The Centre for Social and Economic Progress hosted a seminar titled “The Missing Economic Logic in India’s Relations with Pakistan” on Monday, August 12. Sanjay Kathuria, Visiting Senior Fellow, CSEP made a presentation based on his recent paper titled ‘Toward a Durable India-Pakistan Peace: A Roadmap through Trade’. The presentation was followed by a discussion with C Raja Mohan, Non-Resident Distinguished Fellow with the Asia Society Policy Institute, Happymon Jacob, Associate Professor of Diplomacy and Disarmament at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and Suhasini Haidar, Diplomatic Editor, The Hindu. Constantino Xavier, Senior Fellow, CSEP, moderated the seminar. 

The seminar was streamed live on Zoom and CSEP’s YouTube channel.  

About the event 

India’s trade relations with Pakistan have been in limbo since 2019. Why should India care? The essay by Sanjay Kathuria shows that there are many reasons why India should. Going beyond short-term numbers, Pakistan could become a major market for Indian goods and services, and an even bigger market for tourism. Exports of electricity are another real possibility. In addition, history is full of examples of trade contributing to peace, but trade has never been given a real chance in the India–Pakistan context. There are also strategic gains for India, if trade helps to create the conditions for a more durable peace on the border. Finally, trade can also help create openings to discuss more contentious issues. 

Presenter 

• Sanjay Kathuria

Sanjay Kathuria is a Visiting Senior Fellow in the Growth, Finance and Development vertical at CSEP. He has vast experience of more than 40 years and is recognised as a pre-eminent thinker and commentator on economic development, growth and integration in South Asia. His research interests and writings have focused on South Asia, economic growth and development, industrial policy and competitiveness, trade and globalisation, regional integration, the economics of small states, and gender issues, among others. He teaches in both the US and India, as Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University, and Visiting Faculty, Ashoka University. He is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore and a Global Fellow at the Wilson Centre in Washington, DC. He was a Lead Economist at the World Bank in Washington, DC, where he spent 27 years working on South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe, including field assignments in New Delhi and Dhaka. Before joining the World Bank, he was a Fellow at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations in New Delhi, from 1982 to 1992. Apart from many books and reports published at the World Bank, his writings have featured in Foreign Policy, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, The Wire, Daily FT (Sri Lanka), Business Standard, among others. He is currently working on a new book on The Future of South Asia. 

Panelists 

• C Raja Mohan

C Raja Mohan is a Non-Resident Distinguished Fellow with the Asia Society Policy Institute. He is a Visiting Research Professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore, and was previously the Director of ISAS. Mohan was the founding director of Carnegie India in Delhi, the sixth international center of Carnegie Endowment for Peace. He was associated with several Indian think tanks, including the Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses, the Observer Research Foundation, and the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.  Mohan was a Professor of South Asian Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and the Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. He served on India’s National Security Advisory Board.  He was the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Kluge Center, US Library of Congress, Washington DC, during 2009-10. He convened the India chapter of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, during 1995-2005. Mohan has published widely on India’s foreign and security policies, Asian geopolitics, and the global governance of advanced technologies. In his most recent, Mohan co-authored the Adelphi Book, The New Asian Geopolitics: Military Power and Regional Order published by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, London in 2021. He is a columnist for Foreign Policy and the Indian Express.  

• Happymon Jacob

• Suhasini Haidar 

Suhasini Haidar is the Diplomatic Editor of The Hindu, one of India’s oldest and most respected national dailies regularly writing on foreign policy issues. Prior to this, Suhasini was Foreign Affairs editor and prime time anchor for India’s leading 24-hr English news channel CNN-IBN (2005-2014), where she presented the signature show “WorldView with Suhasini Haidar”, and Correspondent for CNN International’s New Delhi bureau before that. In 2015, she was the recipient of the most prestigious Indian print journalism ‘Prem Bhatia’ award and has won a series of awards for her work in Television as well. Over the course of her 26-year reporting career, Suhasini has covered the most challenging stories & conflicts from the most diverse regions including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Libya, Lebanon and Syria.  In India, she has covered the foreign affairs beat for over a decade and her domestic assignments include political profiles and in-depth reportage from conflict zones including Kashmir, where she was injured in a bomb blast in 2000. Suhasini Haidar worked with CNN International from 1995-2005, regularly reporting from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. She was part of the CNN team that won the Columbia-Dupont Broadcast Journalism Awardin 2005 for coverage of the tsunami in India, and worked for CNN.com in New York for a month during its 9/11 coverage. Suhasini began her career in journalism as an intern at CNN’s United Nation’s bureau in New York in 1994, after which she joined CNN New Delhi bureau as a producer in April 1995. 

Moderator 

• Constantino Xavier

Constantino Xavier is a Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy and Security Studies at CSEP, where he leads the Sambandh Initiative on Regional Connectivity. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, in Washington DC. His research focuses on India’s changing role as a regional power, and the challenges of security, connectivity, and democracy across South Asia and the Indian Ocean. 

Please contact Gurmeet Kaur at GKaur@csep.org for general queries and Ayesha Manocha at AManocha@csep.org for media queries.