Indus Pakistan
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Ever done accounts? What matters is the account in hand? Not yesterdays of what might come. Tangibles sunshine, tangibles and hard facts ...There are still many pages in said ledger left to be filled, please keep in mind.
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Ever done accounts? What matters is the account in hand? Not yesterdays of what might come. Tangibles sunshine, tangibles and hard facts ...There are still many pages in said ledger left to be filled, please keep in mind.
Even though some of the points that are made are very good and valid, from my point of view, it can not be one way.
We have equivalents of Masood Azhar and Hafiz sitting in the highest posts of Indian govt.
We have yet to see any culprits of Samjhota express terrorist attack, which was squarely blamed on Pakistan, to be punished.
And then there is the Kashmir issue.
India being the larger country must show her seriousness about combating terrorism by not sponsoring it in the first place. And I can assure you, other countries like Pakistan who want nothing but the economic recovery would not have any reason for revenge etc.
India must cool down the situation in Kashmir and must stop engineering things close to elections. Most of which are making Pakistan a boogey man.
Govt under IK is damn serious about economy and not interested in d!ck measuring with india, but if they keep walking that road, we have our own hawks here as well...
International opinion, even though important, keeps changing and mostly favor the winners. This is the bitter reality.
Luckily for everyone, the media do not set the policies for either country. The governments do, and the people follow. Thank God!
Let India hold to her word for atleast 2-3 years to show she is serious and will hold her elections based on performance and not on boogy-man Pakistan.
Pakistan will definitely reciprocate. Remember, IK and Bajwa are very serious abt persuing peace. But it should not be taken as a sign of weakness.
Let Kashmir cool down for few years, both sides can do this. India being the occupying force and having blood on their hand has to show her seriousness abt that.
But don't media tells what people want to hear? Isnt this their biggest sales pitch and tool to gain audience. To them its business after all.
the more things change , the more they stay the same.
I only see things escalating further every now & then. You seemed to have missed the fact that Manmohan singh was the last PM of older generation who carried the emotional baggage of pre-partition India. These oldies were mature enough to understand the long term consequences of making bad decisions. Coming govts will run policies as quarterly financial report of profit & loss.
Ever done accounts? What matters is the account in hand? Not yesterdays of what might come. Tangibles sunshine, tangibles and hard facts ...

@Joe Shearer @Nilgiri @Vibrio
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/02/28/india-and-pakistan-should-stop-playing-with-fire
Modi’s dangerous moment
India and Pakistan should stop playing with fire
With an election looming, Narendra Modi is under pressure to act tough
Print edition | Leaders
Feb 28th 2019
The armies of India and Pakistan often exchange fire across the front line in the disputed state of Kashmir. When tensions rise, one side will subject the other to a blistering artillery barrage. On occasion, the two have sent soldiers on forays into one another’s territory. But since the feuding neighbours tested nuclear weapons in the late 1990s, neither had dared send fighter jets across the frontier—until this week. After a terrorist group based in Pakistan launched an attack in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir that killed 40 soldiers, India responded by bombing what it said was a terrorist training camp in the Pakistani state of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Pakistan retaliated by sending jets of its own to bomb Indian targets. In the ensuing air battle, both sides claim to have shot down the other’s aircraft, and Pakistan captured an Indian pilot.
A miscalculation now could spell calamity. The fighting is already the fiercest between the two countries since India battled to expel Pakistani intruders from high in the Himalayas in 1999. The initial Indian air raid struck not Pakistan’s bit of Kashmir, but well within Pakistan proper and just 100km from the capital, Islamabad. That, in effect, constituted a change in the rules of engagement between the two. India and Pakistan are so often at odds that there is a tendency to shrug off their spats, but not since their most recent, full-blown war in 1971 has the risk of escalation been so high.
The intention of Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, in ordering the original air strike was simple. Pakistan has long backed terrorists who mount grisly attacks in India, most notably in Mumbai in 2008, when jihadists who arrived by boat from Pakistan killed some 165 people. Although Pakistan’s army promised then to shut down such extremist groups, it has not. By responding more forcefully than usual to the latest outrage, Mr Modi understandably wanted to signal that he was not willing to allow Pakistan to keep sponsoring terrorism.
In the long run, stability depends on Pakistan ending its indefensible support for terrorism. Its prime minister, Imran Khan, is urging dialogue and, in a promising gesture, was due to release India’s pilot—presumably with the approval of the army chief, who calls the shots on matters of security.
But in the short run Mr Modi shares the responsibility to stop a disastrous escalation. Because he faces an election in April, he faces the hardest and most consequential calculations. They could come to define his premiership.
Mr Modi has always presented himself as a bold and resolute military leader, who does not shrink from confronting Pakistan’s provocations. He has taken to repeating a catchphrase from the film “Uri”, which portrays a commando raid he ordered against Pakistan in 2016 in response to a previous terrorist attack as a moment of chin-jutting grit. The all-too-plausible fear is that his own tendency to swagger, along with domestic political pressures, will spur him further down the spiral towards war.
The ambiguity of Mr Modi’s beliefs only deepens the danger. He campaigned at the election in 2014 as a moderniser, who would bring jobs and prosperity to India. But, his critics charge, all his talk of development and reform is simply the figleaf for a lifelong commitment to a divisive Hindu-nationalist agenda.
Over the past five years Mr Modi has lived up neither to the hype nor to the dire warnings. The economy has grown strongly under his leadership, by around 7% a year. He has brought about reforms his predecessors had promised but never delivered, such as a nationwide goods-and-services tax(GST).
But unemployment has actually risen during Mr Modi’s tenure, according to leaked data that his government has been accused of trying to suppress. The GST was needlessly complex and costly to administer. Other pressing reforms have fallen by the wayside. India’s banks are still largely in state hands, still prone to lend to the well-connected. And as the election has drawn closer, Mr Modi has resorted to politically expedient policies that are likely to harm the economy. His government hounded the boss of the central bank out of office for keeping interest rates high, appointing a replacement who promptly cut them. And it has unveiled draft rules that would protect domestic e-commerce firms from competition from retailers such as Amazon.
By the same token, Mr Modi has not sparked the outright communal conflagration his critics, The Economist included, fretted about before he became prime minister. But his government has often displayed hostility to India’s Muslim minority and sympathy for those who see Hinduism—the religion of 80% of Indians—as under threat from internal and external foes. He has appointed a bigoted Hindu prelate, Yogi Adityanath, as chief minister of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. A member of his cabinet presented garlands of flowers to a group of Hindu men who had been convicted of lynching a Muslim for selling beef (cows are sacred to Hindus). And Mr Modi himself has suspended the elected government of Jammu & Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, and used force to suppress protests there against the central government, leading to horrific civilian casualties.
As reprehensible as all this is, the Hindu zealots who staff Mr Modi’s electoral machine complain that he has not done enough to advance the Hindu cause. And public dissatisfaction with his economic reforms has helped boost Congress, the main opposition party, making the election more competitive than had been expected. The temptation to fire up voters using heated brinkmanship with Pakistan will be huge.
Mr Modi has made a career of playing with fire. He first rose to prominence as chief minister of Gujarat when the state was racked by anti-Muslim pogroms in 2002. Although there is no evidence he orchestrated the violence, he has shown no compunction about capitalising on the popularity it won him in Hindu-nationalist circles. With a difficult election ahead, he may think he can pull off the same trick again by playing the tough guy with Pakistan, but without actually getting into a fight. However, the price of miscalculation does not bear thinking about. Western governments are pushing for a diplomatic settlement at the UN. If Mr Modi really is a patriot, he will now step back.
The real message has been drowned out but the stupidity displayed by Modi in perpetuating these lies, and negated by the Pakistani retaliation.As I said before @AgNoStiC MuSliM the claim of hundreds of deaths in the attack was rubbish anyway. The real message is something else as I have said elsewhere too.
The real message has been drowned out but the stupidity displayed by Modi in perpetuating these lies, and negated by the Pakistani retaliation.
@Joe Shearer @Nilgiri @Vibrio
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/02/28/india-and-pakistan-should-stop-playing-with-fire
Modi’s dangerous moment
India and Pakistan should stop playing with fire
With an election looming, Narendra Modi is under pressure to act tough
Print edition | Leaders
Feb 28th 2019
The armies of India and Pakistan often exchange fire across the front line in the disputed state of Kashmir. When tensions rise, one side will subject the other to a blistering artillery barrage. On occasion, the two have sent soldiers on forays into one another’s territory. But since the feuding neighbours tested nuclear weapons in the late 1990s, neither had dared send fighter jets across the frontier—until this week. After a terrorist group based in Pakistan launched an attack in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir that killed 40 soldiers, India responded by bombing what it said was a terrorist training camp in the Pakistani state of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Pakistan retaliated by sending jets of its own to bomb Indian targets. In the ensuing air battle, both sides claim to have shot down the other’s aircraft, and Pakistan captured an Indian pilot.
A miscalculation now could spell calamity. The fighting is already the fiercest between the two countries since India battled to expel Pakistani intruders from high in the Himalayas in 1999. The initial Indian air raid struck not Pakistan’s bit of Kashmir, but well within Pakistan proper and just 100km from the capital, Islamabad. That, in effect, constituted a change in the rules of engagement between the two. India and Pakistan are so often at odds that there is a tendency to shrug off their spats, but not since their most recent, full-blown war in 1971 has the risk of escalation been so high.
The intention of Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, in ordering the original air strike was simple. Pakistan has long backed terrorists who mount grisly attacks in India, most notably in Mumbai in 2008, when jihadists who arrived by boat from Pakistan killed some 165 people. Although Pakistan’s army promised then to shut down such extremist groups, it has not. By responding more forcefully than usual to the latest outrage, Mr Modi understandably wanted to signal that he was not willing to allow Pakistan to keep sponsoring terrorism.
In the long run, stability depends on Pakistan ending its indefensible support for terrorism. Its prime minister, Imran Khan, is urging dialogue and, in a promising gesture, was due to release India’s pilot—presumably with the approval of the army chief, who calls the shots on matters of security.
But in the short run Mr Modi shares the responsibility to stop a disastrous escalation. Because he faces an election in April, he faces the hardest and most consequential calculations. They could come to define his premiership.
Mr Modi has always presented himself as a bold and resolute military leader, who does not shrink from confronting Pakistan’s provocations. He has taken to repeating a catchphrase from the film “Uri”, which portrays a commando raid he ordered against Pakistan in 2016 in response to a previous terrorist attack as a moment of chin-jutting grit. The all-too-plausible fear is that his own tendency to swagger, along with domestic political pressures, will spur him further down the spiral towards war.
The ambiguity of Mr Modi’s beliefs only deepens the danger. He campaigned at the election in 2014 as a moderniser, who would bring jobs and prosperity to India. But, his critics charge, all his talk of development and reform is simply the figleaf for a lifelong commitment to a divisive Hindu-nationalist agenda.
Over the past five years Mr Modi has lived up neither to the hype nor to the dire warnings. The economy has grown strongly under his leadership, by around 7% a year. He has brought about reforms his predecessors had promised but never delivered, such as a nationwide goods-and-services tax(GST).
But unemployment has actually risen during Mr Modi’s tenure, according to leaked data that his government has been accused of trying to suppress. The GST was needlessly complex and costly to administer. Other pressing reforms have fallen by the wayside. India’s banks are still largely in state hands, still prone to lend to the well-connected. And as the election has drawn closer, Mr Modi has resorted to politically expedient policies that are likely to harm the economy. His government hounded the boss of the central bank out of office for keeping interest rates high, appointing a replacement who promptly cut them. And it has unveiled draft rules that would protect domestic e-commerce firms from competition from retailers such as Amazon.
By the same token, Mr Modi has not sparked the outright communal conflagration his critics, The Economist included, fretted about before he became prime minister. But his government has often displayed hostility to India’s Muslim minority and sympathy for those who see Hinduism—the religion of 80% of Indians—as under threat from internal and external foes. He has appointed a bigoted Hindu prelate, Yogi Adityanath, as chief minister of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. A member of his cabinet presented garlands of flowers to a group of Hindu men who had been convicted of lynching a Muslim for selling beef (cows are sacred to Hindus). And Mr Modi himself has suspended the elected government of Jammu & Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, and used force to suppress protests there against the central government, leading to horrific civilian casualties.
As reprehensible as all this is, the Hindu zealots who staff Mr Modi’s electoral machine complain that he has not done enough to advance the Hindu cause. And public dissatisfaction with his economic reforms has helped boost Congress, the main opposition party, making the election more competitive than had been expected. The temptation to fire up voters using heated brinkmanship with Pakistan will be huge.
Mr Modi has made a career of playing with fire. He first rose to prominence as chief minister of Gujarat when the state was racked by anti-Muslim pogroms in 2002. Although there is no evidence he orchestrated the violence, he has shown no compunction about capitalising on the popularity it won him in Hindu-nationalist circles. With a difficult election ahead, he may think he can pull off the same trick again by playing the tough guy with Pakistan, but without actually getting into a fight. However, the price of miscalculation does not bear thinking about. Western governments are pushing for a diplomatic settlement at the UN. If Mr Modi really is a patriot, he will now step back.
I did now, and there are a lot of false presumptions there. For one, the Pulwama attacks were domestic, both in terms of the resources used and the motivation for the bomber. Pakistan cannot control Kashmiris who react against the occupation after being abused, tortured and humiliated and seeing their friends and family treated the same way and being killed.Did you read this?
I did now, and there are a lot of false presumptions there. For one, the Pulwama attacks were domestic, both in terms of the resources used and the motivation for the bomber. Pakistan cannot control Kashmiris who react against the occupation after being abused, tortured and humiliated and seeing their friends and family treated the same way and being killed.
Second, the rules of engagement have changed on the Pakistani side as well. Pakistan is going to retaliate and do you think another IAF intrusion is going to just be ‘warned and escorted back across the LoC’? No, it’s weapons free anytime the Indians violate Pakistani airspace again and they’ll be paid back in the same coin. And the response has changed not just from the Pakistani side, but also from the international community. The world knows now that Pakistan will not take such violations lying down - Modi almost started a war with his ‘changed RoE’s’, and the international community does not want to see that, which means that there will be a lot more pressure on Modi as well to not engage in the kind of irresponsible actions he did.
Pakistan will continue to do what little it can in terms of freezing assets and detaining leadership of certain organizations, but that will not stop another Pulwama from occurring. Stopping another Pulwama is in Indian hands, in terms of India (especially the BJP) changing its tactics in IoK.