Tripartite Trade Talks
The three nation South Asia tripartite talks in Dhaka on January 15 will be long on rhetoric but terribly short on substance. More than Pakistan and Bangladesh, it is India that needs to augment her trade within the sub-continent to give a choice of economic amelioration to her teeming millions. Pakistan and Bangladesh do get residual benefits but not on the same scale as our large neighbour. While Prime Minister Hasina Wajed’s excellent initiative to get us talking on such lines must be appreciated it must also be clearly understood by all concerned that there are two major inhibiting factors that will govern the future of trade and commerce in the South Asian sub-continent, viz (1) the core problem of Kashmir and (2) the fear that India’s industry may overwhelm that of its neighbours because sustained protection over the years and economy of scale because of numbers makes its products much more competitive.
History is witness to the fact that not only was the South Asian sub-continent the crossroads of commerce but its raw material and products provided for the shifting of the focus of industry to the western world. Strange as it may seem now, Bengal, which encompasses modern Bangladesh and India’s west Bengal, was once the granary of the sub-continent and for many East Asian countries. The Sultan of Istanbul would get the hull of his warships made in the islands of Hatiya and Sandwip. The commerce was so frequent that piracy flourished in the Bay of Bengal as Dutch and Portuguese pirates joined in with locals to make the islands of the coast as safe havens from where to operate. Piracy was only less frequent in the Arabian Sea, off the coast of what is now Pakistan and that only because of the strength of the Arab naval forces in the area. To the exclusion of the rest of South Asia, the historical silk-route passed through territories now comprising Pakistan. As everyone knows crime only flourishes off lucrative targets and there was no more lucrative target than the trade and commerce off the coast of the South Asian sub-continent and in the mountainous areas of the North. This situation has now been totally reversed, from a net outflow of goods and produce there is almost a one-way inflow of goods and produce. Because we were mercilessly exploited by the British, who denuded us systematically of our resources (and our skills), for the past fifty years after independence the countries of South Asia have been playing catch-up with the rest of the world. Because of a myriad number of reasons we got left behind in the throes of the Asian miracle. Now with the Tiger economics becoming pussycat, it may not have been a bad thing after all. The unfortunate fact remains that the peoples of South Asia need to cooperate to better their economic conditions very much as other regions have done or else we will be left so far behind the civilized countries might as well put a “CHINA WALL” around us to contain the anarchy that will ensue and become the order of the day. Already we are showing signs of that savagery in refusing to live as amiable communities.
