At his press conference on May 24, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh revealed that at his recent summit meeting with Prime Minister Gilani in Bhutan “we agreed that trust deficit is a major problem blocking progress in the direction of going forward and that it should be our common endeavour to reduce the trust deficit.”
It is generally realised that the trust deficit has come to exist not because the armies of the two countries expect a war to break out between them, not because Pakistan calls itself an Islamic republic and India prides itself as a secular state, not because the Muslims are in majority in Pakistan and India is a Hindu-majority state, not because they subscribe to different political ideologies, and not because they had four armed conflicts in the first 24 years of their history.
There is no trust deficit between 1.25 billion poor, backward and oppressed people on the two sides of the border. The wretched of the two countries neither gain nor lose by not trusting each other. However, the ruling elites of the two countries, helped by their respective strategic communities, do harbour a strong trust deficit and make it impossible for peace-seeking political leaders to prevail. Strong vested interests of the ruling elites on both sides of the border feed the trust deficit.
The major issues concerning the peoples of Pakistan and India pertain to the normalisation of the regimes of travel, trade, transportation, free flow of information, cultural, educational and scientific exchanges and release of prisoners. These are not matters which carry much weight in contributing to the trust deficit.
Prime Minister Narsimha Rao was the first to take the bold step, one inconceivable until that time, of issuing visas to a group of more than 100 Pakistanis to hold the first convention of the Pakistan-India Forum for Peace and Democracy at Delhi (PIPFPD) in February 1995. The follow-up conventions were held in Lahore (November 1995), Calcutta (December 1996), and Peshawar (November 1998), with attendance reaching the 300 mark. The enthusiasm generated among the two peoples by the conventions did reduce the trust deficit and was certainly a factor which permitted Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Atal Bihari Vajpaye to meet and issue the Lahore Declaration in 1999. Unrestricted issuing of visas and free flow of information, along with cultural exchanges, will greatly help in reducing the trust deficit further.
The ruling elites of the two countries, having interests different from the interests of the people, do not trust each other’s intentions when it comes to entering into negotiations to resolve the issues of strategic content. Even if the negotiators forget their vested interest for a moment, they cannot believe that those facing them across the table have the power or the capability to deliver on the promise they would make at the negotiating table. To the arguments put forward by the leaders of the respective strategic communities, our weak prime ministers succumb.
They fear that since the strategic communities have the capability to mobilise a section of the media and public opinion against peace efforts, their political party may lose the next general elections. If our prime ministers were statesmen they would overrule the advice from below, win the next general elections and also make their place in history.
Take the case of a resolution to the Kashmir issue, the mother of the trust deficit between the ruling elites and their strategic communities. The governments of India and Pakistan should abandon the plan of first coming to some agreement among themselves before presenting it to the people of Kashmir on both sides of the Line of Control.
Such a presentation, notwithstanding any secret agreement with sections of Kashmiri leaders, will prematurely expose the governmental consensus and materially damage the consensus for the future. They will never be able to secure the agreement of all the political leaders of the former state of J&K on their joint proposal. Those who do not fall in line will hold the trump cards in their hands, for the simple reason that the bulk of the population of the former state has adversarial views on India and Pakistan.
Instead, should the two governments jointly approach the leaders of J&K to present a joint scheme to resolve the issue, simultaneously safeguarding the security and other vital interests of India and Pakistan, the J&K leaders will, to the best of my knowledge and assessment, be prepared to: (a) let India and Pakistan defend the border with China as they do now, along with access to strategic communications; (b) the line of control will stand erased (however, arrangements will be devised and international guarantees secured that neither India nor Pakistan can aggress against the boundaries of the former state); (c) the peoples of India and Pakistan shall enjoy the all privileges of travel and trade over the entire state as India enjoys today over the area lying to the east of the Line of Control; (d) the future residents of the former state will enjoy the same privileges including the use of communication systems of Pakistan and India as they do today; (e) The new model for the future internal governance of the state shall give Jammu, Ladakh and other areas as much autonomy as will ensure freedom from oppression of any one ethnic group or community over others.
The writer is a former finance minister.
Email: mh1@ lhr.comsats.net.pk
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