DECODING RELATIONS INDIA-PAKISTAN

Diplomats and practitioners of international relations work towards predictable and rational behaviour. While the definition of rational is inherently subjective, that of predictability is not. Even if the interlocutor’s actions are not rational, welcome and beneficial, if they are predictable—or exist within a broad and given matrix of options—a state can live with them and learn to respond to them. For the past decade, India-Pakistan relations have followed a certain predictability. This is not to suggest there have been no crises or black swan moments – such as the dramatic terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November 2008—but the governments, the two establishments and the foreign-policy infrastructures have largely learnt to gauge each other. The limits of civilian autonomy in Pakistan; the red lines no government in New Delhi has crossed even after serious terrorist attacks with Pakistani fingerprints; India’s preoccupation with its economy having reduced the older obsession with its western neighbour; the gradual (hope of) opening up of bilateral trade, especially trade between bordering provinces; the growing challenges to the Pakistani state from domestic jihadists and from the post 9/11 power balance in Afghanistan; the relative decline in infiltration across the Line of Control (LoC): in some form or the other, these have been constants in the past decade.