Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is in the United States for the first official state visit by any foreign leader since President Barack Obama took office this year. While the atmospherics are right, and the two leaders probably won't be looking as stilted as Obama and China's President Hu Jintao appeared to be during Obama's trip last week (for the Indians are rarely short on conversation), there is a sense of unease.

And much of it has to do with AFPAK - the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan which is very nearly at the top of Obama's foreign policy agenda and one that some fear may eventually consume the rest of his presidency. America's ally Pakistan worries about India's expanding assistance and links to Afghanistan, seeing it as part of a strategy to encircle it from the rear.  Ordinarily, Pakistani noises wouldn't bother India as much, but for signs that the Obama administration has begun to adopt those concerns as its own in its desperate search for a solution, as Fareed Zakaria writes in Newsweek.

And that is producing a "perverse view" of the region, he says adding it was a bit strange that India was being criticised for its influence in Afghanistan. India is the hegemon in South Asia, with a GDP 100 times that of Afghanistan and it was only natural that as Afghanistan opened itself up following the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, its cuisine, movies and money would flow into the country. The whole criticism about India,  Zakaria says, is a little bit like saying the United States has had growing influence  in Mexico over the last few decades and should be penalised for it.

But what about Pakistan's concerns, a country that was dismembered in the last full-scale war with India in 1971 with the creation of Bangladesh. The last thing it would want is a hostile regime in Afghanistan on its western flank on top of the Indian army, the world's third largest, massed on the eastern front, not to mention the Islamist militants whom it once nurtured turning on  the State itself.

Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Kayani told the U.S. National Security Adviser General Jim Jones earlier his month that Indian presence in Kabul would hurt the war objectives.

And what about the Afghans themselves ? The India-Pakistan rivalry is probably a sideshow in the broader battle between a resurgent Taliban and the foreign forces, but perhaps one they can do without.

[Photographs of Afghan children and Indian and U.S. flags at the White House]

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is among four Indians who share space with U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao on the Forbes 2009 list of the World’s Most Powerful People.

Those who dominate the list were chosen based on the number of people they influence, their ability to project power beyond their immediate sphere of influence and their control of financial resources.

For Singh, a self-effacing economist who led a resurgent Congress Party to a landslide victory in the general election this year, the accolade is a reflection of how far he has come since his name was proposed as an obvious choice for the post of Prime Minister.

The Congress’ showing in the recent assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh had set the trend for its performance in subsequent by-elections where it won 10 of the 31 seats contested.

The message was clear. Independent of the shackles of its communist allies, the party led by Singh (placed 36th on the Forbes list) is now free to aggressively push much-needed reforms.

Under Singh, the Indian economy grew at the rate of 6.7 percent in 2008/09 despite inadequate monsoons and a global slowdown.

Singh assured investors at the World Economic Forum of a seven percent growth next year and a medium term objective of achieving a growth rate of 9 percent per annum as the economic downturn shows signs of reversing.

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani is placed 44th on the Forbes list followed by steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal at 55th and Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata at the 59th spots.

With a net worth pegged at $19.5 billion by Forbes magazine earlier this year, Ambani is thought to be Asia’s richest man.

Forbes says the “ranking is intended to be the beginning of a conversation, not the final word,” but interestingly, some of the names on its power list have strong India connections in their own unusual ways.

Dawood Ibrahim, wanted in connection with the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, ranks 50th on the list and is described as “boss of Mumbai-based organised crime syndicate D-Company.”

Tibetan spiritual leader in exile and Nobel laureate the Dalai Lama (39) fled Tibet to India in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule.

Powerful and influential Indians have often made the Forbes lists. Congress president Sonia Gandhi has appeared on its 100 most powerful women’s list.

From autocrats to multi-billionaires, Forbes judges power based on its own varied criteria. It throws open the question of who has missed its list and deserved to be there.

Is a militant more powerful than the Pope?

But does the common man care beyond his three daily meals? How much bearing does it have on their lives?

With so much noise around these days in the relationship between India and Pakistan it is hard to make out a clear trend.  Politicians and national media in both countries have reverted to trading accusations, whether it be about their nuclear arsenals, Pakistani action against Islamist militants blamed for last year's Mumbai attacks or alleged violations of a ceasefire on the Line of Control dividing Kashmir. Scan the headlines on a Google news search on India and Pakistan and you get the impression of a relationship fraught beyond repair.

Does that mean that attempts to find a way back into peace talks broken off after the Mumbai attacks are going nowhere? Not necessarily. In the past the background noise of angry rhetoric has usually obscured real progress behind the scenes, and this time around may be no exception.

MORE TALKS

The Hindu newspaper reported on Sept 1 that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may meet either the president or prime minister of Pakistan on the sidelines of a Commonwealth summit in Trinidad in November. It said the Indian government was already working out what strategy to adopt to make any meeting meaningful, while also pushing Pakistan to take more action against Pakistan-based militant groups in order to prevent another Mumbai-style attack.

There is no confirmation of that Trinidad meeting, and nor is there likely to be for some time, but The Hindu in recent months has proved to be well informed about the prime minister's approach to Pakistan. Singh himself laid out his plans in a speech in parliament in July in which he promised a "step by step" approach to dialogue -- effectively meaning that India would talk to Pakistan while refusing for now to reopen a formal peace process broken off after the Mumbai attacks.

The two countries' foreign ministers are also expected to talk on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York this month, although it is unclear whether this would be preceded by a meeting of foreign secretaries in line with an agreement reached in July that the top diplomats of India and Pakistan should meet "as often as necessary".  The Hindu said the foreign secretaries would meet in New York; more recent newspaper reports have called this into question.

DISMANTLING JAMMU AND KASHMIR?

In the meantime, both countries are edging forward in their approach to the two parts of Jammu and Kashmir which they control. (After their first war in 1947/48 the former princely state was divided into the regions of Ladakh, Kashmir and Jammu which are held by India, and the regions of Gilgit and Baltistan along with an area known as Azad Kashmir which are held by Pakistan.)

According to Praveen Swami, a Kashmir expert at The Hindu, the Indian government has been holding secret talks over the summer with the main political separatist alliance in Kashmir, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, to try to agree an approach to bring peace to the region. "Perhaps most important," he said, "Pakistan is being asked to endorse the talks."

Over on its side of the border, the Pakistan government has decided to grant limited autonomy to Gilgit and Baltistan. It had previously run the region  directly from Islamabad, much to the irritation of local people who felt they had been deprived of their political rights to the kind of self-rule given to Pakistani provinces. 

To digress briefly into history, the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was created in the 19th century by Hindu Dogra rulers expanding outwards from their base in Jammu and comprising people of different linguistic, ethnic and religious groups.  Were it not for the tremendous importance given to Jammu and Kashmir by both India and Pakistan - both of which claim the state in full - it might have broken up naturally years ago.

The people of Gilgit and Baltistan never felt much loyalty to the former maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir and have long complained that they have been held hostage to the Kashmir dispute (you hear the same complaints from Ladakhis on the Indian side.)

So do the parallel moves on both India and Pakistan suggest both countries are taking small steps towards an eventual dismantling of the former princely state which would allow a settlement of the long-running Kashmir dispute? Not quite - Pakistan has been careful to say it is not giving full provincial status to Gilgit and Baltistan. There are also historical grounds for treating the region differently from other parts of Jammu and Kashmir, which date back to partition and before.

Yet given that anything to do with Jammu and Kashmir is potentially explosive, reactions to the Pakistan government's move on Gilgit and Baltistan have so far been relatively muted. Dawn newspaper said that the decision stuck a balance between meeting the aspirations of its people for political rights and maintaining the region's status as disputed territory. The Daily Times said that the people of Gilgit and Baltistan had been held hostage to the Kashmir dispute for long enough and should eventually be incorporated as a full province of Pakistan. On the Indian side, I've seen criticism from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party but nothing from the government.

A roadmap for peace sketched out by Singh and former president Pervez Musharraf in 2007 effectively acknowledged the division of the state by accepting there would be no exchange of territory between the two countries - although both pledged to try to make borders irrelevant. That agreement was shelved when Musharraf's own political fortunes nosedived.  But are the governments of India and Pakistan nonetheless following some of the signposts in that roadmap despite all the angry rhetoric currently dominating their relationship? And if so, how far are they exchanging information about their plans?

WILD CARDS

Just in case the above looks too rosy a view on the prospects of progress in relations between India and Pakistan, it is probably worth remembering it can all go wrong, particularly if there is another major militant attack in India.

The other wild card comes from the transformation of the political landscape in India with the implosion of the opposition right-wing BJP initially triggered by the furore over a book on Pakistan's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah by former senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh. So far the jury remains out on how the political drama will play out. Analysts variously predict a collapse of the right, or its opposite - a revival of the right as the BJP returns to its hardline anti-Pakistan Hindu nationalist roots in an attempt to reinvent itself after losing two consecutive general elections. Until the political landscape becomes clearer, India's Congress-led government is likely to tread cautiously.

(Reuters file photos: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Siachen; Singh with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari in Russia; Dal lake in Srinagar; Drass on the Line of Control; former Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh)

China and India are sitting down for another round of talks this week on their unsettled border, a nearly 50-year festering row that in recent months seems to have gotten worse.

China’s Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo and India’s National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan are unlikely to announce any agreement on the 3,500 km border, even a small one, but their talks this week may well signal how they intend to move forward on a relationship marked by a  deep, deep “trust deficit”, as former Indian intelligence chief B. Raman puts it.

While the entire Himalayan border is disputed, including the Aksai Chin area, it is the row over large parts of India’s Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern stretch of the mountains that has strained ties in recent months.

The Chinese, says Raman,  are demanding that at least the Tawang tract of Arunachal Pradesh, if not the whole of it, should be transferred to it.  They are apparently adamant that if that doesn’t happen, there won’t be any border settlement, he says.

India’s position is that there can’t be a transfer of populated areas in any border settlement. Tawang is a populated area, its citizens are Indians, New Delhi says.

So firmly have the Chinese dug their heels in, that they refused to endorse an Asian Development Bank  irrigation project in Arunachal Pradesh in June on grounds that it was its territory. Last month, India’s Foreign Minister S. M. Krishna confirmed to parliament in a question-answer session media reports about the Chinese objection to the project which appeared to have stung India.

So where do they go from here ? India’s decision to deploy additional troops along the border in Arunachal Pradesh and beef up its air defences in the region have deepened the sense of unease, more so by making a public announcement of the military moves.  It might be concerned about Chinese buildup in the area and of growing border violations, but to talk openly of the Chinese threat and moves to counter it hardly inspires confidence.

There is a history to this: in the months leading up to the 1962 war between the two countries, India, according to some people at least, took fairly strident positions in public against China, only to be humiliated in the brief conflict.

There are some signs of a calmer, more measured stance in New Delhi and Beijing ahead of this week’s meeting in the Indian capital. There was no need to “demonise” China as a potential threat, India’s top level cabinet committee on security headed by the prime minister concluded last weekend at a preparatory meeting, acording to a report in the Indian Express. But New Delhi will be watching China closely, it said.

Beijing for its part said the two countries must exercise the “greatest political wisdom” to arrive at border settlement. The People’s Daily quoted China’s ambassador to India Zhang Yan as saying: notwithstanding the “twists and turns” in ties, the two countries had the same responsibilities of developing their economies and improving people’s lives.

Bilateral trade, as the People’s Daily in a separate article notes, has flourished despite the strained political relationship. “China has become one of India’s largest trade partners, and India is now one of the most vital investment and overseas project contracting markets for China,” it says.

So is trade going to be the glue holding the world’s two most populous nations together?

(Photographs of India’s Manmohan Singh and China’s Wen Jiabao and Nathu-La on the border between India and China)

The unveiling of India’s top secret nuclear-powered submarine, three decades after it was conceived, has been greeted with much tub-thumping.

Even for a nation hungry for success and even more than that, global recognition, some of the adulation seems excessive and perhaps premature as many are starting to point out.

INS Arihant, or destroyer of enemies, has just made contact with water, as it were, with the navy flooding the dry dock at last weekend’s launch in the southern port city of Visakhapatnam.  It has to be tested in the harbour, then out at sea. The nuclear reactor, the heart of the new technology, has yet to be fitted. Perhaps a bigger moment will be when that reactor goes critical.

“The Arihant is far from reaching operational status, as it currently is little more than floating hull,” as this piece in defence professionals says.

To say that the launch by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh completes the third element in India’s nuclear triad based on missiles, aircraft and underwater strike capability is jumping several years ahead.

As former navy commander Premvir Das notes, an underwater vertical launch system is about the most sophisticated and complex weapons and it is not going to happen any time soon.

Das is worth quoting just to put things in perspective. “For the present, a few years are needed to prove the platform and its systems, first on the surface in harbour, then on the surface at sea and finally, under water, progressively at increasing depths. All along there will be need for corrections and modifications.”

What is significant about the launch is perhaps the announcement itself. For years New Delhi has refused to confirm the existence of the Advanced Technology Vessel project, although anyone who covered the defence ministry got to know about it, sooner or later.

Part of the reluctance was because of the stiff sanctions on import of technology that were already in place because of the nuclear programme.  And it really made little sense to show off a project as cutting edge as this, when you are already blacklisted.

Some of that has changed, with the India-U.S. nuclear deal that virtually recognises India’s nuclear weapons programme. Is that why the project has been unveiled? Or is New Delhi making  a declaration of intent, to raise the game in the Indian Ocean as China begins to extend its reach there.

“What is significant about the launch is that now India has publicly acknowledged its quest to acquire a nuclear submarine and has shown it has the ability to design and build such a platform,” Uday Bhaskar, a former naval commander and now head of the National Maritime Foundation, is quoted as saying in defence professionals.

To be sure the ability to build a nuclear submarine that allows you to remain underwater for long periods and hence travel great distances is a game-changer for any military.  For a nation committed to no-first use of nuclear weapons this allows you to disperse your nuclear weapons deep at sea.

As foreign affairs expert C. Raja Mohan notes here ; “Building a submarine is one of the more complex arts. Powering it with an atomic reactor and arming it with nuclear tipped missile that can be launched from underwater is the acme of modern industrial skill.”

Only five nations — the U.S., Russia, France, Britain and China — have mastered the technology so far. India took a small step last weekend,.

(Photograph of a an old Russian aircraft carrier that was bought by India and Indian military exercises)

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has staked his political reputation on talks with Pakistan, earning in equal measure both praise and contempt from a domestic audience still burned by last November's attack on Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants.

"I sincerely believe it is our obligation to keep the channels of communication open," he said in a debate in parliament on Wednesday. "Unless we talk directly to Pakistan we will have to rely on a third party to do so... Unless you want to go to war with Pakistan, there is no way, but to go step-by-step... dialogue and engagement are the best way forward," Singh said.

That may sound like fairly anodyne stuff. But to recap, Singh signed a joint statement with Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani at a meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt this month in which both ordered their foreign secretaries -- their top diplomats -- to hold more talks to improve relations. Singh however also said the formal peace process -- the so-called composite dialogue -- could not be resumed until Pakistan took more action against those who organised the Mumbai attack.

The outcome was pretty much what was expected from the talks in Egypt, effectively forming a stepping stone between an ice-breaking meeting between Singh and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari on the sidelines of a regional summit in Yekaterinburg in Russia in June and the next international forum where senior politicians from both countries will be present -- September's U.N. General Assembly (though Singh is not personally expected to attend.)

But what has outraged the political opposition in India, along with large sections of the media, has been the specific wording of the joint statement.

The first allegedly offending reference is contained in the part of the statement which summarises what each prime minister said during their talks: "Prime Minister Gilani mentioned that Pakistan has some information on threats in Baluchistan and other areas."  Outsiders may find this hard to follow but the mention of the "B" word has been portrayed as Indian capitulation to Pakistani accusations that it supports a separatist movement in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, an allegation India denies.

The second allegedly offending reference is as follows: "Both prime ministers recognise that dialogue is the only way forward. Action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue process and these should not be bracketed."

No matter how many times I read that sentence, I still find it has all the ambiguity of an Escher painting. It can mean either that India will talk to Pakistan without waiting for it to take action on terrorism, or that Pakistan should take action on terrorism without waiting for India to resume the formal peace process.

Thousands of words have been written about the meaning of this sentence, along with the "B" word, in the last two weeks since the joint statement was issued. (And to keep it in perspective, that's considerably less than the many words which have been written about the exact timing, details, circumstances and implications of the Instrument of Accession signed by the Maharajah of Kashmir pledging his kingdom's allegiance to India in 1947.)

But to get back to the bigger question of Singh's approach to Pakistan - his admirers say he has proved himself to be a great statesman; his critics that he naively caved in to Pakistan.

The Hindu newspaper said he had accomplished the impossible with his speech in parliament by silencing his critics while leaving himself the flexibility for a step-by-step approach to relations with Pakistan. "Essentially, what the Prime Minister’s remarks have done is create room for the government to be flexible in its approach to Pakistan, giving it room to calibrate the pace of engagement to the degree to which Islamabad moves ahead on its commitments to act against terror," it said.

"In the fullness of time, Dr. Singh’s response to the debate will be seen as a potential game changer in India’s official discourse on Pakistan, especially his emphasis on the inevitability of engagement, his clarity on the fact that the alternative to dialogue was war, his fear that the absence of peace with Pakistan would hold back South Asia and allow foreign powers to get involved in the region, and his recognition of the need to strengthen Pakistan’s civilian leaders. On all these points, the Prime Minister is far ahead of his advisers and, perhaps, of the “national mood” that retired diplomats and generals still fighting the battles of the past."

Indian blog, The Acorn, summed up however how far many thought Singh had taken too big a risk with his speech in parliament in the face of intense pressure to either back down or distance himself from the joint statement.

"So he stood his ground, and didn't make use of the lifelines that were created for him by the foreign ministry," it wrote.

"Whether he intended it or not, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has made himself personally vulnerable. Whether he intended it or not, his Sharm-el-Sheikh lollipop is a gamble: if there is another Pakistan-originated terrorist attack during his tenure, Dr Singh will be thrown to the dogs by his own party; if there isn’t one, as the phrase goes, Singh is King."

For a man in his late 70s, who had a coronary bypass this year and who is expected to hand over power eventually to a younger generation of Congress party politicians clustered around Rahul Gandhi, the fear of being forced to resign may weigh considerably less than the possibility -- however remote it might seem -- of a peace deal with Pakistan.

And he is not alone in taking a risk on Pakistan. When the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was in power, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajapayee made repeated attempts to make peace with Pakistan and won respect for doing so.

Where he is perhaps alone is in running so quickly against the tide of popular opinion.  His gamble appears to be that Pakistan is on the cusp of change and by failing to seize the moment, India might lose it altogether.

Right now, he has international support running in his favour. An improvement in relations between India and Pakistan could help underpin stability in Afghanistan at a time when backing for the U.S.-led war is flagging on the home front as the United States and Britain face their worst monthly losses since the Afghan war began. The United States, wary of being seen to interfere overtly in relations between India and Pakistan, is expected to continue quietly to bolster peace efforts.

So the timing, as astrologers might say, is auspicious.

Veteran Indian journalist M.J. Akbar quotes what he says is an old Sufi saying: "When you are trapped in a vicious circle, draw a larger one around it."

Can Singh and his Pakistani interlocutors complete the circle and succeed where so many others before have failed?

(Photos: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh; on the Line of Control in Drass; the Taj in Mumbai and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee meets his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Lahore)

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has dropped a plan to travel to Egypt next month where he was expected to hold further talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh following their meeting in Russia this week.

Pakistan’s foreign office has said Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani will attend the summit of Non-Aligned Nations in the Egyptian city of Sharm El Sheikh although soon after the Singh-Zardari meeting in Yekaterinburg the two sides announced plans for a second meeting in July.

Has something gone wrong?

Newspapers on both sides of the border read more into the change of plans than just a normal swap of duties between the prime minister and the president.

The Dawn linked the cancellation to displeasure over Singh telling Zardari in the full glare of the world’s media that Pakistan should not allow its soil to be used for militant attacks on India.

The soft-spoken Singh’s rather unexpected remark right at the beginning of the first-to-face encounter with Pakistan’s leaders since the Mumbai attacks in November ensured that the meeting was unpleasant from the outset, it said.

Pakistan’s The News said New Delhi had handed Zardari a “well staged slight” but Islamabad was setting it aside because at the end of the day the two sides were talking again.

Indian newspapers were less restrained, saying Zardari dropped out of the next meeting after Singh’s blunt talk and that Islamabad wanted to send the message that his rather public reprimand had not gone down well with Pakistan.

Did India over-reach then? Perhaps too much shouldn’t be read into all this. The Hindu points out that this may not yet be the last word, as Zardari has changed travel plans at the last minute several times.

At home though, they are applauding Singh both for his tough talk and the realisation that you have to engage the “imploding neighbour” because that is the neighbourhood it lives in.

Singh had served notice that India and indeed its neighbours were going to see a more determined prime minister in the months ahead, “a far cry from the man who was seemingly too timid to take on his tormentors during the previous five years,” as New Delhi’s Mint wrote.

And columnist and former ambassador Kuldip Nayar said the meeting hadn’t come a day too soon.

“Too much time and too much money have been wasted in talking against each other instead of talking to each other. The two countries have not experienced peace since independence; 62 years is a long period for the people to suffer estrangement and live in fear of war all the time,” he wrote.

Are they slipping back into talking at each other?

“I am happy to meet you, but my mandate is to tell you that the territory of Pakistan must not be used for terrorism.” This was how Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh began his crucial meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in Russia’s Yekaterinburg on Tuesday.

The comment, made in the full glare of the media, hit Zardari like a well-aimed arrow as the embarrassed Pakistani leader quickly interrupted to ensure the reporters were asked to leave the room.

Those few dramatic moments may have served Singh two crucial purposes: Pakistan could not showcase the meeting as proof that it was again business as usual between the two countries. Second, Singh managed to preclude any criticism back home that India had capitulated before Pakistan.

Indian newspapers such as The Hindu prominently speculated if Singh’s comments were by “design or happenstance”.

The Times of India too highlighted Singh’s acerbic comments with a front page photograph of the two leaders.

In their 60 years of hostilities, one weapon that India and Pakistan has used with much success is the media.

When then Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf famously offered a handshake to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee at a South Asian summit in Kathmandu in January 2002 — while the two countries mobilised for war following an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001 — he was aware of the media arc lights.

Musharraf also won the “media war” during the famous Agra Summit in 2001 when he addressed Indian editors, seeking to highlight the Pakistani point of view and upstage India.

But Singh seems to have turned the tables, possibly leaving Pakistan on the backfoot for now.

Some people in India are calling upon the new coalition government to make a series of bold moves towards Pakistan that will compel the neighbour to put its money where  the mouth is.

If Pakistan keeps saying that it cannot fully and single-mindedly go after militants on its northwest frontier and indeed increasingly within the heartland because of the threat it faces from India, then New Delhi must call its bluff, argued authors Nitin Pai and Sushant K. Singh in a recent piece for India's Mint newspaper.

How about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, back for a second term, giving a categorical public declaration that Pakistan need not fear an Indian military attack so long as the Pakistan army is engaged in fighting with Taliban militants?  While a verbal commitment may not convince the military brass in Rawalpindi, it will likely play well in Washington as it rathchets up pressure on the Pakistan army to take the battle to the militants.

Second and to back up its assurance, India could move some of the army strike formations from the international border with Pakistan in Punjab and Rajasthan. "Such a bold, strategic move will not only make India's verbal assurances credible, but it will also immediately result in irresistible pressure on the Pakistani army to commit more of its troops to the western border," the authors wrote in the Mint piece.

Clearly, the aim of such a peace gamble is to expose the contradiction within the Pakistani position, force them to either go full throttle after militant groups, some of whom are suspected to be tied to its intelligence agencies, or  face America's wrath.

Moving Indian troops back will compel the Pakistan army to act against the Taliban, and because it is incapable of doing so, will cause the United States to realise that there is no alternative to dismantling the military-jihadi complex, Pai and Singh argue.

Taking out Pakistan's military-jihadi establishment is really what the battle in Pakistan is all about - that is the refrain you hear incessantly in the strategic establishment in New Delhi  as I did during a visit over the past few weeks, and one you can be sure it will be telling U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expected to visit sometime in July.

But in the immediate future, is such a bold gamble as troop pullback really going to work?
Two issues. One, what about Kashmir ? No pullback is proposed on Kashmir where tens of thousands of troops are massed on both sides of the Line of Control, and according to some Pakistani experts this really is where is there should be a re-deployment of forces.

Ejaz Haider in a piece for Pakistan's Daily Times, says the bulk of India's military deployment  iscentred on Pakistan, with 7 of the army's 13 corps "specific to Pakistan."  In any case, given that the Pakistan army's numerical strength is half that of India, the deployment of the Pakistan army along the eastern frontier is much thinner than India's.

And if Pakistan does not face the threat of a hot war from India as everyone keeps telling it, Haider says, then India too does not face that prospect.

"If Pakistan is asked by the US and other western capitals on the basis of this argument to pull out troops from the eastern border and deploy them to the west, then perhaps India should also be called upon to thin its much-heavier Pakistan-specific deployment along the international border, the Line of Control, the working boundary and the actual ground position line," he says.

But can the Indian army really thin out of Kashmir? At this point when the threat of infiltration of militants from Pakistan is again being talked about?

And finally does Singh, even with a stronger parliamentary support after a general election, really have the people's endorsement of cutting back troops from the Pakistan frontier. The wounds from the 26/11 attack on Mumbai for which the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba has been held responsible, remain fresh for a large number of Indians.  They are not in a mood to forgive or forget.

[Photos of Indian and Pakistani troops at a border checkpoint and the site of a car bombing in Lahore on May 27)