To be brutally honest, no solution to the Kashmir problem can be found through politics alone. The solution to this problem, like the solution to many of India and Pakistan’s other entrenched problems, will happen once economics begins to throttle politics.

The solution in Kashmir, and this is by no means a new or original idea— but it gains renewed importance in the current context—lies in making borders irrelevant. And that’s where liberal economics has to play the critical role, much as it has done in Europe twice over. If one looks at the long history of the twentieth century no one could have quite predicted that a continent which first spent much of the period between 1900 and 1950 tearing itself apart on issues of nationalism, ethnicity and borders (the World Wars) and much of the period between 1950 and 1990 splitting hairs and indeed countries on ideology (the Cold War), is now a role model for peace, integration and economic and social development. As of today, the only significant European countries outside of the much enlarged EU encompassing only enemies and rivals as diverse as the UK, France, Germany, Poland and Bulgaria, lie in the remains of the former Yugoslavia (except Slovenia). There is a lesson in this too. Yugoslavia, united in the aftermath of World War II by Tito, and despite its flaws of the next 45 years, the richest country of Eastern Europe in 1990, has torn itself apart to violence, civil war and under-development, on political issues (mostly ethnic and nationalist issues), whereas the rest of Eastern Europe has marched ahead—rapidly liberalising their controlled economies and democratising their authoritarian states—with a lot of help from integrated Europe.

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