Aid has been associated with diplomacy, and often with the projection of soft power. In the context of India-Pakistan relations, however, there has never been an eventuality for such a case to arise. Since the phase in India’s post-Independence story when it emerged as capable of providing aid to others, its relations with
Pakistan — never at any time smooth — have hardly been of an order that would naturally foster the giving and receiving of aid. Nonetheless, aid has been sought to be used by Pakistan’s real power-wielders, the country’s military, as a tool for mobilising negative domestic sentiment against this country, actively or passively. This was evident recently in the context of the worst floods in Pakistan in nearly a hundred years. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani threw up his hands and declared that the humanitarian crisis was way beyond his country’s capacity to cope with. International aid was not immediately forthcoming. And yet Pakistan was not signalling acceptance of the $5 million aid that India had stepped forward to offer. To imbue the story with a further absence of graciousness, initially Islamabad even declined to acknowledge that such an offer was made. We are talking of emergency assistance of a humanitarian nature arising from a natural calamity of unprecedented magnitude, born out of goodwill, and by no means the makings of a standard aid dependency syndrome that is typically enmeshed with power and diplomacy. And yet the Pakistan government thought nothing of telling its people through the crude gesture of near-refusal of assistance in a moment of crisis that India was a country with which normality of ties cannot be conceived, and thus its aid was beyond the pale.
The subliminal message being sought to be conveyed was that the two countries or societies must forever remain strung together through ties of hostility, or at least that the military establishment in Pakistan would seek to institutionalise this. Pakistan’s official rebuff was clearly also intended to arouse reciprocal disappointment within India. This is exactly what terrorists, and others who seek to set people against people, hope to achieve at another level. We are certain that the vast numbers of Pakistanis who have been made victims of a natural disaster will not be swayed by the devious and humanity-disrupting thought process of their rulers. Now that the aid has been accepted — clearly under American pressure — we hope that the Pakistani authorities will summon the good grace to put it to good use in the spirit in which it has been given. This would help the people in distress, and possibly allow both Pakistanis and Indians a moment of catharsis in which both feel in their hearts that the natural response to a tragedy is the offer of succour, whether some governments like this or not. In 2005, when a massive earthquake flattened much of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), India offered prompt aid. It was taken, although a good deal of the offer was not utilised. Nevertheless, aid-bearing Indian trucks were permitted into PoK. Islamabad was less haughty on that occasion. The reason is its own agencies were slow-footed, inefficient and corrupt while the Indian Army and Air Force earned the goodwill of the people of northern Kashmir through prompt delivery of assistance, and that this was having a demonstration effect in PoK. Not allowing Indian aid on that occasion could have been a cause for disaffection.
The misguided or cynical use of the instrumentality of aid refusal by a next-door neighbour may serve official ends sometimes, and sometimes earn plaudits from extreme sections in a society. But ordinary people, with normal hearts and minds, cannot approve of such methods. Sooner or later this is bound to become clear to those wielding power.