Suman Palit

Shekhar Gupta weighs in with his take on the new global order. His most important conclusion: .. There is, however, more to this new world than mere unipolarity ( this new global American power ). That would have been simpler to deal with. You can always stand up to a hegemony. It is a great moral position and it might always be possible to build an alliance against it. But what do you do with a world where the big boys cartelise in a manner unprecedented in history? They think and act together, with a remarkable common sense of purpose and, ostensibly, towards greater common good...




This analysis is important for some other reasons as well. This is an indication of a growing acceptance of the new ground rules by Indian opinionmakers. I even detect a certain gleeful enthusiasm at the prospect of engaging the world on these new terms. There is an understated sense of relief that minds full of leftover coldwar rhetoric can now be applied to the tasks of building a truly prosperous nation.

Now the Human Rights Watch World Report 2002 is reported as claiming that .. It (India) held steadfast to its distinction as the region's most stable and vibrant democracy even as its neighbors underwent dramatic and often violent shifts in power... Quite true.. what is more incredible that India did this in spite of all the apparent internal fractures and tribal conflicts that have naysayers proclaiming the balkanization and subsequent destruction of the Indian experiment in federalism. So far, it has not happened, and does not appear likely. Success in the global marketplace, and now a new-found national pride built on a nascent "Indian" identity should simply feed off each other into a spiral of growth, prosperity and the prospect of lasting peace.

According to this source, the Su-38 mentioned below is actually an agricultural aircraft, a single-engined crop-duster. While of some use to would-be terrorists, it is an unlikely candidate for a front-line design. I think the article was probably referring to the Su-47.. or maybe even the S-52, which may still be on the drawing boards.

The Indian defense industry may be forced to grow up and join the big leagues if this Russian proposal to jointly manufacture a next-gen fighter based on the Su-38 prototype goes through. With the exception of Naval architecture and design, India's defense industries have never been quite able to make it on their own. This might provide the much needed kick-in-the-pants India needs.

Did some more research while blogging. It seems that NACO and big sister UNAIDS have been under fire for using unscientific methodologies for quite a while now, as 2 year old this Indian express article tells. A particularly egregious example of the "precautionary principle" being used to justify what is basically a political agenda to cook up a recipe for free-market economic derailment..

1. Pick a Third world country vulnerable to external pressure.
   
2. Take one very real AIDS threat.
   
3. Heat over open flame of fear until threat inflated to level of "public health disaster".
   
4. Mix in poor statistical methods to create a crusty layer of confusion.
   
5. Serve at annual UN budget-fest to attract over $350 million in soft loans.
   
6. Proceed to next artificially inflated crisis.., cook, then repeat..
   

Yet another UN organization accused, this time by a group of Indian NGOs, of
grossly overstating the AIDS epidemic in India. According to the NGOs, the number of AIDs deaths in India in 1999 were estimated at 310,000 by UNAID using massive extrapolations based on unknown actual numbers.. What really gets me though, is the information that this data was used to get World Bank loans for NACO which of course, have to be paid back at some time.



... Money given to NACO is not aid but a soft loan. And this, according to R Chhabra, member of the Commission on Health, "Has an economic cost by spending money unnecessarily on problems that do not exist apart from the interest component." In other words, using the money not to address an issue but to create one...
and also,

...
As for social costs, districts, which have been falsely earmarked as high-risk areas, are having to fight the collective stigma. Women from these areas are finding difficult to get married...


and these are the very people that the benevolent UN is supposed to be looking out for..!!



There is one more even insidious and hidden cost. A health care "epidemic" during what is a critical phase in India's market reforms will automatically figure into any risk assessment by foreign investors already nervous about the prospects of a fresh Indo-Pak war. A bogus scare is more than just a little oops. India, already looking to reassure investors about her stability, does not deserve to be made patsies of by any UN organization.




According to NACO, their estimates of AIDS infections in India in 2000 would have reached 3.86 billion. A little checking shows that these are the exact estimates in the UNAID December 2001 report. Of course this same document states the use of the Sentinel method as in: .. The concept of using HIV sentinel data to estimate the burden of HIV infection was brought out in the WHO document "HIV/AIDS/STD Surveillance Data – Management and Use" of August 1996. .. This is the exactly the methodology discredited by all the NGOs.



Not one is disputing the fact that India, with a large population of illiterate indigents, is at high risk for AIDS. It would be wrong for anyone to even attempt to play down this fact. What is criminal is the attempt by an unaccountable UN bureaucracy to fabricate a problem that have serious long-term economic and social costs..! Do ends justify the means? In this case, I most certainly think not! Of course, if the NGOs can make their charges stick, the repercussions could mean that any genuine effort to understand and manage the Indian epidemic will be greeted with undeserved skepticism.

Well, it's not just writers on tehelka that are going to save Islam, as Bjørn Stærk, our Nordic war-blogger believes. It is also Batman, Spiderman and all the gadget-twirling, web-spinning, mutant heroes from America's mythology who are poised to challenge Islamofascists everwhere. What a wonderfully perverse way to challenge the message of the roadside mullah.




..After food packets from the sky and messages on the radio, comics may be another way of selling American values and pop culture and project America as a ‘‘great country’’. ..




Comics are such a great tool for reaching young minds, specially young boys. Growing up with strict censorship rules in India, it was still possible to get any comic you wanted, and a thriving underground trade in them flourished in my school. Comics often escape adult scrutiny because they tend to fly under the literary radar of most countries. This could really open up a new front in the cultural war. What chance does a pictureless, pedantic and throroughly boring Koran have against Wonder-woman's tights, or Wolverine's claws..?? Let the reverse-indoctrination begin..!

Right-wing moron of the day would be Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray attempting to ban Valentine's day celebrations in Mumbai. His sanitized, statist version of Indian culture has more in common with Wahhabism and other Islamic fundamentalists than he might think. They are both rigid, inflexible and very revisionist when they choose to. I hope Indians tell him to take a hike by putting their money where their beliefs are. Nothing discredits a fundamentalist like people ignoring his edicts..!!



Now personally, I would love to see Valentine's day fall into the biggest, baddest black hole that can be found. It's not the commercialization of the holiday, that's a great thing, and inevitable in a market based society. I would rather see it replaced by "World Drinking Day" or something a little more fun.

Another sign that the English language is continuing to evolve into the international lingua franca. This ought to be good news for globalists, capitalists and anglophiles all over the world. Though I suspect the Brits are a little miffed. After all, it was their language to begin with, or was it..? Language memes have a "mind" of their own, and English, having leapfrogged the channel long long ago, is no longer the charge of a few snooty boarding school types. I read somewhere that languages die when they cannot evolve, and all their beauty, and all their poetry, cannot save them from disuse and doom. How true! How many today speak to one another in Latin, Sanskrit or High German..? Long live the mongrelization of language..! I say lets continue to keep English from the hands of purist academics :-)

Colin Powell really needs to decide whose side he is on.. all this flip-flopping is doing little to bolster the credibility of the US as a reliable mediator for possible future Indo-Pak talks. First he plays up Mushy's little speech about turning into a new leaf, and now he proceeds to hand New Delhi almost everything they want , by placing the ball back in Mushy's court.



This sort of behavior is typical of someone who cannot offer any real solutions and does nothing but muddy the waters even more with constantly conflicting signals. It also underscores the real problem on the ground: India & Pakistan have boxed themselves into one little untenable corner and run out of any negotiating room. That leaves mediating parties with even less options to work with. This whole thing is one giant mess. The threat of war as an abstract dread does not appear to be enough. Sometimes, it takes real war, with real casualties and dead sons and daughters coming home in body bags for people see through their pride and cry for peace.

The Kolkata Libertarian quote of the day:




Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest...



Mahatma Gandhi, My Autobigraphy, p. 446

Brickbats from Chengal Reddy in this article on Western activism and the damage they are doing to developing countries with their misguided, misinformed environmental theologies. He asks:




..Yet even as biotechnology offers the possibility of developing drought-resistant, flood-resistant, pest-resistant and salinity-resistant seeds, the question remains: will environmentalists allow us to utilize this technology for agricultural development? ..



Of course, on the other end of the world, we have our own GM-hating Vandana Shiva raving about Monsanto and their neo-colonial imperialism in India. Her unquestioning acceptance of the "precautionary principle" is so pervasive it is axiomatic to her arguments. In a diatribe against Monsanto's toxic plants she writes


.. Nothing is yet known of the impact on human health when toxic producing Bt. crops such as potato and corn are eaten or on animal health when oilcake from Bt-cotton or fodder from Bt-corn is consumed as cattle feed. ...


This lack of knowledge is enough for her to demand an end to the clinical trials going on right now. Now isn't that precisely why we need more clinical trials, more tests and scientfic experiments to determine if the Bt. crops from Monsanto are in fact safe, and that the benefits of their use outweigh their risks ? Nobody is arguing that biotech firms should get a free hand in how they conduct business, since corporations by their very nature are amoral. They never operate in some kind of rarefied moral plateau. They always settle down within the framework of acceptable law in whatever nation they work in. Of course, the regulatory framework for governing biotech is inadequate. That is a poor excuse for activists to try and slam the brakes on technology. It doesn't work, technology just finds a way to slip into unregulated, less-scrupulous hands, and governments feel compelled into a cycle of useless legislation to combat unscientific terror. When written law conflicts with natural law, as in this case because of technology opening up new agricultural borders, it becomes the responsibility of lawmakers to adapt to the changing natural law, not the other way around..!



I would guess that Ms Shiva's refusal to allow biotech crops in India have more to do with the bureaucrat in her desiring to control the lives of people she feels are incapable of making their own decisions. In a free society, farmers would learn about the risk-benefit quotient of any new biotech plant, and would then be free to make their own choices. For her, the evil lies in the attempt to generate capital out of natural resources, the bedrock of free-market capitalism. To her, Monsanto is somehow responsible suicides among farmers! Suicide among the rural poor has little to do with agri-com. It has much more to do with inadequate property laws, over-dependance on the vagaries of nature, little control over what they can plant and how, uneven judicial oversight when farmers do bring legal complaints against creditors and landwoners, uncaring bureaucracies; the list goes on..!!

Indians are apparently flocking to cell phones in large droves. Well, given that it still takes anywhere from 3-5 years to get a land line approved in Kolkata as an example(anecdotal news only!), its no wonder Indians are looking elsewhere for solutions. Another great reminder that people everywhere desperately want the things that we here in the West take for granted. In Kolkata you can buy GSM cards from street vendors, and there are over 5 competing local cellphone carriers last time I checked. Interestingly, the cell-phone market there seems to be evolving as a local phenomenon as a substitute to poor or non-existent state-provided land service. While opening up the national telephone monopoly completely to foreign and domestic competition might benefit some of the smaller cities, upgrading the mess that exists in places like Kolkata just might not be worth all the trouble. Much better to skip ahead a technological generation and allow market forces to shape the new generation of communication tools growing in India.

Important stuff that sometimes gets ignored by mainstream media, both in India and here in the US, on India rapidly becoming the world's backoffice. I love the part of the report where it states ... The firms focusing on US customers train their operators in American culture and linguistics. Some give the impression that they are located in the United States and agents adopt American names to make callers feel comfortable. ...



This is important and not just from a macroeconomic viewpoint. The cultural ramifications of growth in this industry sector are huge. Imagine a generation of Indian middle-class, learning about American culture, European culture, expanding their polyglot with French and German. Trickle-down culture has the potential to transform Indian youth from ambivalence towards the West into outward-looking freedom-wanting capitalist, er, pigs. On the dimmer side, imagine being stalked by an army of gentle but painfully persistent Indian salespeople who cannot take no for an answer..!


Or maybe I'm just reading too much into this... :-)

It looks like the visit of the Indian Defense minister may become a one-issue trip, at the cost of everything else. The Times of India is reporting the Phalcon deal with Israel may get undue attention. According to the report, Indian officials claim that.."If Washington is going to base transactions on its perception of tensions in the region, then it becomes difficult to do business. Military ties have to be steady and reliable, and not based on exigencies," ...



Well, isn't it also true that perceptions of tensions are real motivations for how interested but directly univolved parties like the US or China would react. I think India needs to suck this one up as the cost of doing business. Of course, handing the US a bucket of negative spin to deal with is always helpful. Machiavellian tactics are time-honored stock-in-trade of all military diplomats!

A great article by Surya Gangadharan of the Strategic Affairs magazine on the Indian Navy's growing design and manufacturing capabilities. He includes a crisp comparison with the two regional navies of Pakistan and China and how the US naval presence influences their strategic missions. A must read for anyone curious about possible maritime war-scenarios..!

The best thing that could happen to both India and China, if both sides are serious about it. Economic activity is always the best antidote to nationalistic war-drums. When you are busy producing, selling, buying or otherwise cooperating in commercial enterprise, there is no time to think of war. The key to any success in Indo-China relations will, as always, be the ability of the two sides to agree on common legal frameworks for bilateral trade, and the committment to free-market principles.

This has got to be one of the most unique military developments in Indian history. We now have yet another top Indian naval official discussing in a broad, Rumsfield-like manner, the possibility that the Indian navy may possess nuclear second-strike capabilities. Given the economic and political hurdles standing in the way of the induction of large aircraft carriers in the Indian navy, the only force-multiplying option left might be ballistic missile submarines. There are reports that the Indian navy has been quietly working with Russian designers to build a new Advanced Technology Vehicle nuclear ballistic submarine. Unfortunately, they do not appear to be ready for deployment. I have read reports, though, of an interim purchase of some Russian submarines, possibly retrofitted to carry medium range ballistic missiles. This arms race is beginning to heat up and I have to confess to a "hawkish" glee at all this. Its easy, I suppose, when you don't actually have to be a combatant. Blogging in the safety of American borders, guarded by the most capable fighting force in the world, all I can do is analyse and apologise..

Reader Dan Rector sends me this wonderfully detailed email about his thoughts on India-US relations.



...India is in a very important place in its history. It
is making the tough reforms and industrializing itself and positioning to be
a major economic power, all at the doorstep of communist China and
fundamentalist Pakistan and not very far from chaotic Indonesia among
others. A nudge here or there could make all the difference between a great
self-sufficient ally in Asia, or another country who distrusts America. And
this is one that we really don't want to lose....




I could not agree more. I think the good news lies in India's diversity and the fact that deadlocked coalition governments can be a good thing if they can get out of the people's way. If India were a monolithic nation, she would be far more vulnerable to toppling over. As the markets slowly reregulate, and if the economic benfits trickle down without obstruction, it will get harder and harder for chaos on her borders to cause real damage. Then he proceeds to make another very good point (this kid needs his own blog!!!)




...Ultimately, for long-run gains I think it will take Indians convincing the
'common' person (ie - Jane Doe white-girl, I don't want to be sexist) that
it's in America's interest to support India. This will take backyard
barbecues and football games and hopefully some more far-reaching steps like
mainstream radio talk shows and CNN correspondents and eventually a Senator
or two....




I have always felt that the onus is upon the immigrant to integrate his/her culture with that of mainstream America, and not the other way around. Many Indians in America are so obsessed with commerce (and thats not a bad thing at all.!!), that they ignore the politics of integration. They do so at their own peril. Also, there is an understandable fear of being assimilated, a false pride that follows from a lack of understanding among many that there is a huge differerence between integration and assimilation. Assimilation is for the Borgs. Assimilation happens when an Indian goes to a backyard barbeque, ignores talk of Indian culture, and pretends he never came from India, tries to fake enjoying the macaroni & cheese and grilled chicken. Integration happens when the same Indian goes to the same barbeque and brings along a plate of tandoori chicken. Then proceeds to share the recipe with everyone and promises to try the hostesses potato salad recipe for dinner at his own home. Integration broadens the cultural experience, and allows the immigrant to expand the cultural "comfort-zone" of the average American. Most people don't vote for political leaders based on race, they do it if they feel emotionally comfortable around them and their ideas. For Indians to move beyond their little enclaves will take just such an effort.

David Carr over on Samizdata laments the wussification of todays Marxist rebels. He longs for those days (and I quote)


...Now I remember the days when marxist rebels really were marxist rebels and could be counted on not to stop fighting until they were streaming up the steps of the Presidential Palace shouting Viva La Revolucion!!!, pouring El Presidentes finest single malt whisky all over the cobblestone streets and waving his mistresses silk panties on the ends of their bayonets..



You want some real marxist rebels, check out these guys.. The PWG along with the MCC are the real deal, the original cottage cheese. They do it all, laying landmines, chopping off the heads of the "class oppressors", setting up kangaroo courts, blowing up ancient monastaries. In fact, these guys are having so much fun, that they have been banned since the 1980s, which of course, makes everything they do immediately excusable in their own twisted little minds..!!

Still a great deal of confusion over whether or not the Israeli Phalcon sale to India will go on as planned. The Times of India quotes the Indian Defense Minister as being confident the sales will go through. The Hindustan Times reports that the deal is on hold... Given that the Hindustan Times is a little ahead of the news curve, I have to go with their story on this.



Conflicting signals like this do little to bolster confidence among Indians on the ability of the current government to conduct business freely. It also lends credibility to the anti-US rants from some sections of the Indian mediacrats. It's just another example of the US goverment's obsolete policy of "moral equivalency" when looking at India and Pakistan. One is a democratic, emerging market economy with a history of getting more things right than wrong. The other is a failed country, bouncing from one military dictator to another, racked by fundamentalism, and possessing an economy kept floating with foreign aid. Why then, does the US not kick out it's Cold War spcialists from the region and take a closer look at longer-term strategic interests ? It grates on my nerves, i tell you.

In deference to Perry and others similarly dismayed by my seeming lack of optimism, here is an equally plausible and more optimistic set of scenarios that does not involve nuclear winter.

1. The threat fizzles: Al-Badr or the Quaid-i-Millat Jafria (new name, same old mullahs) and their cohorts manage a few attacks, but the tightening border manages to disrupt their activities enough that India can justify holding back on massive military reprisals without the BJP losing public confidence.
   
   
   
   1. The Kashmir conflict continues, but now as a diplomatic war between the two countries
      
   2. The ultimate losers continue to be the Kashmiri's, who cannot accept the fiat accompli of their state's permanent union within India. A fifty year war continues for another fifty years. A tourist sighting is as rare as the Yeti.
      
   3. The BJP-led market reforms continue to ravel. Indians push Kashmir to the back-burner, and turn their attention to more important things, like being the first on their block with a dishwasher.
      
   
   
2. It's all about the water, stupid!:India waves the Indus Water treaty in front of Kashmir, tears it up, and promises to give Kashmiris a financial stake and a say in how the water is sent downstream to Pakistan, in return for some peace and some semblance of democratic order. Now two things can happen here:
   
   
   
   1. Pakistan howls in rage and commences hostilities. They get crushed by the Indian army while fighting an unfamiliar offensive doctrine.
      
   2. Pakistan howls in rage and then bows to the will of the Kashmiris, who now have leverage where before they were merely pawns.
      
   
   

The second scenario is less likely in my view. Abrogating a treaty that has remained unbroken over a long history of war and conflict would send all sorts of doomsday vibes to the Pakistanis. It is very difficult to talk calm to someone howling in rage. It's not going to happen. The threat of abrogation, or even potential re-negotiation to help Kashmir, is very likely to be played out in concert with other diplomatic/military scenarios.

Finally fixed the problem with the hard link to the archives. I had a bad path setting. Now that that's taken care of, the blogging can continue.

Samizdata's Perry de Havilland visits the Calcutta angst factory as he calls it. I have to admit that most of my scenarios are a bit simplistic. That is the nature of such speculation. Either way, I cannot see war as doing anyone any good. National pride is a tenuous thing. Economic growth and prosperity are more tangible, longer lasting and events should be viewed in the role they play in promoting or repressing the latter.

The Bush fainting spell story is notable, not for the ordinary nature of the incident, but the fact that the White house felt compelled to share that information blandly and with little or no spin. Liberal pundits will seize on the horrible scandal of a president watching a game while the country is at war. Expect references to Nero in a cowboy hat playing a banjo any time now. Dateline will air a new special warning about how pretzels could be a hidden danger to our children. Conspiracy theorists will no doubt speculate for years whether it was really a pretzel, or was it a reaction to a super-secret anti-bio-terror vaccine. His fans will attrribute it to the overwheming stress of conducting a war with one hand and rescuing the economy with the other. Conservatives will launch counter-tirades to the Liberals, the media will snicker self-absorbedly, and us bloggers will delight in skewering both with gay abandon.

More future-watch scenarios as I predict more gloom and doom in an effort to ward it off:


Terror to spite the face:

1. Al-Badr or their cousins carry out their threats, at least partially.
   It is realistic to assume that if their bark has even some bite behind it, some of them will be able to elude Indian authorities. There are enough sleeper
   cells in India, and enough sympathisers to provide covert and overt support. Some in these organizations will no doubt view this as a great way to hurt
   India and discredit Musharraf. Some possible results could be:
   
   
   
   1. Musharraf's eroding credibility leads to his hard-line opponents gaining face. In a country where dishonor signals weakness, a coup can occur as soon as Musharraf's strength is overshadowed by the sum of his opponents.
      
   2. The border conflict then continues to escalate without overt declaration of war. Remember that throughout all this, Musharraf (or his successors) will still be the official face of denial of the ground reality. The Indians will not risk bad PR in the west while there is no official link between the state and the terrorists in Kashmir.
      
      
      
      1. The Indian stock market goes into a tailspin, troubled by a Lacking a clearly defined set of war aims, and no end to conflict in sight.
         
      2. The world soon forgets about two naked nuclear powers pissing in the wind, who are clearly unable to resolve a conflict decisively. One through lack of credible leadership, the other through lack of a reliable national consensus.
         
      3. The BJP loses power, with the Congress and its allies chipping away vote by vote. Market reforms, legal reforms grind to a halt as a populist Congress government reaches back into India's past for economic inspiration.
         
      4. In 2050 A.D., Sudan and Botswana surpass the Indian GDP, organize pop-rock concert to deliver food aid to Calcutta.
         
      
      
   3. India launches pre-emptive military strikes, while simultaneously launching a big PR offensive equating the increased militant activity with Pak state support.
      
      
      
      1. Advani and his foreign office cohorts manage to duel with the US on right vs. wrong, the morality of India's attack, and in the end, manage to get Powell to shut up.
         
      2. Freed from international constraints (or at least those that matter), the Indian military pushes on..
         
      3. See the Road to War - I scenario to see how that could end.
         
      
      
   
   
   
   Road to war - I
   
   
   
   1. Elements of the Taliban and Taliban sympathisers in Pakistan's ISI continue to forge new relations with Kashmiri militants since Musharraf's control over them in not absolute and all-encompassing. This is big and dangerous, but could be a better scenario than the first one simply because the stakes are clearer and the game is a little cleaner.
      
      
      
      1. Indian intelligence, aided by the Israeli's and/or the Turks and what help they can get from the Afghans, discover enough evidence of this activity.
         
      2. The spin game snowballs, the US finds it increasingly difficult to ask for Indian restraint.
         
      3. India abrogates the Indus water treaty. I found a cached google reference to it that seemed fairly comprehensive. This would be fatal for Pakistan, even more pronounced than war since the treaty gives India complete control over the three rivers of Sutlej, BEas and Ravi that flow into the Punjab province. India could quite easily spin this her way by claiming to redress a long-standing Kashmiri grievance.
         
         
         
         1. Public support for a final war with India in Pakistan reaches it's highest level of support ever.
            
         2. Musharraf throws caution to the wind, and launches pre-emptive military strikes and his nuclear forces take to the air.
            
         3. Pakistan's armed forces, lacking offensive strategies, gets routed by the Indian army.
            
         4. Looking down a military defeat as well as an economic catastrophe, Pakistan thumbs their nuclear trigger.
            
         
         
      4. In a series of pre-emptive moves, the Indian military, fresh from their joint services exercise this spring, begin a series of frontal assaults:
         
         
         
         1. The Kashmir Front: Indian troops get bogged down over to-be-expected heavy resistance from the Pak army and mujahedeen irregulars.
            
         2. The Punjab Front: With favorable terrain, the Indian army sweeps past any initial resistance, aided by IAF air superiority.
            
         
         
      5. Musharraf and his militants save face by defending their half of Kashmir and inflicting heavy casualties.
         
      6. The Indian's save face by quickly taking Lahore, Faislabad and other border towns and cities.
         
      7. International pressure brings fighting to an end, and the shock of war brings both parties to the negotiating table.
         
      
      
   
   
   
   
   // posted by Suman @ Monday, January 14, 2002   

As I was watching CNN's business unusual late last night, there was a quick news brief about the economic woes of the South and South-east asian markets. Specifically, that credit requests and business credit worthiness have been low or dropping everywhere but South Korea and India, where they have been rising at a respectable rate. It is little-reported stories like this which I feel are even more important than all the focus on war games and Kashmir. Credit worthiness and subsequent capital inflows have been tied to upstream events such as improved property rights laws, streamlined asset description procedures, etc. Another fifty years from today, if things go well, pundits will look back to little steps like this that made India a truly thriving free-market democracy. All that will remain of Kashmir is a lament of squandered potential.