This week has seen two Red Letter days for India and by extension the whole subcontinent. First there was the successful launch of the Chandrayaan 1 moon rocket and second the reopening, after 60 years, of a trade route between Indian and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. Each is highly significant because both highlight what can be achieved by determination and good faith. India’s success so far in space is the more remarkable since unlike the Chinese, who have used their communist-run command economy to channel whatever is necessary into their space program, India’s achievements — which also include the successful deployment of ten satellites from a single launch this April — have come about on an extremely tight budget. The first Chandrayaan (“Moon Craft”) probe is expected to cost just $78 million.
Now there will be those who will argue India still has too many poor people to be spending even this relatively modest sum on lunar exploration. This is, however, to overlook the many benefits, including the huge pride that even those very same poor people are today feeling in their country. With pride comes confidence and with technological achievement come international status and in time jobs and prosperity, which will ultimately lift the fortunes of all Indians. And an economically strong India will benefit its neighbors, not least Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan. With the resumption of trade between the two parts of Kashmir, there is further, albeit still fragile, evidence of a better future for the region.
Pakistan has troubles enough with the prospect of an imploding economy. The IMF has been asked this week by Islamabad to assist with a looming balance of payments deficit. A country slowly emerging unsteadily from political turmoil with unrest in its tribal areas is not going to de-regulate and raise taxes in the way that the IMF has prescribed for other developing economies. Though India itself is having to grapple with its own economic problems and is facing ethnic tensions in Maharashtra, it is possible that it could play some tangential role is assisting Pakistan.
At the very least an opening of trade between the two countries with credit lines for Pakistani traders could go some way toward boosting Pakistan’s fortunes. Even if this were little more than symbolic it could still have a major impact, by proving military confrontation and long-standing enmity offer no future for anyone.
India’s remarkable success with the Chandrayaan program and that convoy of trucks laden with fruit and nuts from Indian-controlled Kashmir to the other part of the state, both represent the real future for the subcontinent, a future of high vision, considerable technological achievement and great pride and confidence. Most anyone who saw the Chandrayaan I rocket blast off toward the moon from Andhra Pradesh and the children cheering on the trucks as they crossed the Line of Control will have felt their hearts leap.
