Undoing the economic partition: 

Undoing the economic partition: (

Context:

Seven decades after Independence, transcending the tragedy of Partition remains the single biggest national challenge for India.

Introduction:

The structural religious tension, engendered by Partition has been aggravated by the unending conflict between India and Pakistan, the successor states of the undivided Subcontinent.

India-Pakistan trade:

•  The political division did not demand that the new states should stop trade and commerce between them or shut down their frontiers or limit people to people contact.
•   In fact, the borders remained relatively open in the first two decades after Independence.
•  The 1965 war, followed by the 1971 conflict, saw the closing of post Partition frontiers and with it the sundering of coherent economic spaces like the Punjab and Bengal.
• The great regional junctions and trading centres like Lahore and Amritsar turned into terminals at closed frontiers.
• India and Pakistan made it ever harder for movement of goods and people between the two countries.

India’s neighbours tried different ways to cope with India’s deregionalisation.

• Sri Lanka, in the late 1970s, turned to the ASEAN and the West.
•   Businessmen in Nepal sought arbitrage between the tariff levels of Delhi and Kathmandu.
• The political liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 had little economic consequence, because of  shared commitment to state socialism between Congress and the Awami League.

India’s new commitment to regional economic integration:

•  It was only after 1991 that India put regionalism back on the policy radar.
• India’s new commercial interest in the neighbourhood was very much a consequence of the turn towards globalisation. But it has not been easy to translate India’s new commitment to regional economic integration into effective policies.
•   Internally the resistance to regionalism in India’s economic ministries remains strong.
• In smaller countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka, the politicisation of economic cooperation with India means knee jerk opposition to all projects involving India.

Way ahead:

• Overcoming the economic partition of the Subcontinent has become at once urgent and more difficult to achieve.
• The problem is not about the lack of ideas or resources. It is about mobilising all of Delhi’s political will to force the pace and raise the intensity of India’s regional economic engagement.
• Delhi’s decisions to look beyond SAARC, modernise border infrastructure, promote connectivity, and open up its markets are all important steps forward.