'Challenges confronting CPEC'

This is apropos a Business Recorder op-ed "Challenges confronting CPEC" carried by the newspaper yesterday. The writer, M Ziauddin, has passionately argued, among other things, that "Perhaps Pakistan could take the initiative in this regard by offering Afghanistan and India transit trade route through Pakistan which the two countries have been longing for decades. This move would perhaps neutralise India's plans to foment trouble in Balochistan and its objections to GB becoming a part of the CPEC".
His is a valid argument. The problem, however, is that India cannot be 'appeased' through its inclusion in the CPEC owing to a variety of reasons. One of the key reasons is New Delhi's stance in relation to the South China Sea dispute. The second, but more important reason, is the Sino-Indian border dispute. India, perhaps, is still nursing ambitions to exact the revenge of its humiliating defeat in the 1962 war at the hands of China.