Singh does not need parliamentary approval of the deal, which will open the way for the United States and other nations to sell nuclear reactors and fuel to India for peaceful purposes. If he survives a vote of no confidence, as expected, Singh will put the accord into effect once the US Congress approves its final details later this year. Such approval in Bush’s twilight months will represent a rare triumph, which has been shepherded along by Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and other forward-looking officials.

But that is only half the anniversary story. Pakistan at 60 represents failure, both for itself and for US diplomacy, as starkly as India represents the promise of success on both counts.

Successive Pakistani military regimes have ousted corrupt and ineffective politicians, feathered their own nests for as long as they could, and then turned the shambolic states of affairs they have created over to unreformed politicians, starting the cycle all over again. The implicit deal was that neither side would implement fundamental change in the deeply fractured society they ruled.

When he took power in 1999, Musharraf seemed capable of breaking the pattern. Less corrupt, far more agile and a great deal smarter than previous military rulers, the general was not an unappealing alternative to the civilians he displaced. His periodic peaceful overtures to India seemed more genuine than anything accomplished by elected Prime Ministers such as Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

Musharraf self-destructed despite — or perhaps because of — the windfall of US aid that poured in after September 11, 2001. He received kid-gloves treatment from Washington even as he failed crucial tests on punishing his country’s globally destabilising nuclear proliferation and eliminating al-Qaeda, Taliban and Kashmiri terrorist bases that are aided by his intelligence service. The civilian population is effectively in revolt against Musharraf.

... contd.