Joe Shearer
Professional
We are already trading extensively. Perhaps you are referring to trading intensively, meaning, with interaction between the two nation-wide production and manufacturing systems that lead to trade. There the obstacle is partly IP, partly supply chain sophistication combined with robustness, a very complex and very strong factor within China, that does not exist - yet - within India.
Here, Indian leadership and vision is entirely to blame.
What external observers have found on stripping down current Chinese manufactures, especially of EVs, is that extraordinary degree of fusion of engineering excellence with manufacturing competence - difficult to explain without a lot of hand-waving, but those who are involved with complex manufactures will immediately know what this is.
Chinese design is largely reverse engineering, but it allowed them to concentrate on manufacturing and on supply chain enhancement, in quantity but also in quality. It seems to the observer that in the advanced economies of the west, there is outstanding engineering ability but their capitalist system has actively sent out manufacturing to other locations, leading to a loss of opportunity to work on supply chains.
We have a massive opportunity here. We have the essentials of good engineering - although this may sound weird to other citizens from countries at an equal level of economic development, my own experience has been that when some idiot bureaucrat is not somehow involved in jamming up the process, Indian engineering is really superb.
We fail on supply chain.
Some of the larger manufacturers have got their own bits streamlined - somewhat - but that does not add up to a global level of availability and quality in supplying - meaning on time, on spec., and with buffers for rapid expansion (to some extent) or contraction (to some extent).
Pakistan would benefit by getting rid of the millstone she insists on carrying around her neck.
It requires a purging on the military front. A sensitive issue, and let us keep away from it. It requires also a deep root-canal on the educational system; flogging that long-dead and currently very smelly carcasse of the hatefulness of the other will not work for Pakistan any more. It requires a third, a purging of the ubiquitous mullacracy. What happens in the name of religion, and especially in the name of blasphemy is utterly absurd. Now we have the disconcerting spectacle of Saudi Arabia being far ahead of Pakistan.
The brutally candid Pakistani civil society, with all its charm for democrats and liberals around the world, is not sufficient to let Pakistan float, forget about swimming gracefully or effectively.
There is nothing wrong with Pakistani talent. The few occasions I have had the opportunity to work with Pakistani kids (in IT services only), I found them on par with the Indian Punjabi or north Indian in general, but no match for the Ghati or the Golti, forget about the Tamilian or the Malloo, or even the Bongs.
They just need fair treatment, and a little relaxation for the religious foibles they have and can't help having after years of acculturation. This sounds condescending, but it is intended to be a real explanation of what the working manager needs to do to fit everyone into a smooth, well-oiled team.
On the larger perspective that has been mentioned above, there is no need for China or anybody else to put pressure. Once the major obstacles are gone, there is nothing stopping an avalanche-like expansion of business, and with that, of business opportunities. Afghanistan and Central Asia are fertile and fallow grounds for business growth driven by financial administration, commercial streamlining, and capital investment, it is to be hoped accompanied by education. After these are available, and national laws and fussiness ironed out, people just have to step out of the way.
But that is not going to happen. Too much is required of the Pakistani deep state to permit these to happen. Instead, there will be that very uncomfortable steady year-on-year degradation of capabilities and potential, until the Pashtun and the Baloch begin their middle game. That is when one Indian nightmare that has never seemed to be relevant might rear its ugly head - the prospect of a fraying Pakistan needing urgent support not to fall apart is a hair-raising one.
This is frankly so obvious. India is in free fall now, concealed by Chinese-style false reporting of statistical data, something that India took pride in maintaining at a high level just a few years, a little over a decade back. Her leadership is so stupid, so fundamentally incompetent, as to leave discerning Indian eyes filmed over with tears of exasperation. Imagine pushing a pro-Hindu, pro-Hindi agenda in a country with 20% Dalit opposed to this, with 17% Muslims murmuring the word 'Sabr' between tightly clenched teeth, and the entire south and east appalled at the smelly Gangetic Doab superstitions being foisted on the entire nation, along with the condescension of the CAP* constable asking people in southern airports if they are not Indian citizens, due to their not to be able to speak Hindi.
*Central Armed Police, ie, CRPF, CISF, BSF, SSB, Assam Rifles.
The Pakistani side is beyond my meagre powers of composition to deal with. India has a debt of fraternal duty to the Pakistani people, both as a country and as a people, and Ahsan Abrar and Wild Lens might show the Pakistani observer a thing or ten about how Indians (not from the jumped up idiots who are on Internet but the real thing) react to a stranger in their midst. That debt is something we can never pay, and it is emphatically not due to us.
Last edited:
