Posted on 06/01/2002 9:53:54 AM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
WASHINGTON: Pakistan may have damaged India to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars with its loose talk about initiating nuclear war in the region, according to Indian officials, analysts and business executives.
With the American media raising fears of a nuclear war in the sub-continent to fever pitch over the last few days and the US administration playing into the hysteria by advising US nationals to leave, Indian industry may have received a crushing blow even before -- figuratively -- the first bullets have begun to fly.
“The travel advisory in terribly damaging. It will hurt business and destroy the little tourism we have,” said a gloomy Prasanto Biswal, US representative of the Indian trade body FICCI. The federation is organising a meeting of Indian parliamentarians and American business groups in Washington later this month, an event that has already come under a cloud because of the nuclear hot talk.
No immediate estimates are available, but Biswal and others say depending on how things pan out over the next few days, business travel could be severely affected and the little tourism that comes India’s way could be wiped out. The United States is India’s largest trading partner with bilateral trade in the region of $ 15 billion.
The state department’s decision to pull the plug on India will impact directly on not just business travel but also the increasingly inter-linked commercial transactional activity, since the advisory urges Americans already in India to leave. It could also hurt US businesses since many American orders are processed in India, under a back office system aimed at reducing transaction cost for American consumers.
Worse, almost every western country follows the American example in these matters.
Indian officials are reacting with disappointment and even anger over the American advisory asking its nationals to leave India, with some of them suggesting it implicitly rewards Pakistan’s policy of nuclear blackmail and brinkmanship.
“Pakistan straps itself with a nuclear weapons and runs amok like a suicide bomber... and we get punished,” one official fumed, echoing the vivid imagery first invoked by Salman Rushdie in a New York Times comment last week.
Some Indian officials are convinced that since Pakistan's economy and industry "is in any case doomed," Islamabad is consciously raising the pitch to hurt India's prospects.
Pakistan’s military leader Pervez Musharraf tried to offset the image of a nuclear-crazed country in a CNN interview Saturday by saying western fears of a nuclear exchange are exaggerated. But the US media has described Pakistan’s nuclear machismo in such fervid detail – including its cheesy monuments to nuclear weapons in its city squares – that few are paying any attention to his protestations of responsibility.
However, India is also having to bear the brunt of western criticism since discourse on the subject rarely takes note of New Delhi’s no-first use policy and instead condemns both sides as being on a hair-trigger nuclear posture. Indian officials say this is frustrating.
Meanwhile, travel agencies in the US have begun receiving calls canceling bookings and easing some of the summer rush, when US-India ticket prices shoot up to $ 1600 for the cheapest economy class ticket. Typically, business travel is thin in summer, but many Indian families visit home because of the school holidays. These plans are being put on hold.
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