The mantra that a strong and stable Pakistan is good for India rings hollow. There has been a strong and stable Pakistan only intermittently in the last years. Whenever it felt it was strong, it became a threat to India. Pakistan is a failed State whose disintegration is only a matter of time.

Once Pakistan disintegrates into three or four units; it will lose its perceived geo-strategic advantage. For India, it will mean a final solution to the Kashmir problem. There will be no successor State tot he 1947 Pakistan, and once it balkanises it will not be able to claim Kashmir on a religious basis ... The mixture of a weak economy, failed democracy, religious fundamentalism and sectarian strife are a sure recipe for some form of balkanisation ... The global community can more effectively contain the drug menace from the Pak-Afghan border once the Pakistan State, in its present form, ceases to exist.

Of course, there is the other side of the coin. Pakistan's disintegration will bring instability to the region. There is also the menace of nuclear weapons in case Pakistan sinks into civil war and uncontrolled sectarian strife ... The West has been able to manage the nuclear weapon threat after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Pakistan will have to be tackled in a similar fashion.

Fundamentalist terrorism is more difficult to deal with. However, three or four smaller states of a disintegrated Pakistan will be much weaker ... India, the US and Russia could all cooperate for achieving this common objective.

A section of our political elite may feel sad over a broken Pakistan. For India, it is the lesser of the evils. It is the danger of disintegration which is driving the US to back the military regime in Pakistan. A General is preferable to mullahs, who might take over once the State starts its meltdown ... (Source: The Pioneer)

India-Pak in New Millennium

Editorial, The Anti-Corruption, 23-30 Jan., 2000

How can we have a long-term policy towards a neighbour who is periodically affected with bouts of hiccups? The one redeeming feature of our more than half-a-century of co-existence is that no matter who ruled our respective countries, our people continue to have the warmest of feelings towards each other. This is a unique phenomenon of our times. Nowhere else in the world will you find two neighbouring states perpetually at loggerheads with each other with their people overeager to embrace each other as long lost brothers. Let us hope the new millennium will usher in a new era of closer Indo-Pak friendship.