaram Road, connecting the Chahbahar port in Iran. This road is hardly used for moving supplies etc into Afghanistan. The Iranians have connected Chahbahar port to another city in Iran and connected it to Afghanistan via recently constructed bridge. Even inside Afghanistan, the road is under Taliban control and since US vacated Nimroz, this road has become useless for the Indians and others.
The second was Salma Dam project. It was built on a river flowing into Iran and was supposed to irrigate 75000 hectares of land in Afghanistan. However, since Iran protested as it would reduce the water flow into Iran and also due to security problems, the work on the project has been stopped. India has also stopped to provide further funding for the project.
They are building the Afghan Assembly building. If it is for a democracy like India, which is soaked in blood for her own people, God help Afghanistan.
Then the project to provide electricity from CARs for Kabul. We will have more electricity in Kabul when and if all, this line reaches Kabul.
What more do you want to show for your assistance to Afghanistan. Yes they do watch Indian films and so do people in Pakistan. I don’t think there is any harm in watching Indian women dancing, is there !