Introduction:

The recent spate of events between India and Pakistan after the terror attack at Pulwama has put the bilateral relations at an all time low.

Body:

Changing political scenario of India with Pakistan:

• The influence of Hindutva in political culture on India’s strategic culture has been traced.
• It has resulted in a hardening of strategic culture with the bias towards the offensive also resulting from the military’s organisational culture that has been independently penetrated by Hindutva.
• Political culture with Hindutva as a principal ingredient has had an impact on strategic culture towards strategic self-assertion.
• Organisational culture has also been separately impacted, through penetration of cultural nationalist thinking, thereby making it receptive to changes in strategic culture.
• This explains the offensive content in the strategic doctrine—offensive–compellent—reflected in offensive military doctrines.
• Zero-tolerance to terror attacks, eye-for-an-eye strategy as seen through the surgical strikes.
• Reinforcing the national security policy on cross-border operations
• The strategic cultural shift towards an assertive India has long been in the making.

The best possible course of action for India is

• Strategic:
  • It is time to define the nature and scope of our conflict with Pakistan.
  • As the dominant power in South Asia and one of the world’s leading democracies, India must find a proper answer to what could otherwise become a serious existential crisis.
  • India need to establish a national security doctrine in order to deal with all security issues
  • Surgical strikes with support of the global countries.
  • Strong intelligence network both inside as well as outside the country with effective dissemination to the stakeholders.
  • Water issues should be resolved through the mechanisms provided by the Indus Basin Treaty and should not be allowed to degenerate into a serious source of conflict.
• Diplomatic:
  • Creating International pressure on Pakistan to curb state sponsored terror.
  • There is a strong need for India to change its approach from Responsive to Proactive.
  • Gaining support of global players to designate terror organizations and its entities as global terrorists.
  • India needs to engage and develop relationships with countries from important organizations like SCO, BRICS and try to enable solutions for the issue of cross border terrorism.
  • This must be bolstered with Dialogues at the highest level to track 2 diplomacies.
  • More avenues for people to people contact need to be encouraged.
• Economic:
  • Imposing economic and political sanctions on Pakistan and asking the world to follow suit.
  • The recent move of removing MFN status, increasing of import duty to 200%.
• Technological:
  • Advance technology like drones, thermal imaging etc can be used to monitor the activities in the border and track any violations beforehand.
• Against cross-border firing:
  • To reduce the destruction of civilian habitats is to lower the calibre of the violations. The two sides could consider withdrawing heavy artillery to 50 km behind the zero line.
  • The two Director-Generals of Military Operations, along with their delegations, could consider holding regular meetings every six months. Data show that every time the leaderships of the armed forces meet, ceasefire violations come down
  • Establishing more flag meeting points between local commanders and responding quickly to meeting requests could lead to better communication and reduced misunderstandings resulting in fewer ceasefire violations.
  • Confidence-building measures should be pursued to alleviate the “trust deficit” but should not be used as a substitute for the resolution of disputes.

Conclusion:

There is a need to embrace an overarching strategic stability regime and to shun aggressive security doctrines to reduce the possibility of a nuclear conflict. The problems of terrorism and Non-State Actors need to be addressed jointly through institutionalised mechanisms. Indeed, India should focus on a different type of a surgical strike; it’s a strike that could push Pakistan out of its terror past and military dependency.