Losing the narrative

IN a review of Anatol Lieven’s book Pakistan: A Hard Country, in the Guardian of May 1, 2011, Pankaj Mishra wrote:
“[…] [A]n un-blinkered vision of South Asia would feature a country whose fanatically ideological government in 1998 conducted nuclear tests, threatened its neighbour with all-out war and, four years later, presided over the massacre of 2,000 members of a religious minority. Long embattled against secessionist insurgencies […], the ‘flailing’ state […] now struggles to contain a militant movement in its heartland. It is also where thousands of women are killed every year for failing to bring sufficient dowry and nearly 200,000 farmers have committed suicide in the past decade.” Mishra added: “This country is not Pakistan; it is India.”