Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://www.southasiainvestor.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ
Marking World Food Day today, October 16, 2009, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) called on the world to remember the more than one billion urgently hungry people, nearly half of them in India, with inadequate access to food.
“World Food Day is actually "No Food Day" for almost one out of every six people around the world this year,” WFP executive director Josette Sheeran said in Rome. “Our challenge is to turn ‘No Food Day’ back into ‘World Food Day’ for the hundreds of millions without food on their table tonight.”
Babu Matthew, country director for ActionAid India, said: "The dark side of India's economic growth has been that the excluded social groups have been further marginalized, compounding their hunger, malnutrition and even leading to starvation deaths."
Among the developing countries ranked by Action Aid for Hunger, Brazil wins the top spot with B grade (no country gets an A on a scale from A to E), with the aid agency praising President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's support for land reform and community kitchens for the poor.
ActionAid said Brazil's success shows "what can be achieved when the state has both resources and political will to tackle hunger".
China (B grade) is also gets high marks for cutting the number of hungry by 58 million in 10 years through strong state support for smallholder farmers. But the report is critical of resurgent India, which receives the lowest possible E (essentially an F) grade for hunger. It says 30 million Indians have been added to the ranks of the hungry since the mid-1990s and 46% of children are underweight. Pakistan, with grade D, is also ranked low, with 31% of its children underweight. Bangladesh, receiving C grade, is praised for reducing the number of chronically food-insecure people from 40 million to 27 million in the past 10 years and for improving childhood nutrition in the past two decades. But the report says Bangladesh has a long way to go to reduce overall malnutrition and build a sustainable agricultural system.
A recent British government report has described India as nutritional weakling. There is widespread hunger and malnutrition in all parts of India. India ranks 66th on the 2008 Global Hunger Index of 88 countries while Pakistan is slightly better at 61 and Bangladesh slightly worse at 70. The first India State Hunger Index (Ishi) report in 2008 found that Madhya Pradesh had the most severe level of hunger in India, comparable to Chad and Ethiopia. Four states — Punjab, Kerala, Haryana and Assam — fell in the 'serious' category. "Affluent" Gujarat, 13th on the Indian list is below Haiti, ranked 69. The authors said India's poor performance was primarily due to its relatively high levels of child malnutrition and under-nourishment resulting from calorie deficient diets.
According to Economic Survey 2008-09, presented by Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, Pakistan's economy grew by a mere 2.0 percent, barely keeping pace with population growth. The growth fell significantly short of the 4.5 percent target for the year, which was already very modest compared with an average of 7% economic growth witnessed from 2001-2008. As a result of the nation's economic troubles, there have been massive job losses and significant anecdotal evidence of increase in poverty and hunger. The lines for free food paid for by charities have been growing, with a sense of desperation not seen before, brought in sharp focus by the shameful deaths of several destitute women in Karachi scrambling to grab free wheat bags.
The ActionAid hunger score card is a sobering reminder for both India and Pakistan of how the nuclear armed neighbors lag most of the nations of the world in meeting the basic nutritional requirements of their people. Particularly disturbing are the high rates of underweight children at 44% in India and 31% in Pakistan. This egregious neglect of children by South Asians amounts to condemning their future generations to permanent brain damage.
The best way to stop the increasing carnage on the streets of Pakistan, at least in the short term, is to stop the terrorist attacks well before they occur. Unfortunately, however, the intelligence agencies which are supposed to frustrate the blood-thirsty attackers appear totally ineffective, even paralyzed. The agencies, including the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB), are caught in a continuing power struggle between the civilian political elite and the military brass for control, even as terror strikes on a daily basis, claiming dozens of innocent lives.
While the battle for the control of ISI is making headlines with the well-publicized conditions attached to the recent US aid bill at the urging of Pakistan's Ambassador Haqqani, what is less well known is the disgraceful attempt by President Zardari to pack the IB and the Interior ministry with his cronies.
Let's look at the story of Shoaib Suddle, who is known to be very close to Zardari. Suddle was the Karachi Police Chief in September, 1996, when Murtaza Ali Bhutto, the younger brother of Benazir, who was challenging the role of Zardari in the PPP, was allegedly killed by the police in an apparently planned ambush. Suddle is one of the accused in the murder case filed in this connection. Suddle was appointed by Zardari in June, 2008, to head the IB, in spite of strong opposition from Prime Minister Gilani and against the advice of the military. He was given an extension of two years after he reached retirement age. In April this year, a Pakistan Supreme Court judge set aside the extension given to him and other police officers facing trial in connection with the murder of Murtaza Bhutto. In spite of this rebuff by the apex court, he was taken to the US and Europe by Zardari along with the Director General of the ISI. Shortly after his return from the trip with Zardari, Prime Minister Gilani had Suddle replaced by Javed Noor as the DGIB in deference to the Supreme Court judgment.
Pakistan's top law enforcement officer and Zardari's man responsible for internal security is Interior Minister Rehman Malik. Malik was the person responsible for the personal security of Benazir Bhutto when she returned to Pakistan under a deal with former President Musharraf brokered by the US in 2007. After the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, there were accusations of lax security against Rehman Malik, and serious questions were raised about his absence from the scene of the deadly attack in Rawalpindi. In his current role as Interior Minister, Malik's effectiveness is hampered by the fact that he has had a rocky relationship with the ISI since the 1990s, when he was the deputy chief of the FIA.
Even as the Pakistani Army prepares a counterinsurgency campaign in FATA, it is extremely important to have serious intelligence professionals working together to gain the necessary knowledge to disrupt and disable the terrorist networks, which appear to be spreading to the heartland of Pakistan's Punjab province.
As the nation bleeds like never before, it is the prime need of the hour for both the military and political leaders in Pakistan to start seriously cooperating on matters of coordinated intelligence gathering and concerted counter-terror strategy, organization, plans and actions.
There is also a sense of urgency to initiate longer term actions to address the underlying causes of terror by offering alternatives to the young people who are recruited as suicide bombers, wreaking havoc on innocent lives on almost daily basis.
“The (Pakistan) army had to retrain almost from scratch to meet the new challenge and it has done remarkably well in completely altering the training priority and emphasis in such a short period.”
Col. Brian Cloughley, author of “A History of the Pakistan Army”, talking about Pakistan Army's Counterinsurgency capability.
The Pakistani army’s war against the Taliban continues to make headlines. But there are several other reasons for the global interest in that institution.
The Pakistani army is one of the world’s largest and it is armed with nuclear weapons. It has fought three major wars with India and a few minor ones. Courtesy of four coups, it has ruled the country for more than half its history. And it maintains a sizable presence in the economy.
Brian Cloughley’s “History of the Pakistan Army” has just gone into its third edition and that makes him eminently qualified to rate the army’s combat effectiveness. He is a Briton who served as a colonel in the Australian army. In Brian’s view, “The army is combat effective, with the caveat that there is always room for improvement. One problem is that large-scale exercises are extremely expensive. Given the fuel consumption of armored units, for example, the bill for a division-sized exercise becomes astronomical, and Pakistan can’t afford it. So, although the army is very good, it is suffering from lack of large-scale training.”
Of course, this lack of training could hide major weaknesses such as the ones the army has manifested in prior wars. For example, poor coordination of armor and infantry units blunted Pakistan’s counter-attack in the Kasur-Khem Karan sector in 1965 forcing Pakistan to the cease-fire table faster than anyone would have expected. But Brian felt such blunders were unlikely to be repeated.
I asked him whether the army had improved in the past decade. Brian said the army had been improving since General Aslam Beg’s tenure as army chief who “encouraged wider thinking about tactics.” In particular, a much better logistics chain was established and “contributed immensely to the army’s war-fighting capabilities.”
I asked him whether the army had learned much from the 1971 war. Given the one-sided nature of that war, Brian said the war yielded “little of tactical importance.” But a strategic lesson was learned, that “there is no point in going to war unless you are absolutely certain you have the capability to win.”
I asked him if there was a spirit of critical inquiry in today’s army. He said there were some very critical minds in the army and that some of the Corps Commanders’ meetings had been very argumentative. He pointed out those generals could speak up without risking their careers since only one or two were going to get the fourth star.
He said that training at the two-star level and above was “very good” but added that there was no way of knowing how today’s generals will perform in future wars. He also expressed a concern about “the standard of junior officers themselves. They are promoted too quickly and don’t serve with soldiers for long enough as lieutenants.”
I asked him about the army’s equipment. He said, “You will never get a soldier admitting that there are no equipment problems – probably because there are always some sort of problems, but from boots to tanks, things work, and that’s what matters.”
He added that in the past a major problem was that most of the critical, high powered equipment was imported. Now, about a third of the tanks were produced indigenously and the US M-113 armored personnel carriers had been modified and were being built from scratch. The army is almost self-sufficient in ammunition and aerial bombs. But all of the artillery continues to be imported.
I asked what threats preoccupy the army. He said terrorism and anarchy in the tribal areas: “The army had to retrain almost from scratch to meet the new challenge and it has done remarkably well in completely altering the training priority and emphasis in such a short period.”
Of course, the army contends that it continues to face a major threat along the Indian border and finding a “balance between commitment to NWFP/FATA and maintaining a credible deterrent in the east is difficult.” India continues to voice threats that any act of terror that originates from Pakistan will be followed by a short intense war.
However, Brian is convinced that “nobody could say that such a war would be short. It would almost certainly go nuclear very quickly.” To me, that raises the issue of why Pakistan needs to have such a large army now that it has gone overtly nuclear.
I asked if the army had concluded that national governance was not in its best interest since it detracted from its primary function. He said yes but qualified it by saying that if the army senses that the country is faced with a total breakdown, it may step in.
The problem, in my opinion, is that has always used this excuse to seize power in the past. One can only hope that if the army steps in for a fifth time, it will break from past practice and only stay in power long enough to hold elections and transfer power to the elected representatives.
I asked Brian if the army was able to carry out joint operations with the air force and the navy. He said joint-ness continued to be an area that needed improvement even though PAF-army cooperation had improved markedly in the recent war against the Taliban.
Brian added that true joint-ness would only arise when Pakistan appoints a Chief of Defense Force (as is the case in the UK) but conceded that he did not see that happening any time soon.
When asked to compare the Pakistani and Indian armies, he said the two were very similar with Pakistan having “an edge in quality of armor. This might appear strange, but is caused by India’s obsession with the ‘indigenous’ (foreign-engined) tank, the Arjun, which is a disaster.” He added, in so far as training and general professionalism were concerned, “I would be happy to serve in either army. You can’t get a greater compliment than that.”
Finally, I asked him to name the main weakness of the army. He said, “The army suffers from a shortage of junior officers, and especially from a dearth of high quality junior officers. This is going to have a debilitating effect as time goes on. The obvious answer is to make the career more attractive – that is, better pay. But it is impossible for the public sector to pay comparable salaries to those offered to graduates by commercial enterprises.”
Over all, the army got really good marks from Brian. Perhaps it has learned its lessons.
- AhmadFaruqui@gmail.com
Here's a video report about Pakistan's weapons development:
In addition to borrowing heavily, the US collects over 28% of the nation's GDP to support various government expenditures. As the government spending continues to grow to stimulate demand, the US national debt is ballooning, forcing Uncle Sam to pursue offshore tax cheats.
Thursday is the deadline for Americans to come clean about the money they have hidden offshore, in places like Swiss bank accounts. No one can say with certainty how much money is out there — the accounts are secret — but the hoard may be tens of billions of dollars, The New York Times’s Lynnley Browning reports.
Several thousand wealthy Americans have come forward, hoping to avoid large fines or possibly even prison. But many others are still weighing their options. The choice is clear: They can confess and pay the penalties, or gamble that they will not get caught. With the deadline only days away, tax lawyers say they are being inundated by anxious clients, according to the New York Times.
In contrast to the US, Pakistan collects only about 11% of the country's GDP in tax revenue. Farm income, mostly earned by the nation's feudal ruling elite, accounting for about 20% of the GDP is entirely exempt from any income tax under the law. Only 2.5 million of 172 million Pakistanis pay income tax. Of them, 1.8 million are salaried and paid Rs.27.37 billion in taxes during ended fiscal 2008-09, according to a report to the Senate by Minister of State for Finance and Economic Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar. The government runs large current account deficits, forcing it to beg and borrow to meet the budget needs. The budget deficit for 2008-09 was 4.3% of GDP and it is likely to grow with lower revenue amidst slowing economy in 2009-10. The tax evasion in Pakistan is estimated at Rs500 – 600 billion a year, almost half of the total tax collection of about Rs1200 billion during 2008-08. The untapped amount is almost equivalent to the country’s annual budget deficit. In a country where majority of the transactions, including purchase of big ticket items, occur in cash, there is widespread tax evasion and a sizable informal economy. The estimates for Pakistan's underground economy vary from 25% to 50% of the formal economy. A recent World Bank (WB) report concluded that every Pakistani citizen evaded tax amounting to Rs 4800 in the year 2007-08, while the total tax evaded in the period stood at Rs 796 billion.
During the height of corruption under Bhutto-Zardari-Sharif governments in the 1990s, the size of the underground economy rose to almost 55% in 1999, by one estimate. As the military regime of President Musharraf cracked down on tax cheats, the nation's revenue collection doubled from Rs. 500 million in 2000 to to Rs. 1.04 trillion in 2007-08.
While the income, assets and taxes of the president and top government officials are publicly disclosed and heavily scrutinized by all in the US, no such transparency exists in Pakistan. In fact, tax cheating in Pakistan starts at the top. The richest and the most powerful politicians in the ruling elite pay little or no taxes, setting a horrible example for the rest of the nation.
For example, Benazir Bhutto, Asif Zardari and Nusrat Bhutto declared assets totaling $1.2 million in 1996 and never told Pakistani authorities of any foreign bank accounts or properties, as required by law in Pakistan. Zardari declared no net assets at all in 1990, the year Bhutto's first term ended, and only $402,000 in 1996, according to a report in the New York Times.
Bhutto's family's income tax declarations were similarly modest. The highest income Bhutto declared was $42,200 in 1996, with $5,110 in tax. In two of her years as prime minister, 1993 and 1994, she paid no income tax at all. Zardari's highest declared income was $13,100, also in 1996, when interest on bank deposits he controlled in Switzerland exceeded that much every week. In June 2008, a senior PPP leader and president of Pakistan's Supreme Court Bar Association, Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan, who was interior minister in Benazir Bhutto's first government, told James Traub of the New York Times that most of the corruption and criminal cases against PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari which were dropped recently in Pakistan were justified, and that the PPP was a feudal political party led by a figure (Zardari) accused of corruption and violence. After a moment's reflection, Ahsan further added, “The type of expenses that she had and he has are not from sources of income that can be lawfully explained and accounted for.”
It was only in 2007 that President Asif Ali Zardari returned to Pakistan under an amnesty, euphemistically called National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), sponsored by the Americans. However, the Americans know that the corruption charges against Zardari were credible and he, along with his late wife, was convicted in at least one case by a Swiss judge. The conviction was under appeal in Switzerland when Pakistan government withdrew all charges pursuant to the NRO signed by then President Musharraf under pressure from the Americans.
There have been widespread complaints in Islamabad, including by Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, that the government had solutions to improve the power output but was refusing to implement them in order to benefit a handful of power plant operators, such as those supplying rental power at exorbitant rates, while the IPPs are not being paid for supplying power from currently underutilized installed capacity. Requests for information by Transparency International Pakistan regarding rental power contracts have been ignored by the Ministry of Water and Power. There are widespread corruption allegations against Mr. Zardari personally who has influenced the award of the 783 MW rental power contracts to a former governor of Oklahoma and his Pakistani partner.
There are reports that Mr. Zardari is continuing to extort businesses to enrich himself and his cronies. As Tariq Ali put it in a recent article for Counterpunch, "Zardari has carried on from where he left off as minister of investment in his late wife’s second government. Within weeks of occupying President’s House, his minions were ringing the country’s top businessmen, demanding a share of their profits."
Ali continues, "Take the case of Mr X, who owns one of the country’s largest banks. He got a call. Apparently the president wanted to know why his bank had sacked a PPP member soon after Benazir Bhutto’s fall in the late 1990s. X said he would find out and let them know. It emerged that the sacked clerk had been caught with his fingers literally in the till. President’s House was informed. The explanation was rejected. The banker was told that the clerk had been victimized for political reasons. The man had to be reinstated and his salary over the last 18 years paid in full together with the interest due. The PPP had also to be compensated and would expect a cheque (the sum was specified) soon. Where the president leads, his retainers follow. Many members of the cabinet and their progeny are busy milking businessmen and foreign companies."
The PPP leadership is not alone in evading taxes. The PML leadership appears to be just as guilty. The entire Sharif family paid a nominal income tax of Rs 250,000, wealth tax of Rs 550,000 and agriculture tax of Rs 130,000, considering their vast assets and properties of at least 23 sugar and textile mills and huge agricultural land, according to the News. The tax evasion by the the Sharif family was the reason that the donor agencies giving aid to Pakistan in late 1990s insisted on publishing tax records of all lawmakers and senior bureaucrats, The News said, adding that for this reason, the donor agencies insisted on broadening the tax net to prop up government revenues.
As Pakistan faces a severe economic crisis and the current leaders appear ready to mortgage the nation's future, the chances of the ruling elite setting a good example by paying their taxes in full appear rather remote. In fact, the feudal politicians are fighting the current IMF condition for even a modest tax on farm income. The only hope for a fairer tax system and improved collection from the rich and powerful to fund education and health care lies in serious and sustained pressure on Pakistan's ruling elite from the donors and lenders, backed by the United States.
There is nothing more basic in terms of human necessities than the adequate availability of roti, kapra aur makaan. Going beyond these bare essentials of food, clothing and housing, one can add sanitation, health care and education. Let's examine how the two biggest nations in South Asia are coping with such fundamental necessities of their population: 1. Food:
Food is the most basic necessity of all. In terms of being better fed, Pakistanis consume significantly more dairy products, sugar, wheat, meat, eggs and poultry on a per capita basis than Indians, according to FAO data. Average Pakistani gets about 50% of daily calories from non-food-grain sources versus 33% for average Indians.
There is widespread hunger and malnutrition in all parts of India. India ranks 66th on the 2008 Global Hunger Index of 88 countries while Pakistan is slightly better at 61 and Bangladesh slightly worse at 70. The first India State Hunger Index (Ishi) report in 2008 found that Madhya Pradesh had the most severe level of hunger in India, comparable to Chad and Ethiopia. Four states — Punjab, Kerala, Haryana and Assam — fell in the 'serious' category. "Affluent" Gujarat, 13th on the Indian list is below Haiti, ranked 69. The authors said India's poor performance was primarily due to its relatively high levels of child malnutrition and under-nourishment resulting from calorie deficient diets.
Last year, Indian Planning Commission member Syeda Hameed acknowledged that India is worse than Bangladesh and Pakistan when it comes to nourishment and is showing little improvement.
Speaking at a conference on "Malnutrition an emergency: what it costs the nation", she said even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during interactions with the Planning Commission has described malnourishment as the "blackest mark".
"I should not compare. But countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are better," she said. The conference was organized last year by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Ministry of Development of Northeastern Region.
According to India's Family Health Survey, almost 46 percent of children under the age of three are undernourished - an improvement of just one percent in the last seven years. This is only a shade better than Sub-Saharan Africa where about 35 percent of children are malnourished.
India has recently been described as a "nutritional weakling" by a British report.
2. Clothing:
According to Werner International, Pakistan's per capita consumption of textile fibers is about 4 Kg versus 2.8 Kg for India. Global average is 6.8 Kg and the industrialized countries' average consumption is 17 Kg per person per per year.
3. Shelter:
There is widespread homelessness in India, with a population 7 times larger than Pakistan's, with the urgent need for 72 million housing units. Pakistan, too, has a housing crisis and needs about 7 million additional housing units, about a tenth of India's shortage, according to the data presented at the World Bank Regional Conference on Housing last year.
4. Sanitation:
India might be an emerging economic power, but it is way behind Pakistan, Bangladesh and even Afghanistan in providing basic sanitation facilities, a key reason behind the death of 2.1 million children under five in the country.
Lizette Burgers, chief of water and environment sanitation of the Unicef, recently said India is making progress in providing sanitation but it lags behind most of the other countries in South Asia. A former Indian minister Mr Raghuvansh Prasad Singh told the BBC that more than 65% of India's rural population defecated in the open, along roadsides, railway tracks and fields, generating huge amounts of excrement every day.
While a mere 14 percent of people in rural India - that account for 65 percent of its 1.1 billion population - had access to toilets in 1990, the number had gone up to 28 percent in 2006. In comparison, 33 percent rural Pakistanis had access to toilets in 1990 and it went up to an impressive 58 percent in 2006, according to UNICEF.
Why is it that Pakistan has had more success than India in improving sanitation?
Both India and Pakistan have Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) campaigns supported by UNICEF, with the aim of creating open defecation free villages through education and funding. For reasons which are not obvious, it seems that the strategy has produced better results in Pakistan than in India so far. One possible reason may be that CLTS India is state driven versus CLTS Pakistan is driven by community champions, according to a paper by Lyla Mehta that sheds light on how the CLTS campaigns work in India and Pakistan.
As an example, let's compare India's largest slum Dharavi with Pakistan's Orangi Town. The fact is that Orangi is nothing like Dharavi in terms of the quality of its housing or the services available to its residents. While Dharavi has only one toilet per 1440 residents and most of its residents use Mahim Creek, a local river, for urination and defecation, Orangi has an elaborate sanitation system built by its citizens. Under Orangi Pilot Project's guidance, between 1981 and 1993 Orangi residents installed sewers serving 72,070 of 94,122 houses. To achieve this, community members spent more than US$2 million of their own money, and OPP invested about US$150,000 in research and extension of new technologies. Orangi pilot project has been admired widely for its work with urban poor.
5. Healthcare:
A basic indicator of healthcare is access to physicians. There are 80 doctors per 100,000 population in Pakistan versus 60 in India, according to the World Health Organization. For comparison with the developed world, the US and Europe have over 250 physicians per 100,000 people. UNDP recently reported that life expectancy at birth in Pakistan is 66.2 years versus India's 63.4 years.
Access to healhcare in South Asia, particularly due to the wide gender gap, presents a huge challenge, and it requires greater focus to ensure improvement in human resources. Though the life expectancy has increased to 66.2 years in Pakistan and 63.4 years in India, it is still low relative to the rest of the world. The infant mortality rate remains stubbornly high, particular in Pakistan, though it has come down down from 76 per 1000 live births in 2003 to 65 in 2009. With 320 mothers dying per 100,000 live births in Pakistan and 450 in India, the maternal mortality rate in South Asia is very high, according to UNICEF.
6. Education:
India's literacy rate of 61% is well ahead of Pakistan's 50% rate. In higher education, six Indian universities have made the list of the top 400 universities published by Times Higher Education Supplement this year. Only one Pakistani university was considered worthy of such honor.
Pakistan has consistently scored lower on the HDI sub-index on education than its overall HDI index. It is obvious from the UNDP report and other sources that Pakistan's dismal record in enrolling and educating its young people, particularly girls, stands in the way of any significant positive development in the nation. The recent announcement of a new education policy that calls for more than doubling the education spending from about 3% to 7% of GDP is a step in the right direction. However, money alone will not solve the deep-seated problems of poor access to education, rampant corruption and the ghost schools that only exist on paper, that have simply lined the pockets of corrupt politicians and officials. Any additional money allocated must be part of a broader push for transparent and effective delivery of useful education to save the people from the curses of poverty, ignorance and extremism which are seriously hurting the nation.
In spite of deficiency in education, how is it that Pakistanis can maintain better standards of living in terms of food, clothing, shelter, sanitation and healthcare than their neighbor India? The first answer is that, according to the 2009 UN Human and Income Poverty Report, the people living under $1.25 a day in India is 41.6 percent, about twice as much as Pakistan's 22.6 percent. The second answer can be found in the fact that Pakistanis' real per capita incomes are actually higher than reported by various agencies. The most recent real per capita income data was calculated and reported by Asian Development Bank based on a detailed study of a list of around 800 household and nonhousehold products in 2005 and early 2006 to compare real purchasing power for ADB's trans-national income comparison program (ICP). The ICP concluded that Pakistan had the highest per capita income at HK$ 13,528 among the largest nations in South Asia. It reported India’s per capita as HK $12,090.
Conclusion:
Clearly, the status of an average Indian is not only worse than an average Pakistani's, the abject deprivation in India is comparable to the nations in sub-Saharan Africa. However, Pakistanis do need to worry about their woefully inadequate state of education and literacy. They must find a way to develop the skills, grow the economy and create opportunities for their growing young population. As Pakistan's former finance minister Salman Shah recently told the wall Street Journal, "Pakistan has to be part of globalization or you end up with Talibanization. Until we put these (Pakistan's) young people into industrialization and services, and off-farm work, they will drift into this negative extremism; there is nothing worse than not having a job." Unless Pakistanis heed Shah's advice, there is real danger that Pakistan will slip into total chaos and violence, endangering the entire nation in the foreseeable future.
To summarize, this post has discussed six different indicators of life in any nation: Availability of food, clothing, shelter, sanitation, health care and education. The published data that I have shared with you shows that PAKISTAN IS AHEAD OF INDIA IN FIVE OF THE SIX INDICATORS. In education, however, Pakistan is marginally behind India, which itself suffers from low levels of literacy and wide gender gap resulting in very poor showing on the UNDP HDI this year, and in prior years. In spite of heavy visa restrictions and quotas imposed by many nations around the world, about a million Indians manage to leave India in search of a better life. In fact, India dropped six places on the world rankings from a low of 128 to an even lower 134. Unfortunately, Pakistan has also slipped three ranks on the list, down from 138 to 141, mainly due to its deficit in literacy and gender discrimination.
Here are some more recent comparative indicators in South Asia:
One out of every three illiterate adults in the world is an Indian, according to UNESCO.
One out of very two hungry persons in the world is an Indian, according to World Food Program.
Almost one out of two Indians lives below the poverty line of $1.25 per day.
And yet, India spends $30 billion on defense, and just increased the defense budget by 32% this year.
Poverty:
Population living under $1.25 a day - India: 41.6% Pakistan: 22.6% Source: UNDP
Underweight Children Under Five (in percent) Pakistan 38% India 46% Source: UNICEF
Life expectancy at birth (years), 2007 India: 63.4 Pakistan: 66.2 Source: HDR2009
The latest edition of the world's top universities from The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) has few surprises in 2009. The top 10 Universities are: Harvard (US), Cambridge (UK), Yale(US), UCL, London (UK), Imperial College, London and Oxford (both UK, joint 5), Chicago (US), Princeton (US), MIT, Massachusetts (US) and California Institute of Technology (US). As always, the top of the list is dominated by American and British Universities this year, together making up about 40% of the entire list of 200. The US universities account for more than a quarter, while the UK institutions make up about 15% of the top 200 universities. Outside of the US and the UK, there is fair representation of Australian, Canadian and European institutions and a smattering of Asian universities from China, Japan, South Korea, India, Singapore and Malaysia.
A US publication, US News & World Report, also published its ranking of the world's top universities in June, this year. USN&WR rankings are not identical but quite similar to the Times list.
The number of Asian universities in the list of top 100 has increased from 14 to 16. The University of Tokyo, at 22, is the highest ranked Asian university, ahead of the University of Hong Kong that stands at 24.
Leading UK universities said institutions in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong were "snapping at the heels" of western institutions, arguing they need more funding to compete on the global stage.
However, there has been a significant fall in the number of North American universities in the top 100, from 42 in 2008 to 36 this year.
The rankings are based on an international survey of 9,000 academics who assessed the institutions' research facility, teaching quality and ability to recruit staff and students abroad.
"The broad message of these tables is clear - the leading UK research universities are held in high esteem internationally but countries like China and Korea, which are investing massively in their best institutions, are snapping at our heels" Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group of universities said.
Piatt said the UK was less well-funded than its competitors and if public spending cuts hit budgets they would be under increasing pressure.
The entire Muslim world is represented by just one university from Malaysia on the top 200 list. Other Muslim nations including Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and UAE are represented by one or more institutions among the top 400 universities listed by the Times of London for 2009. Egypt, the largest Arab nation by population, is conspicuous by its absence from this prestigious list of 400 institutions of higher learning.
Here are some of the key highlights:
1. Among the top 20 universities, including one tied ranking, there are 13 American, 5 British, 1 Australian, 1 Canadian and 1 Swiss on the list.
2. Top Canadian university is McGill in Montreal, at number 18, up from 20 last year. Australian National University and ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) are ranked at 17 and 20 respectively. Another top Canadian University in top 200, University of Toronto, is ranked 29.
3. Top Asian universities are University of Tokyo at 22 (down from 19 last year), followed by University of Hong Kong at 24 (up from 26), National University of Singapore at 30, and Hong Kong University of Technology at 35 (up from 39).
4. Outside of Hong Kong, the top Chinese university is Tsinghua at 49 (up from 56), followed by Peking University at 52 (down from 50).
5. The top Irish university is Trinity College, Dublin, at 43, up from 49.
6. Two campuses of the Indian Institutes of Technology make the list, down from three in 2006. IIT Bombay is ranked 163, up from 174 last year, and IIT Delhi at 181, down from 154 last year. Beyond the top 200, there are four more Indian institutions in the top 400 list. These include IIT Kanpur at 237, IIT Madras at 284, University of Delhi at 291 and IIT Kharagpur at 335.
7. Except for UC Santa Cruz (at 252) and the relatively new campuses at Merced and Riverside (at 285), the rest of the University of California campuses are on the top 200 best universities list. UCLA is at 32, UC Berkeley 39, UC San Diego 76, UC Santa Barbara 106, UC Davis 108, and UC Irvine at 161. On a personal note, it is nice to see both of my daughters' schools, UCLA and UC Berkeley, show up among the top 50 institutions on the list. It is also a consolation to see Rutgers University, where I taught in late 1970s, ranked at 183.
8. Ranked at 181, Universiti of Malaysia is the only institution from a Muslim nation on the list, down from two in 2006. It is a sad commentary on the quality of higher education at universities in Islamic nations that renders them unable to be considered for such prestigious lists. It is not hopeless however. There are several up and coming universities in Islamic nations, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which can move up the list if there is continued focus on excellence in higher education.
9. Beyond the top 200, there are thirteen more universities on the list of top 400 from Muslim nations. At 201, the University of Indonesia just missed the top 200 list. Saudi Arabia's King Saud University is at 247, Indonesia's Universitas Gadjah Mada at 250, Saudi Arabia's King Fahd University at 266, Malaysia's Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia at 291, Malaysia's Universiti Sains Malaysia at 314, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia at 320, Universiti Putra Malaysia at 345, Pakistan's National University of Science and Technology (NUST) at 350 (up from 376), Indonesia's BANDUNG Institute of Technology at 351, Turkey's Bilkent University at 360, Iran's University of Teheran at 386 and UAE's United Arab Emirate University at 374.
As Mr. Obama met with his national security advisers for three hours to discuss Pakistan today, there was mounting opposition in Pakistan to the terms of the just approved Kerry-Lugar Bill offering $1.5 billion a year in US aid for the next five years. The US media reports suggest that the opposition is coming mainly from the powerful Pakistani military. However, it appears from a recent Gallup poll that there is growing distrust of the United States among ordinary Pakistanis as well. What seems to be adding fuel to the fire are the language and the conditions in the US aid bill that hold Pakistan implicitly responsible for all acts of terror in its neighborhood. Specifically, the bill, also known as the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act, says as follows: "... ceasing support, including by any elements within the Pakistan military or its intelligence agency, to extremist and terrorist groups, particularly to any group that has conducted attacks against the United States or coalition forces in Afghanistan, or against the territory or people of neighboring countries; (B) preventing al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated terrorist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, from operating in the territory of Pakistan, including carrying out cross-border attacks into neighbouring countries, closing terrorist camps in the Fata, dismantling terrorist bases of operations in other parts of the country, including Quetta and Muridke, and taking action when provided with intelligence about high-level terrorist targets."
It is widely believed that, by accepting this aid package, Pakistani government is endorsing the bill's offensive language and accepting the terrorism allegations and humiliating conditions, while paving the way for a much larger US footprint in Pakistan that will undermine its sovereignty. The Gallup poll exclusively done for Aljazeera TV and released in August shows that 59% of Pakistanis believe that the US is the biggest threat to Pakistan, followed by India(18%) and Taliban (11%) as much lesser threats. Fully 67% of the people oppose the US drone attacks against Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan.
The fear of the growing US presence in the region does not mean that people support the Taliban, as 41% of them favor the Pakistani military operation against the Taliban while 24% oppose it. Support for the military against the Taliban is the strongest among Sindhis at 64%, followed by 50% among Urdu-speaking Mohajirs and 49% among Pushtoons. Only 28% of Punjabis support the military operation but a smaller 25% oppose it. The people of the most populous province of Punjab appear to be the most divided on this issue, which is also in line with only 31% support for military operation among those identifying with Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League. In addition to the bad economy impacting many people, the fact that President Asif Ali Zardari is seen as caving in to the US demands is hurting his popularity. Only 11% approve of him while a whopping 42% think he is doing a bad job.
The Gallup results are also confirmed by a more recent IRI survey results in Pakistan. The survey released in early October by the International Republican Institute, a non-profit group promoting democracy whose board is headed by Senator John McCain, found that Pakistanis remained sharply critical of US military efforts.
Eighty percent of Pakistanis disagreed with cooperation with the United States on the "war on terror," a figure that shot up 19 points since March, the survey said.
At the same time, 86 percent agreed that Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants posed a problem for Pakistan and more than two-thirds supported a recent Pakistani army offensive on extremists.
In one of the sharpest swings, the polls showed that Pakistanis were growing increasingly pessimistic about their own economic futures. Some 58 percent of Pakistanis expected their economic situations to worsen in the coming year, up from 36 percent in March, it said.
It appears that the whole process by which the US aid package has been handled by the US and Pakistani governments is proving to be counterproductive, jeopardizing the chances of peace and stability in the region. Not only has it angered both the military and the public in Pakistan, it has the potential of seriously hurting political stability in Pakistan, further diminishing the chances of economic recovery in the near future, and it is reducing the probability of success against the perpetrators of terror. In sensitive relationships like the one between US and Pakistan, there should have been a lot more quite diplomacy and much less public display of the US pressure and growing presence in Pakistan.
Rather than further inflame the already explosive situation by unnecessary rhetoric, it is time for both governments to try and salvage the relationship, and their common fight against the terrorists, by engaging in serious damage control on both sides.
In spite of the fact that Pakistan's Human Development Index (HDI) has risen by 1.30 percent per year from 0.402 to 0.572 during 1980-2007 period, and it has accelerated to 1.9% increase since 2000 when it was reported to be 0.499, its progress is not yet sufficient to improve the nation's ranking relative to other countries in regions like East Asia, which have been moving considerably faster. Pakistan's index grew by 1.75% in the 1980s but slipped to less than 1.3% during the lost decade of the 1990s.
South Asia Lagging
In fact, the latest Human Development Report for 2009 shows that all major South Asian nations have slipped further down relative to other regions of the world. Pakistan's HDI ranking dropped 3 places from 138 last year to 141 this year, and India slipped six places from 128 in 2008 to 134 this year. The report includes human development data on 182 countries on the index, which measures achievements in terms of life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income. Rankings of other South Asian countries in 2009 are as follows: Bangladesh 146 (140 in 2008), Sri Lanka 102 (99 in 2008), Maldives 95 (100 in 2008), Nepal 146 (142 in 2006) and Bhutan 132 (135 in 2008). Norway continues to top the chart, while Australia, Iceland, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Switzerland and Japan make up the top 10. The US is ranked 13, while Britain and Germany are further down at 21 and 22.
Human Development Defined:
HDI provides a composite measure of three dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy); being educated (measured by adult literacy and gross enrollment in education); and having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity) income.
Human Poverty Index (HPI-1) focuses on the proportion of people below certain threshold levels in each of the dimensions of the index. By looking beyond income deprivation, HPI-1 represents a multi-dimensional alternative to the $1.25 a day poverty measure. The HPI-1 value is 33.4 percent for Pakistan ranks 101st among 135 counties for which the index has been calculated. This figure of 33.4% poverty differs sharply from 17.2% poverty calculated for 2007-08 by the UNDP analysts in Islamabad.
Pakistan's Gender Development Index value means that the greater the gender disparity in basic human development the lower is the country's GDI relative to its HDI. Pakistan's GDI value, 0.532, should be compared to its HDI value of 0.572. Its GDI value is 93 percent of its HDI value. Out of the 155 countries with both HDI and GDI values, 152 countries have a better ratio than Pakistan. The Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) shows whether women take an active part in economic and political life and is different to GDI as the GEM exposes inequalities in opportunities in selected areas. GEM says Pakistan ranks 99th out of 109 countries in the GEM index, with a value of 0.386.
Allowing for migration-both within and between countries-has the potential to increase people's freedom and improve the lives of millions around the world, according the Human Development Report. "We live in a highly mobile world, where migration is not only inevitable but also an important dimension of human development. Nearly one billion-or one out of seven-people are migrants.
"Migration can be a force for good, contributing significantly to human development," says United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Administrator Helen Clark. "But to realize its benefits, there needs to be a supportive policy environment as this Report suggests."
Comparing HDI and PHI:
Unlike HDI which adds other dimensions such as literacy, the new index PHI focuses specifically on the most basic parameters of poverty and hunger in developing nations.
On PHI, Pakistan at 45 ranks well ahead of India at 62, and it is included in the medium performing countries. PHI is a new composite indicator – the Poverty and Hunger Index (PHI) – developed to measure countries’ performance towards achieving MDG1 on halving poverty and hunger by 2015. The PHI combines all five official MDG1 indicators, including a) the proportion of population living on less than US$ 1/day, b) poverty gap ratio, c) share of the poorest quintile in national income or consumption, d) prevalence of underweight in children under five years of age, and d) the proportion of population undernourished.
UNDP Criticisms:
Dr. Mahbub ul Haq of Pakistan, the creator of the human development report, intended the HDI for use as a more reliable indicator of human condition than the gross domestic product (GDP) of various nations. It has not quite met the expectations of some in the human development community. There have been many criticisms of HDI, ranging from the use of stale and skewed data to clear disconnect between the HDI ranking and the ground reality as seen by most observers.
In a 2003 letter to the UNDP, the former director of the UNDP-funded Center for Research on Poverty Reduction and Income Distribution (CRRPRID), Dr Mushtaq A. Khan, challenged the basic data on which the UNDP had ranked Pakistan. Dr. Khan argued that using the factual data of life expectancy at 63.56 years, literacy rate at 44 percent, combined gross enrollment rate at 36 per cent and PPP GDP per capita at $1890, the country should have been ranked at 136th position for 2001, rather than 144th, "bringing it in the group of medium human development countries instead of the low human development countries". Rather than responding to the issues raised in Dr. Khan's letter, the UNDP had him fired from his post. More recently, there continues to be a discrepancy between the poverty figures reported by UNDP analysts in Islamabad and the figures used in HDI computation.
Recently, UNDP became part of a controversial report by Mumbai's municipality in claiming that “Dharavi is not Asia’s largest slum, Karachi’s Orangi Township has surpassed Dharavi.” It is clear that UNDP did not bother to check the facts on the ground before allowing itself to be used by Mumbai's BMC. The fact is that Orangi is nothing like Dharavi in terms of the quality of its housing or the services available to its residents. While Dharavi has only one toilet per 1440 residents and most of its residents use Mahim Creek, a local river, for urination and defecation, Orangi has an elaborate sanitation system built by its citizens. Under Orangi Pilot Project's guidance, between 1981 and 1993 Orangi residents installed sewers serving 72,070 of 94,122 houses. To achieve this, community members spent more than US$2 million of their own money, and OPP invested about US$150,000 in research and extension of new technologies. Orangi pilot project has been admired widely for its work with urban poor.
Foreign visitors to Pakistan and India have often reported that Pakistanis generally look better fed, clothed and housed than their counterparts in India. There is much less poverty on show in Pakistan than in India. However, the UNDP HDI reports continue to show India ranking higher than Pakistan. There could be many possible reasons for such a disconnect.
One example of the disconnect between the UNDP reports and ground reality can be found in the purchasing power parity calculations. The most recent real per capita income data was calculated and reported by Asian Development Bank based on a detailed study of a list of around 800 household and nonhousehold products in 2005 and early 2006 to compare real purchasing power for ADB's trans-national income comparison program (ICP). The ICP concluded that Pakistan had the highest per capita income at HK$ 13,528 in South Asia. It reported India’s per capita as HK $12,090.
In terms of being better fed, Pakistanis consume significantly more dairy products, sugar, wheat, meat, eggs and poultry on a per capita basis than Indians. Average Pakistani gets about 50% of daily calories from non-food-grain sources versus 33% for average Indians.
There is widespread hunger and malnutrition in all parts of India. India ranks 66th on the 2008 Global Hunger Index of 88 countries while Pakistan is slightly better at 61 and Bangladesh slightly worse at 70. The first India State Hunger Index (Ishi) report in 2008 found that Madhya Pradesh had the most severe level of hunger in India, comparable to Chad and Ethiopia. Four states — Punjab, Kerala, Haryana and Assam — fell in the 'serious' category. "Affluent" Gujarat, 13th on the Indian list is below Haiti, ranked 69. The authors said India's poor performance was primarily due to its relatively high levels of child malnutrition and under-nourishment resulting from calorie deficient diets.
According to Werner International, Pakistan's per capita consumption of textile fibers is about 4 Kg versus 2.8 Kg for India.
There is widespread homelessness in India with the urgent need for 72 million housing units. Pakistan, too, has a housing crisis and needs about 7 million additional housing units, according to the data presented at the World Bank Regional Conference on Housing last year.
India might be an emerging economic power, but it is way behind Pakistan, Bangladesh and even Afghanistan in providing basic sanitation facilities, a key reason behind the death of 2.1 million children under five in the country.
Lizette Burgers, chief of water and environment sanitation of the Unicef, recently said India is making progress in providing sanitation but it lags behind most of the other countries in South Asia. A former Indian minister Mr Raghuvansh Prasad Singh told the BBC that more than 65% of India's rural population defecated in the open, along roadsides, railway tracks and fields, generating huge amounts of excrement every day.
Conclusion:
In spite of the many valid criticisms and the major flaws in UNDP's methodology and HDI computation and reporting, the HDI rankings are an important ballpark indicator of the state of human development in a nation or region. The report is a very useful document that the governments must take seriously and make the necessary efforts to improve their human resources by providing the required funding and support for proper nutrition, education and health care to ensure a better future for their people.
Pakistan has consistently scored lower on the HDI sub-index on education than its overall HDI index. It is obvious from the UNDP report and other sources that Pakistan's dismal record in enrolling and educating its young people, particularly girls, stands in the way of any significant positive development in the nation. The recent announcement of a new education policy that calls for more than doubling the education spending from about 3% to 7% of GDP is a step in the right direction. However, money alone will not solve the deep-seated problems of poor access to education, rampant corruption and the ghost schools that only exist on paper, that have simply lined the pockets of corrupt politicians and officials. Any additional money allocated must be part of a broader push for transparent and effective delivery of useful education to save the people from the curses of poverty, ignorance and extremism which are seriously hurting the nation.
Here's a video report about Pakistan's decrepit public education:
Last year's terror attacks in Mumbai triggered a wave of vociferous military threats against Pakistan in the Indian media by various Indian commentators and analysts. Sashi Tharoor, a former UN diplomat and current Indian minister, aptly described the post-Mumbai Indian reaction as India's "Israel Envy". Prior to the attacks, an Indian writer Pankaj Mishra described the urge by many in India's urban middle class to "do a Lebanon" in Pakistan.
India's Sabre Rattling:
After considerable saber rattling by Indian officials, including Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee who talked about "not ruling out military strikes in Pakistan", the Indian government backed off from its threats. The reason was captured well by New York Times' Somini Sengupta reporting in December, 2008 from New Delhi that "Indian officials have said privately in recent weeks that they are reluctant to strike Pakistan, and that even a limited attack on terrorist training camps would invite swift retaliation." Earlier, Pakistan's Army Chief had warned India of retaliation “within minutes” if India carried out any surgical strike inside the country.
Instead, Indian government is now pursuing the dual strategy of conducting covert operations inside Pakistan and developing a comprehensive missile shield to protect against future retaliatory strikes by Pakistan. Former Indian top spies B. Raman and Vikram Sood have argued for stepping up covert war inside Pakistan and using all available methods to discredit and destabilize Pakistani state and military.
Covert War Against Pakistan:
Former RAW chief B. Raman argues that India appoint a covert ops specialist as the new head of RAW. He says, “At this critical time in the nation’s history, RAW has no covert action specialists at the top of its pyramid. Get a suitable officer from the IB or the Army. If necessary, make him the head of the organization.”
Vikram Sood, another former top spy in India, has elaborated on India's covert warfare options to target Pakistan in the following words: "Covert action can be of various kinds. One is the paramilitary option, which is what the Pakistanis have been using against us. It is meant to hurt, destabilize or retaliate. The second is the psychological war option, which is a very potent and unseen force. It is an all weather option and constitutes essentially changing perceptions of friends and foes alike. The media is a favorite instrument, provided it is not left to the bureaucrats because then we will end up with some clumsy and implausible propaganda effort. More than the electronic and print media, it is now the internet and YouTube that can be the next-generation weapons of psychological war. Terrorists use these liberally and so should those required to counter terrorism."
Based on all the evidence of stepped up insurgencies and increasing bomb attacks in Pakistan, particularly Baluchistan, and the hostile, overactive, anti-Pakistan presence of Indians on various Internet sites, it appears that India is acting on the covert war proposals by Raman and Sood.
India's Missile Shield:
Indian defense officials said in December 2007 that the country will have a shield in place by 2010 to protect India from incoming missile that could be fired by Pakistan or China. One of India's top defense research scientists, V.K. Saraswat, revealed plans for a complete ballistic missile defense system to be deployed within three years. Since this announcement, it has been learned that India's anti-missile missiles are to be based on Arrow technology from Israel, which is being funded by the United States. While there are many questions about the viability and effectiveness of such a missile shield, it is commonly accepted by experts that the missile shield can eventually be effective against an enemy with a small number of warheads. That's the basis for the US-Israeli joint effort, mostly funded by the US, to develop Arrow missiles as deterrent against "rogue states", currently defined as Iran and North Korea, with a small number of missiles. It appears that India's effort is primarily aimed at rendering Pakistan's small arsenal of about 100 ballistic missile useless against India, altering the current balance of terror between the two hostile neighbors.
Contrary to popular belief, the Obama administration has not abandoned the missile shield. Instead, it has essentially outsourced the project to Israel, but it is still funded by the Americans.
Pakistan's Response:
In the face of India's ambitious missile shield efforts, Pakistan's security concerns are genuine, given the several India-Pakistan wars and frequent threats by India. Since the potential success of India's missile shield represents a fundamental change in the current balance of terror that has prevented wars between the two nations in the recent history, it is important for Pakistan not to ignore it.
The downside for Pakistan of not doing anything in response to the Indian missile shield is to throw away its current nuclear or even conventional ballistic missile deterrent and invite Indian aggression after potential Mumbai-style terror attacks in the future by any group of terrorists with or without links in Pakistan.
Based on what is known today about Israel's ambitious Arrow program, there is a strong possibility that India's missile shield program will not meet any of its key objectives. However, it makes no sense to build Pakistan's national security strategy on hopes of India failing. The right Pakistani response, in my view, should be as follows:
1. Pakistan should gradually build up a larger arsenal of at least a thousand ballistic missiles with an appropriate mix of nuclear and conventional warheads to make India's missile shield much less effective.
2. Pakistani defense scientists and engineers should study all available information and data on Israel's Arrow technology to develop appropriate counter measures to confuse, frustrate and effectively penetrate any missile shields developed and deployed by India.
3. Pakistani defense scientists and engineers need to look into effective and affordable missile defense development in partnership with their Chinese counterparts to deal with the common Indian threat faced by both.
The history tell us that Indians and others have always underestimated Pakistanis' extraordinary creativity and determination to achieve balance of terror with India at a small fraction of the costs incurred by Indians. I am quite confident that, given the appropriate political and military leadership, Pakistanis have the capacity to preserve the current balance of terror in the interest of peace in South Asia.
