Pakistan has been plunged into a Constitutional crisis, thanks to the subversion of a no-confidence vote in the National Assembly by the popularly elected Prime Minister Imran Khan. It was quite a sight to watch the Prime Minister of Pakistan denouncing its long-standing ally, the United States, as having been the architect of a “conspiracy” to oust him (a charge that the US has since denied). A reckless megalomaniac, Khan has sought to use foreign policy to further his own populist ambitions. He probably traipsed around to hail Russian President Vladimir Putin just after his invasion of Ukraine for the sole purpose of brandishing his just-acquired anti-American credentials. But he perhaps is too out of his depth to understand that his actions do not signify a policy shift in Pakistan, given Pentagon’s long association and continuing support to its security establishment. Moscow is hardly likely to have forgotten Khan’s public protests against its previous action in Chechnya, while Ukraine which has consistently supported Pakistan in its stance on Kashmir, must have felt betrayed.

Khan, like most self-obsessed leaders, is a bad loser. He stalled the no-trust motion by labelling the Opposition as anti-national, concocting a conspiracy theory on the basis of a ‘cable’ prepared by a junior US diplomat. Khan and his aides fell back on Article 5 of the Constitution which says that “loyalty to the State is the basic duty of every citizen”. The people were told that the no-trust motion was a conspiracy hatched by a “powerful country” that did not want Pakistan to have an independent foreign policy. While the Supreme Court is expected to determine the future course of events, it is a fair bet that the Army will play a big role here. Pakistan has after all been a fragile democracy, with the Army directly or indirectly calling the shots always. Khan, like most leaders before him, enjoyed the support of the Army. That plank has now been withdrawn, if the sparring in the open between him and the Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa is any indication. The latter has been appreciative of the US’s longstanding support to Pakistan.

These are troubling developments for India — regardless of the fact that the Army, the de facto boss there, has mooted talks with India and opening up of trade. Trade ties have come to a virtual halt after the Pulwama attacks and revocation of Article 370 with respect to Kashmir. But Pakistan is in economic crisis and is perhaps eyeing cheap imports of wheat, sugar and cotton, among other goods, from India. Inflation in Pakistan is raging at 13 per cent, with the Pakistan rupee’s value having fallen by over 30 per cent against the dollar in the three-and-a-half years of Khan’s government. External debt is close to 40 per cent of the GDP, which is now below $300 billion — a level that was touched in 2018. Political and economic turmoil is fertile ground for non-State actors to become active, to India’s detriment. India must be circumspect and shrewd here, amidst a general climate of regional and global turbulence. A capricious head of State in India’s neighbourhood is not good news at all.

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