East and West Punjab need trade corridors: Indian writer
By Khalid Hasan

Daily Times Thursday, April 05, 2007

WASHINGTON: India and Pakistan need a “corridor” for economic and trade cooperation and can start with establishing one at their Wagah-Attari border in Punjab, a visiting Indian economist said here this week.

Tridvesh Singh Maini, author of a book on how the two Punjabs can forge closer trade, economic and cultural links, was speaking to a group of interested South Asians at the World Bank on Tuesday. He said East Punjab was stagnating economically and its agriculture, which once helped feed the rest of India, was in bad shape. Drug addiction has emerged as a serious problem and the traditionally hardy Punjabi farmer has stopped working, letting migrant labour from Bihar to do the job he once did with such vigour and efficiency. He said the two Punjabs, if they cooperate, can make this region the pride of the subcontinent and an example of the kind of cooperation that was the vision of SAARC when it was founded.

Maini called for free trade between the two Punjabs. He said instead of staging “jingoistic and ultra-nationalist” drills at their border posts, the two parts should open up to each other, which would be the beginning of a co-prosperity zone stretching from India, through Pakistan to Afghanistan and Central Asia. He said the proposed Wagah-Attari corridor should be replicated between the two parts of Kashmir and between Sindh and Rajasthan. India-Pakistan relations should move beyond their “Kashmir-centric” fixated position. He suggested that India should set up the same kind of corridors with its other neighbours, one such corridor being between Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka.

Maini said the mindset of Indian and Pakistani bureaucracies must change because it could not produce results as the past 60 years had shown. Businessmen from India and Pakistan are keen to do business with one another but find themselves hampered by all kinds of restrictions. The time has come to remove those restrictions and throw open the doors. Other means of stepping up Pakistan-India cooperation are promotion of “spiritual tourism”, since both Muslims in Pakistan and non-Muslims in India – Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists – are keen to visit their respective holy places to which to date they have been given little or no access. Another facet of cooperation, he added, lies in “medical tourism”. Instead of spending large sums of money and seeking medical attention in Europe, it would be much simpler and much cheaper for Pakistanis, for example, to go to India where some excellent medical facilities exist. He also proposed university exchanges involving both academics and students. He said already there was talk of setting up a joint agricultural research fund and facility between the two Punjabs with investment form those residing abroad. Pakistan’s Agriculture University at Faisalabad is an established institution of specialist knowledge in food and agriculture and some exchanges have already taken place between that university and the University of Punjab on the Indian side. They need to be enlarged and stepped up.

Maini paid tribute to the present chief minister of Pakistani Punjab and the former chief minister of East Punjab who had taken a number of resolute steps to bring the two Punjabs together in various areas. The holding of the All Punjab games had been a great success. Stressing the worth and value of cooperation, Maini pointed out that the price of one kilo of potato seed bought by Pakistani Punjab’s farmer from elsewhere cost Rs 70 while the same seed cost only Rs 24 if bought from India. Similarly, the price of scooters and motorcycles in Pakistan is very high, compared with what they cost in India. He said good economics was also good politics. Until now what exchanges have taken place between the two Punjabs have been sporadic and haphazard. There have been more obstacles than opportunities. The national governments in the two countries have not been “comfortable” with Punjab as a trade and business “corridor”. There are far too many visa restrictions and what travel takes place between the two parts is fraught with difficulties and despoiled by “security checks” and “clearances”. Not much attention has been paid, he said, to this aspect of India-Pakistan relations by US think tanks either, which have concentrated on Kashmir and nuclear issues. He noted that the shooting up of land prices in areas of the Punjab such as Hussainiwala showed that some farsighted lobbies were anticipating increased economic and other cooperation between the two Punjabs.