Wednesday, January 6, 2010

India and Pakistan Contrasted in 2010

Dr. Ishrat Husain, a former World Bank senior official and an ex governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, wrote an article captioned "India, Pakistan: a comparison" at the end of the first five decades of two nations' existence as independent states. To my knowledge, Dr. Hussain has not done an update of his article since it was first published. Although about three years too late, this post is my attempt to present a comparison of the two South Asian nations after sixty years of independence.

Here is the opening paragraph from Dr. Husain's article from the late 1990s, which I believe still stands true today:

"India and Pakistan are completing five decades of their independence. Since the partition, the relationship between the two countries has been uneasy and characterized by a set of paradoxes. There is a mixture of love and hate, a tinge of envy and admiration, bouts of paranoia and longing for cooperation, and a fierce rivalry but a sense of proximity, too. The heavy emotional overtones have made it difficult to sift the facts from the myths and make an objective assessment. There are in fact only two extreme types of reactions on each side. Either there are those who always find that the grass is greener on the other side of the pasture or those who are totally dismissive of the accomplishments of the other side."

Not much has changed in the last ten years as far as the above paragraph is concerned. The relationship between the two nations remains as emotionally charged as ever.

Then Dr. Husain's essay talked about what he saw as the common successes of the two nations in the first fifty years:

1. Despite the prophets of gloom and doom on both sides of the fence, both India and Pakistan have succeeded in more than doubling their per capita incomes. This is a remarkable feat considering that the population has increased fourfold in case of Pakistan and threefold in India. Leaving aside the countries in East Asia and China, very few large countries have been able to reach this milestone.

2. The incidence of poverty (defined as $1 per day) has also been reduced significantly although the number of absolute poor remains astoundingly high. However, the level of poverty is lower in Pakistan.

3. Food production has not only kept pace with the rise in population but has surpassed it. Both countries, leaving aside annual fluctuations due to weather conditions, are self-sufficient in food. (Pakistan exports its surplus rice but imports small volumes of wheat).

4. Food self-sufficiency has been accompanied by improved nutritional status. Daily caloric and protein intake per capita has risen by almost one-third but malnourishment among children is still high.

5. The cracks in the dualistic nature of the economy -- a well-developed modern sector and a backward traditional sector -- are appearing fast in both the countries. A buoyant middle class is emerging. The use of modern inputs and mechanization of agriculture has been a leveling influence in this direction. But public policies have not always been consistent or supportive.


Here is the update to the above assessment:

1. Per capita incomes in both nations have more than doubled in the last ten years, in spite of significant increases in population. The most recent and detailed 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 ABD ICP concluded that Pakistan had the highest per capita income at HK$ 13,528 (US $1,745) among the largest nations in South Asia. ADB reported India’s per capita as HK $12,090 (US $1,560). Nominal per capita GDP estimates for Pakistan range from US $1000 to US $1022, while the range for India is from US $ 1017 to US $ 1100. Purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita GDP estimates for Pakistan from various sources range from $2500 to $2644, while the same sources put the range for India's per capita GDP from $2780 to $2972.

2. The incidence of poverty (defined as $1.25 per day) has also come down in both nations, although the number of poor in South Asia still remains very high. 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 most recent estimates by UNDP in Pakistan for 2007-2008 indicate poverty level at 17.2%.

3. Food production has barely kept pace with the rise of population, particularly in Pakistan. There have been higher food prices and shortages of various commodities such as wheat and sugar. 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.

4. Though the nutritional status has improved in both nations, there are still very high levels of malnutrition, particularly among children. In spite of the fact that there is about 22% malnutrition in Pakistan and the child malnutrition being much higher at 40% (versus India's 46%), the average per capita calorie intake of about 2500 calories is within normal range. But the nutritional balance necessary for good health appears to be lacking in Pakistanis' dietary habits. Senior Indian official Syeda Hameed has acknowledged that Pakistan and Bangladesh have done better than India in meeting the nutritional needs of their populations.

5. India's economy has grown more rapidly than Pakistan's in the last ten years. However, both nations have accepted and implemented significant economic reforms that have opened up their economies and brought about rapid growth, more than doubling the size of each economy in the last ten years.

Dr. Husain's paper went on to talk about the common failures of the two countries in their first fifty years as follows:

The relatively inward-looking economic policies and high protection to domestic industry did not allow them to reap the benefits of integration with the fast-expanding and much larger world economy. This has changed particularly since 1991 but the control mind-set of the politicians and the bureaucrats has not changed. The centrally planned allocation of resources and "license raj" has given rise to an inefficient private sector that thrive more on contacts, bribes, loans from public financial institutions, lobbying, tax evasion and rent-seeking rather than on competitive behavior. Unless both the control mind-set of the government and the parasitic behavior of the private industrial entrepreneurs do not change drastically, the potential of an efficient economy would be hard to achieve. This can be accomplished by promoting domestic and international competition, reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers and removing constraints to entry for newcomers.

The weaknesses in governance in the legal and judicial system, poor enforcement of private property rights and contracts, preponderance of discretionary government rules and regulations and lack of transparency in decision making act as brakes on broad-based participation and sharing of benefits by the majority of the population.

In terms of fiscal management, the record of both the countries is less than stellar. Higher fiscal deficits averaging 7-8 percent of GDP have persisted for fairly long periods of time and crowded out private capital formation through large domestic borrowing. Defense expenditures and internal debt servicing continue to pre-empt large proportion of tax revenues with adverse consequences for maintenance and expansion of physical infrastructure, basic social services and other essential services that only the government can provide. The congested urban services such as water, electricity, transport in both countries are a potential source of social upheaval.

The state of financial sector in both countries is plagued with serious ills. The nationalization of commercial banking services, the neglect of credit quality in allocation decisions, lack of competition and inadequate prudential regulations and supervision have put the system under severe pressure and increased the share of non-performing assets in the banks’ portfolio. The financial intermediation role in mobilizing and efficiently allocating domestic savings has been seriously compromised and the banking system is fragile. Both countries are now taking steps to liberalize the financial sector and open it up to competition from foreign banks as well as private banks.


Here is the update on the areas of common failures of India and Pakistan:

Though the level of globalization of the two nations remains well below China's, both India and Pakistan have made significant strides in this direction. In Pakistan, exports account for less than 15% of gross domestic product, compared with about 25% in India and 40% in China, according former Musharraf economic adviser Salman Shah. The policy changes in both nations have also opened up greater FDI inflows, though Pakistan's FDI has declined in the last two years due to security perceptions, after several years of strong FDI inflows, particularly in banking, telecommunications, real estate and oil and gas sectors.

Both countries continue to run large budget deficits. India's fiscal deficit for 2008-2009 stood at 6.5 percent of gdp and it is rising, according to Bloomberg. Pakistan has said its fiscal deficit will widen to as much as 4.9% of gross domestic product in 2009-2010, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The banking sectors in both nations have seen major improvements in delivery of new services. India and Pakistan have ranked 31 and 34 respectively, out of 52 countries in the World Economic Forum's first Financial Development Report. Both nations are ranked ahead of the Russian Federation (35), Indonesia (38), Turkey (39), Poland (41), Brazil (40), Philippines (48) and Kazakhstan (45).

Consumer and commercial credit availability and retail services have improved in the last ten years. Microfinance sectors are now well established in South Asia, helping fight poverty, and empowering women economically.

Both nations are suffering from poor governance resulting in lack of responsiveness to the basic needs of the vast majority of their people. In fact, the latest Human Development Report for 2009 shows that both 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 level of urbanization in Pakistan is now the highest in South Asia, and its urban population is likely to equal its rural population by 2030, according to a report titled ‘Life in the City: Pakistan in Focus’, released by the United Nations Population Fund. Pakistan ranks 163 and India at 174 on a list of over 200 countries compiled by Nationmaster. The urban population now contributes about three quarters of Pakistan's gross domestic product and almost all of the government revenue. The industrial sector contributes over 27% of the GDP, higher than the 19% contributed by agriculture, with services accounting for the rest of the GDP.



The increasing urbanization has had the effect of defusing the "population bomb" in Pakistan. With increasing urbanization, Pakistan's population growth rate has declined from 2.17% in 2000 to 1.9% in 2008. Based on PAI Research Commentary by Karen Hardee and Elizabeth Leahy, the total fertility rate (TFR) in Pakistan is still the highest in South Asia at 4.1 children per woman. Women in urban areas have an average of 3.3 children compared to their rural counterparts, who have an average of 4.5 children. The overall fertility rate has been cut in half from about 8 children per woman in 1960s to about 4 this decade, according to a study published in 2009.

Third, Dr. Husain turned his attention to the areas where India surpassed Pakistan:

There is little doubt that the scientific and technological manpower and research and development institutions in India are far superior and can match those of the western institutions. The real breakthrough in the Indian export of software after the opening up of the economy in 1991 attests to the validity of the proposition that human capital formation accompanied by market-friendly economic policies can lift the developing countries out of low-level equilibrium trap.

Indian scientists working in India excel in the areas of defense technology, space research, electronics and avionics, genetics, telecommunications, etc. The number of Ph.Ds produced by India in science and engineering every year -- about 5,000 -- is higher than the entire stock of Ph.Ds in Pakistan. The premier research institutions in Pakistan started about the same time as India have become hotbed of internal bickerings and rivalries rather than generator of ideas, processes and products.

Related to this superior performance in the field of scientific research and technological development is the better record of investment in education by India. The adult literacy rate, female literacy rate, gross enrollment ratios at all levels, and education index of India have moved way ahead of Pakistan. Rapid decline in total fertility rates in India has reduced population growth rate to 1.8 percent compared to 3.0 percent for Pakistan.

Health access to the population and infant mortality rates are also better in India and thus the overall picture of social indicators, although not very impressive by international standards, emerges more favorable. The two most important determinants of Pakistan’s dismal performance in social development are its inability to control population growth and the lack of willingness to educate girls in the rural areas.


Here's the update on areas where India was ahead of Pakistan ten years ago:

In response to the growing concerns about the nation lagging in higher education achievement, Pakistan launched Higher Education Reform led by Dr. Ata ur Rahman, adviser to President Musharraf in 2002. This reform resulted in over fivefold increase in public funding for universities, with a special emphasis on science, technology and engineering. The reform supported initiatives such as a free national digital library and high-speed Internet access for universities as well as new scholarships enabling more than 2,000 students to study abroad for PhDs — with incentives to return to Pakistan afterward. The years of reform have coincided with increases in the number of Pakistani authors publishing in research journals, especially in mathematics and engineering, as well as boosting the impact of their research outside Pakistan.



Although India has about 270 million illiterate adults, India's overall literacy rate is better than Pakistan's. Pakistan's population of illiterate adults is estimated at 47 million, fourth largest after India's 270 million, China's 71 million, Bangladesh's 49 million, according to the latest UNESCO Education For All report for 2010.



But India remains significantly ahead of Pakistan in higher education, with six universities, mostly IITs, ranked among the top 400 universities of the world versus only one from Pakistan, National University of Science and Technology(NUST) ranked at 350, up from 375 last year. Replication of NUST campuses, like the IIT campuses in India, can help spawn more highly rated institutions of higher learning near major cities in Pakistan.



Pakistan's information technology industry is quite young. It is in very early stages of development compared to the much older and bigger Indian IT industry, which had a significant headstart of at least a decade over Pakistan. During the lost decade of the 1990s under Bhutto and Sharif governments, Pakistani economy stagnated and its IT industry did not make any headway. However, the industry has grown at 40% CAGR during the 2001-2007, and it is estimated at $2.8 billion as of last year, with about half of it coming from exports. This pales in comparison to over $5 billion revenue a year reported by India's Tata Consulting alone.

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.

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.

Finally, Dr. Hussain addressed areas where he thought Pakistan was ahead of India fifty years after independence as follows:

The economic growth rate of Pakistan has been consistently higher than India. Starting from almost the same level or slightly lower level in 1947, Pakistan’s per capita income today in US nominal dollar terms is one-third higher (430 versus 320) and in purchasing parity dollar terms is two-third higher (2,310 versus 1,280). The latter suggests that the average Pakistani has enjoyed better living standards and consumption levels in the past but the gap may be narrowing since early 1990s. Had the population growth rate in Pakistan been slower and equaled that of India, this gap would have been much wider and the per capita income in Pakistan today would have been twice as high and the incidence of poverty further down.

Although both India and Pakistan have pursued inward-looking strategies, the anti-export bias in case of Pakistan has been comparably lower and the integration with the world market faster. The trade-GDP ratio in PPP terms is twice that of all South Asian countries. Pakistan’s export growth has been stronger and the composition of exports has shifted from primary to manufactured goods; albeit the dominance of cotton-based products has enhanced its vulnerability.

Domestic investment rates in Pakistan have remained much below those of India over the entire span primarily due to the relatively higher domestic savings rates in the latter. But the efficiency of investment as measured by the aggregate incremental capital-output ratio or total factor productivity has been higher in case of Pakistan and, to some extent, compensated the lower quantity of investment.


Here's the update on the above assessment:

Although Pakistan's economy has more than doubled in the last decade, the nation's economic growth has been slower than India's since the 1990s. Since 2008, Pakistan's economy has, in the words of the Economist, returned to the "bad old days" of the lost decade of 1990s. 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.

While it lags behind China, India now exports a larger percentage of its GDP than Pakistan. In Pakistan, exports account for less than 15% of gross domestic product, compared with about 25% in India and 40% in China, according former Musharraf economic adviser Salman Shah.

At 30% of GDP, Indians continue to save twice as much as Pakistanis who save about 15%. Indians' private savings provide a much larger pool for domestic investments than the much smaller private savings in Pakistan.

Let me conclude with an excerpt from a British writer William Dalrymple's article, published on 14 August, 2007 in The Guardian:

"On the ground, of course, the reality is different and first-time visitors to Pakistan are almost always surprised by the country's visible prosperity. There is far less poverty on show in Pakistan than in India, fewer beggars, and much less desperation. In many ways the infrastructure of Pakistan is much more advanced: there are better roads and airports, and more reliable electricity. Middle-class Pakistani houses are often bigger and better appointed than their equivalents in India.



Moreover, the Pakistani economy is undergoing a construction and consumer boom similar to India's, with growth rates of 7%, and what is currently the fastest-rising stock market in Asia. You can see the effects everywhere: in new shopping centers and restaurant complexes, in the hoardings for the latest laptops and iPods, in the cranes and building sites, in the endless stores selling mobile phones: in 2003 the country had fewer than three million cellphone users; today there are almost 50 million."


A familiar yardstick often used to measure progress of a nation is its energy consumption. Per capita energy consumption in Pakistan is estimated at 14.2 million Btu, which is much higher than Bangladesh's 5 million BTUs per capita but slightly less than India's 15.9 million BTU per capita energy consumption. However, South Asia's per capita energy consumption is only a fraction of other industrializing economies in Asia region such as China (56.2 million BTU), Thailand (58 million BTU) and Malaysia (104 million BTU), according to the US Dept of Energy 2006 report. To put it in perspective, the world average per capita energy use is about 65 million BTUs and the average American consumes 352 million BTUs. With 40% of the Pakistani households that have yet to receive electricity, and only 18% of the households that have access to pipeline gas, the energy sector is expected to play a critical role in economic and social development. With this growth comes higher energy consumption and stronger pressures on the country’s energy resources. At present, natural gas and oil supply the bulk (80 percent) of Pakistan’s energy needs. However, the consumption of those energy sources vastly exceeds the supply. For instance, Pakistan currently produces only 18.3 percent of the oil it consumes, fostering a dependency on imports that places considerable strain on the country’s financial position. On the other hand, hydro and coal are perhaps underutilized today, as Pakistan has ample potential supplies of both.

Pakistan's KSE-100 stock index surged 55% in 2009, a year that also saw the South Asian nation wracked by increased violence and its state institutions described by various media talking heads as being on the verge of collapse. Even more surprising is the whopping 825% increase in KSE-100 from 1999 to 2009, which makes it a significantly better performer than the BRIC nations. BRIC darling China has actually underperformed its peers, rising only 150 percent compared with energy-rich Brazil (520 percent) and Russia (326 percent) or well-regulated India (274 percent), which some investors see as a safer and more diverse bet compared with the Chinese equity market, which is dominated by bank stocks.





Summary:

Goldman Sachs report on "BRIC" and "Next 11" projects that India will be the fourth largest economy in the world by 2025. Goldman also forecasts Pakistan's rank moving up from the 26th largest now to the 18th largest economy in the world by 2025. If the deteriorating security situation and current economic slump in Pakistan are not contained and managed properly, there is a strong chance that Pakistan would be left significantly behind India at the time of the next update of this comparison in 2020. However, Pakistan is just too big to fail. In spite of all of the serious problems it faces today, I remain optimistic that country will not only survive but thrive in the coming decades. With a fairly large educated urban middle class, vibrant media, active civil society, assertive judiciary, many philanthropic organizations, and a spirit of entrepreneurship, the nation has the necessary ingredients to overcome its current difficulties to build a strong economy with a democratic government accountable to its people.

Here are some more recent comparative indicators:

One out of every three illiterate adults in the world is an Indian, according to UNESCO. Pakistan stands fourth in the world in terms of illiterate adult population, after India, China and Bangladesh.

One out of very two hungry persons in the world is an Indian, according to World Food Program. Pakistan fares significantly better than India on the hunger front.

Poverty:

Population living under $1.25 a day - India: 41.6% Pakistan: 22.6% Source: UNDP

The reason for higher levels of poverty in India in spite of its rapid economic growth is the growing rich-poor disparity. Gini index measuring rich-poor gap for India is at 36, higher than Pakistan's 30. Gini index is defined as a ratio with values between 0 and 100: A low Gini index indicates more equal income or wealth distribution, while a high Gini index indicates more unequal distribution. Zero corresponds to perfect equality (everyone having exactly the same income) and 100 corresponds to perfect inequality (where one person has all the income, while everyone else has zero income).

Nutrition:

Underweight Children Under Five (in percent) Pakistan 38% India 46% Source: UNICEF

Health:

Life expectancy at birth (years), 2007 India: 63.4 Pakistan: 66.2 Source: HDR2009

Education:

Youth (15–24 years) literacy rate, 2000 to 2007, male Pakistan: 80% India 87% Source: UNICEF

Youth (15–24 years) literacy rate, 2000 to 2007, female Pakistan 60% India 77% Source: UNICEF

Economics:

GDP per capita (US$), 2008 Pak:$1000-1022 India $1017-1100

Child Protection:

Child marriage under 15-years ; 1998–2007*, total Pakistan - 32% India - 47% Source: UNICEF

Under-5 mortality rate per 1000 live births (2007), Value Pakistan - 90 India 72 Source: UNICEF

Here is the summary of a 2011 Update of this article:

Pakistan has created more jobs, graduated more people from schools and colleges, built a larger middle class and lifted more people out of poverty as percentage of its population than India in the last decade. And Pakistan has done so in spite of the huge challenges posed by the war in Afghanistan and a very violent insurgency at home.

The above summary is based on volumes of recently released reports and data on job creation, education, middle class size, public hygiene, poverty and hunger over the last decade that offer new surprising insights into the lives of ordinary people in two South Asian countries. It adds to my previous post on this blog titled "India and Pakistan Contrasted in 2010".


Please read more at http://www.riazhaq.com/2011/10/india-and-pakistan-comparison-update.html

Here's a video clip of British Writer William Dalrymple comparing in India and Pakistan:



Here's another video clip from Intelligence Squared debate about Pakistan:



Here's recent video of Prof Jayati Ghosh of Nehru University debunking the myth of the "Indian Miracle":




Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Explore the World--Gapminder.org

The India You May Not Know

Pakistan's Foreign Visitors Pleasantly Surprised

Escape From India

Reflections on India

After Partition: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh

The "Poor" Neighbor by William Dalrymple

Pakistan's Modern Infrastructure

Video: Who Says Pakistan Is a Failed State?

India Worse Than Pakistan, Bangladesh on Nutrition

UNDP Reports Pakistan Poverty Declined to 17 Percent

Pakistan's Choice: Talibanization or Globalization

Pakistan's Financial Services Sector

Pakistan's Decade 1999-2009

South Asia Slipping in Human Development

Asia Gains in Top Asian Universities

Pakistan's Multi-Billion Dollar IT Industry

India-Pakistan Military Comparison

ITU Internet Access Data by Countries

Food, Clothing and Shelter in India and Pakistan

Pakistan Energy Crisis

248 comments:

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Saurav said...

Why are all your postings about convincing yourself that Pakistan is great and India sucks?
Exact mentality of whole nation of Pakistan - to thrive on everything and anything anti india.

Riaz Haq said...

Suarav: "Pakistan is great and India sucks?"

It's clear that you have either not read the post or possibly not understood it. The post is an attempt to do an objective update on the comparison of strengths and weaknesses of both nations. For example, the post talks about India's edge over Pakistan in terms of education, literacy and faster economic growth in recent years. At the same time, I also show that Pakistan has done better in providing basic necessities and reducing hunger and poverty.

Please read the post again more carefully and try to comprehend what it says.

Anonymous said...

Nice article. It has brought objective comparison by third party. It is really a great job. But a comparison along with these two countries to china, brazil will give a better perspective. Further it will not look for many india vs. pakistan rather a comparison of young growing economies.

Sikander Hayat said...

Very nice article Mr Haq. Very informative.
http://real-politique.blogspot.com

Niks said...

Well, both nations have capability to overcome their deficiencies and problems if they seriously try to maximize efforts in eradicating those shortcomings. The whole system needs to be summed up, the talents of young minds shall be recognized rather than practicing bureaucracy and red tapism. The solution is in the hands of either people,i hope everything goes on well for both the nations in the upcoming time.

Long live India/Pakistan

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a relevant opinion by Soutik Biswas of BBC:

Has India's "Deciding Decade" begun? A study, done by a Delhi-based economic research firm along with a leading newspaper, thinks so. It says that India's GDP can grow at an average annual rate of 9.6% for the next 10 years even if there were no reforms. Incomes will double, the middle class will burgeon and urbanisation will proceed at breakneck speed.

Now the bad news. Even with this scorching growth, more than 250 million people of a total population of 1.3bn will still be "very poor" in 2020, the study says. That's not all: not even 100 million Indians will be graduates or post graduates despite the growth. Clearly, without radical reforms in education and infrastructure taken up with missionary bipartisan zeal, millions of Indians will still be hungry, poor and illiterate. Are India's politicians and bureaucrats up to the task? On present evidence, hardly. But we all live in hope.

The decade has also begun with a rash of good news stories. The government is planning to give out passports within three days of verification, make compulsory baby seats in cars and provide cheaper food for the poor. At least one state is launching madrassas or religious schools where English will be the medium of instruction. The government is also promising to introduce more women-friendly laws, harsher punishment for sexual crimes and fast track courts. All this just proves how much ground India has to cover. And Indian governments are famous for making announcements that take months, sorry, decades to implement. So we will wait and see.

But there is a piece of truly good news that holds out hope for India. Bihar, India's basket case state - poorest, most lawless, underdeveloped - appears to have clocked the fastest rate of growth during 2008-2009. If the Bihar government is to believed, the state's growth rate - 11.4% - is higher than India's industrially developed states. It is being attributed to good governance, buoyant revenues, increased government spending and a swelling unorganised private sector. If this is true then Bihar has all the makings of a miracle economy.

Bihar's remarkable "turnaround" shows the way for India, in a way. It also proves, as political philosopher Pratap Bhanu Mehta says, that "for the first time in modern Indian history, Indians, including the very marginalised, have a sense that change is possible: our destinies are ours to shape".

A sobering thought to keep in mind though. Impressive growth figures are unlikely to stun the poor into mindless optimism about their future. India has long been used to illustrate how extensive poverty coexists with growth. It has a shabby record in pulling people out of poverty - in the last two decades the number of absolutely poor in India has declined by 17 percentage points compared to China, which brought down its absolutely poor by some 45 percentage points. The number of Indian billionaires rose from nine in 2004 to 40 in 2007, says Forbes magazine. That's higher than Japan which had 24, while France and Italy had 14 billionaires each. When one of the world's highest number of billionaires coexist with what one economist calls the world's "largest number of homeless, ill-fed illiterates", something is gravely wrong. This is what rankles many in this happy season of positive thinking.

Anonymous said...

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/01/12/world/international-uk-pakistan-islam.html?_r=1&scp=8&sq=india&st=nyt

Riaz Haq said...

Anon who sent link to Legatum Institute forecast that "U.S. and UK leverage over Pakistan is not growing. It is decreasing. Pakistani society is moving towards anti-Americanism and towards more sharia law."

I think it's just an extension of the Bush era rhetoric "you are with us or you are against us".

Repeated election results in Pakistan over the last 60 years have shown that Pakistanis do not support extreme right-wing politicians or religious parties. They are becoming more anti-West because of the US policies of demonizing all Muslims, such as the recent decision to treat 675 million Muslims from "countries of interest" as suspects or unqualified support of Israel, but it does not mean they are in favor of draconian Shariah laws or favor the Taliban.

Anonymous said...

"They are becoming more anti-West because of the US policies of demonizing all Muslims, such as the recent decision to treat 675 million Muslims from "countries of interest" as suspects "

It hurts right? Time for an introspection as why muslims go about blowing everything they see.
is there a template somewhere in some so called divine book. How is that helping any cause. In fact it only helps islamaphobes with their i-told-you-so remarks.

And before we blame others for demonizing, time to look at our own girebaan and see how we demonize Ahemdiyas.

Riaz, we Pakistanis have NO leg to stand on.

Riaz Haq said...

Data Cruncher: "And before we blame others for demonizing, time to look at our own girebaan and see how we demonize Ahemdiyas."

There is a lot of blame to go around, from past and present actions. But let's all remember that all actions have consequences, both intended and unintended. There is a lot of introspection needed on all sides.

Here's a recent exchange at a White House press conference that illustrates the knee jerk nature of responses when dealing with the issue of terror:

Thomas: "Why do they want to do us harm? And what is the motivation? We never hear what you find out on why."

Brennan: "Al Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents... They attract individuals like Mr. Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the concept of Islam, so that he's (sic) able to attract these individuals. But al Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death."

Thomas: "And you're saying it's because of religion?"

Brennan: "I'm saying it's because of an al Qaeda organization that used the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way."

Thomas: "Why?"

Brennan: "I think this is a - long issue, but al Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland."

Thomas: "But you haven't explained why."

Anonymous said...

Riaz - This Brenan vs Thomas tete-e-tete is frankly a POS. Muslims love playing victim and blame all others for their actions and there are some useful idiots who support them.
I am not going to buy it.
Islamic terrorism is now global. Russia/China/France/UK - u name it.
Are all supporting Israel? Or All are demonizing 675 million muslims as potential terrorists?. NO.

Practicing muslims must ask themselves as what is there in islam that makes it followers so violent and all developed country despise their attitude.

Forget about west. How many muslims (like you and me), after living in the west, would love to go back the islamic paradise of Pakistan, Bangladesh. And it is not economic reasons alone.

I am not a practicing muslim. I don't even believe in religion or God. Those who know me are aware that I am very critical of mainstream islam practiced in majority of islamic country. Occasionally due to my Pakistan background I suffer from this so called demonizing when I spend more hours at the airport answering questions. Big deal. I am ready to put up with this. Do you know why? Because next time a brave jihadi looking for his shahadat blows away a plane, I would die too. Bombs don't make any distinction between kuffars and muslims.

Do you know 149 cases of terrorism has been busted in USA after 9/11. Roughly half of it has ended up in convictions.

swastyk7 said...

Really wonderful article Mr. Haq, very unbiased and highly informative. The most important thing to notice that the growth of both the nations, primarily economic, is not mainly due to the impetus or the enthusiasm provided by the governments but more so because of the initiatives by the people and the corporate houses themselves. Indeed self help is the best form of help.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a recent post by BBC's Soutik Biswas:

A sobering thought to keep in mind though. Impressive growth figures are unlikely to stun the poor into mindless optimism about their future. India has long been used to illustrate how extensive poverty coexists with growth. It has a shabby record in pulling people out of poverty - in the last two decades the number of absolutely poor in India has declined by 17 percentage points compared to China, which brought down its absolutely poor by some 45 percentage points. The number of Indian billionaires rose from nine in 2004 to 40 in 2007, says Forbes magazine. That's higher than Japan which had 24, while France and Italy had 14 billionaires each. When one of the world's highest number of billionaires coexist with what one economist calls the world's "largest number of homeless, ill-fed illiterates", something is gravely wrong. This is what rankles many in this happy season of positive thinking.

Anonymous said...

I could not find a better thread to post this.
As expected Aus completed a 3-0 whitewash of Pak in the test series.
Read this

"The broad point is often made in Pakistan that the world seems to be passing the country by. The extent of it can still be debated, but that the cricket world has long since left Pakistan behind cannot be. "

http://www.cricinfo.com/ausvpak09/content/current/story/444876.html

Riaz Haq said...

Data Crucncher: "The broad point is often made in Pakistan that the world seems to be passing the country by. The extent of it can still be debated, but that the cricket world has long since left Pakistan behind cannot be. "

I expected you (and others like you) to relish the moment with your smug "I told you so".

While I, too, am deeply disappointed by this loss, let's not forget the following:

1. Very few have ever beaten Australia in Australia in recent history.

2. Test is a fading format, as seen by dwindling attendance and TV viewership. T20 is the future of cricket where Pakistanis excel.

3. Pakistan has a lot of young cricketing talent, like Umar Akmal and Mohammad Aamer, and a strong Under-19 side.

My advice to you: Don't sell Pakistan short. You'll regret it.

Anonymous said...

"Very few have ever beaten Australia in Australia in recent history.
"
No team has ever lost 12 matches in a row except bangladesh to srilanka.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a 1998 report from Times of India comparing India and Pakistan:

Pakistan has long been richer than India. On the 50th anniversary of independence, The Economist proclaimed India the greater political success, but Pakistan the better economic performer.

That may finally have changed. The World Development Report, 1998, of the World Bank proclaims that India has finally overtaken Pakistan in living standards. Atal Behari Vajpayee will perhaps trumpet the news to voters; Mera Bharat Mahan.

The measure used by the World Bank to compare living standards is GNP per head measured in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP). That needs to be explained to the lay reader. Prices are far lower in India than in the US (even of onions). So the purchasing power of dollar in India is much greater than suggested by the exchange rate. Hence international comparisons of GNP per head in dollars can be misleading. These show Pakistan ($ 490) ahead of India ($ 390) in 1997. A more accurate comparison would be of purchasing power, and for this economists have constructed a PPP index.

The PPP measure is preferred by the World Bank for international comparisons. And this shows that in 1997, India's GNP per head in PPP terms ($ 1,650) finally overtook Pakistan's ($ l,590).This represented a major catch-up effort: In 1985, Pakistan was almost 30 per cent better off (see graph).

What explains the reversal of fortunes? Pakistan started off faster. India under Nehru followed a socialist path which yielded a modest GDP growth rate of 3.5 per cent, derided as the Hindu rate of growth. The Islamic rate in Pakistan was much faster, around 6 per cent in the heyday of president Ayub Khan, who ran a market-friendly economic regime.

Then came Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who expanded socialist controls and government ownership, less out of ideological conviction than to concentrate all power in his hands. Pakistan's investment in education and health remained miserably low. Its administration became even weaker and more corrupt than India's. Tax evasion was rampant, and Pakistan's savings rate was almost half of India's (14 per cent against 25 per cent in 1996). Yet Pakistan did better on the economic front for a long time. One reason was that it never fell too deep into grand illusions of import substitution. The second, more important reason is that it was plain lucky.

Its first stroke of luck was the splitting away of its eastern wing to form Bangladesh, This got rid of the poorest and least productive part of the country. It may have been a political disaster, but was an economic blessing.

Its second stroke of luck was the OPEC oil boom. High oil prices laid low many countries. Pakistan, too, was hit as an oil importer. But it more than made up by exporting labour to the Gulf, to which it was close in terms of geography and religion. A much higher proportion of Pakistanis went to the Gulf than Indians. The Pakistani proportion was closer to Kerala's-And like Kerala, Pakistan virtually solved its problem of poverty by exporting its poor to oil-rich countries.

Then came Zia and his Islamic brigade. The US cut off aid, and remittances from the Gulf began to stagnate. The outlook for Pakistan dimmed. But then came its third stroke of luck: The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Immediately US and other international aid flooded back. Added to which was new, but illegal income from the arms and drug trade, both facilitated by the Afghan war.

Riaz Haq said...

Contd:

Here's a 1998 report from Times of India comparing India and Pakistan:

But all good wars come to an end. In the 1990s, Pakistan has finally run out of luck. It has constantly been on the brink of bankruptcy, signing new deals with IMF and then defaulting on loan conditions. No foreign godfather is available to underwrite its excesses. The US does not want to see Pakistan sink into anarchy, and has temporarily waived sanctions against the country. But no longer will any foreign godfather keep Pakistan prosperous. It needs major reforms, social and administrative no less than economic, to become healthy again.

Just as Pakistan has decelerated, India has accelerated. The acceleration began in the 1980s, and gained further momentum after the reforms of 1991. For some time now, the neo-Hindu rate of growth has been faster than the neo-Islamic rate of Pakistan. That has enabled India to catch up and go ahead.

Having said that, I need to express some misgivings about the data. Look at the chart comparing social indicators of India and Pakistan. They cast some doubt on the notion that Indian living standards are superior. India is much better off in terms of the fertility rate, infant mortality rate, and adult literacy rate. A superior social performance plus superior GNP per head should have taken India far ahead on indicators like poverty and nutrition. This, however, is not the case,

Pakistan's poverty ratio of 11.6 per cent is barely one-fifth India's 52.5 per cent (this refers to the proportion of people below the World Bank's poverty line of $ 1 per day: This is different from the national poverty lines of the two countries). The data relates to 1991 and 1992 for the two countries, and India's relative position has improved since. Even so, it seems utterly implausible that India has caught up.

We have a major puzzle here. India's living standards, according to Bank data, are as high as Pakistan's. Also, India is more egalitarian (its inequality index is lower). If so, poverty should be lower in India than Pakistan. Yet the opposite seems to be the case.

This seems corroborated by other indicators. No less than 66 per cent of Indian children suffer from malnutrition, against only 40 per cent in Pakistan. If children are better fed in Pakistan, it is surely less poor.

Again, despite having better health facilities, India's maternal mortality rate (women dying during childbirth) is higher than Pakistan's, suggesting that Pakistani women are stronger and better fed. Finally, 64 per cent of Indians remain in agriculture, a low-income sector, against only 52 per cent in Pakistan.

So, we have many indications that Pakistani poverty is lower than India's. Pakistanis will, therefore, contest the Bank's estimate that India's living standards ace now higher.

Enough of statistical complexities, The bottomline is that India has clearly been growing faster than Pakistan for some time, and has better future prospects. Whether or not India has caught up already, it should go well ahead in the next decade. India is no East Asian tiger. But the elephant is lumbering ahead of its western neighbour.

joseph said...

first of all well done.. a really detailed article painstakingly researched...
i understand that this particular blog was comparing the two countries in the 60 years they have existed...But wherever i go over the net, why is that u pakistanis are hell bent on comparing yourself with India in everything... while we are trying to compete with top countries in the world... you guys only want to compete with us.. or try to compare yourself with us... why cant you people aim for more.. all you want to do is beat India.. so for pakistanis it doesnt matter for example ,if they are ranked second last country in the world(in any feild)
as long as India is ranked last.. you people are very happy... iam really worried by this atitude. A strong, stable pakistan is in Indias interest. We dont want Taliban spilling over into our country.. But with the atitudes that some pakistanis display.. iam worried that if God forbid, there is a war.. you people wont think twice before dropping nukes on us... even though you guys know that we will respond by nuking you.. You people wont care because, it doesnt matter if you're destroyed as long as India is destroyed first... this atitude of pakistan really worries me.. i understand that my comments about nukes is a bit over exagerated.. but im just trying to illustrate a point...i know people including you will respond by thrashing me.. all im saying,, try searching for pakistani blogs search for comments of pakistani in youtube, face book and see everywhere they want to either run down India or compare yourself with us.. and yes some Indians do it too.. but in a majority of the cases because they are retaliating agianst pakistani who have bad mouthed them..
...
And one more thing ive noticed pakistanis bring in race and color into every argument.. (we indians are guilty internally in our country too)... but whenever i have a debate with a pakistani,, some of them try to insult saying that indians have black faces and pakistanis are white and beautifull.. I mean you believe in Allah, you believe that God created everyone as his children and we need to love and respect one another , at the same time they throw this misguided insults that pakistanis are white and Indians are Black... and do you think God will be pleased with the insults that your throwing on his creation...
appeal to everyone spread peace and love not jealousy and hate..
God bless Pakistan and India..
you might say we are kafirs.. but the same God that created you created us....
Long live pakistan...
peace brothers...
And best of luck to your country.. may you have a secure safe and prosperous future...
jai india..
proudindianjoe1

Riaz Haq said...

joeindian: "why is that u pakistanis are hell bent on comparing yourself with India in everything."

For the same reason Indians always compare themselves to Pakistanis. Indians are at least as obsessed with Pakistan, if not more, than Pakistanis are with India.

You need to read more of your bloggers and your media reports, such as the one I reproduced from Times of India in my previous comment.

joseph said...

Boy that was quick!!!
yes, i read a lot of our bloggers and media reports, including the one in TOI that you suggested...
obviously being the old enemy.. there will be some articles and blogs about pakistan...
But we Indians are not half as obsessed
about pakistan as pakistan is about us... we dont compare yourself with us... coz many Indians consider india to be much advanced then pakistan...
But I must say I was suprised at the progress pakistan has made when I read your article...
seriously, previous to reading your article , i thought pakistan was a crumbling country, thanx to bbc and cnns coverage of the internal war and the terrorist attacks..
iam sure a lot of indians will be suprised at reading your blog too..
this further illustartes my point. That we dont really consider pakistan to be anywhere near us(obviosly we are wrong according to your article) . To even compare it with us..
You obvsly wont agree... And I think your wrong... Pakistanis should stop your Indian Obsession.. And try competing with the rest of the world... that will be good for pakistan

Riaz Haq said...

joeindia: Talking about Indians obsessing with Pakistan, here is a recent NPR story:

"I actually feel we give too much time in our minds to Pakistan," says Rahul Gandhi of India's ruling Congress Party. He thinks it's time for attitudes to change.

His mother, Sonia Gandhi, is the party's president. His grandmother was former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the assassinated daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister.

Rahul Gandhi, who many observers believe will one day lead India, would like to see his nation spending much less time obsessing about Pakistan.

"We are now becoming a serious international player. Pakistan is a very small piece of our worldview," he says.

Many analysts believe India's biggest foreign policy challenge these days is its rivalry with China.

But changing attitudes about Pakistan isn't going to be easy. The subject dominates India's news media, which often makes no attempt to disguise its bias. A recent television newscast used the phrase "most preposterous" to describe a position espoused by Pakistan's interior minister.

"It's hysterical. It's absolutely, totally unprofessional," says Seema Mustafa, editor of India's Covert magazine. "I think the television channels have actually forgotten they are journalists, and they've become advocates for war."

She says the relationship between India and Pakistan is a paradox. "At the individual level, it turns into a whole level of camaraderie. And at the political level, it is akin to hate," Mustafa says.

Indians who take a hard-line stance on Pakistan sometimes display a strangely contradictory view of that country, Mustafa says.

"People who have been sort of going hammer and tongs about nuking Pakistan — of taking your army across and finishing that country — are people I have seen visit Islamabad and be even friendlier with the Pakistanis. And the families all start visiting each other, big gifts are taken. Then after that, they come back and say the same thing," Mustafa says.

swastyk7 said...

Though i dont want to sound like a pakistan basher but the bottomline remains that pakistan was created on the very lines that it had be anything but similar to India. Every child in India today from the very day he reads about the subcontinental history he is told that the people on the other side of the border are just like us. Despite that we have quite a sizeable chunk of the population who are always ready to blow pakistan back to the stone ages if they had the capability. On the other hand even a cursory glance at the education system of Pakistan (i mean madarssas to be general) shows us how desperately they try to show how different they are from India. Even they go upto the extent of teaching racist ideas like people in the indus region are fair wheat eating tall and handsome peole and to the east of the border people are dark skinned puny people (which is quite ridiculous). Infact i can also point out this attitude to be the very reason Pakistan broke up in 1971. The people of west Pakistan could never bear the thought of being ruled by the Awami League(leading east Pakistan political party then) beacuse they thought themselves to be too superior to be ruled an inferior fish eating dark bengali. Mohammed Ali Jinnah used the idea of protection of muslims and islam in creating Pakistan though he himself was a very secular individual. But the very idea of creation of an Islamic State was also unable to hold together Pakitan. Ofcourse i am not denying that the geopolitical reasons were also crucial in breaking up Pakistan in 1971.
We have entered 10 years into the new millenium. New millenium holds loads of new promises for both the nations growth and progress. We Indians though think that we are shedding/or have already shed our Pakistan Pakistan obsession, but in the back of our minds we are always very critical of our neighbour and this has been the case despite more than 60 years of education of saying that indians and pakistanis are same. So it is very natural for the Pakistanis to compare and criticize India at very step. Pakistan for long had been economicaly better off than India , but when India is turning the tables today sparks shall definitely fly. Dont you think China is also that critical seeing another rising superpower from its own backyard (albeit in a lower intensity)?

Riaz Haq said...

swatsyk7: "On the other hand even a cursory glance at the education system of Pakistan (i mean madarssas to be general) shows us how desperately they try to show how different they are from India. Even they go upto the extent of teaching racist ideas like people in the indus region are fair wheat eating tall and handsome peole and to the east of the border people are dark skinned puny people (which is quite ridiculous)."

I think you are grossly misinformed about what they teach in Pak schools about India, just as you are unaware of what they are teaching in Gujarat, India, about Muslims and Pakistan. Here are a few excerpts from Gujarat textbooks:

*Gujarat is a border state. Its land and sea boundaries touch the boundaries of Pakistan which is like a den of terrorism. Under such circumstances, it is absolutely necessary for us to understand the effects of terrorism and the role of citizens in the fight against it

*If every countryman becomes an ideal citizen and develops patriotism, the National Population Policy can definitely be achieved

*When people used to meet earlier, they wished each other saying Ram Ram and by shaking hands. Today, people enjoy their meeting by speaking Namaste. Is it not a change?

*Making full use of Muslim fanaticism, Osama Bin Laden organized die-hard Muslims and founded the International Jihad Organization in the name of the Jehedi movement*
[Excerpted from Social Science textbooks, standard nine (2005) and standard eight (2004)]


http://www.indiatogether.org/2007/feb/edu-gujtexts.htm

swastyk7 said...

There is a saying in hindi: "Taali kabhi ek haath se nahin bajti"(Meaning in a duel no particular side is completely right). I never said that whatever is taught in India absolutely uncontroversial everywhere. Infact i can also give you scores of links which indicate many anomalies in Pakistani and Indian academic textbooks and media reports. But surely only geopolitical differences can't be the only reason for the creation of Bangladesh. I know it may be very hard for many people there to admit it but its a fact as much as is the riot of Godhra in Gujarat in India due to religious clashes ;racial difference was a very key point in the breaking up of Pakistan.
India has been very lucky(deservedly) in having a sovereign, socialist, democratic, secular, republic governance. Though we are not 100% in any of these but we are pretty close to it. The idealogy upon which India was created was very good indeed. Though implementation hiccups have been there all through the post-independence history. But on the other hand Pakistan was created to be a nation for muslims only. Democracy ("of the people", "for the people", "by the people") is more like an illusion there. Socialist: The measure of socialism is in the strength of middle class of a nation. India has nearly 25%(conservative estimate) of the population in this range. Pakistan is 8% in this regard. Sovereign: What is sovereignty of a nation if its own citizens are not their own rulers? What is sovereignty if the people dont have the "freedom" to choose their own national government? Secular: I am sure many of my pakistani friends are going to pass a chuckle or two pointing out some of the communal riots in India. But atleast our constitution has a provision for equality of all religions. Moreover its only the news of riots that will spread, but not the news of how there are 100s of temples and mosques in India that are accessible to both hindus and muslims, the most famous being the Shirdi Sai Temple (some distance away from Mumbai). Republic: Do i need say anything more in this regard?
Rather than trying to forge relationships of friendship or trying to reduce the bitterness its actually pretty disappointing to try to highlight or rake up the differences between two nations and its citizens. It is surely not of any help. When people start identifying themselves with the similarities they have with their counterparts on the other side of the border then only we can actually hope of a peaceful coexistence. "Birds of same feather flock together". I personally believe there is not much of a difference between people on either side of the border. Don't you agree?

Anonymous said...

I was actually surprised when I read your blog. I never knew Pakistan was doing so well. Congrats . However there is something that we must set straight: India and Pakistan, though similar in some aspects, are very different in others. Please don't try picking at India's flaws. Contrary to your understanding, the average Indian does know about these flaws. What makes me hopeful is that India has emerged as a global player IN SPITE of these flaws. Your assumption that these flaws must be corrected for India to develop further is not entirely true, as you have discounted national pride, something we Indians have ample amount of. These flaws, these blights on Indian society, will slowly be weeded out. It is inevitable.

Our neighbours have generally not been appreciative of us, but they should. "The Indian census of 1961 recognised 1,652 different languages in India (including languages not native to the subcontinent). The 1991 census recognizes 1,576 classified "mother tongues"". A democratic country with this staggering amount of languages, 28 states, and innumerous ethnicities has managed not to collapse spectacularly. Does that not intrigue you, cause you to look a little more closely at what makes us tick, and implement it in Pakistan? If it does'nt, I am appalled by your apathy and ignorance.

VIJAY said...

well, Mr Haq was certainly unbiased when he wrote the main article but his uniformity declined when the readers commented. I would advise you uncle( I hope you don't mind me calling you Uncle cause I am just 16) to look into matters from an inertial frame. India is into this new decade along with the global leaders, on the other hand, Pakistan enters the same with various severe problems. It's important for us to work for our own benefits and not other's harms. I do think that the people there are trying to achieve progress, but to my small mind, it occurs that it cannot be achieved with an anti-American view. Americans develop because they don't give a damn. And though the Indian governance may be based on the British ways, the Indians are more akin to the americans in their lifestyles and thinking. You cannot educate students in Madarsas and expect them to be global leaders- even if I believe that you don't teach terrorist activities there. So you have built a nuclear missile, good. But so have many other countries of the world. But they don't behave as irresponsibly as you guys do. There are constant threats the pakistani public gives that they will nuke the entire world. A word of advice would be that they should leave these void spaces and start building an economically powerful pakistan. You spend so much on your defense but refuse to spend on education. Tell me what threat you face from India or China. None from China I know , and regarding India, if you recall history, we never attacked you except in 1971 when it was necessary on humanitarian grounds. "Frankly speaking, my friend, I don't give a damn" about what is going on in Pakistan. If the people there are dying, I don't care. If people there are terrorists, I don't care. If women there are getting raped, hell I don't care. It's our country and our people we Indians care for and expect the world not to cause any trouble to us or we will trouble you(as we do to Pakistan).

Riaz Haq said...

Vijay, Thanks for your comment. I do understand your point of view. Now let me give you the other side of the coin that you have probably not paid much attention to.

India has the dubious distinction of being among the top ten on two very different lists: It ranks at the top of nations with 270 million illiterate adults, the largest in the world, as detailed by a just released UNESCO report on education; India also shows up at number four in military spending in terms of purchasing power parity, behind United States, China and Russia.

Not only is India the lowest among BRIC nations in terms of human development, India is also the only country among the top ten military spenders which, at 134 on a list of 182 nations, ranks near the bottom of the UNDP's human development rankings. Pakistan, at 141, ranks even lower than India.

India also fares badly on the 2009 World Hunger Index, ranking at 65 along with several sub-Saharan nations. Pakistan ranks at 58 on the same index.

The reality of grinding poverty in resurgent India was recently summed up well by a BBC commentator Soutik Biswas as follows:

A sobering thought to keep in mind though. Impressive growth figures are unlikely to stun the poor into mindless optimism about their future. India has long been used to illustrate how extensive poverty coexists with growth. It has a shabby record in pulling people out of poverty - in the last two decades the number of absolutely poor in India has declined by 17 percentage points compared to China, which brought down its absolutely poor by some 45 percentage points. The number of Indian billionaires rose from nine in 2004 to 40 in 2007, says Forbes magazine. That's higher than Japan which had 24, while France and Italy had 14 billionaires each. When one of the world's highest number of billionaires coexist with what one economist calls the world's "largest number of homeless, ill-fed illiterates", something is gravely wrong. This is what rankles many in this happy season of positive thinking.

VIJAY said...

How many times will you quote the same lines from BBC Mr. Haq. I have gone through all your comments, and understand what you have to say. What I am trying to say is that there is little co-operation between India and Pakistan and the general public mentalities are different on either side of the border. While Pakistani citizens blame the Indian soaps on their television for disturbing their sentiments, the same soaps are blamed in India for being too out of date and only old women watch them. You see where the difference is? It is in the people. While Indian crowd is not as advanced as the Americans, the urban Indian can certainly be compared to a French or maybe a German. Pakistan is yet to make a start in the up liftment in feelings of Pakistanis which is mainly because of the failed policies of the state. Your government built the terrorists to destabilize India. Wouldn't it have been better that you built industries to function in India? Now terrorism plagues both countries. When we promote human rights in Afghanistan, you people say we are promoting terrorism in your country!What will we gain by that? Don't you recall that we even returned the land we won in the wars at the UN. We want peace Mr. Haq.
And remarking to what you have said, I think it's not much different from what other Pakistani orators have been commenting. "240 million". Yes it is the largest number but don't forget that we also have the largest population. Why don't you better speak in percentage where the true picture can be seen. In my previous post, as you did not notice, I never said that India is better than Pakistan. I said there is a difference in the way people behave in the two countries. You reply me back with a list of facts from organisations and other figures I cannot argue with. They are true. But the point is change, sir. While Indians change, Pakistanis don't.

Riaz Haq said...

Vijay: "You reply me back with a list of facts from organisations and other figures I cannot argue with. They are true. But the point is change, sir. While Indians change, Pakistanis don't."

The facts always speak louder than words. And the facts indicate that India remains a poor, hungry, backward, illiterate and rural.

Pakistan is already the most urbanized country in South Asia, and it is urbanizing faster than its neighbors. As to comparison with India, let me quote what Alistair Scrutton of Reuters wrote recently:

Indeed, for sheer spotlessness, efficiency and emptiness there is nothing like the M2 in the rest of South Asia.

It puts paid to what's on offer in Pakistan's traditional foe and emerging economic giant India, where village culture stubbornly refuses to cede to even the most modern motorways, making them battlegrounds of rickshaws, lorries and cows.

There are many things in Pakistan that don't get into the news. Daily life, for one. Pakistani hospitality to strangers, foreigners like myself included, is another. The M2 is another sign that all is not what it appears in Pakistan, that much lies hidden behind the bad news.

On a recent M2 trip, my driver whizzed along but kept his speedometer firmly placed on the speed limit. Here in this South Asian Alice's Wonderland, the special highway police are considered incorruptible. The motorway is so empty one wonders if it really cuts through one of the region's most populated regions.

"130, OK, but 131 is a fine," said the driver, Noshad Khan. "The police have cameras," he added, almost proudly. His hand waved around in the car, clenched in the form of a gun.

On one of my first trips to Pakistan. I arrived at the border having just negotiated a one-lane country road in India with cows, rickshaws and donkey-driven carts.

I toted my luggage over to the Pakistan side, and within a short time my Pakistani taxi purred along the tarmac. The driver proudly showed off his English and played U.S. rock on FM radio. The announcer even had an American accent. Pakistan, for a moment, receded, and my M2 trip began."

joseph said...

yes, your reply kinda underscores my point...
when i meant pakistans obsession with India... i didnt mean your media, govt, army ,isi and politicians... that is taken for granted that they will bash and compare with India just like indian govt , indian media keep obsessing about pak... What I meant was the general people of pak who constantly compare and onsess about India.. I must correct myself.. i cant generalise the whole pak public... to be more precise i must say, the internet users wherever i go, youtube, facebook, blogs there is constant comparison by pakistani internet users... "oh, your poverty level is high,,, u people are dark,, pakistan ki awam(population) bookha nahi sotha" and so on.. Any way im sorry about the way the IPL disgarcefully treated pak cricketers... hope both our nations can forget, forgive and strive for the future...
bye..............

joseph said...

On one of my first trips to Pakistan. I arrived at the border having just negotiated a one-lane country road in India with cows, rickshaws and donkey-driven carts i toted my luggage over to the Pakistan side, and within a short time my Pakistani taxi purred along the tarmac. The driver proudly showed off his English and played U.S. rock on FM radio. The announcer even had an American accent.

doesnt it seem obvious that the new tarmac, the fancy cab driver speaking
english head banging to his rock music... was all for show.. its almost like saying... Look at our side of the border how developed we are, new roads, i can speak english" I mean,We can train any dude on the street to speak eng... the largest engilsh speaking nation in the world apart from america...
another classic case of pakistan trying to out do India..
I have had and hosted a number of foreigners in my home town bagalore (IT capital of India) they have all gone ga ga over bangalore , terming it "just like any city in europe"...too bad none of them were reporters from reuters( alistair scrutton) for you to quote them in your blog... then again if some reporter would say something good about India,, im sure it will never be quoted because the pakistan mindset is programmed to pick the negative of atleast India...
Your pakistan cricketers when they played a match in bangalore ,, were so impressed with my city they were gushing about it to the local media.. some pakistani players as well as support staff picked up lots of computer related equipment and software coz they said they couldnt find that in pakistan (continued)...

joseph said...

continued))))
i can understand if it was some new player gushing,, but it was the entire team including the rich established players... yes we have, poverty, yes we have infant mortality but so do pakistan .. ours is a huggggggge country with more than 1000 diffrent languages, different races,, religion... With a population of 1.2 billion people...
So yes we will have logistical problems ,, right now all the wealth is
concentrated in the urban areas but it is just a matter of time before it starts reaching the poorer parts of our country... Dont compare your selves with us .... the only part of the world that we can BE, somewhat remotely compared to ,is EUROPE... Because just like europe we have a number of different languages spoken in diffrent regions... diffrent cultures and like in europe we have certain regions which are rich and certain regions that are very poor as in europe Ukraine, Romania , maldovar,
the challenge for the govt is to spread the flow of wealth , it will take time but it will happen...

you know for an intelligent man like you.. it is unfair to keep comparing and pulling up stuff about poverty, infant mortality simply coz pakistan doesnt care about some infant dying in india nor about a poor homeless man... Because you have 100001 problems of your own that you need to concentrate on...
We are growing and boy are we growing!! One of the few countries that grew upwards during the recession.. A country like USA is scared of China.. And these chinese our scared of our rise...
But the bottom line Mr haq as this could be my last post to you... have lot of other posts that I have to reply...
The bottom line is " Our muslim brothers in India can go to any Mosque and pray peacefully to the almighty without getting scared of being blown apart by some bomb"
Our people can go and shop without being worried of dying in a suicide bomb blast in some market"
our army till date never had to fight an internal war with any religious extremists"

We are much more safer in india... some of our people might be hungry... but atleast they dont live in fear of being gunned down by some terrorists...
"500 blasts in pakistan last year" and im not quoting some biased , indian bashing reuters or bbc reporter... im quoting imran khan...
so i guess before pointing fingers ,, you people should do something about your internal security...
we Indians dont live in fear ... like the people of pakistan of their self grown terrorist nor are we scared of the govt and living without freedom like the chinese people..
thats the bottom line....

and please dont pull up some stats about indias internal security.. coz no matter which source you quote ,,, nothing can deny the fact that India is much more safer.. And to me thats more important ...

Riaz Haq said...

Joeindian: ". to be more precise i must say, the internet users wherever i go, youtube, facebook, blogs there is constant comparison by pakistani internet users... "oh, your poverty level is high,,, u people are dark,"

My experience is just the reverse. Whether it is the Wall Street Journal, or Reuters, or any sites operated by Indians or Pakistanis (this blog included), I see hostile Indian comments on any story or post where Pakistan is mentioned. In fact, the hostile comments by Indian readers outnumber Pakistanis' comments by at least 10 to 1. Often such comments by Indians are outright personal and abusive, displaying open bigotry and Pakistanis and their faith, and expressing undisguised glee at the ongoing carnage in Pakistan.

Anonymous said...

"The facts always speak louder than words. And the facts indicate that India remains a poor, hungry, backward, illiterate and rural."

Please also consider the fact that Pakistan has a population of 168,560,000 compared to India which has a population of 1,198,003,000. Now if you apply your statistics percentages it will be fair until then it's only a trivial "mine is bigger than yours" attempt.

Riaz Haq said...

One out of every three illiterate adults in the world is an Indian, according to UNESCO.

One out very two hungry persons in the world is an Indian, according to World Food Program.

Almost one out two Indians live 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.

Here are some more recent comparative indicators in South Asia:

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

Education:


Youth (15–24 years) literacy rate, 2000 to 2007, male Pak istan: 80% India 87% Source: UNICEF

Youth (15–24 years) literacy rate, 2000 to 2007, female Pak istan 60% India 77% Source: UNICEF

Economics:

GDP per capita (US$), 2008 Pak:$1000-1022 India $1017-1100

Child Protection:

Child marriage under 15-years ; 1998–2007*, total Pak istan - 32% India - 47% Source: UNICEF

Under-5 mortality rate per 1000 live births (2007), Value Pakistan - 90 India 72 Source: UNICEF

Riaz Haq said...

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.


Here's a recent Bloomberg report on sanitation in India:

Until May 2007, Meera Devi rose before dawn each day and walked a half mile to a vegetable patch outside the village of Kachpura to find a secluded place.

Dodging leering men and stick-wielding farmers and avoiding spots that her neighbors had soiled, the mother of three pulled up her sari and defecated with the Taj Mahal in plain view.

With that act, she added to the estimated 100,000 tons of human excrement that Indians leave each day in fields of potatoes, carrots and spinach, on banks that line rivers used for drinking and bathing and along roads jammed with scooters, trucks and pedestrians. Devi looks back on her routine with pain and embarrassment.

“As a woman, I would have to check where the males were going to the toilet and then go in a different direction,” says Devi, 37, standing outside her one-room mud-brick home. “We used to avoid the daytimes, but if we were really pressured, we would have to go any time of the day, even if it was raining. During the harvest season, people would have sticks in the fields. If somebody had to go, people would beat them up or chase them.”

In the shadow of its new suburbs, torrid growth and 300- ­million-plus-strong middle class, India is struggling with a sanitation emergency. From the stream in Devi’s village to the nation’s holiest river, the Ganges, 75 percent of the country’s surface water is contaminated by human and agricultural waste and industrial effluent. Everyone in Indian cities is at risk of consuming human feces, if they’re not already, the Ministry of Urban Development concluded in September.

Economic Drain

Illness, lost productivity and other consequences of fouled water and inadequate sewage treatment trimmed 1.4-7.2 percent from the gross domestic product of Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam in 2005, according to a study last year by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program.

Sanitation and hygiene-related issues may have a similar if not greater impact on India’s $1.2 trillion economy, says Guy Hutton, a senior water and sanitation economist with the program in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Snarled transportation and unreliable power further damp the nation’s growth. Companies that locate in India pay hardship wages and ensconce employees in self- sufficient compounds.

Riaz Haq said...

The Times of India has reported today that it's a myth that the global financial crisis left India virtually unscathed. In fact, India is the biggest victim of financial crisis-induced poverty, according to data obtained by TOI from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs' (UNDESA). Check out these figures.

The UNDESA data estimates that the number of India's poor was 33.6 million higher in 2009 than would have been the case if the growth rates of the years from 2004 to 2007 had been maintained. In 2009 alone, an estimated 13.6 million more people in India became poor or remained in poverty than would have been the case at 2008 growth rates.

In other words, while a dip from the 8.8% growth in GDP averaged from 2004-05 to 2006-07 to the 6.7% estimated for 2008-09 may be nothing like the recession faced by the West, its human consequences for India were probably worse. The 2.1% decline in India's GDP growth rate has effectively translated into a 2.8% increase in the incidence of poverty.

According to the UNDESA's World Economic Situation and Prospects 2010, 47 million more people globally became poor or remained in poverty in 2009 than would have been the case at 2008 growth rates, and 84 million more than would have poor at 2004-7 growth rates. Of these, 19 and 40 million respectively are in south Asia.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's piece on the underlying hate against SRK by Shiv Sena...I hope it helps expose the Indian right-wing hatemongers on the net:

Hate and dividing communities is the hallmark of right wing politics, wherever they are. Whether it is in Mumbai, bashing north Indian taxi drivers or Australian skinheads attacking Indian students – the underlying message is clear – “we” are different from “you” – and this some how gives “us” the right to violently exclude “you” from our society. If the “we” in this case is the majority, this gives the added bonus to whip up a majoritarian frenzy and ride to electoral victory using that.

The anti North Indian issue whipped up by Raj Thakre and now the Bal Thakre attack on Shahrukh Khan over his comments that Pakistani cricketer should have been considered for the IPL, are a part of this larger hate agenda.

The original movement for Maharashtrian identity was very different from the hate project of the Shiv Sena and the MNS. It was the left – both communists and socialists – that had played the key role in the movement for creating Maharashtra out of the erstwhile Bombay province. This was a part of the larger struggle for linguistic reorganisation of states, waged all over the country. These were not divisive movements – they did not turn against other communities but wanted the states to be based on language. These were the movements which complemented the national movement and allowed India to create itself as a multi national and multi ethnic state – a feat that was considered inconceivable by western commentators on India then.

The Shiv Sena model of Marathi pride from the very beginning was an exclusive and a divisive one. It started with attacks on South Indians in Mumbai – the Marathi identity was asserted from the very beginning as an exclusion of other communities from Mumbai. Of course, let us have no illusions that the ruling party then – that the Congress did not dirty its hand in this too. In order to break the left labour unions, particularly in the textile mills, the mill owners and the Congress joined hands to provide explicit and implicit support to Shiv Sena. The Marathi pride was the instrument not of asserting a Marathi identity but as an instrument of exclusion.


http://newsclick.in/india/mns-goons-and-australian-skinheads-%E2%80%93-why-are-they-similar

joseph said...

MR Haq,

you really picked the wrong issue to prove your point...
shiv sena and their cousin narendra modi and his party bjp are right wing extremist who lack popular support...

these people in no way represent indians or netizens from india...
i never said that all Indians do not hate pakistan and spew hatred in the net.. i ve always said that there are indians hatemongers but very very few compared to the hate mongers from pakistan nearly 95% from my experience...that i have come across....

The greatness of my country is the fact that shiv sena were defeated in their mission...

majority of the people ,the govt , the media all joined hands and defeated these evil stupid shiv sainiks in their effort... The film recieved bumper opening throughout the country many of whom, saw it just to defy the sena.... initialy on friday many multipexes and theaters were liitle worried .. but with good support from the police and people , on saturday almost all the theaters ran the movie...

Today I AM A PROUD INDIAN it was heartening to see how support for shahrukh khan came in from all across india....

shiv sena are desperate, it was pecisely for their pro marathi agenda , their hatred and thier hooliganism that they were defeated badly in the recent state election....
same with the HINDU PARTY BJP in the national election...
the great indian democracy(our people) rejected the BJP twice ( in the last two election) inspite of the great strides that india made under Vajpayee of the BJP people rejected bjp because of their pro-hindutva stand...
(continued)

joseph said...

(continuation)
We have elected a secular party twice in the last two election...

you know for all my above arguments, you will pull up some article and some stats to defy my argument....

But the bottomline is this,, if extremists trained by some Hindu extremist organisation had entered pakistan and attacked a major city and destoryed lets say the RAMADA PLAZA hotel... then one year later if an hindu actor from pakistan had said that "we should allow indian cricketers to take part in the pakistan premier league" just before his movie, lets say, "my name is rahul" was due to be realeased .... what do you think would have been the reaction in your country pakistan... (no stats you pull out, will be able to prove me wrong that the reactions to my hypothetical scenario would be bloody)

a hundred islamic extremist hate mongering organization (like shiv sena )would have caused a huge ruckus in pakistan.( in my country there was just shiv sena and a couple others who caused problem but the police quickly silenced them...)
forget one city,, there would have been protests all over pakistan..
forget the pak govt providing security, the govt would have prevented the release of the movie on account of the riots caused by it...

And honestly how many every day normal pakistanis would have come out in support of that hindu actor and watched his movie...honestly....

the ans-- very very few...

that sir is the fundamental differnce between pakistan and india..

that is why I call myself proud indian...
people from all walks, the govt, the media every day tom dick and harry hindus, muslims christians ,sikhs of my country went out and watched the movie on saturday to support shahrukh khan and to defy the shiv sena almost all theaters showed it in mumbai and everywhere else in india..... forget everyone else... my friends and i watched the movie.... and not because of shahrukh khan ( i am a aamir khan fan, i dont identify with the kind of bubble gum movies shahruk makes)... But to defy the narrow minded protests from sena...

you can pull out any stats any article ..
but that doesnt make a difference to me..i have seen first hand how my country men have rallied across to support a muslim actor and a movie about a muslim theme...
yes, there will be few a very few who will be against SRK and few others who will spread hatred on the internet... but they are a minority...
far too less compared to my hate mongering brothers in pakistan... no way on earth would, every day pakistani public have supported a hindu actor and his movie based on a hindu theme...

thats the diffrence ... iam sure you wont agree... i guess we can agree to disagree...

Riaz Haq said...

joeindian: "shiv sena and their cousin narendra modi and his party bjp are right wing extremist who lack popular support..."

Unlike the right wing religious parties in Pakistan, Shiv Sena has been elected before, and Modi is currently a popular multi-term CM in Gujarat, in spite of his crimes against humanity.

In Pakistan, religious right-wing parties never get more than a few percent votes. In India, the BJP and Sangh Parivar have been elected many times and have had their prime minister.

So your argument doesn't hold water.

saptarshi said...

i made a few observations abt pakistan hope u like it.
Let us begin with population growth, perhaps the basic malaise behind all other ills facing the two countries. While India itself has registered a not-so-low annual growth rate of 2.2 per cent according to the last census, Pakistans growth rate has been as high as three per cent per annum. This rate has been prevalent since the has led to the quadrupling of the country?s population from the time of independence. In fact, the last census in Pakistan was held in 1981, and if reports in the Pakistani media are to be believed, the annual growth rate may have neared 3.5 per cent in the last decade.

The reasons for this high growth rate are many. Apart from usual causes like extreme poverty and social insecurity, Pakistani society continues to suffer from medieval practices like early marriage of women and their poor education. Almost 50 per cent of women in Pakistan are married before the age of 20, enormously increasing the chances of conception. In fact, the average fertility of women (number of live birth, per woman) in Pakistan is a high 6.1 compared to India?s 3.7. Another factor is poor education of women. There is abundant evidence internationally that well-educated women, being career- oriented, generally bear fewer children. Contraceptive usage is also quite high among them.

according to a 1991 survey, only two- fifths of Pakistani women knew of major contraceptives, and less than a quarter of these actually used them. The reasons cited by them ranged from husband preference to their cost and even a simple lack of conviction regarding their usefulness. Also, about 30 per cent of college graduates reported using contraceptives compared to 8.5 per cent of uneducated women.

Literacy is perhaps the most significant index of social development in a country as the performance of all other sectors is dependent on the success achieved in this sector. The average literacy rate in Pakistan is a poor 35.7 per cent compared to India?s 49.9 per cent. World Bank figures show that Pakistan?s literacy rate is even lower than some of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa like Ghana and Nigeria. School enrolment rates in Pakistan are less than half the averages in India.

saptarshi said...

contdThe most distressing aspect that emerges from these observations is the state of education among women. Nationwide, their literacy rate is not even half compared to men. But the gap attains enormous proportions in rural areas where the female literacy, at 5.5 per cent, is just about one-fifth of rural male literacy. The literacy rate of 5.5 per cent is also the lowest in the world for any section of people.

Other averages, like those of enrolment and drop out rates, further impress the dismal state of female education in Pakistan. Primary enrolment rate for girls is 15 per cent below the total enrolment rates, and 8 per cent below secondary enrollment. Girls moving from primary to secondary schools in 1987 were 9 per cent less than boys, implying a higher percentage of drop out for girls. A prime factor behind this is lower school availability and accessibility for girls. Whether or not a school is available in the same or nearby village is claimed to account for one-third of the large gender gap in schools. The distance to a school may not be the most critical factor for boys. But for girls, and especially those in the rural areas, it makes all the difference between a literate and a non-literate status.

In a way these distressing literacy rates are not very surprising. Education has never been a priority issue with Pakistan?s planning department, as is evident from the extremely low expenditure budgeted for this sector. It was as low as 1.4 per cent of GNP in the early ?70s, and remained around 1.5 per cent between 1975 and 1985. Since then it has increased to 2.3 per cent, but is still nowhere near the requirement.

saptarshi said...

These figures also reveal a deep-rooted urban bias in the health sector of Pakistan. Even though 60 per cent of Pakistan lives in rural areas, an overwhelming section of medical personnel and health facilities are located only in cities. For example, 85 per cent of all practising doctors work in the cities, which comes to a doctor-population ratio of 1:1801. The rural doctor-population ratio happens to be a pathetic 1:25829. Similarly, only 23 per cent of the hospitals in the country are located in rural areas and only 8,574 hospital beds (18 per cent of total) are available to a population of 80 million.

The health budget in Pakistan is less than 1 per cent of the GNP. Out of this, more than four-fifths gets allocated to urban-based curative health facilities at the expense of rural health programmes. An important reason for a lack of trained medical manpower in rural areas is lack of facilities. Even if some well- intentioned doctors want to serve in rural areas, the abysmal conditions force them to change their mind. The government?s approach to the whole issue can be gauged from the fact that though it ?urges? doctors to go to rural areas, it actually pays them less than their colleagues at equivalent positions in urban health centres.

Even in urban areas, these health facilities are largely restricted to use by the upper sections of society and are beyond the reach of those living in slums and katchi abadis. Pakistan has undergone a very fast rate of urbanisation at around 4.8 per cent per annum, largely due to migration from rural areas. Thus, slums and katchi abadis constitute a large section ? around 40 per cent nationwide ? of the urban populace. Health centres and other medical facilities are virtually non-existent in these settlements. Sanitary provisions and water accessibility are also practically nil and, in several cases, even proper sewage facilities are not provided. Under such extreme conditions, it is no wonder that three-fourths of the deaths are caused by infectious diseases.

saptarshi said...

The degraded status of women in Pakistani society is already evident from our discussion on population welfare and the education sector. Some observations made by Pakistani economist S Akbar Zaidi in Issues in Pakistan?s Economy provide further clues:

* Pakistan has the lowest sex ratio in the world: In 1985 there were 91 women for every 100 men, down from 93 in 1965.

* According to studies conducted in 1989, Pakistan was one of only four countries in the world where men lived longer than women.

* Primary school enrolment rates for girls are among the ten lowest in the world.

* While the incidence of ill-health and premature death among the poor of both sexes is very high in Pakistan, women and girls are the worst affected.

* Pakistan?s maternal mortality rate is the highest in South Asia and greater than all other Muslim countries, essentially due to birth-related problems. This is compounded by the very high prevalence of babies with low birth-weight ? only three countries in the world have a higher percentage of such babies.

* Only 13 per cent of the labour force is constituted of women, substantially below the 36 per cent average for all low-income countries.

The discrimination meted out to women in the Pakistani society has wide- ranging implications for the country as a whole. As economist Giovanni Cornia has observed in his paper in Tariq Banuri?s Just Adjustment: Protecting the Vulnerable and Promoting Growth, the unsatisfactory social and economic development record in Pakistan depends to a very large extent on the low status of women in society, on their low level of literacy, on their restricted access to basic services, and on a pervasive gender bias in the access to economic resources which is the source of a severe intra-sex and intra-household income inequality. Women are married at an early age, have shorter lives, work longer hours, remain mostly illiterate, and have minimal opportunities for schooling, training and gainful employment. Their low and secondary status precludes any significant decision-making role even in fertility control.

quoted from

INDIA Vs PAKISTAN - Contrasts In Social Development ,2005
Author: Sultan Shahin
Publication: The Observer of Business and Politics
widely available in the net

saptarshi said...

hat about pakistani research facilities?

Serious scientists work heroically under overwhelming odds in such circumstances; good or outstanding scientific work done is despite the milieu. ``Islamic Science,'' whose proponents claim that the Koran contains all possible science, makes constant inroads into positions of power in educational and Research and Development institutions, and obscurantism has been elevated to a position of dignity. The author cites a number of examples of the non-science that is produced as a result. A senior scientist of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, committed to `Islamic science,' argues that Koranic evidence supports the existence of jinns as fiery beings possessing unlimited energy, and that this energy can be used as fuel. Another author proposes that atomic charges are carved out of ``spiritual forces'' and ``not simply the blind electromagnetic forces that the materialists would make us believe.''

this is what he had to say abt another test designed by the nobel laureate samuel ting,in 29th jan at centre for basic sciences,in which 130 students from all over pakistan perticipated."Not a single student passed. Not one came anywhere close to the pass mark. The highest recorded score was 113, and the average score was 70 - a scant 3 points above that which a group of illiterated would have attained, had they been allowed to randomly tick off the answers."

he gives an excerpt from questions asked in qaid e azam university teachers interview,1987considered to be pakistans best university

What are the names of the Holy Prophet's wives?
Recite the prayer Dua-e-Qunoot.
When was the Pakistan Resolution adopted?
What is the difference between different azan's?
What does your [the candidate's] name mean?
Give the various names of God.

a few of pakistani education policies:-

Imposition of the chadar for female students in educational institutions;
Organization of zuhr (afternoon) prayers during school hours;
Compulsory teaching of Arabic as a second language from the 6 the class onwards;
Introduction of nazra Qur'an (reading of Qur'an) as a matriculation requirement;
An alteration of the definition of literacy to mean religious knowledge;
Elevation of maktab schools to the status of regular schools;
The recognition of madrasah certificates as equivalent to master's degrees;
The grant of 20 extra marks for those applicants to engineering universities who have memorized Qur'an;
Creation of International Islamic University in Islamabad;
Organization of numerous national and international conference on various aspects of Islamization;
Introduction of religious knowledge as a criterion for selecting teachers of science and non
science subjects;
Revision of conventional subjects to emphasize Islamic values.

the science miracles conference oct 18,1988,
following shortlist of rather suggestively titled papers presented at the Scientific Miracles Conference by itself speaks volumes:
Chemical Composition of Milk in relation to Verse 66 of Surat An-Nahl of the Holy Qur'an.
Description of Man at High Altitudes in Qur'an.
Cumulonimbus Clouds Description in Qur'an.
Have You Observed the Fire?
Revelation of Some Modern Oceanographic Phenomena in Holy Qur'an.

saptarshi said...

a few of pakistans prominent research papers:-

Dr Mohammed Muttalib, who teaches earth sciences at the famous Al Azhar University of Egypt, presented ... paper on the relation of geological facts and phenomena to Qur'anic verses. ....... Mountains have roots in the earth, said the good doctor, and the Allah made them act like pegs which tether a tent to the ground and kept it from blowing away. Without mountains, he emphasized, the earth's rotation would cause everything to fly apart. It would be totally catastrophic -- no mountains, no earth.
Engineer Abdal Fequi of Egypt, drawing on his experience with armour piercing anti-tank ammunition gained during service in the Egyptian army in 1976, gave very impressive evidence that Allah intends us to use empty copper shells in order to destroy such men and jinns as may dare to venture in spaceships into forbidden regions of heavens.
Munafiqat (hypocrisy) is certainly an endemic problem in our society. .... at the International Seminar on Qur'an and Science, organized in June 1986 by the Pakistan Association of Scientists and Scientific Professions, one intrepid scientist presented a bold new scientific theory of munafiqat.

Dr Arshad Ali Beg, a senior scientist at the PCSIR has a mathematical formula by which, he says, the degree of munafiqat in a society can be calculated. ..... So everything happens through chemical reactions such as:

Infidels + Teaching of the Prophet -----> Religious Society
...Western society is calculated to have a munafiqat value of 22, while Spain and Portugal have a value of only fourteen. It is a bit of a mystery that munafiqat values are given for Pakistan society......
In a paper read at the Karachi Qur'an and Science Conference, Mr Salim Mehmud [Chairman of SUPARCO] proposed that an explanation for the Holy Prophet's Mairaj (ascension to heaven) be sought in Einstein's theory of relativity

ncredible as it may sound, a German delegate to the Islamic Science Conference held in Islamabad in 1983 claimed to have calculated the Angle of God using mathematical topology. He states the angle to be pi/N, where pi = 3.1415927... and N is not defined.

Look at Figure . It contains a formula by which you can calculate the total sawab (reward) earned for namaz, as a function of the number of people praying alongside you. The author of this formula is Dr M. M. Qureshi, ...., ex-chairman of the physics department at Quaid-e-Azam University, .......

[Poster's note: Figure not reproduced]
Per-Capita Spiritual Activity =

1.22 2.44 (+ or -) 0.3
( N ) {1 + ( N ) }**(-1)
( N0) { ( N0) }

Total Spiritual Activity =

2.22 2.44 (+ or -) 0.3
( N ) {1 + ( N ) }
( N0) { ( N0) }

[There is a response by Mr Bashiruddin Mahmood and the author's reply to the response]

sourced from,Islam and Science, Pervez Hoodbhoy , Zed Books Ltd,1991
widely available in internet
he is the most well known scientist in pakistan (go wikipedia and ask)

Riaz Haq said...

sabtarshi:

A side effect of higher urbanization is seen in at least partially defusing the "population bomb" in Pakistan's context. With increasing urbanization, Pakistan's population growth rate has declined from 2.17% in 2000 to 1.9% in 2008. Based on PAI Research Commentary by Karen Hardee and Elizabeth Leahy, the total fertility rate (TFR) in Pakistan is still the highest in South Asia at 4.1 children per woman. Women in urban areas have an average of 3.3 children compared to their rural counterparts, who have an average of 4.5 children. The overall fertility rate has been cut in half from about 8 children per woman in 1960s to about less than 4 this decade, according to a study published in 2009.

Dramatic declines in fertility are not necessarily good for society. In a book titled "The Empty Cradle", the author Philip Longman warns that the declining birth rates around the world will cause many social and economic problems. As a consequence of declining fertility, by 2050 the population of Europe will have fallen to what it was in 1950. Mr. Longman says this is happening all around the world: Women are having fewer children. It's happening in Brazil, it's happening in China, India and Japan. It's even happening in the Middle East. Wherever there is rapid urbanization, education for women and visions of urban affluence, birthrates are falling. Having and raising children is seen as an expense and a burden.

"So we have a "free rider" problem. You don't need to have children to provide for your old age -- but the pension systems need them." Says Longman, referring to the coming Social Security crunch as the number of retired people rises faster than the number of workers.

As to the literacy rates, the youth literacy rate in Pakistan for both male and female are significantly higher than for adults, although still lower than the rates in India. It's clearly an area of urgent focus for Pakistan's future.

Youth (15–24 years) literacy rate, 2000 to 2007, male Pakistan: 80% India 87% Source: UNICEF

Youth (15–24 years) literacy rate, 2000 to 2007, female Pakistan 60% India 77% Source: UNICEF

Riaz Haq said...

Daily Times is quoting an APP report that Pakistan is on the path of economic recovery, according to the IMF:

Pakistan’s economic growth has started to recover despite security and energy challenges and the country met almost all targets under the International Monetary Fund program, the global financial institution said on Tuesday.

“Pakistan’s program is progressing well,” the Fund said in a statement following ‘constructive discussions’ with Pakistani officials focusing on Pakistan’s recent economic performance, the outlook for the rest of the fiscal year.

Adnan Mazarei, who met with the Pakistani officials in Dubai over the past week to initiate discussions on the fourth review under Pakistan’s Stand-By Arrangement (SBA), noted that Islamabad observed all quantitative performance criteria, except for the budget deficit target, which exceeded by a small margin.

Listing positive trends Pakistan registered in recent months, the Fund said the exchange rate has remained stable at Rs 84–85 per US dollar, and the international reserves position has strengthened (the banking system’s gross foreign exchange reserves, including the State Bank and commercial banks, reached $14.3 billion in mid-February, of this total, the State Bank held $10.5 billion).

The early signs of recovery in some sectors and the improved external position are encouraging, although there are risks and challenges to Pakistan’s economic program.

“Economic growth in Pakistan is starting to recover; large-scale manufacturing output has started to increase, the improvement in the global economy has helped manufacturing exports, and private sector credit growth has picked up to some extent as businesses rebuild their working capital.

The IMF’s package for Pakistan - approved in November 2008- has been extended to $11.3 billion. Looking ahead, the IMF statement said, a resumption of higher growth is needed to raise living standards and will require improvements in the business climate to stimulate higher investment by local and foreign investors.

Emphasizing the need for stepped up donors support for the key anti-terror partner of the international community, the Fund said, early disbursement of donor financing remains crucial to support Pakistan’s stabilisation and reform efforts as well as laying the basis for a sustainable growth.

The IMF mission staff will prepare a report on the fourth review under Pakistan’s SBA, which is scheduled for consideration by the IMF Executive Board in late March. APP

joseph said...

(In Pakistan, religious right-wing parties never get more than a few percent votes. In India, the BJP and Sangh Parivar have been elected many times and have had their prime minister.
So your argument doesn't hold water. )

No mr haq my argument holds tons of water...
The only reason why pakistanis dont elect religious right-wing parties is because they know they would be digging their own grave...
Once these parties come to power they would enforce the strict sharia law (i think that is what its called seriously dont have time to be reasearching) they will atleast try to rule like the way the Taliban ruled afghanistan...

trust me not many pakistanis, not even the staunch muslim would like to have such barbarians(taliban style)rule them...
That is the only reason why they havent elected extremist parties not because pakistanis are very secular... Coming to the BJP and Sangh Parivar they were the only major alternative nationally to the congress which had ruled india for a mjor part of its history.
So out of the 3 times they manged to form coalition government. They only completed the full term once... And the people electd them as an alternative to congress but inspite of the great progress made under bjp(2000-2004) the people rejected them in the next 2 election because of their extremist views..
But you havent really answered my question Mr Haq...
(continued)

Riaz Haq said...

Joeindian: "not because pakistanis are very secular."

That's right. Most Pakistanis are nt secular, just like most Indians are not secular.

Here's how Kapil Komireddy demolishes the myth of Indian secularism in a piece he wrote for the Guardian newspaper:

For decades Indian intellectuals have claimed that religion, particularly Hinduism, is perfectly compatible with secularism. Indian secularism, they said repeatedly, is not a total rejection of religion by the state but rather an equal appreciation of every faith. Even though no faith is in principle privileged by the state, this approach made it possible for religion to find expression in the public sphere, and, since Hindus in India outnumber adherents of every other faith, Hinduism dominated it. Almost every government building in India has a prominently positioned picture of a Hindu deity. Hindu rituals accompany the inauguration of all public works, without exception.

The novelist Shashi Tharoor tried to burnish this certifiably sectarian phenomenon with a facile analogy: Indian Muslims, he wrote, accept Hindu rituals at state ceremonies in the same spirit as teetotallers accept champagne in western celebrations. This self-affirming explanation is characteristic of someone who belongs to the majority community. Muslims I interviewed took a different view, but understandably, they were unwilling to protest for the fear of being labelled as "angry Muslims" in a country famous for its tolerant Hindus.

The failure of secularism in India – or, more accurately, the failure of the Indian model of secularism – may be just one aspect of the gamut of failures, but it has the potential to bring down the country. Secularism in India rests entirely upon the goodwill of the Hindu majority. Can this kind of secularism really survive a Narendra Modi as prime minister? As Hindus are increasingly infected by the kind of hatred that Varun Gandhi's speech displayed, maybe it is time for Indian secularists to embrace a new, more radical kind of secularism that is not afraid to recognise and reject the principal source of this strife: religion itself.

abhishek2010 said...

@ Mr riaz haq,

i find your writings are very biased,
and you have wrote this article in such a way that it looks like you are mocking at India rather than seriously comparing India and Pakistan, this was not expected from you.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an opinion arguing that India is a failed state:

Inspite of the fact that India has been living on the old crumbs of outsourcing for the last 10 years the situation has hardly improved in the cities and villages of India. The poverty in India is reaching its new hieghts with every passing day. Thousands and thousands of people commit suicide every year just because they either don't have enough to eat or they simply can't feed their children/family. The Socialistic economic system in India has suddenly been changed to capitalistic one but trickle down effect has hardly taken effect. The whole nation is facing terrorism from left right and center. 25% of the country (areawise) has no writ of the state as MAOISTS (Communists) have demolished the capitalistic structure in many districts of India. They have their own laws and their own courts. There are at least 10 insurgency movements in India starting from Kashmir in the east to the whole of North East which has 6 or 7 states. Indian Govt. seems helpless.

Anjum said...

Interesting and informative factual statements, and also the analysises done by both Mr. Haq and Mr. Saptarshi are good to read....knowledge is first step toward enlightenment

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an optimistic assessment of Pakistan's economy by PM Gilani at Karachi Expo 2010, as published by The Nation newspaper:

KARACHI - Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said that the economic condition of the country despite international and domestic adversities has improved significantly and Pakistan’s real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth is likely to remain close to the target of 3.3 per cent during the fiscal year (2009-10).
“Foreign exchange reserves have risen from $6 to $15 billion and exports are expected to achieve target of US$ 20 billion. Remittances from overseas Pakistanis have reached $4.531 billion which is 25 per cent higher than last year,” he added.
Speaking at an inauguration ceremony of Expo 2010 at the Governor House here on Thursday, he said that Pakistan’s private sector was very enterprising and has repeatedly demonstrated its dynamism and resilience even in adverse circumstances. It goes to the credit of the ingenuity and enterprise of our private sector that in the face of severe global recession, were able to reduce its impact on Pakistan’s economy compared to the much severe impact suffered by the economies of several other countries in the region.
He said that the government strongly believes in market forces to open opportunities and create a competitive environment in the country. “We have continued to liberalise the economy. The reforms in the trade and investment fields stem from our conviction that the private sector of Pakistan is the engine of economic growth and should be facilitated to play its role to the fullest in creating new businesses, opening new jobs and adding value to Pakistani goods and services for the export markets.”
Gilani said that the Ministry of Commerce through its “Strategic Trade Policy Framework (STPF) 2009-12” has successfully addressed major issues like falling exports competitiveness, lack of sophistication, diversification of products and markets. STPF, a medium term plan, provides assurance for continuation of Trade Policy for three years and the businesses can plan their production and export orders accordingly. The policy has been set in motion and the initiatives are at various stages of implementation.
He said a comprehensive Textile Policy 2009-14 had also been announced to revive the textile sector through Textile Investment Support Fund (TISF) of Rs40 billion. He said that more than 500 buyers from 50 countries were attending the show this year and around 350 producers and exporters from all over Pakistan were displaying a wide variety of their products.

Riaz Haq said...

Dr. Ashfaque H. Khan, Dean of NUST Business School, has written a guest post on this blog. Here are some excerpts from it:

" Pakistan positioned itself as one of the four fastest growing economies in the Asian region during 2000-07 with its growth averaging 7.0 per cent per year for most of this period. As a result of strong economic growth, Pakistan succeeded in reducing poverty by one-half, creating almost 13 million jobs, halving the country's debt burden, raising foreign exchange reserves to a comfortable position and propping the country's exchange rate, restoring investors' confidence and most importantly, taking Pakistan out of the IMF Program.

The present government inherited a relatively sound economy on March 31, 2008. It inherited foreign exchange reserves of $13.3 billion, exchange rate at Rs62.76 per US dollar, the KSE index at 15,125 with market capitalization at $74 billion, inflation at 20.6 per cent and the country's debt burden on a declining path. The government itself acknowledged in the same document that "the macroeconomic situation deteriorated significantly in 2007/08 and the first four months of 2008/09 owing to adverse security developments, large exogenous price shocks (oil and food), global financial turmoil, and policy inaction during the political transition to the new government". (Para 3 of the MEFP, November 20, 2008)"

Riaz Haq said...

Here is part of an article in today's Dawn by Irfan Husain, a columnist known for his harsh criticism of Pakistan:

Every now and then, I get an email from one irate Indian reader or another, demanding to know why Jawed Naqvi, Dawn’s erudite and irreverent New Delhi correspondent, is so critical of India. Invariably, I reply that they should ask Jawed about his views. I also point out that just as I am often critical about Pakistan, he has every right to point out his country’s shortcomings.

I suspect what upsets these readers is that an Indian should be voicing critical comments about his country in a foreign newspaper. I was subjected to similar censure from expatriate Pakistanis when I wrote for a Gulf daily. Finally, the editor told me politely that my criticism of Musharraf was incompatible with his paper’s policy, and that was the end of the (small) trickle of Dubai dirhams.

The reality is that we are all touchy about seeing our dirty linen washed in public, but somehow, Indians seem super-sensitive to any hint of criticism. While there are many dissenting voices that question Indian claims to having reached Nirvana, they do not find much space in the mainstream media. Although Indian journalists do excellent work in digging up scams and scandals, they do not often question the broad consensus underpinning the ‘India shining’ image the media, politicians and big business work so hard at projecting.

I spent the other evening at the Karachi Boat Club in the company of a European who has spent a long time in the region, and knows South Asia well, having lived in Pakistan and India for several years. When I asked him how it felt to be back in Pakistan after being away for a few years in New Delhi, his answer came as a surprise. As we have known each other for fifteen years, he had no need to be polite: “It feels great to be back,” he replied. “You have no idea how difficult day-to-day life is in New Delhi. Apart from the awful traffic, the pollution, and the expense, you have to put up with the prickliness of most Indians you meet. They are touchy to the point of paranoia. There is a lot of very aggressive poverty in the air. And when the New Delhi airport opens, we’ll have to brace ourselves for yet another self-congratulatory blast. What is truly shocking is how little the well-off Indians care about the poor.”

“Here in Pakistan, people are so much more laid back. Karachi’s traffic flows much faster, and I don’t sense the same kind of anger. While I’m sure there must be slums, I do not see the same level of abject poverty that is ever-present in India. And of course, the food is much better here.”

Riaz Haq said...

Here's recent piece in the Guardian from its departing Indian correspondent Randeep Ramesh after six years in India:

In my six years there, it was hard not to be infected by the hubris of India – a nation that feels part of history, an essential actor on the global stage. Yet even as I admired a country that had thrived as a democracy despite unbounded poverty, mass illiteracy and entrenched social divides, experiencing India as a reporter was a string of enervating and dispiriting episodes.

Whether I was visiting a rural police station where half-naked men were hung from the ceiling during an interrogation, or talking to the parents of a baby bulldozed to death in a slum clearance, the romance of India's idealism was undone by its awful daily reality. The venality, mediocrity and indiscipline of its ruling class would be comical but for the fact that politicians appeared incapable of doing anything for the 836 million people who live on 25p a day.

The selling of public office for private gain was so bad that the only way to make poverty history in India would be to make every person a politician. Last year the wealth of local representatives in the northern state of Haryana rose at an astonishing rate of £10,000 a month. Their constituents were lucky if their income increased by a few pounds.

swastyk7 said...

A blog which started as a nice unbiased comparison between India and Pakistan is not what it stands now. If Mr. Haq deserves creditfor initiating this blog he should be equally ashamed how readily and spinelessly he converted into such an unabashed criticiser of India. he doesnt even realize that each and every flaw he points out in india exists almost in the same or worse manner in his own country. And this particular behavior of him is conspicuous especially when one can see really sincere efforts being made by people, celebrities and media from both sides of the border trying to create peace and harmony via various initiatives viz. "Aman ki aasha" by TOI and Jung group...
i am a very proud Indian, and may be i would have been proud of pakistan if i would have been born and brought up der. but that would never push me to make deteriorative comments about any country by quoting or misquoting any article in some media publication(atleast not after seeing the efforts of peace by both sides). if i being just a 20 year old can think in such terms of peace like this, i cannot make out what stops u Mr. Haq to behave a bit more responsibly and in a "mature" way considering the high levels of ur understanding, experience and education in this field. So i would humbly request you Mr. Haq not to be too much critical of ur neighbour henceforth. Surely ur, how do i put it, mudslinging attitude towards India is of no help to the peace efforts of citizens of both nations. At times in the past even i have made untoward comments regarding pakistan, but i have decided not to do it any more. i hope u will do so too. waiting 4 ur reply. Thank you.

Riaz Haq said...

swastyk:"Surely ur, how do i put it, mudslinging attitude towards India is of no help to the peace efforts of citizens of both nations"

I am sorry if you see criticism of India as mudslinging, but it's not intended to be. Being "mature" means accepting the reality of the problems that exist in spades, and then responding by finding ways to solve them rather than taking offense. That goes for both India and Pakistan.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an analysis titled "Vision 2010: a dangerous myopia" by Amiya Kumar Bagchi in the Hindu:

The Central budget of 2010-11 is a further step in the realisation of a vision of India vibrant with the income, wealth, saving, education and the entrepreneurial energy of the top 5-10 per cent of the population and the rest of Indians, serving that minority and surviving as barely literate, malnourished multitude.

With the accession of Rajiv Gandhi to power, a vision began to germinate. That vision was that of an India that would be vibrant with the entrepreneurial energy of the few, and the rest of the population serving those few with their labour.

---------------------
Look at the successes of the budget: the professional middle class is happy with the cuts in taxes collected from it. The business community, including foreign investors, is happy, because of further privatisation of public assets by which the Finance Minister proposes to raise Rs. 25,000 crore, because of the looming privatisation of many operations of the Indian Railways, whose kitty is nowhere near what it should be for even partial implementation of the projects announced by the Railway Minister, because the FDI path would be further smoothed and because licences would be issued for fresh private banks. Never mind if they fail as the Global Trust Bank did, the government will pick up the bill directly or indirectly, in accordance with its earlier record and the recent practice in the United States and Britain where banks failed but bankers remained prosperous. The Indian stock market responded positively, thus sending a message of welcome to the budget and generating profits for the bulls.

The Finance Ministers of the neoliberal Central government had earlier instituted the Fiscal Responsibility and Responsibility Management Act. This became their excuse to drastically cut down public investment and expenditure on the social sector. As soon as the global financial crisis hit India and the interests of the Indian rich demanded fiscal stimulus, the government overthrew fiscal orthodoxy and budget deficits soared. North Block policymakers can claim that the stimulus worked and the growth rates did not crash. The problem is with the content of that growth.

-----------------------------

The Union Cabinet recently approved an agreement with the U.S. on ‘Agricultural co-operation and food security.' Under an India-U.S. Agricultural Knowledge Initiative, multinational agribusiness firms such as Cargill and Monsanto can become members of the policymaking body. This is ironical since most of U.S. agribusinesses are conducted under the umbrella of huge government subsidies, while the current budget has cut the measly subsidies poor farmers enjoy in India. Indian agriculture has grown slowly in recent years, and food grain production has lagged behind population growth.

Ordinary Indians are badly malnourished and calorie intake has fallen over time. An Expert Group appointed by the Planning Commission has proposed 1800 calories per day as the norm of consumption by an adult for fixing the poverty line. This norm is applicable only for light or sedentary work. How is a construction worker with heavy head loads or an agricultural worker driving buffaloes in a flooded paddy land going to do his work and lead a healthy life or survive long? Even this norm yields an estimate of poverty of about 42 per cent in 2004-05, much higher than the estimates quoted officially. If the Food Security Bill is passed by Parliament, it will presumably be implemented by accepting the older estimate or the new estimate of the Expert Group. Either way, a vast number of people who are malnourished will remain in that state.

Pravin said...

I thing Comparision is not feasible. Like if you compare India with USA for tha tmatter. If you look at India's population and gergraphycal area, I believe Pakistan is much smaller in both the terms. Hence, i agree with what sourav has said said. It is only for writer to please himself and his fellow countrymen to see Pakistan is on TOP as compared to India. I believe Pakistan shuld be compared with similar size nations like Bangaldesh, Malaysia. comparisio9n should take place with thing of equal stature

Riaz Haq said...

KSE-100 closed at 1408 on Dec 31, 1999. Then, exactly 10 years later on Dec 31, 2009, it closed at 9386. In between, it hit a peak of 15125 on March 31, 2008 around the time of the elections.

Using a 10-year window with year-end closes in 1999 and 2009, it comes to about 21% CAGR. If you discount it for Pak currency decline from 55 to 85 rupees to a dollar (most of which occurred since 2008), then the CAGR return is still a whopping 16% a year....clearly beating all of the BRIC nations' stock performance in this period.

If any one insists on making KSE-100 look bad by using the March 31, 2000 peak (2000 points) at last week's close (on 10138 points), then 17.82% before currency discount, and 13% after it...still beating all of the BRICs.

Vish said...

I appreciate the detailed data-based analysis and comparison between the 2 nations.

A few questions

- I would like to know how much of Pakistan's improvement is due to the inflow of the huge military aid and what will be the consequences if this dried up.

- The indicators given here all lagging indicators. Is there any place where we can reliably see the forward looking indicators. I have never been to Pakistan but what I see in India is the tremendous amount of confidence in its youth with a can do attitude and keen interest in the governance.

- Assuming a foreigner (with no India or Pakistani connection) has a million dollars to invest and he has a choice between India and Pakistan for this investment then please let me know which country stands a better chance even after the foreigner reads your detailed analysis.

- What in your opinion should Pakistan do to reduce the security threat perception of the outsiders

Vish

Riaz Haq said...

Vish: "- I would like to know how much of Pakistan's improvement is due to the inflow of the huge military aid and what will be the consequences if this dried up."

First, the military aid has little or no impact on Pak economy. In fact, the cost of the military operations in support of the US mission in Afghanistan far exceed any military aid from US.

Vish:"The indicators given here all lagging indicators. Is there any place where we can reliably see the forward looking indicators. I have never been to Pakistan but what I see in India is the tremendous amount of confidence in its youth with a can do attitude and keen interest in the governance."

My post a comparison as of this year. Pakistan's economy is obviously in trouble, and it has an impact on people's psychology. I expect the economy to improve, and boost confidence of the local population and foreigners. If the KSE-100 performance for Q1-2009 is any guide, the confidence is beginning to return.

Vish: "Assuming a foreigner (with no India or Pakistani connection) has a million dollars to invest and he has a choice between India and Pakistan for this investment then please let me know which country stands a better chance even after the foreigner reads your detailed analysis."

Pakistan is clearly more risky at this stage, but it has a history of producing higher returns than India. In the last decade, and again in Q1/2010, KSE has significantly outperformed BSE and other BRIC markets.

Vish: "What in your opinion should Pakistan do to reduce the security threat perception of the outsiders"

Pakistanis are fighting the terrorists and militants and dying to restore security for themselves. A return to better security within Pakistan is the first priority. Foreigners come second, and hopefully a Pakistan safe for Pakistanis will help in improving its image abroad.

Vish said...

Riaz saab!

I am no economist or accountant but find the first statement on the cost vs aid difficult to comprehend. Any normal person would not spend more than income and so I do not understand why Pakistan would support the "US mission" bearing a lot of cost from its own pocket. Is there something more than what meets the eye here.

I wish I had been a bot more explicit in my question on investment - I was not referring to hot funds flowing for a quick return. I was trying to ask you if a company has to invest in physical capital for its growth then where do you see them investing. So, the factors are not only RoE but a host of other factors too.

I agree that Pakistan has to be safe for Pakistanis first and so would like to know what you believe Pakistan should do for achieving this. You claim they are terrorists. I am sure they did not spring out of nowhere.

I read thru one of your links comparing the military might of the neighbors. Would you say that given the relative size of the 2 economies, Pakistan is spending a far larger proportion of its resources to compete with India. I can understand the sentiments and the psychology on why this is being done but do you honestly believe this is sustainable. If you agree with me then what is the best way forward.

Lastly, why is there a need for Pakistan to compare itself with India and vice versa.

In my opinion, India has spent the first 40 - 50 years managing its vast ethnic and religious diversity and they have done an excellent job trying to give a voice to everyone. It maybe far from perfect and can be criticized but one gets to appreciate it better only when they compare what India has done with other countries that had similar issues. This is a sunk cost and was essential for future growth. Unfortunately, the economic indicators and other data points may not reflect this. I only wish that you could visit India and talk to muslims across the different spectrum and gauge for yourself what India has accomplished.

I sincerely want Pakistan to succeed and be at peace with itself and with its neighbors. Also, I hope that in the next decade your post will not be on us vs them comparison but more on how together India and Pakistan have worked together to improve the prosperity and security of its citizens.

Riaz Haq said...

Vish: "I do not understand why Pakistan would support the "US mission" bearing a lot of cost from its own pocket. Is there something more than what meets the eye here."

It's not difficult to understand. In spite of all the media hype, the fact is that all foreign aid to Pakistan from all source adds up to about 2-3% of its GDP.

Vish: "I was not referring to hot funds flowing for a quick return. I was trying to ask you if a company has to invest in physical capital for its growth then where do you see them investing. So, the factors are not only RoE but a host of other factors too."

The security situation has hurt FDI (foreign direct investment) flow since 2008. Prior to that, Pakistan was attracting more FDI than India in terms of percent of GDP, something Greenspan acknowledged in his book. However, Pakistan is still attracted $1-2 billion in telecom, energy and consumer sectors last year, in spite of deteriorating economy and security situation.

Vish: "Pakistan is spending a far larger proportion of its resources to compete with India."

That is not accurate. Pakistan and India both spend about 3.5% of GDP when you do apples-to-apples comp rather than accounting gimmicks.

On paper, India spends $32.7 billion, about 3% of its GDP on defense, after an increase of 34% for 2010.

In reality, India spends closer to 3.5% of its GDP on defense.

Here's what Col.(Retd) Pavan Nair of the Indian Army has to say about it in a recent guest post on Haq's Musings:

India's own specified limit of 3% has been observed only by excluding several items like the cost of the MoD and the expenditure on military pensions which by itself amounts to 15% of the total defense outlay. Several other items like the Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry (JAKLI, a regular regiment of the army consisting of thirteen battalions) and the Coast Guard are also excluded. A substantial part of the cost of the nuclear arsenal and allied systems is excluded. All para-military forces including the ones directly involved in border management are excluded. The Parliamentary Committee on Defense spends most of its time on personnel matters and resolving issues of protocol between the service chiefs and the defense secretary. The Committee looks at DE but beyond stating that DE should be pegged at 3% of GDP, it has nothing substantial to contribute. Clearly, parliamentary oversight and control seems to be missing. For several years, DE in aggregate has crossed 3% of GDP.

Vish: "It maybe far from perfect and can be criticized but one gets to appreciate it better only when they compare what India has done with other countries that had similar issues"

India's most vulnerable citizens, including children, women, and minorities have paid a very heavy price for India's "secular democracy".

Pakistan has not done a good job either, but India has far more hunger and poverty and malnutrition than Pakistan. India is far behind Pakistan, even Bangladesh, in basics such a hygiene an sanitation.

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.

Here are some more recent comparative indicators in South Asia:

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

Vish said...

Riaz saab!

You have not answered my question of why Pakistan wants to spend more than what it gets in support of a "US mission"

I am not going to argue with you on the various data points you are throwing here. I disagree however when you say minorities have suffered because of the secular democracy. Please visit India and talk to the muslims yourself to see if this is true. You have missed my point about how India has managed its diversity so far which potentially is not yet reflecting in the data points. Growth is sustainable only when you have respect and tolerance for diversity in views, worship and cultures. You live in the US and I am sure you will agree how this respect and tolerance (enforced by law) here in the US has benefited everyone.

I strongly feel that your posts come thru as a us vs them. I respect your intellect, analytical ability and vast knowledge and I only wish you could be more constructive on what India and Pakistan could learn from each other to make the lives better for its population.h

Riaz Haq said...

Vish: "You have not answered my question of why Pakistan wants to spend more than what it gets in support of a "US mission""

The Afghan "Mujahiden", the Taliban's predecessors were the creation of both US and Pakistan during the Cold War. And the Taliban were created by Pakistan from the remnants of US CIA and Pak trained Mujahideen.

So the US bears some responsibility for it, but it is also in Pakistan's own best interest to deal with the militants who have either crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan or Pakistani terrorists inspired by the Taliban to cause mayhem on Pakistan's streets.

Vish: "Please visit India and talk to the muslims yourself to see if this is true."

Yes, I have. On many occasions. And I have read reports such as the Sachar Commission report, as well as a treatise on recurring violence against minorities written by US researcher Prof Paul Brass.

And I follow the status of the Gujarat 2002 Muslim victims who are still languishing in refugee camps while the known culprits roam free.

Vish: "You have missed my point about how India has managed its diversity so far which potentially is not yet reflecting in the data points."

India's saving grace is that there still are powerful elements in India who still believe in Gandhian philosophy of tolerance, particularly in Congress Party. But India has also seen a dramatic rise in intolerance by the Sangh Parivar who rule many large Indian states, including Gujarat and Orissa, through BJP.

Vish: "I strongly feel that your posts come thru as a us vs them."

I am sorry if you feel that way. I am very highly critical of Pakistan's ruling elite's failures as well. And I admire Indian leaders such as PM Manmohan Singh for his honest leadership of a country that is very difficult to govern. But I also point out the massive failures of Indian democracy which has turned India essentially into a few islands of prosperity in a vast sea of abject poverty and extreme deprivation.

Vish said...

Riaz saab!

Some of the perpetrators of the 1984 riots against Sikhs are still roaming free which is not justice. So, is the case with the Gujarat riot perpetrators too. The wheels of justice move slowly in India for such cases which is not right but at-least these things are not allowed to repeat again thankfully. However, that still does not mean the old hatred or the tit-for-tat exists between Sikhs and Hindus or between the Gujarat muslims and hindus. Many Muslims in Gujarat have admiration for Narendra Modi's economic governance now and there is no escaping that truth.

Please do not make too much of the extremist elements and please do not equate the entire state administration in the states you mentioned as belonging to the extremist ideology. It is far from true.

I am curious to hear from you what your Muslim friends in India said about its secular democracy.

Riaz Haq said...

Vish: "I am curious to hear from you what your Muslim friends in India said about its secular democracy."

Some of them in the cities have benefited from India's economic boom, but most have not. It has certainly not touched those who live in small towns, and rural areas.

Even those who are relatively prosperous are not able to rent/live in upscale neighborhoods dominated by Hindus. I was shocked to see the extent of housing segregation based on religion in India.

Vish said...

Riaz saab!

As Eisntein said - It is more difficult to crack prejudice than an atom. I agree laws are needed in India like US to change the mindset and I have to say India is moving in the right direction. A rising tide lifts all boats and it is a matter of time before the Muslims and the other minorities in the smaller towns and villages benefit the same way as the urbanites.

Can you please tell us about discrimination in Pakistan. I hear from my Punjabi friend on how unsafe he feels in Karachi and a Mohajir about the highly discriminating quota system in colleges for the different groups. Then I saw a program on NG channel about the prevalence of bonded labor. As I stated earlier, I have never been to Pakistan but have good Pakistani friends.

Riaz Haq said...

Vish: "I hear from my Punjabi friend on how unsafe he feels in Karachi and a Mohajir about the highly discriminating quota system in colleges for the different groups. Then I saw a program on NG channel about the prevalence of bonded labor"

Karachi is a very cosmopolitan city, a microcosm of Pakistan with all ethnic and religious groups. I am from Karachi, and I have personally not seen any problems between Punjabis and Mohajirs. But there are ethnic tensions between Muhajirs and Pathans that sometimes erupt in violence...especially since Karachi has a large number of Afghan refugees making it the largest Pashtoon city in the world.

On bonded labor, Pakistan still has this unfortunate problem, but on a much smaller scale than India.

I wrote a post, including a video about this horrible practice last year. Here's an excerpt from it:

Though Pakistan has been in the news lately for its continuing practice of slavery, it is not alone. Bonded labor in South Asia is considered the problem in modern slavery affecting millions of people. The UN believes 20 million people are enslaved worldwide, the majority of whom are in South Asia, according to a BBC report.

A recent report by US State Department for 2009 said that “India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation.”

India is listed with 52 countries on the watch list of nations that have failed to meet the minimum standards against human trafficking but are making efforts to do so. The blacklisted countries are subject to US sanctions if they don’t make greater efforts to fight trafficking.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's BBC commentary by Soutik Biswas on India's "rights revolution":

Ensuring the basics in life remains the biggest challenge for India, six decades after independence.

Take food. Some 43% of Indian children younger than five are underweight - far above the global average of 25% or sub-Saharan Africa's 28%. India is a lowly 65th among 84 countries in the Global Hunger Index. Half of the world's hungry people live in India.

So the proposed right to food, entitling a poor family to 25kg of rice or wheat at three rupees (seven cents) a kilogram is good news. The bad news is that identifying the deserving poor is a challenge - there are four different government estimates of the very poor or below poverty line (BPL) people floating around. States may inflate numbers of beneficiaries to corner more federal benefits. Then there is the notoriously leaky public distribution system, from where food is often siphoned off by a triad of low-level bureaucrats, shop owners and middlemen.

Nobody can deny that the right to education - every child aged 6-14 can demand free schooling - is critical: an estimated eight million children in that age group do not attend school in India. India's 61% literacy rate lags behind Kenya's 85%. But critics point to a lack of teachers - India would need more than a million teachers just to implement the right - and say there are simply not enough schools to cope with the increased demand.

Rights don't work miracles. But activists say they are an urgent social intervention to empower the poor in a highly iniquitous society, where it is difficult for the poor to access officials to air their grievances and secure their entitlements. "In a hierarchical society, rights-based movements are a way of moving towards equality," says leading political scientist Mahesh Rangarajan. Also, they put pressure on the state to deliver - the right to information, despite glitches, is making government more accountable.

Studies show that sensitive political and bureaucratic leadership combined with grassroots awareness and an engaged local media can translate rights into reality and improve the lives of the poor. Activists point out that money is not a problem - the economy is doing well, revenues are buoyant, federal health and education outlays have been increased. The government has pledged more than $5bn to send 10 million poor children to school.

The cynicism over rights mainly comes from India's burgeoning educated upper middle class. It is mostly not engaged with public institutions at all - its members rarely serve in the lower ranks of the armed forces, teach in state schools or work for the government. Yes, there are valid concerns about whether the state has the capacity to deliver on rights. Yes, the Indian state continues to focus on maintaining law and order and collecting revenue. Delivering services is not its strength. Rights could actually help it move towards a functioning welfare state. I would like to hear stories from you - and people you may know - who are reaping the benefits of the rights revolution.

Riaz Haq said...

More people in India, the world’s second most crowded country, have access to a mobile telephone than to a toilet, according to a set of recommendations released today by United Nations University (UNU) on how to cut the number of people with inadequate sanitation.

“It is a tragic irony to think that in India, a country now wealthy enough that roughly half of the people own phones, about half cannot afford the basic necessity and dignity of a toilet,” said Zafar Adeel, Director of United Nations University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health (IWEH), and chair of UN-Water, a coordinating body for water-related work at 27 UN agencies and their partners.

India has some 545 million cell phones, enough to serve about 45 per cent of the population, but only about 366 million people or 31 per cent of the population had access to improved sanitation in 2008.

The recommendations released today are meant to accelerate the pace towards reaching the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on halving the proportion of people without access to safe water and basic sanitation.

If current global trends continue, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) predict there will be a shortfall of 1 billion persons from that sanitation goal by the target date of 2015.

“Anyone who shirks the topic as repugnant, minimizes it as undignified, or considers unworthy those in need should let others take over for the sake of 1.5 million children and countless others killed each year by contaminated water and unhealthy sanitation,” said Mr. Adeel.

Included in the nine recommendations are the suggestions to adjust the MDG target from a 50 per cent improvement by 2015 to 100 per cent coverage by 2025; and to reassign official development assistance equal to 0.002 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to sanitation.

The UNU report cites a rough cost of $300 to build a toilet, including labour, materials and advice.

“The world can expect, however, a return of between $3 and $34 for every dollar spent on sanitation, realized through reduced poverty and health costs and higher productivity – an economic and humanitarian opportunity of historic proportions,” added Mr. Adeel.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=34369&Cr=mdg&Cr1#

http://finalizations.com/sewage-water-pollution-and-its-environmental-effects.html

Riaz Haq said...

In 2009 HDR, the rankings of countries in terms of population WITHOUT access to improved water source, the rankings are as follows:

India 78 (11%)
Bangladesh 106 (20%)
Nepal 79 (11%)
Pakistan 74 (10%)

Water quality reported by UNESCO is not the same as access. The two are different, mainly due to the relative affordability.

The water quality is bad in some European nations such as Belgium, but access to clean water is 100%, and it is achieved through bottled water that the population there can afford.

If you look at the water quality rankings, you'll realize the difference.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a recent article in Dawn on India-Pak water issues:

Another take on the issue comes from John Briscoe, a South African expert who has spent three decades in South Asia, and has served as a senior advisor on water issues to the World Bank. In an article titled War or Peace on the Indus?, Briscoe places the matter in a political context:

“Living in Delhi and working in both India and Pakistan, I was struck by a paradox. One country was a vigorous democracy, the other a military regime. But whereas important parts of the Pakistani press regularly reported India’s views on the water issue in an objective way, the Indian press never did the same. I never saw a report which gave Indian readers a factual description of the enormous vulnerability of Pakistan, of the way India had socked it to Pakistan when filling Baglihar….

“Equally depressing is my repeated experience — most recently at a major international meeting of strategic security institutions in Delhi — that even the most liberal and enlightened of Indian analysts … seem constitutionally incapable of seeing the great vulnerability and legitimate concern of Pakistan (which is obvious and objective to an outsider)…. This is a very uneven playing field. The regional hegemon is the upper riparian and has all the cards in its hands.”

Briscoe makes the point that even though India was cleared of any technical violation of the treaty in building Baglihar dam by an international panel of experts its timing of the diversion of the river to fill the dam caused great hardship to farmers in Pakistan. He goes on to argue that as the upper riparian, India can and should do much more to reassure Pakistan that it has no intention of violating the letter or spirit of the treaty. Above all, Briscoe puts the onus on Indian opinion makers to do much more to explain the issues fairly to the Indian public.


Media coverage and analysts are very significant in India Pakistan relations. There's a lot of hope hanging on journalists and analysts exchanges as part of Aman Ki Asha.

A hopeful sign I saw recently was Indian anchor Burkha Dutt, known for her extremely hawkish views after Mumbai, visiting and joining Pak journalists and expressing herself in a much more conciliatory tone. This happened as part of Aman Ki Asha programs being aired in both South Asian countries.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a recent excerpt from a piece by Dawn columnist Irfan Husain about Pakistan's middle class influencing nation's politics:

While external debt increased from $39bn in 1999 to $50bn in 2009, poverty levels have fallen by over 10 per cent since 2001. Indeed, there are now around 30 million Pakistanis who are considered to be in the middle class with an average income of $10,000 annually, while some 17 million are now bracketed with the upper and upper-middle classes.

Even though this does not approach China’s and India’s spectacular progress in this period, it does represent a solid advance. If one factors in the political turmoil the country has gone through, together with its ongoing insurgencies in the tribal areas and Balochistan, Pakistan’s progress has been impressive by any standard.

How do these numbers translate into day-to-day life in Pakistan? To examine the social transformation the country is undergoing, Jason Burke uses the Suzuki Mehran as a yardstick to measure change. In his ‘Letter from Karachi’ published in the current issue of Prospect, the Guardian reporter writes:

“In Pakistan, the hierarchy on the roads reflects that of society. If you are poor, you use the overcrowded buses or a bicycle. Small shopkeepers, rural teachers and better-off farmers are likely to have a $1,500 Chinese or Japanese motorbike…. Then come the Mehran drivers. A rank above them, in air-conditioned Toyota Corolla saloons, are the small businessmen, smaller landlords, more senior army officers and bureaucrats. Finally, there are the luxury four-wheel drives of ‘feudal’ landlords, big businessmen, expats, drug dealers, generals, ministers and elite bureaucrats. The latter may be superior in status, power and wealth, but it is the Mehrans which, by dint of numbers, dominate the roads.”

This growing affluence has already caused a major power shift, with the urban population now having a bigger say after years of being ruled by feudal landowners. As urbanisation gathers pace, Pakistan’s traditional power elite will increasingly come from the cities, and not from the rural hinterland. This will have a profound impact not just on politics, but on society as a whole. As Burke observes in his Prospect article:

“Politically, the Bhutto dynasty’s Pakistan People’s Party, mostly based in rural constituencies and led by feudal landowners, will lose out to the Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif with its industrial, commercial, urban constituency. Culturally, the traditional, folksy, tolerant practices in rural areas will decline in favour of more modernised, politicised Islamic strands and identities. And as power and influence shifts away from rural elites once co-opted by colonialism, the few elements of British influence to have survived will fade faster.”

Often, perceptive foreigners spot social trends that escape us because we are too close to them to see the changes going on around us. For instance, Burke identifies the shift away from English, and sees ‘Mehran man’ as urban, middle class and educated outside the elite English-medium system. He sees Muslims being under attack from the West, and genuinely believes that the 9/11 attacks were a part of a CIA/Zionist plot. Actually, my experience is that many highly educated and sophisticated people share this theory.

Burke continues his dissection of the rising Pakistani middle class: “Mehran man is deeply proud of his country. A new identification with the ummah, or the global community of Muslims, paradoxically reinforces rather than degrades his nationalism. For him, Pakistan was founded as an Islamic state, not a state for South Asian Muslims. Mehran man is an ‘Islamo-nationalist’. His country possesses a nuclear bomb….”

Riaz Haq said...

Pakistan is more urbanized with a larger middle class than India as percent of population. In 2007, Standard Chartered Bank analysts and SBP estimated there were 30 to 35 million Pakistanis earning more than $10,000 a year. Of these, about 17 million are in the upper and upper middle class, according to a recent report.

As to India's much hyped middle class, a new report by Nancy Birdsall of Center for Global Development says it is a myth. She has proposed a new definition of the middle class for developing countries in a forthcoming World Bank publication, Equity in a Globalizing World. Birdsall defines the middle class in the developing world to include people with an income above $10 day, but excluding the top 5% of that country. By this definition, India even urban India alone has no middle class; everyone at over $10 a day is in the top 5% of the country.

This is a combination both of the depth of India's poverty and its inequality. China had no middle class in 1990, but by 2005, had a small urban middle class (3% of the population). South Africa (7%), Russia (30%) and Brazil (19%) all had sizable middle classes in 2005.

Anonymous said...

All the Information may be true,but comparisons made between unequal entities is not going to lead anywhere.India can be compared with China,because India and china are big countries where most of humanity resides.For a smaller country like pakistan the going is much easier as you can show great figures on paper thanks to lower population.The realities are known to the people on ground.For eg.For an indian to buy 10 gms of gold today,it costs Rs.18000 approximately,the same costs a pakistani Rs35,000 plus.If your currency is depreciated everything is going to be costlier.So such comparisons are really fruitless.It would be prudent to just state the facts and leave out comparisons.Your writing is informative,and for that i congratulate you,but one must keep jingoism out of writing.

Anonymous said...

As much as you say yours is an objective comparison, you are clearly biased towards your home country.

You only cherry pick those articles from media which fit the opinion you choose to project : "Nah, India is progressing, but that ain't much! Pakistan is quite well and even much better than India in some cases"

The truth is far from it!

You downplay the successes of India and ignore the abject failures of Pakistan. You highlight the failures of India and blow Pakistani achievements out of proportion!

Clearly, you ignored many facts about India and Pakistan and I find it biased!

I don't think that this comparison is done 100% objectively.

1) Time and again you quote that India is home to the largest illiterate Adult population without once mentioning that India has the THIRD largest Scientific and technical manpower in the world

2) India is a land of contrasts. Whatever you say about India, the opposite is also true... that is because of its sheer size and history!


It is half full and half empty at the same time! (Like in Quantum Mechanics).If you choose to focus on the half empty aspect, it looks empty despite its growth!

3) If you choose to look at the half full, it looks very full!!

For example, the IITs now 15 of them, are world famous and me being a PhD student in Engineering, regularly see US univs filled with Indian and Chinese Students and Scientists (two largest foreign student populations in the US). I rarely come across PhD or Masters students from Pakistan pursuing advanced degrees. The Silicon valley has large contributions from India.

These kind of genuine success stories are not mentioned. Infact, CBS has done a show on the IITs!


4) Comparing India and Pakistan is like comparing apples and oranges. They both belong to different leagues. Statistics is not everything! Some things are fuzzy and difficult to be quantified!

5) India is vast and diverse and it must be reiterated that it is a land of paradoxes! Things are not black and white for this country.

In this regard, the comparisons do not give much insight into what is going on in India. In fact, they are useless!

P.S. Having said this, for the past decade, Indians don't care much about Pakistan. They are over it!

India now wants to be compared with China. It wants to progress like her but Pakistan is still stuck with being obsessed with and compared to India.

Riaz Haq said...

Here are excerpts from a piece by Bloomberg's Hindol Sengupta:

Add this bookstore to the list of India-Pakistan rivalry. A bookstore so big that it is actually called a bank. The book store to beat all bookstores in the subcontinent, I have found books I have never seen anywhere in India at the three-storeyed Saeed Book Bank in leafy Islamabad. The collection is diverse, unique and with a special focus on foreign policy and subcontinental politics (I wonder why?), this bookstore is far more satisfying than any of the magazine-laden monstrosities I seem to keep trotting into in India. ...

Yes, that's right. The meat. There always, always seems to be meat in every meal, everywhere in Pakistan. Every where you go, everyone you know is eating meat. From India, with its profusion of vegetarian food, it seems like a glimpse of the other world. The bazaars of Lahore are full of meat of every type and form and shape and size and in Karachi, I have eaten some of the tastiest rolls ever. For a Bengali committed to his non-vegetarianism, this is paradise regained. Also, the quality of meat always seems better, fresher, fatter, more succulent, more seductive, and somehow more tantalizingly carnal in Pakistan. ....

Let me tell you that there is no better leather footwear than in Pakistan. I bought a pair of blue calf leather belt-ons from Karachi two years ago and I wear them almost everyday and not a dent or scratch! Not even the slightest tear. They are by far the best footwear I have ever bought and certainly the most comfortable. Indian leather is absolutely no match for the sheer quality and handcraftsmanship of Pakistani leather wear.

Yes. Yes, you read right. The roads. I used to live in Mumbai and now I live in Delhi and, yes, I think good roads are a great, mammoth, gargantuan luxury! Face it, when did you last see a good road in India? Like a really smooth road. Drivable, wide, nicely built and long, yawning, stretching so far that you want zip on till eternity and loosen the gears and let the car fly. A road without squeeze or bump or gaping holes that pop up like blood-dripping kitchen knives in Ramsay Brothers films. When did you last see such roads? Pakistan is full of such roads. Driving on the motorway between Islamabad and Lahore, I thought of the Indian politician who ruled a notorious —, one could almost say viciously — potholed state and spoke of turning the roads so smooth that they would resemble the cheeks of Hema Malini. They remained as dented as the face of Frankenstein's monster. And here, in Pakistan, I was travelling on roads that — well, how can one now avoid this? — were as smooth as Hema Malini's cheeks! Pakistani roads are broad and smooth and almost entirely, magically, pot hole free. How do they do it; this country that is ostensibly so far behind in economic growth compared to India? But they do and one of my most delightful experiences in Pakistan has been travelling on its fabulous roads. No wonder the country is littered with SUVs — Pakistan has the roads for such cars! Even in tiny Bajaur in the North West frontier province, hard hit by the Taliban, and a little more than a frontier post, the roads were smoother than many I know in India. Even Bajaur has a higher road density than India! If there is one thing we should learn from the Pakistanis, it is how to build roads. And oh, another thing, no one throws beer bottles or trash on the highways and motorways.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a BBC report about Manipur blockade by Naga insurgents:

India is flying in emergency supplies to the remote north-eastern state of Manipur after key roads were blocked by separatists from a neighbouring state.

Road links were cut off by supporters of Thuingaleng Muivah, a rebel leader from Nagaland who has been denied entry to Manipur by the state government.

Mr Muivah's home village is in Manipur, which says allowing him to visit would inflame ethnic tensions.

The road blockade has led to a severe shortage of fuel and medicines.

For the past five weeks, two highways which serve as the lifelines of this remote mountainous state on Burma's border have been blocked by supporters of Mr Muivah, the leader of India's longest running separatist insurgency.

Mr Muivah has been barred from visiting his home village, Somdal, which lies inside Manipur in an area dominated by members of his Naga tribe.

It is a bitter standoff between the Nagas and the Manipuris who share a history of animosity.

The blockade has had a massive impact on Manipur. Petrol stations have shut down, with no fuel available.

"The situation is dire. There is no petrol or cooking gas available anywhere. Whatever is available is on the black market at ridiculous rates," retired air force officer Rajkumar Ronendrajit told the BBC.

Hospitals are also running short of life-saving drugs and oxygen.

"We normally carry out 20 surgeries a day. We are down to about eight because our stocks of oxygen are fast running out," managing director of Shija hospital Dr KH Palin said.

Officials say cargo aircraft carrying rice and medicine have now begun arriving to try and ease the situation.

But with the blockade continuing, things continue to remain tense.

joseph said...

(Add this bookstore to the list of India-Pakistan rivalry. A bookstore so big that it is actually called a bank. The book store to beat all bookstores in the subcontinent
Yes, that's right. The meat. There always, always seems to be meat in every meal, everywhere in Pakistan. Every where you go, everyone you know is eating meat.).

This obsession and comparison with India is reaching insane proportions...

Some dude from India has compared the leathers of two countries and the fact that people eat more meat in Pakistan and you seem to think that is worth posting on your blog...

Surely my inbox deserves to be filled with more mature content...

majority of people in India are Hindu's, who don't eat meat, even if they do, it is very rarely, it is not in the culture...
Whereas Pakistanis eat meat. So what?
My Hindu brethren in my country don't eat meat on almost 3 days of the week because of religious reasons..
Whereas my Muslim brethren in india eat it in every meal,
we Christians are the same too...
So what.. Some carnivorous indian dude , who couldnt think of anything thought this would be a good comparison and a supposed experienced MR Haq gladly copy pasted this insane comparison ...

As far as the book store goes, good for pakistan that they have a big one...
But we have twice the number of bookstores than what pakistan has, oh wait you'll retort back by saying that it is because India is a larger country...
If one of our billionaire entrepreneur wants too, he can build a bookstore twice as
large as pakistan's book store, even if he happens to lose a lot of money. So what? he'll think of it as show-off investment, like buying one off the ipl teams.. Oh no wait, now you'll retort back by saying inspite of the billionaires, we have poverty ( what was the % of poverty we have, again)..
All said and done your blog is an attempt to convice yourself and others..( mainly pakistanis) that your better than India.. Cant digest India's success, so lets find fault with them and convince ourselves that we are better..
Nothing wrong with the actual truth of the facts... But it is the selective revealing of facts, that really puts off non-pakistani readers of your blog... Finding only faults of one country but the positives of your own country, Isint being objective, it's called being biased...

Twenty years down the line which country makes the most progress? is a question that will be answered by most un-biased, neutral experts as well as ordinary non sub-continental people -as India...

Your free to keep convincing yourself and your country man of your own superiority...
Time will give us the answer...

Seriously, pakistani eat more meat! and we are supposed to feel inferior about that? you thought that was worth copy pasting on your blog..
Common serioulsy

Ps: Quoting my anonymous friend
"For the past decade, Indians don't care much about Pakistan. They are over it!
India now wants to be compared with China. It wants to progress like her but Pakistan is still stuck with being obsessed with and compared to India"Sir,

Riaz Haq said...

IndianJoe: "Twenty years down the line which country makes the most progress? is a question that will be answered by most un-biased, neutral experts as well as ordinary non sub-continental people -as India..."

This post and the various comments on it add up to a broad and comprehensive comparison of India and Pakistan today. No one knows for sure what the future holds. Both nations have a whole host of risks and challenges as acknowledged by Goldman Sachs, the creator of BRIC and N11 groups.

Riaz Haq said...

Israeli foreign minister is dragging events in India and Pakistan in a desperate bid to defend Israel's bloody assault on Gaza flotilla, according to a report in Times of India:

JERUSALEM: In an unusual step, Israel, which is facing global criticism for attacking an aid flotilla, has said violent incidents in countries like India and Pakistan in the past one month which claimed 500 lives have been "ignored" while it is being condemned for its "unmistakably defensive actions".

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman "reminded" the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that in the past month alone 500 people were killed in various incidents in Thailand, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and India, a Foreign Ministry statement said.

"While the international community remained silent and passive, and generally ignored the occurences, Israel is being condemned for unmistakably defensive actions," a Foreign Ministry statement quoted Lieberman as saying.


This is the first time that Israel has dragged India into a controversy. New Delhi has already condemned the Israeli attack on the aid flotilla to the Gaza Strip saying there was no justification for indiscriminate use of force.

He is understood to have told Ban that the incident related to Gaza aid flotilla was about the "basic right of Israeli soldiers to defend themselves against an attack by a gang of thugs and terror supporters who had prepared clubs, metal crowbars and knives in advance of confrontation."

Lieberman expressed "regret" at the behaviour of the international community.

"All of Israel's proposals to the Turkish government to transfer the humanitarian aid in an orderly manner were rejected by flottila's organisers," Lieberman was quoted as saying.

He also accused activists participating in the mission of intentionally trying to breach Israel's sovereignty and creating "provocation that would cause bloodshed".

In an emergency session yesterday, the UN Security Council called for an investigation into Israel's deadly commando raid on ships taking humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip on Monday, condemning the act that resulted in the loss of at least nine lives.

"... the Security Council resolution is unacceptable and contributes nothing to the promotion of peace and stability in the Middle East," Lieberman said.

joseph said...

yes, only future will tell us which country will make the most progress... But im sure 90% of people will bet on India..
Any way your free to convince yourself and pakistanis of your own superiority..
But you experience and capabiluity should be better used for peace initiatives..
God bless the sub- continent with peace . more than anything else..
Good bye

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Wall Street Journal story about counting the poor in India for government's welfare aid program:

Alimunisha's home is a 150-square-foot mud floor with a roof of plastic tarp held up by bamboo sticks. The beds are burlap potato sacks. There's no running water, electricity or toilet. She can afford to feed her five children one meal a day on the income her husband earns selling traditional drums.
Redefining Poverty in India

But according to the Indian government, Ms. Alimunisha, who goes by only one name, isn't living in poverty.

That means her family doesn't qualify for aid aimed at the poorest Indians, including a program that provides free housing and subsidies that would cut her food costs by two-thirds.

India, one of the world's fastest growing economies, is now embarking on a major reassessment of poverty levels. The review will determine how many struggling people across the world's second-most populous nation, from urban slum dwellers like Ms. Alimunisha to landless farm laborers, will be counted among the ranks of the official poor and get government handouts. At a stroke, tens of millions of people could flood onto the welfare rolls.

Millions of destitute Indian families don't qualify for food subsidies or housing assistance because they are not officially considered poor. Now the government is reassessing its poverty levels.

Generating a reliable list of poor households has become a top priority for the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which has pledged to spread the benefits of India's rapid growth to the aam aadmi, or common man. The government launched its review of poverty as it drafts legislation to give the poorest Indians a right to subsidized food-grains.

Defining poverty is tough in any country. But deciding who is poor, and how much the government can afford to help them, is especially complex in a nation of 1.2 billion where average annual per capita income is $953 and roughly one in two children is malnourished.

Expanding the definition of poverty without ballooning social spending will be doubly difficult. India already spends $12 billion a year on food subsidies alone. The review could add 100 million people to the welfare rolls and $1.3 billion a year to the nation's food-subsidy bill, a burden on a country that is striving to trim public deficits.
------------------
But the most pressing question is how many people the program should cover. Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi, who has made the "right to food" bill her pet project, was unhappy with early drafts based on the previous poverty count, because she thought too many people would be left behind, people familiar with her thinking say. Through a spokesman, Mrs. Gandhi declined to comment.

It isn't hard to see why politicians find it so tempting to expand the welfare rolls. In urban areas like Ismail Ganj, the Lucknow slum where Ms. Alimunisha lives, residents beg for water from nearby government buildings, often without success. They bath and defecate in the open.

Last September, the city bulldozed the slum prior to the planned inauguration by the state governor of a building across the street—the state's Human Rights Commission. The ceremony was canceled amid a backlash over the incident. Residents re-erected their mud and bamboo homes.

Ms. Alimunisha's husband earns about $40 per month—less than the official poverty line for a household of seven—by selling "dholaks," folk drums made of mango wood and goat skin.

"I feel so bad being poor," Ms. Alimunisha says. "Are we going to have to live like this all our lives?"

amal said...

Riaz
I am an Indian living in UK.
It is a very good article, unbiased and with statistical facts which are true, i scrolled quickly not sure whether u mentioned about basic sanitation and access to drinking water from unicef records it show Pak is better than INDIA.

with regards to the gdp India is definitely better than Pakistan.
But GDP does not constitute every thing, this is what the congress govt of India is doing by cheating the people.
In actual terms Indias rich are becoming richer than ever, the gap between the rich and poor is increasing ,which will have a bad consequence.

The influential politicians and the business men are filling there pockets.

India's natural resources like steel(iron ore), cement(limes tone,gypsum ) etc getting drained.
India is selling the valuable basmati rice, sugar and tea at a cheap rate, people are suffering.


There is ever increasing food prices, food inflation is 16 %,govt if india has failed to stop it more hungry people.

Actually India is becoming poor, there are more than 370 million people living below the poverty line and this number is likely to increase, common people will be fooled with gdp numbers like 8%.

Pakistan had the advantage of being a small country , one language, one religion,one culture
,but unfortunately because of the radical islamic culture,military coups and take over, Pakistan has underperformed.
Perhaps Pakistan's greates loss was the death of Mr. JINNAH at such an early age.

South asia will remain the underdeveloped and malnourished and poverty striken for the next 100 years.
Neither India nor Pakistan will acheive what Singapore and South korea has done.

Anonymous said...

Mr Haq, Just went through your entire page and was amused at the same time pleased to see a Pakistani gentleman answering all posts without being abusive or getting profane. I agree to some of your points and do disagree on many. Not that I side with all the folks who have replied/argued/countered your arguments.

But after reading all this, my thoughts drifted to a different orbit altogether. You spoke of the wide margin between have's and have not's in India.

Don't you think its a boon in a long run where you have so many billionaires(each year it is rising) in India? All these billionaires won't be idle. They will(or already have) create enterprises which benefit the society, provide employment which in itself pulls out or reduces the margin of poor or malnutritioned people (according to your stats) from its current state in years to come.

How many of your industrialists or enterprises can you brag about who go and buy a telecom company spanning 19 countries in Africa thereby taking over their entire telecom infrastructure while being no 1 in India? How many can buy the biggest Steel plant on planet and become numero Uno(Mittal, Tata Corus)? How many have attempted to become no 1 in Aluminium (Birla)? Who bought the priciest and richest car companies Jaguar and Range Rover? Am not even attempting to list other bohemoths like Ambani brothers, the biggest IT powerhouses and other big industries.

Are there any vibrant ecosystem in your country that encourages research and development? Top class educational institutions that take on MIT, Stanford or Harvard? How many of your fellow citizens patent their ideas?

Due to all these we are not dependant on foreign aid from other countries and succumb to their pressures.

Have you built your own supercomputers yet? Have you sent your satellites near the moon successfully or atleast thought of it apart from limiting yourself to tit for tat missile race with foreign aid?

What am hitting at is one need to create an environment where all people from every sphere of life be it rich or poor can be creative and work towards a better tomorrow. Whatever your UN stats show(about India in the last decade) we are geared to face the future with lots of confidence. I invite you to come to any city in India to have a first hand view of change yourself and I would be keen to see your blog thereafter.

Talking of past or getting happy by someone's pathetic past performance doesn't necessarily help you or Pakistan attain the summit it rightly deserves. Shunning some current thoughts and habits definitely paves way for a brighter future is all I can say politely.

Regards,
Prashanth Muthanna

Riaz Haq said...

Prashanth: "Don't you think its a boon in a long run where you have so many billionaires(each year it is rising) in India? All these billionaires won't be idle...."

The evidence in India and elsewhere shows that "trickle-down" economics does not work without significant and progressive government policies forcing redistribution.

There was recently a piece by Devinder Sharma in Deccan Herald arguing that the number of poor in India has multiplied along with the number of billionaires.

Prashanth: "I invite you to come to any city in India to have a first hand view of change yourself and I would be keen to see your blog thereafter."

I have had the opportunity to visit both India and Pakistan on several occasions, and I have written from personal experience and substantial data.

Unknown said...

I did a bit more findings on india and Pakistan.

I can say a few more things.
While pakistan had the advantage of being a small country with less population, less cultural diversity,same language,same religion etc.
Geographically pak was well located near to the oil rich countire and good relation with America.

While pak was in the driver seat from 1947-1965, they lost the oppurtunity to beat India in all respect from this period, because the leadership went to the wrong hands like Zulfikar Bhutto etc.
These leaders had no vision or will to do any thing good for pakistan,
The other thing that went wrong was the radical islamisation which has led to the downfall of all social sectors.

India in 1947 started on the back foot from the begining with 90% poverty, huge population of illiterate people, caste system,multifaith,multiliguistic
etc.
But the only good thing was Nehru was alive and put India in the right direction ,by building essential things, like cement ,textile,railways,engineering colleges,Steel plants etc, which did not happen in Pakistan because of the appeasement of

India was still extremely poor until 1990, infact Pakisitan had better growth rate ,better prospects than india.
Pakistan has been let down by the strong association of maulvis with politics and military.

India has not had that problem.
India has definitely gone ahead of Pakistan in last 10 years.

And the statistics reveal that both are equal now, but now india is on drivers seat as u can see billions of dollars are being invested in india.
on the contrary because of the damaged image of pakistan getting in to the back foot.

In another 20 years pakistan will be way behind India, and certainly mullahs and the military are to blamed for that.

Riaz Haq said...

A couple years ago, a Dutch diplomat in New Delhi couldn't take it any more. He came under fire from the Indian foreign ministry after he reportedly labeled the capital as "miserable" and a "garbage dump", according to a newspaper report.

Arnold Parzer, agriculture counsellor at the Royal Netherlands Embassy, reportedly told the Dutch daily Het Financieele Dagblad that New Delhi residents were a "darn nuisance”, the Hindustan Times reported.

“Anything that can go wrong, does go wrong; everyone interferes with everyone else; the people are a darn nuisance; the climate is hell; the city is a garbage dump,” Parzer reportedly told the daily.

“New Delhi is the most miserable place I have ever lived in,” the diplomat was quoted as saying.

The Hindustan Times said India’s foreign ministry had summoned Dutch ambassador Eric Neihe, who in turn had “taken the officer to task”.

More recently, a Mercer survey ranked New Delhi, along with Mumbai and Dhaka in South Asia, among the dirtiest cities in the world. No Pakistani cities are on this list.

And here's an American blogger Sean Paul Kelly in his post "Reflections on India":

"One would expect a certain amount of, yes, I am going to use this word, backwardness, in a country that hasn’t produced so many Nobel Laureates, nuclear physicists, imminent economists and entrepreneurs. But India has all these things and what have they brought back to India with them? Nothing. The rich still have their servants, the lower castes are still there to do the dirty work and so the country remains in stasis. It’s a shame. Indians and India have many wonderful things to offer the world, but I’m far from sanguine that India will amount to much in my lifetime.

Now, have at it, call me a cultural imperialist, a spoiled child of the West and all that. But remember, I’ve been there. I’ve done it. And I’ve seen 50 other countries on this planet and none, not even Ethiopia, have as long and gargantuan a laundry list of problems as India does. And the bottom line is, I don’t think India really cares. Too complacent and too conservative."


Here are excerpts from a piece by Bloomberg's Hindol Sengupta, an honest Indian:

....Add this bookstore to the list of India-Pakistan rivalry. A bookstore so big that it is actually called a bank. The book store to beat all bookstores in the subcontinent, I have found books I have never seen anywhere in India at the three-storeyed Saeed Book Bank in leafy Islamabad. The collection is diverse, unique and with a special focus on foreign policy and subcontinental politics (I wonder why?), this bookstore is far more satisfying than any of the magazine-laden monstrosities I seem to keep trotting into in India. ...

But they do and one of my most delightful experiences in Pakistan has been travelling on its fabulous roads. No wonder the country is littered with SUVs — Pakistan has the roads for such cars! Even in tiny Bajaur in the North West frontier province, hard hit by the Taliban, and a little more than a frontier post, the roads were smoother than many I know in India. Even Bajaur has a higher road density than India! If there is one thing we should learn from the Pakistanis, it is how to build roads. And oh, another thing, no one throws beer bottles or trash on the highways and motorways. ...

Riaz Haq said...

By their own admission, the Foreign policy magazine says their index is based entirely on media reports. So it's the raw news reports which have been mostly negative for Pakistan lately, that have driven its ranking among failed states.

It is a well known fact that media coverage is heavily manipulated by western governments, particularly the United States.

For example, it is normal Washington practice to use well-timed media leaks in Washington Post, New York Times, CBS and other major media outlets, including blogs, twitter and new social media, to effect changes in policies and behaviors within and outside the United States. Such leaks are almost always attributed to unnamed officials, and intended to put pressure to act in ways preferred by the leakers.

Even the US presidents are not immune from such manipulation. In its recent issue, the Newsweek magazine has described how President Obama himself became the target of such pressure tactics during his Afghan policy review last year.

Recently, NPR's Madulika Sikka, an Indian-American producer of Morning Edition, put the effect of media coverage as follows:

But one thing I do want to talk about in the, you know, what is our vision of Pakistan, which often is one dimensional because of the way the news coverage drives it.

But, you know, we went to visit a park in the capital, Islamabad, which is just on the outskirts, up in the hills, and we blogged about it, and there are photos on our website. You could have been in suburban Virginia.

There were families, picnics, picnic tables, you know, kids playing, stores selling stuff, music playing. It was actually very revealing, I think for us and for people who saw that posting, because there's a lot that's similar that wouldn't surprise you, let's put it that way."

Anonymous said...

As i said Indis is slowly but steadily progressing.

India's main problem is population and nothing else.

India will have to grow at 8- 10 % to prevent it sliiping down for the next 20 years or so.

In every sectors India is doing well globally, Pharmaceutical companies like Dr.Reddy's Lab, Wochardt,Ranbaxy has already entred Europe and doing well in US as well amidst a lot of competition.
Indian tourism industry is growing . and so is Medical tourism . India is earning billions in this industry, in a few years time the film and entertainment indusrty will fetch 10 billion dollars to the exchequer.

Pakistan has slowed down considerably, foreign investors are afraid to go there because of the kidnapings, ransoms, arson, and last but not least islamic terrorism.

The NHS is the biggest empolyer in U.K.has gone to India to recruit new doctors, the posts which they could not fill with there own doctors, ignoring the govt rule of employing other european docs if vacancies are left after british docs have taken up the jobs.
They have ignored Pakistan and other non european countries as well EU COUNTRIES.

Therefore indian are better placed than Pakistanis in the global picture.

Riaz Haq said...

BBC is reporting India's decision to use troops to break the blockade by Naga rebels in Manipur in the northeast:

The Indian government is sending federal paramilitary troops to the north-eastern state of Manipur to lift a blockade by tribal groups.

The two-month blockade of main roads has led to severe shortages of food and medical supplies and soaring prices.

Naga tribal groups oppose a government decision preventing Naga separatist leader Thuingaleng Muivah from visiting his birthplace in the troubled state.

Naga rebels have been campaigning for decades for a separate homeland.

The BBC's Chris Morris in Delhi says Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has finally met protest leaders to hear their concerns.

His involvement may be a last attempt to resolve things peacefully, our correspondent reports, before troops are instructed to lift the blockade - by force if necessary.

Home Secretary GK Pillai said the authorities would begin sending troops from Tuesday.

"We shall see to it that food supplies reach Manipur," he told the AFP news agency.

Riaz Haq said...

By evacuating 250 Pakistani students, and the body one slain Pakistani, in an airlift from Kyrgyzstan, Pakistani government has demonstrated that it cares for its citizens abroad. I see this as a good sign of responsive democratic governance emerging in Pakistan. I hope there will be more signs of it to come, and I expect Pakistani media to continue to play their role in such matters.

Meanwhile, India's foreign ministry has said that 116 Indians - mostly students - were still stranded in southern Kyrgyzstan due to the fighting.

"Everything possible is being done to ensure the safety and well-being of the Indian nationals, within the constraints posed by the difficult ground situation," said the ministry in a statement.

Riaz Haq said...

Much has been written about India's skilled doctors providing health care to "medical tourists" from the West. Here's a BBC story that makes you think about all the hype:

A US surgeon convicted of manslaughter after botching a series of operations has been jailed for seven years by an Australian court.

Jayant Patel, an Indian-born US citizen dubbed "Dr Death" by Australian media, worked at a Queensland hospital between 2003 and 2005.

He was found guilty at the Brisbane Supreme Court earlier this week of the manslaughter of three patients.

He was also convicted of causing grievous bodily harm to a patient.
Patients hidden

Patel had pleaded not guilty to the manslaughter of Gerry Kemps, James Phillips and Mervyn Morris, and causing grievous bodily harm to Ian Vowles.

Prosecutors argued that Patel's operations were well below the standard of a competent surgeon.

During the 14-week trial, the court heard that he had botched operations, misdiagnosed patients, removed healthy organs and used sloppy surgical techniques during his time at Bundaberg Base Hospital.

Nurses used to hide patients from him because of their concerns about the quality of his work, the court heard.

Prosecutors had requested a 10-year sentence.

Before arriving in Australia, Patel had been banned from conducting surgery in the US states of New York and Oregon.

Unknown said...

AS Mr. HAQ puts so much energy in proving the point that India and Pakistan are so much similar..

Lets put some input..


World Perception:

PAKISTAN:

#Brown reveals that 75 per cent of terrorist plots investigated by Britain have links to Pakistan

-http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

#Madeleine Albright: Pakistan : “an international migraine”
-www.deccanchronicle.com

#Pakistan ranks 10th among ‘failed states’

india is at 87th place

-www.dawn.com

#Pakistan, Afghanistan make South Asia terror capital

-dawn.com

# Obama Threatens Pakistan Invasion

(www.greenchange.org)

#No Cricket for Pakistan Till 2015(http://www.usatrends.info)


INDIA:

#India Aims to Be World's Fastest Growing Economy(ABC news)

#India projected to join China in surpassing size of the U.S. economy by 2050 - Business - International Herald Tribune



#George Bush while introducing Manmohan singh to Laura Bush:

"Honey,here is the PM of India which has 150 million muslim but not a single member of Al Quida"


#When Manmohan Singh speaks, people listens: Obama at G20 summit (www.deccanherald.com)


#India is organizing the commonwealth game in New Delhi this octomber 2010..



As Mr. Haq is so much worried about poors in india lets bring some light in that issue..

#In India, the number of such people living on less than $1.25 a day (poor)is expected to go down from 435 million or 51.3 percent in 1990 to 295 million or 23.6 percent by 2015
and 268 million or 20.3 percent by 2020.(World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund report)


#India on track to meet poverty reduction goal: World Bank

# In South Asia, there was a very rapid decline (in poverty) because of India, “But outside of India, the rate of reduction of poverty is less:The Global Monitoring Report 2010

# Human developmental Index
Pakistan 141
India 134

#Terrorist Violence in Pakistan:
2009: 11585 people killed
80 suicide attacks
-http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/pakistan/




# A typical Indian IT worker is increasingly being called a "cyber coolie" or sometimes a "code coolie"

Infosys won the Global MAKE (Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises) award, for the years 2003, 2004 and 2005, being the only Indian company to win this award and is inducted into the Global Hall of Fame for the same.

http://www.knowledgebusiness.com

There is difference between software engineer(which requires knowledge) and coolie.. if someone says something that does not mean you can not use your brain..




#Economy:

India: GDP:$3.526 trillion (2009)(ppp)
Foreign reserve:$287.37 billion
The number of billionaires in India nearly doubled to 52 in 2009(forbes)

Pakistan: GDP:$449.3 billion (2009 est.)(ppp)
Foreign reserve: $15 billion
Mian Muhammad Mansha: First Pakistani on the Forbes Billionaire’s List 2010(forbes)

#Tourism:

Pakistan: Since 1971, the year in which tourist statistics were first compiled, foreign tourist arrivals have ranged between
122,000 and 494,000 and domestic tourists were estimated at 42.8 million.(shah alam khan)

India: India witnesses more than 5 million annual foreign tourist arrivals and 562 million domestic tourism visits.(wikipedia)


# Education:

India has its educational institutions producing 7,000 PhDs per year in the Sciences which is more than the entire
stock of phds in pakistan..

3 iniversity of india in top 100 asian university none from pakistan(www.webometrics.info)

#some other facts:

#Pakistan will spend 5.2 billion U.S. dollars on defense for next year.(17% increase) now this is a country which runs on forign aid..


IN a nutshell: When your house is burning you should not waste time in thinking that Neighbour's house might be burning also because some smoke is also coming from it..

Close this blog if you can't post this message..

sarthak said...

hi mr haq,
1stly congrats for an interesting article (comments are just rushing in!)
well as a pakistani u have all the r8 in the world 2 b happy to c pakistan doin well in several key indicators like poverty rate, life expectancy etc. However ur article can hardly be claimed as 'neutral' -its sounds just like many of so called 'neutral' media houses. They like u, use stats for their advantage.
Now pakistan as u r8ly pointed out has done much better than India pre 1990. And from 1991 India is growing faster than India. Now to make the matters clear I will actually like to know the current ppp of the two countries (2008 or better still 09).
But honestly I am amazed to see follies of the people of our two countries. And you people( i mean ppl of your gen 50s-60s born), goodness gracious. Just look at our countries, we should hide our face in shame that millions cannot get the bare minimum and what we are doing, having vain vain pride comparing with each others. Its like comparing which is a better soccer team Ind or Pak (stupid, do Ind or Pak know how to play soccer). Similarly are these economic stats life expectany pak 65, Ind 63 anything to be v proud off . Rubbish man you fools have just left a legacy of being cheap. Now as for Indians and Pakistanis of the new generation I would say friends these fellows are mad about partition and etc and they just cant do anything but hate each other. But shouldn't we change?
Forget your neighbor (be it Ind or Pak) for the moment put ur house in order. Massive transformation is necessary in both the countries. We still stand no where compared to the developed countries.
Dont listen to these freaks and lets work our way out from these mountain high obstacles.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Wall Street Journal story comparing roads in India and Pakistan:

A major conundrum to those who visit both India and Pakistan is why the roads are so much better in the latter.
For all its problems, Pakistan’s 367-kilometer-long M2 motorway between Lahore and Islamabad strikes a visitor as being streets ahead of India’s decrepit inter-state roads even if roads minister Kamal Nath is on a binge of fund-raising to try to improve India’s highways.
For one, there’s a disciplined motorway police that patrol Pakistan’s highways and don’t take bribes. If you go above 120 kilometers an hour, and are caught on camera, a fine awaits you at the toll gate. Nonpayment means you can’t get out. The M2 motorway passes through the densely populated Punjab countryside but there are no cows, rickshaws or motorbikes coming at traffic on the wrong side of the road which is a common experience in India.
The M2 road was built in the late 1990s by South Korean firm Daewoo, whose name is still emblazoned on the modern service stations that line the route.
Sunita Kohli, a New Delhi-based interior designer who recently did work on a boutique hotel in Lahore, says she was impressed with the road compared to similar developments in India.
“We really lag behind on infrastructure,” she said. “Now we’re trying to make up for lost time.”
That’s not to say Pakistan doesn’t face its own infrastructure challenges. Its most pressing need is to build more power plants and stop people from stealing electricity to avoid hours of blackouts across the country.
And Pakistan’s motorways — at just over 600 kilometers in combine length — are only a small fraction of the total road network, much of which is old. Ms. Kohli says she sees the M2 as a “showcase.”
India still slightly edges out Pakistan in the United Nations’ Human Development Index, which measures per capita GDP, literacy, life expectancy and other development criteria.
Until a couple of years ago, Pakistan’s economy was booming and there was plenty of public and private money for infrastructure spending. Now, foreign direct investment has dried up and the government, running a large deficit, has had to turn to the IMF for more than $11 billion in loans.
But first-time visitors to Pakistan, many expecting a failed state, are surprised by some of the modern infrastructure.
Apart from the roads, Pakistan’s broadband and wireless roaming speeds also compare favorably with India. Doing business in Pakistan is easier than in India and China, according to the World Bank.
With regular Taliban suicide bombings, though, Pakistan is unable to capitalize on these positives and continues to generate only negative headlines.

Riaz Haq said...

The Aug 23 & 30 issue of Newsweek has a cover story titled "The Best Country in he World is...". It ranks top 100 nations of he world based on education, health, quality of life, economy and politics.

As expected, the top nations are the industrialized OECD member nations, followed by the nations of Eastern Europe, Middle East, Latin America, North Africa and South East Asia. Bottom of the list includes South Asian and sub-Saharan African nations.

The top nation in South Asia is Sri Lanka at #66. Afghanistan and Nepal are not included in the list.

Here are the rankings for India and Pakistan:

India...Pakistan

88........86........Education

82........85.......Health

87........85.......Quality of Life

38........62.....Economic Dynamism

48........99.......Political Env.

78........89.......Overall

Pakistan is ahead of India in education and quality of life, as judged by Newsweek.

Obviously, Newsweek rankers have a bias for democracy, no mater how flawed, that puts India significantly ahead of Pakistan in political environment and helps its overall ranking. And the fact that Pakistan has been hugely demonized by the western media has also hurt its standing.

But the killers for Pakistan rankings are its corrupt and incompetent politicians and the economic ruin they have wrought over the last two years.

Riaz Haq said...

A pre-requisite for a responsive and accountable democracy is a substantial middle class population.

An ADB report on Asia's rising middle class released today confirms that Pakistan's middle class now is 40% of the population, significantly larger than the Indian middle class of about 25% of its population.

The other significant news reported by Wall Street Journal today says the vast majority of what is defined as India's middle class is perched just above $2 a day.

Most of this middle class growth in Pakistan occurred on Musharraf's watch.

Anonymous said...

"Most of this middle class growth in Pakistan occurred on Musharraf's watch."

Now your president Mr.Zardari is ensuring that all that middle class turn into poor class.

Riaz Haq said...

Over the last two decades, Pakistan has continued to offer much greater upward mobility to its citizens than neighboring India. Since 1990, Pakistan's middle class had expanded by 36.5% and India's by only 12.8%, according to an ADB report on Asia's rising middle class released recently.

All the hype about Indian education is exposed by the UNDP's Education Index.

UNDP publishes the Education Index which is measured by the adult literacy rate (with two-thirds weighting) and the combined primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrollment ratio (with one-third weighting). The adult literacy rate gives an indication of the ability to read and write, while the GER gives an indication of the level of education from kindergarten to postgraduate education.

On this UNDP education index, Pakistan scores low at 0.665 and ranks 137, but it is still ahead of India's score of 0.638 and ranking of 142nd on a list of 176 nations.

Unknown said...

Cricket family's shame: Pakistan!! !!! Pakistan Players are center of cheating claims

#

ICC vows 'prompt and decisive action'
#

Pakistan should be banned from world cricket, says former ICC head
#

Four players named will not play in remainder of England tour
# Girlfriend claims player admitted match-fixing

The teenage cricket sensation at the centre of a betting scandal deserves to be punished if he has brought shame on Pakistan, his family said.

Star bowler Mohammad Aamer, whose amazing rags-to-riches rise has been compared to the Slumdog Millionaire movie, is one of four players at the centre of the claims.

As the crisis in world cricket gathered pace, there was astonishment that the Pakistan team has been allowed to continue with its British tour.
Mohammad Aamer

Shock: Aamer's family members in the village of Changa Mera, look stunned as they explain their belief he should be punished if found guilty of aiding illegal gambling

Aamer, captain Salman Butt, wicketkeeper Kamran Akmal and bowler Mohammad Asif have been questioned by Scotland Yard over claims in the News of the World that they took cash from an international betting racket.

It was announced today that all four would take no further part in the current England tour.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1307555/Pakistan-cricket-scandal-Punish-Mohammad-Aamer-hes-guilty-say-stars-family.html?ito=feeds-newsxml#ixzz0ykNnqg7v

Riaz Haq said...

kathan: "do not doubt your intentions, but your reference is unverified for sure... I have never seen any of those statements (one that you quoted) in any text books (not just Social studies, but all) of any grade level..."

The following is a report at India Together Website about Gujarat textbooks:

An ongoing study of school textbooks in four states has found stereotypes and biases in Gujarat's textbooks. The Social Studies textbook for standard five has nine stories on mythology masquerading as history. Deepa A reports.

*Gujarat is a border state. Its land and sea boundaries touch the boundaries of Pakistan which is like a den of terrorism. Under such circumstances, it is absolutely necessary for us to understand the effects of terrorism and the role of citizens in the fight against it

*If every countryman becomes an ideal citizen and develops patriotism, the National Population Policy can definitely be achieved

*When people used to meet earlier, they wished each other saying Ram Ram and by shaking hands. Today, people enjoy their meeting by speaking Namaste. Is it not a change?

*Making full use of Muslim fanaticism, Osama Bin Laden organized die-hard Muslims and founded the International Jihad Organization in the name of the Jehedi movement*
[Excerpted from Social Science textbooks, standard nine (2005) and standard eight (2004)]
19 February 2007 - Much discussion and debate have taken place about the textbooks brought out by the Gujarat State Board. But, as is evident from the examples given above, litigation and complaints have done little to change the content of these books.

At the Centre, the National Curriculum Framework, a blueprint for textbooks across the country, has famously done away with all kinds of stereotypes to create a democratic and innovative system of learning. But none of this seems to have percolated down to the Gujarat State Board of School Textbooks.

In today's Gujarat, the textbook continues to be a medium that is subversively used to mould children's minds according to the ideology of the Narendra Modi Government, whose complicity in the communal violence of 2002 that killed over 1,000 people – a majority of them Muslims – has been established in inquiries made by various non-government agencies. Even a cursory glance of the textbooks suffices to confirm that it is full of anti-minority statements, slants that idolise freedom fighters who used violent methods to fight imperialism, and crude suggestions about population control and terrorism, both of which are, incidentally, pet topics of the Modi regime.


http://www.indiatogether.org/2007/feb/edu-gujtexts.htm

Riaz Haq said...

Here is an excerpt from "The Trickledown Revolution" by Arundhati Roy on India's 63rd independence day:

“All of you have contributed to India’s success,” he (Manmohan Singh) said, “the hard work of our workers, our artisans, our farmers has brought our country to where it stands today… We are building a new India in which every citizen would have a stake, an India which would be prosperous and in which all citizens would be able to live a life of honour and dignity in an environment of peace and goodwill. An India in which all problems could be solved through democratic means. An India in which the basic rights of every citizen would be protected.” Some would call this graveyard humour. He might as well have been speaking to people in Finland, or Sweden.

If our prime minister’s reputation for ‘personal integrity’ extended to the text of his speeches, this is what he should have said: “Brothers and sisters, greetings to you on this day on which we remember our glorious past. Things are getting a little expensive I know, and you keep moaning about food prices. But look at it this way— more than 650 million of you are engaged in and are living off agriculture as farmers and farm labour, but your combined efforts contribute less than 18 per cent of our GDP. So what’s the use of you? Look at our IT sector. It employs 0.2 per cent of the population and earns us 5 per cent of our national income. Can you match that? It is true that in our country employment hasn’t kept pace with growth, but fortunately 60 per cent of our workforce is self-employed. Ninety per cent of our labour force is employed by the unorganised sector. True, they manage to get work only for a few months in the year, but since we don’t have a category called ‘underemployed’, we just keep that part a little vague. It would not be right to enter them in our books as unemployed. Coming to the statistics that say we have the highest infant and maternal mortality in the world—we should unite as a nation and ignore bad news for the time being. We can address these problems later, after our Trickledown Revolution, when the health sector has been completely privatised. Meanwhile, I hope you are all buying medical insurance. As for the fact that the per capita foodgrain availability has actually decreased over the last 20 years—which happens to be the period of our most rapid economic growth— believe me, that’s just a coincidence.

My fellow citizens, we are building a new India in which our 100 richest people hold assets worth a full 25 per cent of our GDP. Wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer hands is always more efficient. You have all heard the saying that too many cooks spoil the broth. We want our beloved billionaires, our a few hundred millionaires, their near- and dear-ones and their political and business associates, to be prosperous and to live a life of honour and dignity in an environment of peace and goodwill in which their basic rights are protected.

Kathan said...

Dear Mr. Haq, The article about Text-book is old and is likely to be irrelevant... However, On my return to India, my first project would be the work on Text books... As far as my own schooling, we (Indians) were never taught hatred in schools like you see in present Pakistan (against Indians, especially Hindus); or in Sri-Lanka (against Tamils)...
Here's Ali Sethi's article in New York Times- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/opinion/13sethi.html?ref=terrorism

Kathan said...

First Part of His Article:
“Write a Note on the Two-Nation Theory.”

It was a way of scoring easy points on the history exam, and of using new emotions and impressive-sounding words. I began my answer like this:

The Two-Nation Theory is the Theory that holds that the Hindus and Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent are Two Distinct and Separate Nations. It is a Theory that is supported by Numerous Facts and Figures. During the War of Independence of 1857 the Muslim rulers of India were defeated by the British. Suddenly the Hindus, who had always held a grudge against the Muslims for conquering them, began to collaborate with the new British rulers. They joined British schools, worked in British offices and began to make large amounts of money, while the Muslims, who were Discriminated Against, became poorer and poorer. It was now Undisputable that the Hindus and the Muslims were Two Distinct and Separate Nations, and it was becoming necessary for the Muslims to demand a Distinct and Separate Homeland for themselves in the Indian Subcontinent.

To that point, my “note” had only built up the atmosphere of mistrust and hostility between Hindus and Muslims. It had yet to give examples of the Distinctness and Separateness of the two communities (such as that Hindus worshipped the cow but Muslims ate it), of Hindu betrayals and conspiracies (they wanted Hindi, not Urdu, to be the national language). And it had still to name and praise the saddened Muslim clerics, reformers and poets who had first noted these “undisputable” differences.

I got points for every mini-note that I stretched into a full page, which was valid if it gave one important date and one important name, each highlighted for the benefit of the teacher. This was because the teacher couldn’t really read English, and could award points only to answers that carefully showcased their Facts and Figures.

Kathan said...

Your whole generation and present generation have been preached such lies... Hence it is no surprise to see the focus of your blog on gratifying Pakistan, while reproaching everything about India... It is understandable that psychologically this will sooth you as you'll feel "we Pakistanis are not that bad". But by ignoring positives of India, you would lose a learning opportunity. People like Arundhati Roy (extreme left) balance people of extreme right (Businessmen) and helps India to center itself... But, if u refer her articles to debase India, it will only serve your thirst of feeling ok about ur country's poor scenario. You got to highlight people who criticize your government so that you can generate a pressure group that will improve lives of common Pakistanis... Well learned Pakistanis like you should forget India (if you can't see any good) and focus on strengthening Pakistan... Strong and stable Pakistan will be a great gift to us Indians -Peace

Riaz Haq said...

kathan: "Your whole generation and present generation have been preached such lies... "

There is no bigger than "Shining India" which is drilled into every Indian kid...even those who are highly malnourished and near starvation.

And this is not new. Here is one of Al-Biruni's observations about the Hindus of his day:

"The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs.They are haughty, foolishly vain, self-conceited, and stolid. They are by nature niggardly in communicating that which they know, and they take the greatest possible care to withhold it from men of another caste among their own people, still much more, of course, from any foreigner ... Their haughtiness is such that, if you tell them of any science or scholar in Khorasan and Persis, they will think you to be both an ignoramus and a liar. If they traveled and mixed with other nations, they would soon change their mind, for their ancestors were not as narrow-minded as the present generation is."

Kathan said...

Intellectual Pakistanis should focus on improving Pakistan rather than rationalizing and feeling comfortable with National security State format of their country. Your education would prove to be a complete waste if you concentrate your efforts on finding loop-holes in India, rather than developing Pakistan. I hope you create an open/ democratic/ intellectual society in Pakistan... In short a well fare state. You would succeed only if you see good practices of others. I wish Allah may grant you this much needed wisdom.

Riaz Haq said...

Kathan: "In short a well fare state. You would succeed only if you see good practices of others."

I agree. But I don't see any good practices in India which remains home to the largest and most neglected population of poor, hungry and illiterate people.

The Turkish model has delivered results making it possible for democracy to emerge there.

It's similar to the East Asian and South East Asian models where efficient military-backed dictatorships transformed the Asian Tigers from poor, backward, third world nations into modern literate nations capable of democratic form of governance.

Indian writer Arudhati Roy believes India's democracy is a sham democracy...and she argues her point quite effectively.

Well before Roy, it was Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, the Dalit framer of the Indian constitution, who wrote that “democracy in India is only a top dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic.”

“A democratic form of government presupposes a democratic form of a society. The formal framework of democracy is of no value and would indeed be a misfit if there was no social democracy. It may not be necessary for a democratic society to be marked by unity, by community of purpose, by loyalty to public ends and by mutuality of sympathy.”

Riaz Haq said...

kathan: "Intellectual Pakistanis should focus on improving Pakistan rather than rationalizing and feeling comfortable with National security State format of their country."

Talking about "feeling comfortable with National security State format", do you know that India is second only to the United States in the number of think tanks, including "security" think tanks, funded by special interests?

Do you know that the Indian military, supported by a bunch of self-serving "security" analysts who get most of the media attention, demanded and got a 34% annual increase in defense budget in 2009?

Do you know that India, a country with the world's largest population of poor, hungry and illiterate people, is also among the biggest military spenders with about $35 billion annual budget?

Do you know that India is now among the top one or two biggest importers of military hardware in the world?

Indian military, with its burgeoning military-industrial complex, exercises a lot of power in Delhi.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's another sign of India becoming a "national security state" through surveillance of its citizenry:

MUMBAI, India — India has widened its security crackdown, asking all companies that provide encrypted communications - not just BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion - to install servers in the country to make it easier for the government to obtain users' data. That would likely affect digital giants like Google and Skype.

"People who operate communication services in India should (install a) server in India as well as make available access to law enforcement agencies," Home Secretary G.K. Pillai told reporters. "That has been made clear to RIM of BlackBerry but also to other companies."

On Monday, India withdrew a threat to ban BlackBerry service for at least two more months after RIM agreed to give security officials "lawful access" to encrypted data.

Indian officials have for some time also been concerned about Google and Skype, neither of which maintains servers in India. Google has an Indian unit, but Gmail is offered by Google Inc., a U.S. company subject to U.S. laws. Luxembourg-based Skype has no India operations.

India began a sweeping information security review after the November 2008 terror attack in Mumbai, which was coordinated with cell phones, satellite phones and Internet calls. Officials are also eager to avoid any trouble at the Commonwealth Games, a major sporting event to be held in New Delhi in October.

At the same time, India seems to be gaining confidence in its own attractiveness as a market, taking a tougher stance with international companies, not just in telecommunications - where it is the world's fastest-growing major market - but also in mining and nuclear energy.

"Our stand is firm. We look forward to get access to data," Home Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters. "There is no uncertainty over it."



Read more: http://www.thestate.com/2010/09/02/1445860/india-widens-security-crackdown.html#ixzz0zShRFeIk

Riaz Haq said...

With the emergence of Hindutva fascist forces and their alliance with Neo cons and Zionists, India witnessed a sharp increase in the number of research institutes, media houses and lobbying groups. According to a study by Think Tanks & Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, India has 422 think tanks, second only to the US, which has over 2,000 such institutions.

Out of 422 recognized Indian think tanks, around 63 are engaged in security research and foreign policy matters, which are heavily funded by global weapon industry. India’s Retired spies, Police officers, Military personals, Diplomats and Journalists are hired by such national security & foreign policy research institutes which gets enormous fund from global weapon industry. These dreaded institutions are in fact has a hidden agenda. Behind the veil, they work as the public relations arm of weapon industry. They create fake terror stories with the help of media and intelligence wing, manipulate explosions through criminals in areas of tribals, dalits or minorities in order to get public acceptance for weapon contracts.

By creating conflicts in this poor country, Brahmin spin masters get huge commission from the sale of weapons to government forces. To this corrupt bureaucrats, India’s ‘National Interest‘ simply means ‘their self Interest’. Their lobbying power bring more wealth to their families as lucrative jobs, citizenship of rich countries and educational opportunities abroad.

Mentionable that India is one of the world’s largest weapons importers. Between 2000 and 2007 India ranked world’s second largest arms importer accounting for 7.5 % of all major weapons transfers. It stood fourth among the largest military spender in terms of purchasing power in 2007 followed by US, China and Russia.

Over 1,130 companies in 98 countries manufacture arms, ammunitions and components. 90 % of Conventional arms exports in the world are from the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council namely USA, UK, Russia, China & France. The countries of Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East hold 51 per cent of the world’s heavy weapons.

The Defence Offset Facilitation Agency estimating the expenditure on the sector at USD 100 billion for next five years. At least 38 court cases relating to arms agreements are still pending against bureaucrats and military officers. Hindu fascist forces currently enjoy upper hand in media, civil service, judiciary, defence and educational streams of Indian society. Sooner or later, 25,000 strong democratic institutions in India will be collapsed and the country will be transformed to a limited democracy under the rule of security regime like Turkey or Israel. Hindutva’s security centric nationalism never was capable of bringing peace and protection to the life of our ordinary citizens.

According to Global Peace Index, India currently ranked on bottom, (122 with 2.422 score). Interestingly, our favourite arms supplier, Israel is among the worst performer when it comes to peace ranking. (141). It reminds a simple fact that the peace cannot be attained by sophisticated security apparatus.

Further more, India topped on Asian Risk Prospects -2009, with the highest political and social risk, scoring 6.87, mainly because of internal and external instability (PERC)

http://escapefromindia.wordpress.com/

Riaz Haq said...

FAO released its report on hunger today. According to the report highlights as published in The Guardian, there are 847.5 million undernourished people in the world. India tops the list with 237.7 million, followed by China with 130.4 million, Pakistan 43.4 million, Democratic Republic of Congo 41.9 million, Bangladesh 41.7 million, Ethiopia 31.6 million and Indonesia 29.9 million.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/datablog/2010/sep/14/hunger-world-fao-undernourished

Riaz Haq said...

Here are key points of WHO report on maternal mortality report (MMR) with India accounting for most of the mothers' deaths:

Puncturing tall government claims, a World Health Organisation (WHO) report claimed on Wednesday India accounted for most maternal deaths in the world, with at least 63,000 such deaths taking place in 2008 alone.

In fact, India fared worse than even Nigeria (50,000 maternal deaths in 2008), Congo (19,000), Afghanistan (18,000), Ethiopia (14,000), Pakistan (14,000), Tanzania (14,000), Bangladesh (12,000), Indonesia (10,000), Sudan (9,700) and Kenya (7,900).
An estimated 65% of maternal deaths globally occurred in these 11 countries in 2008, with India contributing the most.

Though India’s maternal mortality ratio (MMR) came down from 570 deaths per 1,00,000 live births to 230 in 2008, the change in percentage was negative-59.

Health ministry officials, however, put on a brave face, saying the figures were stale and fresh data would surely present a better picture.

The WHO report, ‘Trends in maternal mortality’, contradicts a nationwide survey commissioned by Unicef in 2009 which recently claimed that important parameters of maternal health, such as institutional delivery, safe delivery by skilled birth attendants and three or more ante-natal check-ups by mothers, had increased impressively since 2005-06.

It says the number of women dying due to complications during pregnancy and childbirth decreased by 34%, from an estimated 5,46,000 in 1990 to 3,58,000, in 2008 worldwide. But the annual rate of decline was less than half the target to achieve the millennium development goal of reducing MMR by 75% between 1990 and 2015. Developing countries continued to account for 99% (3,55,000) of such deaths, while sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia accounted for 87% (3,13,000).

It is estimated that overall, there were 42, 000 deaths due to HIV/AIDS among pregnant women.


http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_shame-story-india-is-the-biggest-mother-killer-of-the-world_1438582

Anonymous said...

EDITORIAL (July 04 2010): A high maternal mortality rate can leave a long-lasting ripple effect on the whole society, creating unfathomable problems for families left without the protective, guiding and nurturing hand of a mother.ACCORDING TO EXPERTS AT A SEMINAR HELD IN PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN HAS THE HIGHEST MATERNAL MORTALITY RATE IN SOUTH ASIA, WHERE, IN MOST CASES, THE DEATHS ARE PREVENTABLE. Its causes are multiple, inter-related and complex.

http://www.pakistantalk.com/forums/social-affairs/7364-pakistans-high-maternal-mortality-rate.html

Is this not worth a little musing?

Riaz Haq said...

Northern Pakistan hit by 6.2 quake on Sept 17, 2009, according to Pakistan's Dawn newspaper:

ISLAMABAD, Sept 17: High-intensity tremors jolted vast areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Azad Kashmir and Islamabad a little before midnight on Friday, triggering panic among people.

According to seismic department, the magnitude of the quake was 6.3 on the Richter scale and its epicentre was somewhere in Hindukush mountains. The tremors lasted 14 to 15 seconds.

The tremors were felt in Gilgit, Chitral, Skardu, Abbottabad, Swat, Muzaffarabad, Mirpur, Mansehra, Peshawar, Kohat, Nowshera, Islamabad, Lahore, Faisalabad, Gujranwala and Sarai Alamgir.

No loss of life was reported from any part of the country.


Reports from India indicate tremors were felt in Indian occupied Kashmir and as far as Delhi.

Anonymous said...

Both Countries know how they are doing. Both countries have been seeing development and advancement. If they were friends they could have done much better, no doubt. INspite of various problems in social and political level in India and Pakistan, they seems to progress so well. Can't imagine what will be the pace of development if the social evils are eradicated. Nice statistics, these statistics shows where a country lacks and what it should do to better in future

~With Regards
Sanskar
http://www.theworldreporter.com

Riaz Haq said...

In 1832 under the Mughal rule, India was among the world's two largest economies along with China, a status it will not regain until after 2032, according to a recent CNBC report.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/39376706

Anonymous said...

"In 1832 under the Mughal rule, India was among the world's two largest economies along with China, a status it will not regain until after 2032, according to a recent CNBC report."

The world seems to be in general agreement on India's march towards economic supremacy, and it is only a question of how soon. Pakistan, if you remember, was a part of the same Mughal empire which in 1832 was right up there with China. And yet today, does anyone attempt, or even dare, to predict where Pakistan's economy will be in 2032? The answer is, NO. Therein lies the rub!

Riaz Haq said...

anon: "Pakistan, if you remember, was a part of the same Mughal empire which in 1832 was right up there with China"

The key word here is "part"...Pakistan is about 1/10th of the Mughal India. In those terms, Pakistan is not just at par, but better than the rest of India. I has less poverty and hunger and a larger urban middle class than the rest of British India.

I believe that what is now Republic of India, the bulk of the Mughal and British India, has changed....from the world's richest nation under the Mughals in the mid 19th century, to one of the world's poorest nations in the 20th and 21st centuries.

While the Muslim rulers left India among the richest nations contributing a quarter of the World's GDP, the British colonial rulers left it a among the most destitute nations, with the world's largest population of poor, hungry and illiterate people producing less than 3% of the world's GDP.

Anonymous said...

"I believe that what is now Republic of India, the bulk of the Mughal and British India, has changed....from the world's richest nation under the Mughals in the mid 19th century, to one of the world's poorest nations in the 20th and 21st centuries."

"I believe.." is the operative part here. You are right about the 20th century, but I believe- and the world believes - that the 21st century is going to be different for India.

swastyk7 said...

One interesting thing to note:
The economic development of a country is quite directly reflected in the level of sports and achievements in sports of its sportspersons. China is a classic example of this. Their economic growth rate and rate of increase in their medal tally in the olympics is in direct correlation with one another. Not long ago India was a proverbial good for nothing in many sports. But the trends in the recent years see a wholesome change in that aspect. India is actually doing very good in many sports. It is dominating in the sports like wrestling, shooting, chess, cricket, amateur boxing and doing reasonably well in sports like tennis, badminton, weightlifting in the past few years. On the other hand there has been a sure but steady fall in the level of sports in Pakistan. They used to dominate very few games in the past like squash. But today they are not a leader in that sport too. I wont be exactly surprised if the entire Pakistani contingent fails to win a single medal in the cwg 2010 while India aims to win 100 medals this time. The only silver lining they seem to see today may be the rise of tennis in their country. Hopefully this is a symbol of new hope for Pakistan's rise again. But surely economic development and political situation is reflected sooner or later in the sports arena of a country.

Riaz Haq said...

swastyk7: "The economic development of a country is quite directly reflected in the level of sports and achievements in sports of its sportspersons."

Generally, but not necessarily in each instance. Here's an excerpt from a post I wrote in 2008 prior to Beijing Olympics on Johnson-Ali model:

Professor Johnson's model weighs factors such as wealth and population rather than rely on the detailed knowledge of individual athletes' abilities. The model, which was concocted by Johnson and former student assistant Ayfer Ali in 1999 at Harvard, also considers a country’s climate and the advantages of hosting.

Though the professor predicts the US will still lead the overall medals table with 103 medals this year, China will be aided by a booming economy, its host advantage and polluted air to take home the most gold medals—44 to be exact. Based on recent Olympics history, the professor has had a pretty good success rate at about 95%. Here's the link to Johnson and Ali's Beijing 2008 Olympics medals forecast. The duo predict Pakistan will win 12 medals, including three golds, at Beijing, just above Israel with 10 medals, including 9 golds.

He said the U.S. would win 103 medals, 35 of them gold at Athens in 2004. Real numbers: 103 and 37. But when it came to forecasting China's output in Greece, the economic indicators were way off. Johnson and Ali said China would win 39 overall and 15 gold. They took 63 and 32, respectively.

The Johnson-Ali model has not done well for nations other than the top 10. For example, Pakistan, which Johnson suggested would win seven medals, including three golds, won no medals at all at Athens. In fact, Pakistan has won three golds,three silvers and four bronze medals, a total of 10 medals in the entire history of its participation in Olympics since 1948. Eight out of the ten medals were won by Pakistan's field hockey team. The last Olympic medal Pakistan won was a bronze in 1992. India has won eight golds,four silvers and five bronze medals, a total of 17 medals in its entire Olympics history which began in 1927 while Sri Lanka has won two medals in its history at the Olympics, one silver and one bronze. The rest of the South Asian nations have never won any medals at the Olympics.

Anonymous said...

"The Johnson-Ali model has not done well for nations other than the top 10."

This is a demonstrably valid observation, as the model is not an exact science but a reasonaby good economic indicator, whose accuracy wanes as you go down the list.
In this context, it would be interesting to look at the top 10 spots in the ongoing Commonwealth Games, and assess the performances of countries like India and Pakistan.

Unknown said...

Very well written and informative article. I wish people could commenting could keep their comments in line with the topic. Specially people like Datacruncher who from his first post can be judged easily as an atheist.

Pakistan & India have similar problems and similar potentials because of the fact that they both originate from similar DNAs. Corruption and lack of right leadership has hampered our growth tremendously. If only we both could find a way to complement each others strengths.

Riaz Haq said...

India ranks 67, far worse than Pakistan's ranking of 52 on the world hunger index 2010 report published recently, according to a Times of India report.

China is rated much ahead of India at the ninth place, while Pakistan is at the 52nd place on the 2010 Global Hunger Index, released by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in association with a German group Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe.

In India, the high Index scores are driven by high levels of child underweight resulting from the low nutritional and social status of women in the country, the report pointed out, adding that India alone accounts for a large share of the world's undernourished children, the IFPRI report said.

India is home to 42% of the world's underweight children, while Pakistan has just 5%, it added.

Among other neighbouring countries, Sri Lanka was at the 39th position and Nepal ranked 56 by index. Bangladesh listed at the 68th position.

"The economic performance and hunger levels are inversely correlated. In South and Southeast Asia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Timor-Leste are among countries with hunger levels considerably higher than their gross national income (GNI) per capita," the IFPRI report said.

"Undernutrition in the first two years of life threatens a child's life and can jeopardise physical, motor and cognitive development. It is therefore of particular importance that we take concerted action to combat hunger, especially among young children," the report stressed.

It further said that the global food security is under stress. Although the world's leaders, through the first Millennium Development Goal, adopted a goal of halving the proportion of hungry people between 1990 and 2015, "we are nowhere near meeting that target."

"The 2010 world Global Hunger Index (GHI) shows some improvement over the 1990 world GHI, falling from 19.8 points to 15.1 or by almost one-quarter. The index for hunger in the world, however, remains serious," it noted.

In recent years, however, the number of hungry people has actually been increasing. In 2009, on the heels of a global food price crisis and in the midst of worldwide recession, the number of undernourished peopled surpassed one billion, although recent estimates by the UN body Food and Agriculture Organisation suggest that the number will have dropped to 925 million in 2010, it added.

Read more: India ranks below China, Pak in global hunger index - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-ranks-below-China-Pak-in-global-hunger-index/articleshow/6728259.cms#ixzz12CoXFD6s

Riaz Haq said...

Commonwealth Games 2010 ended today in New Delhi, India.

Representing the host nation, Indian athletes performed very well, ending up second on the medals table with 101 medals, including 38 golds, beating England to win the second place with just one more gold medal than England's 37 golds.

As expected, Australia topped the medals table with 177 medals, including 74 golds, down significantly from 221 medals they won in 2006, according to the BBC.

India doubled their medal count to 101 this year from 50 medals in 2006.

England also made gains, winning 142 medals this year, up from 110 in 2006.

Pakistan ranked 17th, on a list of 37 medal winning nations. Pakistan's medal count remained flat at 5, including 2 golds.

In terms of population per medal, Nauru (2 medals) topped the list with one medal per 5000 people.

India and Pakistan ended up near the bottom with one medal per 11 million and 33 million respectively.

Bangladesh was at the bottom with its one bronze medal for its entire population of 162 million people.

In terms of GDP, Nauru topped with 1 medal per $119 million.

India and Pakistan were near the bottom with $12 billion and $33 billion respectively.

Bangladesh was last with just one bronze for its entire GDP of $94 billion.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an LA Times story on "Chalta Hai" attitude that was at the root of the mess in lead up to the CWG 2010:

The international embarrassment that India suffered in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games — marred by massive cost overruns, a collapsed bridge and widespread corruption allegations — has focused attention on a stubborn cultural condition that if not checked, analysts here say, could undercut India's superpower ambitions.

An attitude referred to in Hindi as "chalta hai," which translates to "it goes" but can mean "don't be bothered," "whatever," "it'll do," or "don't fret (such problems as corruption, delays, shoddy quality)."

Or in the words of one commentator: "It's OK dude, who cares?"

As the Games' closing ceremony wrapped up Thursday, the attitude appeared to be borne out. Chaos reigned until opening day of the international sports competition, but India ultimately pulled it off. There were no major terrorist attacks, India won 38 gold medals and dancing and marching bands wowed the closing crowd.

As the hangover sets in, however, some wonder why it took prime ministerial intercession to get toilets cleaned in the athletes village, why Indian planning compared so poorly with neighboring China's hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics and whether a wing-it attitude befits a nation with such talent, potential and prospects.

"It doesn't matter if we're a growing superpower or the stock market's at record levels," said Vinod Mehta, editor in chief of the Outlook media group. "What these Games showed is that we've hit the limit on chalta hai."

Some see the attitude growing out of Hindu fatalism and rigid social hierarchies.

"It's a sense of 'que sera, sera,' pre-destination, you're born upper or lower caste," said Ravinder Kaur, a sociologist at the Indian Institute of Technology.

Others cite India's huge population and limited resources, which can leave individuals feeling powerless. "It's a coping device," said Amita Baviskar, a sociology professor at Delhi's Institute of Economic Growth.

For Santosh Desai, president of McCann-Erickson India, chalta hai is epitomized by a story his father recounted of a classmate who stole test answers, then only bothered to memorize the bare minimum required to pass.

Most cultures have something similar of sorts, including the Latin American "manana" and the Middle Eastern "bukrah, insha Allah" ("tomorrow, God willing") attitudes.

India's slack Games preparations epitomized chalta hai thinking, analysts said, but examples are widespread in India.

Siraj said...

Chalta hai, dude. Heck, "superpower" kehne mein kiya jaata hai?

Back in October 2008, Price Waterhouse India had invited me to give a talk on India's progress, as seen from the realistic lens of a foreigner who has interests in India. My talk was titled India Today - Rising Star or Land of Snake Charmers? All I can say is that India has done a damn good job with their global image building with just 2 1/2 products - Bollywood, IT and more recently, cricket. Otherwise, its all hollow from inside. I now have more Indian friends than I had before that event, because of some straight talk. I also have adopted two lovely little girls, whose biological mothers are commercial sex workers in Pune Both the moms are HIV+.

However, to answer the question whether Pakistan can be substituted for India in LA Times "chalta hai" .....my answer would be a NO (in caps). Whether you call it the land of the pure or the land of the poor, Pakistan is unfortunately without doubt, the world's most dangerous country now and has to completely reinvent itself to be functional. The leadership team does not realize that when you are in a deep hole, the first thing you have to do is to stop digging.

smokin' aces said...

Bad news for India ..it slipped further down on corruption index to 87th position..But Pakistan has gone down to 145!!! even below Bangladesh..in fact at this rate it will race down to bottom pretty soon..hmm what say now..mr haq? all your hopes of developing pakistan are dashed i guess...

Riaz Haq said...

Shining India is made up of a few fabulously rich individuals like Mukesh Ambani whose new billion dollar 27-story home soars into the Mumbai skies. It's a brand new symbol of the vast rich-poor gap that continues to grow in India.

Here's what NY Times says:

Now Mukesh is moving into a tower that makes Sea Wind seem like a guest house.

“It’s kind of returning with a vengeance to where they made it into the middle class and trumping everybody,” said Hamish McDonald, who chronicled the family’s history in his new book, “Mahabharata in Polyester: The Making of the World’s Richest Brothers and Their Feud.”

“He’s sort of saying, ‘I’m rich and I don’t care what you think,’ ” Mr. McDonald said.

Mumbai, once known as Bombay, is India’s most cosmopolitan city, with a metropolitan area of roughly 20 million people. Migrants have poured into the city during the past decade, drawn by Mumbai’s reputation as India’s “city of dreams,” where anyone can become rich. But it is also a city infamous for its poor: a recent study found that roughly 62 percent of the population lived in slums, including one of Asia’s biggest, Dharavi, which houses more than one million people.

------------

Along Altamount Road, which is also home to other industrialists, the reaction to the new neighbor is mixed. Some senior citizens along the street worry about the noise from the comings and goings of helicopters. But Utsav Unadkat and Harsh Daga, college students who grew up in the neighborhood, stared up at the tower on a recent afternoon as if it were a dream realized.

“I heard he has a BMW service station inside,” said Mr. Unadkat, dragging on a cigarette (unconfirmed). “There’s also a room where you can create artificial weather,” Mr. Daga added (apparently true).

Standing nearby, Laxmi Kant Pujari, 26, a decorator’s assistant, waited to carry glass samples into the building. If his samples are selected, Mr. Pujari, a migrant, would handle the installation — a task he considered an honor. “Whether it is a beggar or an Ambani, the desire to be rich is in everyone’s heart,” he said.

Farther down the street, Sushala Pawar admitted struggling to comprehend the difference in Mr. Ambani’s life and her own. She cooks for a family in a nearby apartment, earning 4,000 rupees a month, or about $90. She sleeps on the floor of the hallway after the family has gone to bed.

“I’m a human being,” she said. “And Mukesh Ambani is a human being. Sometimes I feel bad that I live on 4,000 rupees and Mukesh Ambani lives there.”

But then, nodding toward the building, she perked up.

“Maybe,” she said, “I could get a job there.”

Riaz Haq said...

Here are some excerpts from a recent by India's Tehelka.com piece on the impact in South Asia of Swiss Bank secrecy law change forced by the United States:

SHAKEN BY the Swiss government’s recent announcement that it would reveal the names and account details of Indians who have stashed away an estimated $1.4 trillion ( Rs.62 lakh crore) in Swiss banks, the tax evaders are rushing the greenbacks back home. The Swiss are only waiting for the Indian Parliament to ratify the revised Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) that the two countries signed in August. The revised treaty is also likely to ensure that henceforth global shipping companies will be required to pay tax on their profits only in their country of domicile. Currently, though India has DTAAs with 79 countries, not all of them have provision for exchanging taxation-related information..............
-----
As for the Swiss government, it could soon push its banks to exchange information related to the tax evaders’ bank account details, as per norms set by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The move is believed to have been prompted by intense pressure from G-20 nations. “This is worrying many Indians who have money stashed away in those banks,” says Jethmalani, adding: “So they are taking out their money and, for the time being at least, investing heavily in the market.”

And this has been happening in Pakistan as well, ever since the Swiss Parliament’s historic move to pass the Return of Illicit Assets Act (RIAA). There, too, the tax evaders have started transferring billions of dollars from their Swiss bank accounts to secret destinations in Europe and Asia. According to recent estimates, roughly $200 billion — four times the external debt of Pakistan — is stashed away in Swiss banks and is now being withdrawn. Top sources in Lahore say they have evidence that Pakistanis are moving their black money to two destinations — London and Islamabad — via PN, and opening sub-accounts with FIIs. “Our problems are similar. They are making everything above board, everything official,” said Ali Mohammed, a broker at the Karachi Stock Exchange.

Earlier this month, Christa Markwalder, president, Foreign Affairs Committee (Presidentin Aussenpolitische Kommission des National Rats) of the Swiss Parliament told Tarun Vijay, MP and national spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party, that she had recently explained to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee about how the matter could be resolved to India's satisfaction. Incidentally, Vijay was the first to directly contact the Swiss government in this regard. But Jethmalani feels India is not pressing the Swiss hard enough. “Soon, there will be a crash of an unusual nature in the markets — because even if the Swiss government is keen, the Indian government does not seem to be keen to push the agenda,” says Jethmalani.

Riaz Haq said...

About 60% of India's workforce is engaged in agriculture, contributing about 16% of GDP, according to published data. Textile manufacturing claims the second largest employment and comprises 26% of manufacturing output. It accounts for a fifth of India’s exports, and employs almost 10 percent of India’s workforce, or some 35 million people, and has the potential to add another 12 million new jobs --dwarfing the 1-2 million jobs created by the much-heralded IT and BPO sector, according to a World Bank report. Even the most optimistic estimates by NASSCOM put the total direct and indirect employment in IT and ITES sectors at 10 million jobs.

Agriculture in Pakistan accounts for 19.4% of GDP and 42% of labor force, followed by services providing 53.4% of GDP and 38% employment, with the remainder 27.2% of GDP and 20% workers in manufacturing sector. Over half of Pakistan's manufacturing jobs are in the textile sector, making it the second biggest employer after agriculture.

Here is a quick comparison of different sectors of the economy in India and Pakistan in terms of employment and GDP contribution:

Country....Agri(emp/GDP)..Textiles..Other Mfg..Service(incl IT)

India........60%/16% ...........10%/4%.....7%/25%...........23%/55%

Pakistan......42%/20%...........12%/8%......8%/18%...........38%/54%

Riaz Haq said...

Assuming India's PPP GDP of $3.75 trillion (population 1.2 billion) and Pakistan's $450 billion (population 175 million), here is what I calculated in terms of per capita GDP in different sectors of the economy:

India vs. Pakistan:

Agriculture: ($833 vs. $1,225)

Textiles: ($1,242 vs. $1,714)

Non-Textile Mfg ($11,155 vs $5,785)

Services ($7,246 vs $3,654)

It shows that Indians in manufacturing and services sectors add more value and produce higher value goods and services than their Pakistani counterparts.

The income range in India is much wider from $883 to $11, 155 accounting for the much bigger rich-poor gap relative to Pakistan's range from $1225 to $5,785.

swastyk7 said...

Service and manufacturing sector make up for the major part of the GDP of both the economies. And the fact that per capita income of people in that regard India scores nearly double of Pakistan is not a surprise. Much of that can be attributed to the entrepreneural and innovative spirit of the people of the country. Brilliant ideas and free thoughts can only flourish in a free atmosphere and governance. Pakistan hasn't had such a conducive atmosphere since its inception unlike India. The results are here to see. India today has more than 15 times the number of home grown MNCs than Pakistan. India has 8 companies in the fortune 500 list in the world. Pakistan has none even in the global 1000 forbes list (and probably not there in the 2000 list as well). India no doubt has 5 times the population of Pakistan, but if one compares the growth of education and science and research there is a huge difference between the two neighbours not just in terms of sheer numbers but also in terms of quality. Now Mr. Haq don't pull up any article saying that in few colleges in India researchers have copied and published stuff. We all know that stench is deeper out there in Pakistan. As per a conservative estimate India produces more research papers and PHD doctorates every year than the entire stock of them in Pakistan.
And as far as the comparison of the unemployment rates and global hunger rankings, that is going to get better for India because it is generating more jobs for people every strata of the society.
Today the entire Pakistani economy threatens to implode endangering whatever little progress (or rather less decay) it has made on the above mentioned counts of global hunger etc. Its economy now barely managed to survive with a huge debt from the world bank recently. If not for the the US funding and aid it would have been impossible for Pakistani economy to even survive till now.
Nine months ago, Pakistan had $16 bn in the coffers as foreign reserves. Today it has barely 3 bn dollars which is just enough to sustain the nation for barely a month with necessary supplies in case of an economic collapse. The Pakistan rupee has lost more than 21 per cent of its value so far this year and inflation now runs at 25 per cent. The rise in world prices has driven up Pakistan's food and oil bill by a third since 2007. Added to that are reports of rampant corruption. I am not saying India is a holy sage when it regards corruption. But we atleast have had squeaky clean figures leading the nation all the time. Take for example Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, AB Vajpayee. But that thing clearly seems to be missing from Pakistan. People of Pakistan elect leaders such as Zardari and Geelani to rule their country. And about all the talks of routing corruption out of the society... The classic case of corruption and mismanagement is that of the PCB and Ijaz Butt. How on earth can you have a Presidential nominate and not elect the head of a cricket board? And this is what I have experienced first hand from my interaction with the Pakistani bloggers. Quite a significant proportion of them believe that Zardari can become their saviour by kicking out Butt from PCB. It is almost laughable to even think that a corrupt individual like like Zardari is being hope to become the savior of Pakistani cricket. This point alone sums up my entire post. Now I think I have written enough already to highlight the catastrophic problems faced by Pakistan which I am pretty sure should keep you involved to think about rather than knitpick the problems faced by India. Thank You.

Riaz Haq said...

@swastyk:

In both agriculture and textile sectors where 70% of Indians and 54% of Pakistanis work, the productivity and incomes of Pakistanis are 50% higher than their Indian counterparts.

Assuming India's PPP GDP of $3.75 trillion (population 1.2 billion) and Pakistan's $450 billion (population 175 million), here is what I calculated in terms of per capita GDP in different sectors of the economy:

India vs. Pakistan:

Agriculture: ($833 vs. $1,225)

Textiles: ($1,242 vs. $1714)

Non-Textile Mfg ($11,155 vs $5,785)

Services ($7,246 vs $3,654)

It shows that Indians in manufacturing and services sectors add more value and produce higher value goods and services than their Pakistan counterparts.

The income range in India is much wider from $883 to $11, 155 accounting for the much bigger rich-poor gap relative to Pakistan's range from $1225 to $5,785.

So the bottom line is that the majority of Indians are 50% poorer than their Pakistani counterparts, as also reflected in the under-$2 per capita income figures for 60% of Pakistanis and 76% of Indians.

Riaz Haq said...

Here is a news report on UNDP findings released today:

India lags behind its neighbours, Pakistan and Bangladesh, on human development indices like life expectancy at birth and mean or average years of schooling, a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report released Thursday said.

Titled "Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development", the report had a global launch and was released at the UN in New York by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon.

While India is ranked 119 on the Human Development Index (HDI) among 169 countries -- above Pakistan and Bangladesh which are ranked 125 and 129, respectively -- it lags behind the two on certain development indices.

According to the report, life expectancy at birth in India is 64.4 years, while in Pakistan it is 67.2 years. In Bangladesh, life expectancy is 66.9 years.

Similarly, mean years of schooling in India is 4.4 years while in Pakistan and Bangladesh it is 4.9 and 4.8 years respectively.

Sri Lanka, which is ranked above India on HDI at 91, also fares better than India on the two indices. Its life expectancy at birth is 74.4 years and mean years of schooling is 8.2 years.

On some positive note, in terms of growth of income, India is considered one of the top 10 countries. China is on the top position in this index.

Finance Ministrys chief economic advisor Kaushik Basu, who was present at the India launch of the report, said: "India has a lot of catching up to do. There is scope to do so much better."

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an excerpt fom a NY Times story on Obama's India visit and internal US policy debates on India-Pakistan conflict:

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan, is among those who have warned internally about the dangers of Cold Start, according to American and Indian officials. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, share these fears.

The strategy calls for India to create fast-moving battle groups that could deliver a contained but sharp retaliatory ground strike inside Pakistan within three days of suffering a terrorist attack by militants based in Pakistan, yet not do enough damage to set off a nuclear confrontation.

Pakistani officials have repeatedly stressed to the United States that worries about Cold Start are at the root of their refusal to redeploy forces away from the border with India so that they can fight Islamic militants in the frontier region near Afghanistan. That point was made most recently during a visit to Washington last month by Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

The administration raised the issue of Cold Start last November when India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, visited Washington, Indian and American officials said. Indian officials told the United States that the strategy was not a government or military policy, and that India had no plans to attack Pakistan. Therefore, they added, it should have no place on Mr. Obama’s agenda in India.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/06/world/asia/06india.html?scp=6&sq=obama%20t rip%20to%20india&st=cse

Riaz Haq said...

Along with healthy economic gowth, the Musharaf era also saw significant ecuction in hunger and poverty in Pakistan, according to recent IFPRI and World Bank data.

This reminds us of the whole reason why Dr. Mabhub ul-Haq argued for using social indicators, not just the GDP, as a measure of a nation's well-being.

There is a description of Mahbub ul-Haq's thinking on page 12 of the Human Development Report 2010. It is titled "From Karachi to Sorbonne--Mahbub ul-Haq and the idea of human development".

Dr. Haq was Pakistan's planning commission's chief in 1960s which was seen as a time of great progress because of rapid GDP growth in Pakistan, and every one expected Dr. Mahbub ul-Haq to crow about it and pat himself on the back.

But, as the report puts it, "The young economist shocked his audience by delivering a stinging indictment of Pakistan's development strategy" for favoring the elite at the expense of the poor. A few years later, Mahbub ul-Haq persuaded UNDP to push for research reports and social indicators as an alternative to single-minded focus on GDP.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an Op Ed by Beena Sarwar in the Guardian recently:

India and Pakistan may be neighbours but it's surprising how little they really know about each other. Their rich common heritage is easily forgotten amid mutual baiting and negative stereotyping, and it's difficult to imagine them ever being truly at peace until these obstacles have been overcome.

"I'm really surprised to see so many women ... I thought you would be all covered in burqas," said a journalist at the Indian Women's Press Club when the Pakistani contingent arrived last April on a visit organised by Aman ki Asha (a joint initiative for peace by the Times of India and Pakistan's Jang media group).

Indians who visit Pakistan are invariably pleasantly surprised by the openness, helpfulness and hospitality of Pakistanis. It is hard for them to believe there is so much vibrant art, fashion, music, dance, media, literature and theatre. They are moved by the outstanding work that people are doing, often voluntarily, in fields ranging from women's and human rights to education and medical care.

Many Pakistani men, women and children participate in the fortnightly Critical Mass cycling events in Karachi; there's a Critical Mass in Lahore, too. Music lovers in both cities organise the well-attended annual All Pakistan Music Conference that showcases classical musicians, singers and dancers. Pakistan hosts the largest privately organised annual puppet festival in the world. The festival organisers (the Peer Group) also arrange annual music, dance and theatre festivals.

Pakistanis also proved, during the restrictive military regime of Gen Zia-ul-Haq, that it is possible to have a lively theatre scene, including productions staged in backyards and open spaces in poor localities. Some activist groups, such as Ajoka Theatre and Tehrik-e-Niswan, still do this to raise awareness.

The few theatres we have in Pakistan remain solidly booked. Indian journalists who saw a local production of the West End hit musical Mama Mia in Lahore were stunned by the talent, and by the slickness of the production by the group which had put on Chicago the previous year.

But far too few opinion-makers from India and Pakistan are able to visit the other country. Trapped in a long history of hostilities, our governments are reluctant to grant visas to each other's citizens, even journalists. Their reciprocal protocol only allows two journalists from the other country to live and work in their capital cities, Islamabad and New Delhi – and they must obtain special permission to go elsewhere.

Despite the shared border, languages, food, music and cultural traditions, we don't even have the option of a tourist visa for each other's citizens. When visas are granted, they are reminiscent of the cold war era tendency to grant city-specific, single entry visas limited typically to a fortnight or a month. Visitors must report to the police within 24 hours of arrival and departure.

Our cell phones, on roaming anywhere else in the world, stop working when we step into each other's country.

We've banned each other's newspapers and television news channels – ridiculous in this age of internet access. India doesn't allow Pakistan's cooking, sports or entertainment TV shows or live link-ups to Pakistani TV channels. Pakistan is more relaxed on this score and allows India's extravagant soap operas – but many here (particularly in the military and the bureaucracy) still operate on the premise that India is enemy number one.

Riaz Haq said...

Beena Sarwar's Guardian Op Ed contd:

We've banned each other's newspapers and television news channels – ridiculous in this age of internet access. India doesn't allow Pakistan's cooking, sports or entertainment TV shows or live link-ups to Pakistani TV channels. Pakistan is more relaxed on this score and allows India's extravagant soap operas – but many here (particularly in the military and the bureaucracy) still operate on the premise that India is enemy number one.

Even as Pakistan reels from unprecedented floods that submerged one-fifth of the country and affected 20 million people, officials are dithering over allowing relief and aid workers from India.

European states came together despite a long history of bloodshed and hostility because it made economic sense to do so. For India and Pakistan too, co-operation and trade make sense. Businessmen and women recognise this, and they endorsed economic ties at a large meeting in May organised by Aman ki Asha.

In an age of nuclear weapons and unmanned drones how much sense does it make to keep armies amassed at the borders? Our people – one-fifth of the world's poor – need schools, hospitals, shelters, infrastructure, not more missiles and bombs.

It is only by opening the India-Pakistan border to each other's travellers, to commerce and to our shared culture that we can combat the negative stereotypes that feed mutual hostility and militarism in the subcontinent.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Dawn news report on US bipartisan panel recommending Pakistan's membership of G20:

WASHINGTON: The United States should seek Pakistan’s membership or at least observer status in major international forums, such as the Group of Twenty, a US task force recommended on Friday.

The panel – led by Richard Armitage and Samuel Berger, top aides to former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton – notes that Pakistan’s presence in such groups would enable it “to connect with new power structures and familiarise it with emerging norms and responsible international behaviour”.

In a report released on Friday, the task force, which enjoys support of the administration, endorses the Obama administration’s effort to cultivate cooperation with Pakistan as the best way to “secure vital US interests in the short, medium, and long run”.

It recommends that this approach should include significant investments in Pakistan’s own stability, particularly after this summer’s floods. But in order for US assistance to be effective over the long-term, Washington must make clear that it “expects Pakistan to make a sustained effort to undermine Pakistan-based terrorist organisations and their sympathisers.” The task force warns that “two realistic scenarios” could force a fundamental reassessment of US strategy and policy.

First, it is possible that Pakistan-based terrorists conduct a large-scale attack on the United States and that the Pakistani government – for any number of reasons – refuses to take adequate action against the perpetrators. In the aftermath of a traumatic terrorist attack, it would be impossible for US leaders to accept Pakistani inaction.

The United States most likely would launch a targeted strike on Pakistani territory led by Special Forces raids or aerial attacks on suspected terrorist compounds. Even limited US military action would provoke a strong backlash among Pakistanis. Public anger in both countries would open a rift between Washington and Islamabad.

In a second scenario, Washington could reach the conclusion that Pakistan is unwilling to improve its cooperation on US counter-terrorism priorities. The panel warns that frustration over Pakistan’s persistent relationships with groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Afghan Taliban at some point could cause the United States to shift its approach towards Pakistan.

In this case, Washington will have a number of points of leverage with Pakistan. It could curtail civilian and military assistance. It could also work bilaterally and through international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the UN, to sanction and isolate Pakistan.

US operations against Pakistan-based terrorist groups could be expanded and intensified.
In the region, the United States could pursue closer ties with India at Pakistan’s expense.
“Sticks would be directed against Pakistan-based terrorists, but also against the Pakistani state, in an effort to alter its policies. The US-Pakistan relationship would become openly adversarial.”

But the panel warns that “Americans and Pakistanis must understand that these options carry heavy risks and costs. Both sides have a great deal to lose”.

Riaz Haq said...

Here is an interesting reader comment on Op Ed on growing Russia-Pakistan ties published recently in The Hindu:

Vlad. is absolutely spot on! We have arrived at a seminal point in geostrategic time. Sands of Central Asia have shifted from beneath the south block mandarins. They were first shell-shocked by the twists in Obama's new AFPAK strategy which pegged Pakistan squarely as the cornerstone of its Central Asia strategy and tripled its AID. Then China upped the ante by building reactors, dams, ports, baltistan motorways and high-speed rail to be followed by oil/gas pipelines and refineries. NATO is embracing Pakistan for its large, powerful military. EU is planning to make Pakistan a key trade partner. Iran is solidifying her relations with pakistan with pipelines. And now finally Russia has jumped into the fray and offered Pakistan economic friendship. As Pakistan begins to leverage its monopoly on the crossroads of global energy and trade routes, her stature will be enhanced vis-a-vis its neighborhood. This leaves India as the only remaining global power without any say.
The policy to isolate Pakistan by south block stands failed.
The plan to get Pak labeled "terrorist" has failed beyond Mr Cameron.
The 63 year-old policy of unending hostility towards pak in the vain hope that it will cause her to economically collapse, ethnically disintegrate, militarily be defeated and leave India unrivaled geostrategic player has FAILED!!!!!! Now it is time for south block to rethink its Pakistan policy. Pakistan wants only one thing and that is the kashmir Valley. Does south block have the courage to engage in a give and take with Pakistan to secure India's economic pre-eminence in the vast region of Central Asia? The alternative does not bode well!!
This will be the biggest success or fall for south block mandarins after nuclear deal.
I might add; had Nehru not dragged India into Kashmir civil war, it is more than likely that India would have been a cultural big brother to pakistan today instead of China or US or Russia- enjoying the fruits of her geostrategic sagacity and enhancing India's global stature.

from: Marco

Riaz Haq said...

Here is a little trivia about India and Pakistan IQs:

According to Prof Richard Lynn's worldwide IQ data published by Webster Online dictionary, Pakistanis avg IQ rose from 81 in 2002 to 84 in 2006, while Indians's avg IQ increased by just one point from 81 to 82.

http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/IQ+and+Global+Inequality?cx=partner-pub-0939450753529744%3Av0qd01-tdlq&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=IQ+and+Global+Inequality&sa=Search#922

A recent UNM study linking IQs and disease burdens can be the basis for rationalizing it.

Looking at the situation in South Asia, it appears from the WHO data that Pakistan is doing a bit better than India in 12 out of 14 disease groups ranging from diarrhea to heart disease to intentional injuries, and it is equal for the remaining two (Malaria and Asthma).

Poverty, hunger, unsanitary or unsafe conditions and inadequate health care in South Asia's developing nations are exposing their citizens to high risk of a variety of diseases which may impact their intelligence. Every year, World Health Organization reports what it calls "Environmental Burden of Disease" in each country of the world in terms of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) per 1000 people and total number of deaths from diseases ranging from diarrhea and other infectious diseases to heart disease, road traffic injuries and different forms of cancer.

In the range of DALYs/1000 capita from 13 (lowest) to 289 (highest), WHO's latest data indicates that India is at 65 while Pakistan is slightly better at 58. In terms of total number of deaths per year from disease, India stands at 2.7 million deaths while Pakistani death toll is 318, 400 people. Among other South Asian nations, Afghanistan's DALYs/1000 is 255, Bangladesh 64 and Sri Lanka 61. By contrast, the DALYs/1000 figures are 14 for Singapore and 32 for China.

Anonymous said...

Indian Bank targets up to 28% credit growth

Inquiring minds are reading Indian Bank targets up to 28% credit growth

According to a top official working with the Indian Bank, the bank has the plans to target the credit growth to around 28 per cent during the current fiscal year as the demand for the credit this year seems to have risen quite a bit.

"We expect a credit growth of 27-28 per cent this year," the Chennai-based bank's Chairman and Managing Director, T M Bhasin, said.

"RBI has always been judicious and its decision to decrease the statutory liquidity ratio by 1 per cent will definitely infuse more liquidity in the system," he said.
The sustained growth assumptions of India and China at about 10% each are simply not going to happen. Both countries are overheating and there is a not so little constraint called peak oil that will get in the way. Should India maintain its rate of growth, do not expect to see any containment in price inflation. The same holds true for China.

For more on China, please see China Hikes Rates, Ponders Capital Controls to Halt Currency Inflows; Eight Reasons China Faces Hard Landing

India and China are going to overheat and crash, or their economic growth is going to slow dramatically, quite possibly both.


http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/12/food-fuel-inflation-hits-india-primary.html

Anonymous said...

Indian Bank targets up to 28% credit growth

Inquiring minds are reading Indian Bank targets up to 28% credit growth

According to a top official working with the Indian Bank, the bank has the plans to target the credit growth to around 28 per cent during the current fiscal year as the demand for the credit this year seems to have risen quite a bit.

"We expect a credit growth of 27-28 per cent this year," the Chennai-based bank's Chairman and Managing Director, T M Bhasin, said.

"RBI has always been judicious and its decision to decrease the statutory liquidity ratio by 1 per cent will definitely infuse more liquidity in the system," he said.
The sustained growth assumptions of India and China at about 10% each are simply not going to happen. Both countries are overheating and there is a not so little constraint called peak oil that will get in the way. Should India maintain its rate of growth, do not expect to see any containment in price inflation. The same holds true for China.

For more on China, please see China Hikes Rates, Ponders Capital Controls to Halt Currency Inflows; Eight Reasons China Faces Hard Landing

India and China are going to overheat and crash, or their economic growth is going to slow dramatically, quite possibly both.



http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/12/food-fuel-inflation-hits-india-primary.html

Riaz Haq said...

A recent World Bank report on housing in South Asia mentions lack of housing finance as one of the key impediments to more low to middle class housing.

It says that "Pakistan's finance-to-GDP ratio in below 1 percent. The ratio in developed countries is 50-70 percent, and 7 percent in India."

It adds that "in spite of active and robust financial sector reforms led by the State Bank of Pakistan [SBP] in the recent decade, the unweildy land administration environment, unprecedented rises in land prices, and inadequate mortgage lender experience with lower-income housing have prevented the market from advancing in the provision of housing and housing finance solutions."

Riaz Haq said...

There is no question that the Indian economy is doing much better than Pakistani economy as Pakistan finds itself mired in some serious crises.

But there is a pattern of some western magazines, probably inspired by their Indian staffers, that exaggerates India's accomplishments, while making Pakistan look worse than the reality warrants.

The latest example is data published by The Economist on India and Pakistan in its current issue.

It says the following about India:

GDP growth: 8.2%
GDP: $1,832bn (PPP: $4,508bn)
Inflation: 5.8%
Population: 1,202.1m
GDP per head: $1,520 (PPP: $3,750)

And Pakistan:

GDP growth: 3.2%
GDP: $188bn (PPP: $487bn)
Inflation: 9.9%
Population: 189.6m
GDP per head: $992 (PPP: $2,570)

Here are the problems with the above:

1. Pakistan's population is about 180 million, not 190 million as stated by the Economist. This distortion causes Pakistan's per capita GDP to look smaller than it is.

2. India's GDP is not $1.832 trillion. The highest figure I have seen is $1.5 trillion. This exaggeration makes India's per capita GDP higher than reality, or any credible forecasts for 2011.

3. The magazine puts India's inflation rate at 5.8%...the actual inflation rate in India is in double digits....wth the latest figures closer to 15%.

4. Even if one assumes that the Economist figures are a 2011 forecast, it still makes no sense. Even if India grows by 10% in 2011 which is unlikely, the Indian GDP will still be less than $1.8 trillion.

The fact is that, using credible data from multiple souces, the real per capita GDP of both India and Pakistan hovers just a little over $1000 in nominal terms.

Why does Economist magazine hide the names of its staffers? Why does it not print by-lines identifying the authors of articles, other than surveys and special "by invitation" contributions?

Canadian author John Ralston Saul describes The Economist as a "magazine which hides the names of the journalists who write its articles in order to create the illusion that they dispense disinterested truth rather than opinion. This sales technique, reminiscent of pre-Reformation Catholicism, is not surprising in a publication named after the social science most given to wild guesses and imaginary facts presented in the guise of inevitability and exactitude. That it is the Bible of the corporate executive indicates to what extent received wisdom is the daily bread of a managerial civilization".

Isn't it shoddy journalism by the Economist?

What happened to fact-checking at the Economist magazine?

Read more at:

http://www.riazhaq.com

http://www.riazhaq.com/2010/01/india-and-pakistan-contrasted-in-2010.html

Riaz Haq said...

Failed state of Pakistan feeding "Shining India"?

Here's a BBC story on India urging Pakistan to resume onion exports:

India is trying to persuade Pakistan to resume exporting onions overland to curb soaring prices.

The matter has been taken up with the government of Pakistan, External Affairs Minister SM Krishna said.

Pakistan banned overland exports of onions to India on Tuesday with traders saying they feared shortages at home.

Last month, India abolished import taxes on onions after prices nearly tripled in a month.

"We have initiated talks and before not too long, we are hopeful we will find a solution to this, easing pressure within our country for onions," Mr Krishna told a press conference in Delhi.

Pakistan banned exports to India through the land route via the Attari-Wagah border crossing, although the sea route is still open.

Much of the trade, however, is by road and rail which are cheaper and quicker.

India's food inflation has risen for the fifth straight week this week to 18.32% - the highest in more than a year.

The price of onions, a key food staple for Indian families used in almost all dishes, has risen dramatically over the past month.

A kilogram which usually costs 20 rupees went up to 85 rupees ($1.87; £1.20) last month. At present, it is 65 to 70 rupees a kilo.

The rise has been blamed on unusually heavy rains in the bulk-producing western states of Maharashtra and Gujarat and in southern states, as well as on hoarders and speculators.

Discontent over food inflation has been a major headache for the government.

High prices of essential commodities such as onions have previously sparked unrest and helped bring down the national government in 2004.

Anonymous said...

Sitting with Hindians its like Pakistan is about to be evaporated in thin air and patting each other or by themselves for being the expert sage of million years and vedant shaivite which pakistanis are not will show how deprived they are and there life b/c they are vegie deprived and dont believe in reincarnation .


Just watch pakistani T.V. Duniya Ptv Geo Sama Life is 99% usual .Some people dont bother to know if some Salman was killed b/c it never mattered in there life Thse Gov, Foreign Misters And Pakistani Presidents are focus of Hindians . There are two reasons for this

1. it is common to look whats outside your home doubting that you got worst deal than the neighbour Thats why you read books on pakistan pakistani and rest of India never heard of

2. B/c you coming from less starved family of India having money to come to USA have plenty of free time Instead of going to restaurant and blowing 200$ or malls spending as much or any club with the same value membership Yu choose to sit it out at home with your computer Actually its not bad idea i do the same .You think life stand still b/c some high fi families father is no more .Man on the street are as happy or sad as they were before 4111 as they ever will be.Go read Atish And Meherbanos Oxford English Eulogies and gush with crocodile tears As if those who dont publish in NYT or come onNDTV dont suffer when there father dies and only these people are tragedy prince princess

Riaz Haq said...

Suicide rates in India are about 5-10 times higher than in Pakistan, according to WHO data reported by Daily Times:

And suicides are on the rise in India, according to Times of India:

NEW DELHI: Every four minute, one person takes his or her life in the country and one in each three of victims is a youth below the age of 30 years, the latest report of National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has revealed.

According to the 'Accidental Deaths and Suicides 2009' released recently, 68.7 per cent of a total of 1,27,151 people who committed suicide across the country in 2009 were in the age group of 15-44 years.

More than 55 per cent of the suicide victims in Arunachal Pradesh and Delhi were in the age group of 15-29 years -- 56.42 per cent (62 out of 110) of victims in Arunachal Pradesh and 55.3 per cent (817 out of 1,477) in Delhi were in this age group.

"34.5 per cent of the suicide victims were in the age group of 15-29 years and 34.2 per cent were in the middle aged group of 30-44 years," the report said.

"223 males commit suicides per day in the country while the number for women is 125 out of which 69 are house wives. 73 people commit suicide on a single day due to illness while 10 are driven to suicide due to love affairs," it said.

The country witnessed a 1.7 per cent increase in suicide cases in 2009 compared to the previous when it recorded 1,27,151 cases as against 1,22,902, the report said.

West Bengal topped the list with 14,648 cases followed by Andhra Pradesh (14,500), Tamil Nadu (14,424), Maharashtra (14,300) and Karnataka (12,195).

These five states together accounted for 55.1 per cent of the total suicides.

The southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala (8,755) together accounted for 39.2 per cent of the total suicide cases reported in this year.

Delhi recorded 1,477 suicides in 2009. Uttar Pradesh has reported a comparatively lower number of suicidal deaths, accounting for only 3.3 per cent of the total cases. The state accounts for 16.7 per cent of the total population.

"The number of suicides during the decade (1999-2009) has recorded an increase of 15 per cent from 1,10,587 in 1999 to 1,27,151 in 2009. The increase in incidence of suicides was reported each year during the decade except 2000 and 2001," the report said.

On the reasons for people taking extreme steps, family problems and illness topped the list with 23.7 and 21 per cent cases respectively. Love affairs led to 2.9 per cent and dowry dispute, drug abuse and poverty were 2.3 per cent each.

"It is observed that social and economic causes have led most of the males to commit suicides whereas emotional and personal causes have mainly driven females to end their lives," the report said.

Riaz Haq said...

While India had a huge and growing current account deficit amounting to 3.7% of its GDP in July-Dec 2010, Pakistan actually had a small current account surplus during the same period.

http://www.riazhaq.com/2011/01/pakistans-exports-and-remittances-rise.html

Riaz Haq said...

Pakistan suffered a decline in FDI inflow in July-Dec 2010 of 15.5 per cent to $828.5 million from $968.9 million in the same period last year, according to The Nation newspaper.

Increased exports and remittances still helped Pakistan achieve a small current account surplus of $26 million in July-Dec 2010 period, according to Dawn News.

Pakistan wasn't the only developing nation in South Asia to see FDI decline. India suffered 31.5% decline in FDI in 2010, according to UNCTAD.

FDI inflow in India declined from $34.6 billion in 2009 to $23.7 billion in 2010.

With decline in FDI, India is now running a huge current account deficit of over 3.0% of its GDP for July-Dec, 2010, according to Trading Economics.

Anonymous said...

How long can you compare India and Pakistan? Please give atleast a roguh estimate.

Riaz Haq said...

Anon: "How long can you compare India and Pakistan? Please give atleast a roguh estimate."

As long as Indians are worse off than even sub-Saharan Africans, it's quite a compliment for India to be compared with Pakistan which has less poverty, hunger and disease than India and sub-Saharan Africa.

As per capita income rose over 50% to nearly $2500 in purchasing power, poverty in Pakistan decreased from about 34.5% to 17.2% and hunger went down with it during Musharraf years from 2000 to 2008, as reported by World Bank and IFPRI as lagging indicators. The global hunger index score, published annually by the International Food Policy Research Institute(IFPRI), is a number between zero and 100, with lower figure signifying less hunger.

Based on hunger data collected from 2003 to 2008, IFPRI reported that Pakistan's hunger index score improved over the last three consecutive years reported since 2008 from 21.7 (2008) to 21.0 (2009) to 19.1 (2010) and its ranking rose from 61 to 58 to 52. During the same period, India's index score worsened from 23.7 to 23.9 to 24.1 and its ranking moved from 66 to 65 to 67 on a list of 84 nations.
A new multi-dimensional measure of poverty confirms that there is grinding poverty in resurgent India. It highlights the fact that just eight Indian states account for more poor people than the 26 poorest African countries combined, according to media reports. The Indian states, including Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh , Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal, have 421 million "poor" people, compared to 410 million poor in the poorest African countries.

In the range of DALYs/1000 capita from 13 (lowest) to 289 (highest), WHO's latest data indicates that India is at 65 while Pakistan is slightly better at 58. In terms of total number of deaths per year from disease, India stands at 2.7 million deaths while Pakistani death toll is 318, 400 people. Among other South Asian nations, Afghanistan's DALYs/1000 is 255, Bangladesh 64 and Sri Lanka 61. By contrast, the DALYs/1000 figures are 14 for Singapore and 32 for China.

Looking at the situation in South Asia, it appears from the WHO data that Pakistan is doing a bit better than India in 12 out of 14 disease groups ranging from diarrhea to heart disease to intentional injuries, and it is equal for the remaining two (Malaria and Asthma).


Developed at Oxford University, the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) goes beyond income poverty based on $1.25 or $2 a day income levels. It measures a range of "deprivations" at household levels, such as schooling, nutrition, and access to health, clean water, electricity and sanitation. According to Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) country briefings 2010, 55% of Indians and 51% of Pakistanis are poor.

Mohan said...

I unterstand that now the darker sides of the two nations can be compared. So, what you have said is not the answer to my question ! I asked "how long" because India has achieved a growth rate comparable to that of China, the kind of growth rate with which China reduced its poverty to < 10 pc, and just a few decades back both Chinese and Indians were equally poor.

When you compare malnuutrition in India and Africa, the figures are same. But does it mean Subsaharan Africa is economically better than India ? No. In Africa the most significant problem is hunger. with hunger and wide spread diseases like AIDS, they dont live enough to be counted as malnourished. In the next stage of their development, they will be upgraded as malnourished people. Then malnutrition is not only related to money but its has a social component too. Pakistan is small compared to India, so the numbers associated are small, qualitatively both are the more or less similar. Yes people living < $ 1.25 is less in Pakistan but % of people living < $2 is almost the same, I dont think a few cents make a big difference. Also, when you compare fast growing countries use the most recent statistics.

A comparison should cover all aspects, but you often compare the negative sides. Yes the negatives sides are similar. But on her positive sides India is decades ahead of Pakistan. Better instutions in India, in every field are much better than the best in Pakistan. For example in the educational field, they produce better quality scientists, engineers and managers who drive the country forward. Before the industrial revolution, most of the people in most of the countries were extremely poor. Industrilation is perhaps the only way out of poverty. India produce caipable people to lead such a social transformation. Where do pakistan stand ?

When you compare, why dont you compare the quality and quantity of publications in scientific Journals form both countries. Why dont you compare IITs, IISERs, NITs and IIMs to their counterpart in Pakistan. Why dont you comapre the achievements of ISRO and your space research organisations ? List is too long. These comparisons will be even more useful to the readers, if people dont read your blogs to see a malnourished Indian in his death bed.

Riaz Haq said...

Mohan: " I asked "how long" because India has achieved a growth rate comparable to that of China, the kind of growth rate with which China reduced its poverty to < 10 pc, and just a few decades back both Chinese and Indians were equally poor."

China and India are very different countries. Unlike India, the growth in China has actualy reduced poverty dramatically because of its progressive policies and better execution.

Mohan: "Yes people living < $ 1.25 is less in Pakistan but % of people living < $2 is almost the same"

No, you are wrong. There are 60% of Pakisanis living under $2 a day, versus 75% of Indians, manily because the rural economy in Pakistan is much better than in India.

First, India has had lower productivity and higher poverty in its rural areas than Pakistan, as can be seen in terms of hundreds of thousands of farmers' suicides in the last decade. Over 17000 Indian farmers killed themselves in 2009 alone, according to Indian govt data. Over 75% of Indians live on less than $2 a day versus 60% of Pakistanis.

A recent satirical Indian film "Peepli Live" has amply shown how the Indian politicians and bureaucracy have bugled the situation of farmers.

Second, 60% of India's workforce produces 16% of Inda's GDP in agriculture. Compare that with 42% of Pakistani workforce in agriculture contributing 19.4% of GDP. Assuming India's PPP GDP of $3.75 trillion (population 1.2 billion, nominal gdp $1.3 trillion) and Pakistan's $450 billion (population 175 million, nominal gdp $167 billion)), here is what I calculated in terms of per capita GDP in different sectors of the economy:

India vs. Pakistan: Per Capita GDP $3,125 PPP ($1,083 nom) vs. $2,570 ($955 nom)

Agriculture: $833 PPP ($288 nom) vs. $1,225 PPP ($454 nom)

Textiles: $1,242 ($433) vs. $1,714 ($636)

Non-Textile Mfg: $11,155 ($3,870) vs $5,785 ($2,142)

Services $7,246 ($2,590) vs $3,654 ($1356)

Data shows that the majority of Indians who work in agriculture and textiles are on average 50% poorer than their Pakistani counterparts, as also reflected in the under-$2 a day per capita income figures for 60% of Pakistanis and 76% of Indians.

Third, here are some interesting highlights from a paper "Land-use Changes and Agricultural Growth in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, 1901-2004" by Takashi Kurosaki:

1. In India and Pakistan, the area under forests and under cultivation increased substantially throughout the post-independence period. The annual growth rates were higher in Pakistan than in India: the forest area increased at an annual growth rate of 1.91% and 0.75% in Pakistan, well above the figures of British India before independence. In India, the growth rates were lower than in Pakistan but comparable to rates recorde before independence.

2. During post-independence period, output (Q) in Pakistan grew at 3.5 percent per annum while Output/Area (Q/A) increased at 2.3 percent. Therefore, the major contribution to agri growth after independence came from increase in land productivity.

3. The level of growth was highest in Pakistan, followed by India, with Bangladesh at the bottom.

4. In all three countries, the growth rate of land productivity was not high enough to cancel the negative growth of land availability per capita. But the output per capita growth in Pakistan continues to be higher than in India and Bangladesh.

http://www.riazhaq.com/2011/01/pakistans-rural-economy-showing.html

http://www.riazhaq.com/2010/01/india-and-pakistan-contrasted-in-2010.html

Mohan said...

I dont Claim India can reduce poverty as fast as China did, but our government is now caipable of Introducing schemes like "rural employment guarantee scheme" which was not possible earlier. Now the Govt has the money to do that and the economic development is not all useless. From March onwards they are also going to increase the wages. I see this work fine atleast in My state.

In case of $ 2 perday Ind vs. Pak is 75 and 60. But still comparable ! Qualitatively the same in the sense that both the figures shows too much deveation from the "ideal case".

But, the positive sides you are never willing to discuss is Qualitatively different. Better instutions in India are comparable to the ones any where else in the world. Or if an Indian wishes to work in a hiquality Institute or to get highly paid job they dont have to go out side India.

On the top of all "facts" and "data" you display, why do people outside Pakistan percieve it different ?

like the CIA world fact book says: "Pakistan, an impoverished and underdeveloped country, has suffered from decades of internal political disputes and low levels of foreign investment....."

But I regularly see the Kind of news that comes in publications like Der Spiegel or in Deutsche welle, Economist, etc: the perception about India and Pakistan are different. Why the mighty Pakistan is viewed like this in the media all over the world ? I dont think they are all aganist Pakistan. I saw how sincerely these people collecting the aid for the flood victims. Also, I dont think Indian media do not write these much ill about Pakistan.

Riaz Haq said...

Mohan: "like the CIA world fact book says: "Pakistan, an impoverished and underdeveloped country, has suffered from decades of internal political disputes and low levels of foreign investment....."

It's true that Pakistan is poor and underdeveloped, but India is even more poor and underdeveloped. And there are people within India who know more about it than CIA, and write about....like this Indian blogger who calls himself "CyberGandhi" or Hindol Sengupta, or a foreigners like Sean Paul Kelly and William Dalrymple or Alaistair Scrutton.

Riaz Haq said...

Here is some anecdotal evidence as well as research and data that show that agriculture sector in Pakistan has done better than in India and Bangladesh, particularly since independence.

First, India has had lower productivity and higher poverty in its rural areas than Pakistan, as can be seen in terms of hundreds of thousands of farmers' suicides in the last decade. Over 17000 Indian farmers killed themselves in 2009 alone, according to Indian govt data. Over 75% of Indians live on less than $2 a day versus 60% of Pakistanis.

A recent satirical Indian film "Peepli Live" has amply shown how the Indian politicians and bureaucracy have bugled the situation of farmers.

Second, 60% of India's workforce produces 16% of Inda's GDP in agriculture. Compare that with 42% of Pakistani workforce in agriculture contributing 19.4% of GDP. Assuming India's PPP GDP of $3.75 trillion (population 1.2 billion, nominal gdp $1.3 trillion) and Pakistan's $450 billion (population 175 million, nominal gdp $167 billion)), here is what I calculated in terms of per capita GDP in different sectors of the economy:

India vs. Pakistan: Per Capita GDP $3,125 PPP ($1,083 nom) vs. $2,570 ($955 nom)

Agriculture: $833 PPP ($288 nom) vs. $1,225 PPP ($454 nom)

Textiles: $1,242 ($433) vs. $1,714 ($636)

Non-Textile Mfg: $11,155 ($3,870) vs $5,785 ($2,142)

Services $7,246 ($2,590) vs $3,654 ($1356)

Data shows that the majority of Indians who work in agriculture and textiles are on average 50% poorer than their Pakistani counterparts, as also reflected in the under-$2 a day per capita income figures for 60% of Pakistanis and 76% of Indians.

Third, here are some interesting highlights from a paper "Land-use Changes and Agricultural Growth in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, 1901-2004" by Takashi Kurosaki:

1. In India and Pakistan, the area under forests and under cultivation increased substantially throughout the post-independence period. The annual growth rates were higher in Pakistan than in India: the forest area increased at an annual growth rate of 1.91% and 0.75% in Pakistan, well above the figures of British India before independence. In India, the growth rates were lower than in Pakistan but comparable to rates recorde before independence.

2. During post-independence period, output (Q) in Pakistan grew at 3.5 percent per annum while Output/Area (Q/A) increased at 2.3 percent. Therefore, the major contribution to agri growth after independence came from increase in land productivity.

3. The level of growth was highest in Pakistan, followed by India, with Bangladesh at the bottom.

4. In all three countries, the growth rate of land productivity was not high enough to cancel the negative growth of land availability per capita. But the output per capita growth in Pakistan continues to be higher than in India and Bangladesh.

mohan said...

Personal opnions of people can differ. But, the opinion of an organisation or an institution is what matters. There could be people in the CIA, who has got both good and bad opnions about India, but that cannot not be in the report that they publish. A person in CIA who has got bad opnions may be writing the same in his blogs, let him do it. But he cannot publish as the CIA report.

I havent seen any responsible or respectable organisation saying India is an underdeveloped country or its a failed state. What they say is it is a developing country with a serious socio-economic problem. I usually listen only to such organisations or people talking on behalf of it.

They also agree that we are on track in alleviating it:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/indicators/India-on-track-to-meet-poverty-reduction-goal-World-Bank/articleshow/5850202.cms

India and Pakistan was together as a nation for thousands of years and also under British Rule. According to the nature and duration of the British Raj, some parts of India were relatively poorer than the others. But there were also regions like Kerala which had a high literacy(now ~100%) literacy, a much advanced social set up like its health care system is is comparable to the developed world. So what became Pakistan was better than the poorer regions in India but lesser than states like Kerala. Thus it had a better initial start, as it inherited something above the average in undivided India. Getting colonized is like getting burned, parts in which there deep wounds will recover, but slowly.

However, as of now (thanks to your clown like Politicians and the Great Dictators) it Lags behind India is several respects and the gap is widening fast, though it had better perfomance than India before the 1990s. These days, everyone agree that India is growing fast, and pakistan stands is in the middle of nowhere. The main reason: though our politicians steal, but, they dont swallow the treasury: like your leaders.

Riaz Haq said...

Mohan: "Personal opnions of people can differ. But, the opinion of an organisation or an institution is what matters... But he cannot publish as the CIA report."

I have never heard anyone describe CIA as neutral and objective. But if you insist, let me quote a British govt report that says "India is condemning another generation to brain damage, poor education and early death by failing to meet its targets for tackling the malnutrition that affects almost half of its children", according to The Times.

The Times story goes on to say, "In 2001, India committed to the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving its number of hungry by 2015. China has already met its target. India, though, will not meet its goal until 2043, based on its current rate of progress, the IDS report concluded.

“It’s the contrast between India’s fantastic economic growth and its persistent malnutrition which is so shocking,” Lawrence Haddad, director of the IDS, told The Times. He said that an average of 6,000 children died every day in India; 2,000-3,000 of them from malnutrition."

IFPRI, OPHI and others are not individuals but organizations. And these organizations have reports saying India is worse off than not only Pakistan, but Indians are also worse off than the poorest of the poor sub-Saharan Africans.

WHO and UNICEF, both organizations, have documented that the health and hygiene situation in India is much worse off than in Pakistan.

Members of India's own planning commission describe poverty and hunger situation in India to be "worse than Pakistan and Bangladesh".

Looking at all these reports from multiple independent organization, one can only conclude that India is more "impoverished and underdeveloped" than Pakistan.

As to the "failed state" nonsense, the organization that says that also admits that its assessment is based on media reports and coverage (dominated by western media) which has been one-dimensional and largely negative for Pakistan.

Judging objectively in terms of providing basic services and territorial control, India is as failed a state as Pakistan, if not more so.

Mohan said...

In my previous responses, I have admitted that there is poverty in India, and its level could be higher than in Pakistan. Any way it is not rising, and if its magnitude changes, chances are that it is decreasing. The reference that I forwarded you is most recent and published in a good Indian news paper. The economic times dosent need to please anybody, they write what they think to be true. And please dont refer Blogs or a kind of blah blah websites.

The whole point that I made in my arguments is that India and Pakistan can be compared only in its negative sides and on positive sides, Pakistan is decades behind.

CIA. May be its biased, but I dont think they waste time in defaming Pakistan, as Pakistan is not important in world affairs. It is not a concern to the world as Technological, economic, or a political power. Also nobody see it as an upcomming Superpower, or even a *dominant* regional power.

Then British news papers have a bias aganist India. BBC is one of the most anti-Indian organisation in the world. Then there is a reason for it, which I dont like to say. I dont think they are fair with Pakistan either. Or, whatever once called India. Compare the very same India in British and German news papers.

Why do you Say the Idea of Failed state is nonsense ? The criteria in ranking the countried as failed state are fairly resonable. And Pakistan qualifies all those criteria. Its not like a blackbox telling "Pakistan is a failed state".

I would like to hear from you why the Idea of a failed state is a nonsense.

Riaz Haq said...

Mohan:" The whole point that I made in my arguments is that India and Pakistan can be compared only in its negative sides and on positive sides, Pakistan is decades behind."

On the one hand, you want to talk about Pakistan as a failed state. But when I explain to you Indian state's monumental failues in delivering basic services to its people, you want to change the discussion.

No matter how you spin it, it's hard to gey away from the stark realities of failed state India, some of which are:

1. Indians constitute the world's largest population of poor, hungry, illiterate and sick people, acording to varous UN agncies.

2. Over 7000 Indians starve to death every single day, and 200 million of them go to bed hungry each night, according to Bhookh.com. The situaion is much better in Pakistan, acording to World Hnger Index published by IFPRI.

3. Two-thirds of Indians (vs one-third of Pakistanis) defecate in the opn, according to joint study by UNICEF and WHO.

4. Over 17000 Indian farmers committed suicide in 2009 alone, according to Indian govt data. There are ZERO reports of farmers' suicides in Pakistan.

5. Little children in India are eating mud to fill their stomachs that is making them saick, according to the BBC. There are no such reports from Pakistan.

6. Indian state does not exist in vast swathes of the land, according to Prof Chhibber of UC Berkeley. It has no control of over 25% of Indian territory where Maoists rule.

Whatever little positives you can offer are easily overwhelmed by the torrent of bad news about how 75% of common Indians (vs 60% of Pakistanis) barely survive on less than $2 a day.

Anonymous said...

A Lovely Piece


A worldwide survey was conducted by the! UN.

The only question asked was: "Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?"

The survey was a huge failure, In Africa they didn't know what 'food' meant, In India they didn't know what 'honest' meant,

In Europe they didn't know what 'shortage' meant, In China they didn't know what ' opinion' meant,

In the Middle East they didn't know what 'solution' meant, In South America they didn't know what 'please' meant,

And in the USA they didn't know what 'the rest of the world' meant!

Mohan said...

I told you several times that I admit that there are poor people in India and may be the percentages are higher than in Pakistan. I never tried to prove that there is no poverty in India, or it is not a big problem.


>> Indians constitute the world's largest population of poor, hungry, illiterate and sick people, acording to varous UN agncies.

Just because we are more in number. Just think there are more people in China than in entire Pakistani population who are exteremely poor. So is Pakistan better than China ?

>> Over 7000 Indians starve to death every single day, and 200 million of them go to bed hungry each night, according to Bhookh.com. The situaion is much better in Pakistan, acording to World Hnger Index published by IFPRI.

Every one in Pakistan eat two plates of Biriyani nd drink three glasses of buffallo milk before they go to bed, according to a report published by ISI.

>> 3. Two-thirds of Indians (vs one-third of Pakistanis) defecate in the opn, according to joint study by UNICEF and WHO.

Two-thirds vs one-third that is why I said the negative sides of these two nations are qualititively similar comparing these are of no use. Then I dont understand whats wrong with open air, especially in rural areas. I myself have done it especially as a kid, though we have enough toilets.
I have seen UN officials come in India every morning and counting how many piles of shit are there.



>> Over 17000 Indian farmers committed suicide in 2009 alone, according to Indian govt data. There are ZERO reports of farmers' suicides in Pakistan.

Thats a real problem,. May be it is not reported because, it may not be a news in Pakistan. I know Farmers going to jail in US after a few grains of "patented" wheat being detected in their agricultural machinary. That also dosent happened or reported in Pakistan.. rt ? May be Pakistan better than US.


>> Little children in India are eating mud to fill their stomachs that is making them saick, according to the BBC. There are no such reports from Pakistan.

May be the B**** Broadcasting Corpration found a bit more "funny" thing there. Anyway they showed children drinking a lot flood water in Pakistan few months back. You search in the internet they have even more interesting videos about India. There is one nice video of Indians eating rats.

>> Indian state does not exist in vast swathes of the land, according to Prof Chhibber of UC Berkeley. It has no control of over 25% of Indian territory where Maoists rule.

Good job, you found such a professor, there are even worse professors, I know these community very well, I will also be a Proffesorrrrrr some day not far from now. Then, I dont understand what do you mean by "ruling".

>>Whatever little positives you can offer are easily overwhelmed by the torrent of bad news about how 75% of common Indians (vs 60% of Pakistanis) barely survive on less than $2 a day.

That is where you are entirely wrong. Every developed country that you see today had a past like India. They overcome that stituation, by adding up these little positives, and it was not like on a fine morning a fairy whirled a magic wand and blessed with all that you see today. Thats why these little positives are so Important. While they were overcomming those, India was colonized, and now, I belive that we have made a good start.

Answer to my question. I asked you if Pakistan is classified as a failed state why that is nonsense ? [Not your *personal opnion*, personally I also dont belive Pakistan is a failed state, I have my own arguments about it, but that dosent count as long as we are common people, we argue here on the basis of known facts and data].

Answer to this question is not trying to prove India is a failed state with your data and calculation. The people who classify countries surely have better data and they know better math than you.

Riaz Haq said...

Chandran Nair argues in his book "Consumptionomics" that the Asians need to rethink the whole idea of western-style consumer-driven capitalism to ensure a better, more sustainable future for their massive population.

Here are some excepts from Financial Times review of the book "Consumptionomics: Asia’s Role in Reshaping Capitalism and Saving the Planet":

, -- Life might not be as much fun in his world as it is for the lucky ones who become wealthy under liberal capitalism. “Golf and car racing might be out but badminton and social dancing are more popular,” he suggests in his vision of leisure time in a Nairian society. But the benefits of development would be spread more widely, damage to the earth’s resources would be controlled and people would probably spend less time working.

Nair’s starting point is that the world simply cannot survive the consequences of the growth of highly populous Asian economies to levels of development reached by industrialised countries if that is to be achieved on the same resource-guzzling terms as western development.
-------------
Throughout the book, Nair evinces an angry disdain for western-style capitalism, which he regards as setting the world on a path to destruction by its devotion to the ideology of markets and its voracious appetite for finite resources. He’s none too complimentary either about its media cheerleaders, including this newspaper.

“The biggest lie of all is that consumption-driven capitalism can deliver wealth to all,” he writes. “In Asia it can only deliver short-term wealth to a minority; in the long term, it can only deliver misery to all. This is the intellectual dishonesty at the heart of the model the west has peddled to Asia.”

Nair points to the familiar issue of energy use, saying that if Asia’s population was to use as much energy per person as Europeans do today (relatively modest compared to Americans), then it would use eight to nine times as much energy as the US currently consumes. Perhaps more startling is an estimate he uses for poultry consumption. Americans will eat 9bn birds this year, apparently. If by 2050 Asians ate the same amount per person, they would swallow more than 120bn. That’s a lot of battery chickens.

Nor is Nair impressed by arguments that technology will ultimately solve issues such as energy shortages and climate change, allowing economic growth and consumption to go on expanding. He dismisses the notion that Asia should concentrate on growth and then, when it is rich, clean up afterwards. What he demands is a radical change in the prevailing global economic model and its governance.
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But the shape of a Nairian Asia does emerge. It would be made up of strong nation-state governments willing to take unilateral action on issues such as controlling natural resource exploitation and domestic agriculture and industry. Governments would get bigger and spend more with an emphasis on sustainable infrastructure such as public transport. Carbon, natural resources and financial transactions would be taxed – possibly allowing for a reduction or elimination of payroll taxes. Agriculture would be deindustrialised, with a drive to return to labour-intensive farming to ensure sufficient output and stop mass migration to cities.

What would life be like for the individual? They would be expected to forgo owning a car, would pay high prices for meat and restaurant portions would be restricted. But income differentials would be minimised and access to the benefits of technology widely shared.

He doesn’t say it but Nair is describing a kind of Asian Norway, with the benefits of natural resources controlled and socialised to a high degree, rural communities subsidised to keep people on the land, fisheries protected, a high commitment to energy efficiency and high taxation to support high levels of social welfare.

Riaz Haq said...

Here are some excerpts from a Daily Mail story on cash-strapped UK's decision to extend $1.5 billion in aid to India:

So why has the Government just changed its mind, and decided to give £1 billion in aid to India over the next three years, making in the largest single recipient of our largesse?

At a time of cutbacks I struggle to understand the case for increasing aid even to the poorest countries. In the case of India, I find it impossible to grasp why we should think it desirable to shell out £1 billion to the fourth- largest economy in the world.

Could it be post-colonial guilt? If so, it is misplaced. When Britain left the country in 1947, India was the 12th-largest industrial power in the world, and had the most extensive railway system in Asia. It was the semi-socialist policies applied for the next 40 years that held India back until free market reforms began to transform it.
----------
Perhaps Mr Obama knows something I don’t, but I wasn’t aware that in the Twenties and Thirties the Raj employed a huge secret police force and used widespread torture.

-------
Andrew Mitchell, the International Development Secretary, denied this was a motive during an interview yesterday morning on Radio 4’s Today Programme. I hope he meant it. India will trade with us if we are able to produce goods and services which its people want to buy.

More likely, there is an outdated sense that it is our duty to disburse funds to the supposedly less fortunate — rather like an impoverished parent continuing to subsidise children who have grown much wealthier, and are more than capable of getting by on their own. I suspect that giving so much money makes us feel more important than we really are.

The decision is so apparently senseless that it is almost impossible to unravel. What makes it more senseless still is that the Indian government has signalled that it would not object if British aid were ended. There would be no hard feelings. India can look after itself. One of its senior diplomats is reported by The Times as saying: ‘We will help if you want to withdraw.’

----------

No one disputes that, despite its phenomenal growth, India still has countless millions of poor people, though many fewer than it used to have. Its population, after all, is many times greater than ours. But despite its challenges with poverty, it spends some £20 billion a year on defence, not much less than Britain, and is a nuclear power. It also splashes out about £1.5 billion a year on its space programme, a luxury which this country cannot afford.

Arguably India should be spending less on defence, and nothing on its space programme, and be diverting more funds to the alleviation of poverty. But the country is a democracy, and its government will be held to account for the decisions it makes. It is hardly our business if India wants to spend so much money on a space programme.

But surely it is madness for us to be channelling precious funds to a country which chooses to have prestige projects that are beyond our own means.
------------
It was the Tories, not the Lib Dems, who decided that international aid should not only be ‘ring-fenced’ but increased by a third to £11.5 billion by 2015 while domestic budgets, apart from the NHS, are being slashed. This was a controversial decision in view of the ineffectiveness of much development aid, not to mention the corruption that sometimes surrounds it.

India, although a democracy, is by no means corruption-free. A report by the country’s auditor general, seen by the Mail last September, revealed widespread aid abuses, including wasting money on thousands of colour televisions and computers that were never used, and several instances of fraud amounting to millions of pounds.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Telegraph India report on how the British govt is defending continuing aid to India:

London, Feb 16: The UK government today said it was making changes to its aid programme to India following popular anger that helping one of the fastest growing economies in the world is “unjustifiable”.

“From now on in India we will focus our support on three of the poorest states,” said Chris Mitchell, the international development secretary.

Bengal will be cut out for Britain considers Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar to be the poorest states.

Speaking during “International Development Questions” in the House of Commons, Mitchell was forced to respond to critics such as Tory MP Philip Davies.

“India spends 36 billion dollars a year on defence, 750 million dollars a year on a space programme, has one of the fastest growing economies in the world and is developing its own overseas aid programme,” said Davies, who represents Shipley. “Many of my constituents, given that we are having to cut public expenditure in this country, will think such aid to India is now unjustifiable.” UK aid is worth £280 million a year for four years.

Mitchell said UK aid was “in transition” and added: “Our programme will change to reflect the importance of the role of the private sector and private enterprise.”

He explained: “There are more poor people in India than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. We should focus on the poorest areas, particularly on the roles of girls and women.”

He told MPs that 60 million children had enrolled in Indian schools since 2006. “That’s a tremendous tribute to the work of the Indian government, but it would not have been possible without the intervention of British aid and support.”

Some MPs spoke up for the need to continue with the aid, among them Labour’s Barry Gardiner whose constituency of Brent North in north London has many people of Gujarati origin. He argued the help was “vital” and told the Commons a quarter of the world’s poorest people lived in India.

The children’s charity body Plan International also defended British aid to India.

“The fact that eight Indian states account for more poor people than in 26 of Africa’s poorest countries combined shows there’s a need for aid in India,” its head of advocacy Adam Short said.

“In spite of its economic successes, India is home to 421 million poor people. We work with more than a million children in the country’s least developed communities. Through our work on child welfare, education and health, we know how vitally important it is to ensure aid reaches the most marginalised children and communities.”

Marxist economist Lord Meghnad Desai could be relied upon to take a distinctive line.

In an interview to The Telegraph, Desai said: “The truth is India does not need the money but the experts at DFID (Department for International Development) are better at getting through to the health and educational sectors than the government of India.”

“It is a criticism of the government of India that it cannot manage to do in its own backyards what other people can do. It should commission DFID to do the work and pay them for it.”

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a NY Times story on how Azim Premji's foundation is helping improve primary education in India:

PANTNAGAR, India — The Nagla elementary school in this north Indian town looks like many other rundown government schools. Sweater-clad children sit on burlap sheets laid in rows on cold concrete floors. Lunch is prepared out back on a fire of burning twigs and branches.

But the classrooms of Nagla are a laboratory for an educational approach unusual for an Indian public school. Rather than being drilled and tested on reproducing passages from textbooks, students write their own stories. And they pursue independent projects — as when fifth-grade students recently interviewed organizers of religious festivals and then made written and oral presentations.

That might seem commonplace in American or European schools. But such activities are revolutionary in India, where public school students have long been drilled on memorizing facts and regurgitating them in stressful year-end exams that many children fail.

------
Outside of India, many may consider the country a wellspring of highly educated professionals, thanks to the many doctors and engineers who have moved to the West. And the legions of bright, English-speaking call-center employees may seem to represent, to many Western consumers, the cheerful voice of modern India.

But within India, there is widespread recognition that the country has not invested enough in education, especially at the primary and secondary levels.

In the last five years, government spending on education has risen sharply — to $83 billion last year, up from less than half that level before. Schools now offer free lunches, which has helped raise enrollments to more than 90 percent of children.

But most Indian schools still perform poorly. Barely half of fifth-grade students can read simple texts in their language of study, according to a survey of 13,000 rural schools by Pratham, a nonprofit education group. And only about one-third of fifth graders can perform simple division problems in arithmetic. Most students drop out before they reach the 10th grade.
-----------
Narayana Murthy, a friend of Mr. Premji and chairman of Infosys, a company that competes with Wipro, said he admired the Premji Foundation’s work but worried it would be undermined by the way India administers its schools.

“While I salute Azim for what he is doing,” Mr. Murthy said, “in order to reap the dividends of that munificence and good work, we have to improve our governance.”

Mr. Premji says his foundation would be willing to work with private schools. But he argues that government schools need help more because they are often the last or only resort for India’s poorest and least educated families.

Mr. Premji, whose bright white hair distinguishes him in a crowd, comes from a relatively privileged background. He studied at a Jesuit school, St. Mary’s, in Mumbai and earned an electrical engineering degree at Stanford.

At 21, when his father died, Mr. Premji took over his family’s cooking oil business, then known as Western Indian Vegetable Product. He steered the company into information technology and Wipro — whose services include writing software and managing computer systems — now employs more than 100,000 people. He remains Wipro’s largest shareholder.
-------------
After visitors left a classroom at Nagla school, an instructor began leading more than 50 fifth-grade students in a purely rote English lesson, instructing the students to repeat simple phrases: Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good night. The children loudly chanted them back in unison.
------------
Underfunding is pervasive in the district. But so are glimmers of the educational benefits that might come through efforts like the Premji Foundation’s.
------------

Riaz Haq said...

One of the measures of the goodness of a nation, particularly its middle class, is its level of civic engagement.

By this measure, advanced western nations lead the pack with the United States in #1 position, followed by Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Holland, Canada, and lo and behold! Sri Lanka.

In South Asia, Pakistan is a distant second to Sri Lanka's 51% participation rate. Pakistan's participation rate of 42% ranks it at 27, the same as Israel.

India lags far behind with the participation rate of only 28% ranking it at 48 among 130 nations, according to a recent Gallup poll on civic engagement that included 130 nations.

While 53% of Sri Lankans gave money to charity and 53% volunteered time, 51% of Pakistanis contributed money and 27% volunteered time. In India, 28% donated money and 18% volunteered time. Comparable figures for the top-ranking United States are 65% and 43%.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/145589/civic-engagement-highest-developed-countries.aspx#2

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an assessment of PAF capabilities by an IAF leader as reported by Indian Express:

Terming US arms aid to Pakistan as a challenge, India on Friday said the latest F-16s, missiles and munition being supplied to Pakistan Air Force (PAF) could "reduce the technological gap" with the IAF.

"It (US arms aid) is certainly a challenge, no doubt about that," IAF's Western Air Command chief Air Marshal N A K Browne told a press conference here.

"Earlier the difference of assets was a certain amount. But their acquisitions have seen to have reduced (the gap) between the PAF and IAF in terms of capability of their aircraft, Beyond Visual Range missile systems, day and night operations and precision guided munitions," Browne said.

He was replying to questions on the US arms aid to Pakistan including F-16s purportedly for counter-terrorism operations along its Afghanistan border.

"There are things actually that tend to reduce the gap. Pakistan is catching up with the IAF, which has always had an edge in terms of its size and platforms. But I don't think so (that PAF would match the IAF in the future)," he said.

Riaz Haq said...

Cash for votes is a common feature of democracies in South Asia and other developing nations. Latest publication of Wikileaks by The Hindu reveals vote buying by India's ruling party in a 2008 confidence vote:

The ghost of bribes for MPs’ votes returned to haunt the government on Thursday with the entire Opposition demanding its resignation over allegations that UPA-I purchased the support of lawmakers to survive the trial of strength at the height of crisis over Indo-U.S. nuclear deal in 2008.

On top of several scams that had surfaced in the last few months, the government faced a torrid time in Parliament on Thursday with Opposition targeting it on the manner in which it won the vote of confidence in 2008 after the Left parties had withdrawn support to it opposing the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal.

Both the Houses of Parliament were repeatedly rocked by uproar and adjournments by the Opposition members who demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his government saying it did not have any right to continue even for a moment as it was surviving on “political and moral sin“.

The Right and and the Left combined in Parliament whenever it met during the day to launch an assault armed with the claim in a U.S. diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks that an aide of former Union Minister Satish Sharma had shown to the diplomat currency chests that were part of Rs.50 crore to Rs.60 crore money collected by Congress for purchase MPs for the vote in the Lok Sabha.

The only defence that the government came out with was when Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told Parliament that a diplomat’s cable enjoyed immunity and he could not confirm or deny its contents.

Riaz Haq said...

Middle class Pakistanis are fighting for justice in their society using both soft and hard power, while middle class Indians have become a tool for the few rich in India by singing praises of Shining India in the midst of extreme and widespread poverty, hunger and disease.

Pakistanis give 1% of their GDP to charity while Indians give only half a percent, according to data published by Bain and Co and PCP.

http://www.riazhaq.com/2011/02/philanthropy-lagging-in-india-and.html

Another measures of the goodness of a nation, particularly its middle class, is its level of civic engagement.

By this measure, advanced western nations lead the pack with the United States in #1 position, followed by Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Holland, Canada, and lo and behold! Sri Lanka.

In South Asia, Pakistan is a distant second to Sri Lanka's 51% participation rate. Pakistan's participation rate of 42% ranks it at 27, the same as Israel.

India lags far behind with the participation rate of only 28% ranking it at 48 among 130 nations, according to a recent Gallup poll on civic engagement that included 130 nations.

While 53% of Sri Lankans gave money to charity and 53% volunteered time, 51% of Pakistanis contributed money and 27% volunteered time. In India, 28% donated money and 18% volunteered time. Comparable figures for the top-ranking United States are 65% and 43%.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/145589/civic-engagement-highest-developed-countries.aspx#2

Riaz Haq said...

Here's another glimpse of vote-buying Indian democracy:

New Delhi: The head of whistleblower website WikiLeaks Monday accused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of deliberately misleading the public by claiming that leaked US diplomatic cables allegedly pointing to payoffs to MPs during a 2008 parliamentary trust vote were not authentic."The comments I have been hearing from Prime Minister Singh these, to me, seem to be a deliberate attempt to mislead the public by suggesting that governments around the world do not accept the material," Wikileaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange told to a news channel in an interview.

As per the WikiLeaks cables published in The Hindu, a US diplomat was told that Rs.50-60 crore was kept aside by the Congress party to get some opposition members of the Lok Sabha on board before the trust vote in July 2008 during the first tenure of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

The prime minister said in parliament that the government could not "confirm the veracity, contents or even the existence of such communications", and added that many persons mentioned in the cables have "stoutly denied the veracity of the contents".

Assange asserted that there "is no doubt, whatsoever, that the cables are authentic", which was the reason why the US government has been very upset over the leak of the diplomatic cables.

He said that there was "no doubt that these are bonafide reports sent by the American ambassador (in India) back to Washington and these should be seen in that context".

That does not mean every fact in them are correct, you have to look at their sources and how they have this information," added Assange.

He said that the defence argument was "actually the behaviour of guilty men".

"A man who is innocent doesn't tend to behave like that. That doesn't mean people making those statements, like Prime Minister Singh and so on, are guilty of this particular crime. It suggests something that how Indian parliamentarianss and politicians respond to very serious allegations. They respond through indirection and attempting to cover up the issue for the public rather than address it fully and frankly," Assange asserted.

He felt that if the cable on bribery was incorrect, the US envoy in India "has a lot to answer" for sending cables to Washington "about senior politicians and the behaviour of Indian parliaments, which is cast in very negative light".

"Either he has committed a grave error that would damage Indian and American relations and should resign on that matter; or the report was correct and he was reporting correctly and he had checked his fact before reporting back to Washington," Assange said.

He suspected that the "most serious issue in the cable, I suspect, is yet to be revealed". "There is quite a bit of time to go through the material: the material from Pakistan, China. It is likely to be of interest to the Indian population," he said.

There are about 6,000 cables from the US embassy in India.

"What we are looking at more carefully are the cables from Pakistan and those are something that are yet to be published. We are working to have those published," he said.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a comparison for those who are curious:

At 3 per 100,000, the suicide rate in Pakistan is a fifth of the suicide rate in India of 15 per 100,000, according to WHO data.

http://www.who.int/mental_health/resources/suicide_prevention_asia_chapter1.pdf

Riaz Haq said...

Here's how India and Pakistan stack up as arms importers, as reported by SIPRI:

"India is the world's largest arms importer," the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said as it released its latest report on trends in the international arms trade.

"India received nine percent of the volume of international arms transfers during 2006-10, with Russian deliveries accounting for 82 percent of Indian arms imports," it said.

Its arms imports jumped 21 percent from the previous five-year-period with 71 percent of its orders being for aircraft.

India's arms purchases were driven by several factors, said Siemon Wezeman of SIPRI'S Arms Transfers Programme.

"The most often cited relate to rivalries with Pakistan and China as well as internal security challenges," he wrote.

China and South Korea held joint second place on the list of global arms imports, each with six percent, followed by Pakistan, on five percent.

Aircraft accounted for 45 percent of Pakistan's arms imports, which had bought warplanes from both China and the United States. Pakistan's arms imports were up 128 percent on the previous five-year period, SIPRI noted.

Greece rounded off the top-five list arms importers, with four percent of global imports.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's Maplecroft risk warning for investing in India, according to Times of India:

LONDON: The United Kingdom-based Global Risks Atlas 2011 on Friday described India as the 16th riskiest country to invest in for the security hazards it poses and rather embarrassingly clubs it with Niger, Bangladesh and Mali. The Atlas is published by Maplecroft, a consultancy founded by Alyson Warhurst, chair of strategy and international development at Warwick Business School.

The evaluation is structured on seven key global risks including macroeconomic risk and threats around security, governance, resource security, climate change, social resilience and illicit economies.

Maplecroft assessed India faces simultaneous threats of terrorist attacks from Islamists and Maoists. It also points at India's lack of social resilience despite a robust economic growth and cites its poor human rights record. It says large sections of the population lack access to basic services such as education, healthcare and sanitation, and highlights its less productive workforce, greater susceptibility to pandemics and susceptible to social unrest.


A press release by Maplecroft lumps Pakistan with Russia on investment risk:

Dynamic political risks constitute immediate threats to business and Maplecroft rates 11 countries as ‘extreme risk.’ Most significantly, the emerging economy of Russia has moved up five places from 15th to enter the top ten for the first time, whilst Pakistan has also moved two places up the ranking to 9th.

The ‘extreme risk’ countries now include: Somalia (1), DR Congo (2), Sudan (3), Myanmar (4), Afghanistan (5), Iraq (6), Zimbabwe (7), North Korea (8), Pakistan (9), Russia (10) and Central African Republic (11).

Russia’s increased risk profile reflects both the heightened activity of militant Islamist separatists in the Northern Caucasus and their ambition to strike targets elsewhere in the country. Russia has suffered a number of devastating terrorist attacks during 2010, including the March 2010 Moscow Metro bombing, which killed 40 people. Such attacks have raised Russia’s risk profile in the Terrorism Risk Index and Conflict and Political Violence Index. The country’s poor performance is compounded by its ‘extreme risk’ ratings for its business environment, corporate governance and the endemic nature of corruption, which is prevalent throughout all tiers of government.
-----
Jim O’Neil, Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, states: "Growth is happening where political risk is most challenging. So, meticulous monitoring and mitigation now will enable business to flourish and benefit from the opportunities presented by the future growth economies of the BRICs and Next 11".

Looking to the longer term, the BRICs countries are witnessing increasingly worse structural political risk trends for 2011. China (25), India (32) and Russia (51), rated ‘high risk’ and Brazil (97) medium risk, have all seen risks increase compared to scores from last year’s Atlas.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a story of Pakistan's 100,000 ladies health workers reaching out to rural communities:

KARACHI, Mar 16, 2011 (IPS) - At eight in the morning 30-year-old Sultana Solangi steps out of her house ready for her day’s work. Wearing a black gown that shows only her eyes, she is shod in comfortable slippers and lugs a large black bag.

She will walk through this city’s poorest communities, visiting as many as 10 homes everyday, helping to raise awareness and improve maternal and child health.

In her bag is an assortment of medical supplies: Paracetamol tablets and oral rehydration salts, bandages, condoms, contraceptive pills, iron and folic acid tablets, eye ointments, and antiseptic lotion.

Solangi, the sole breadwinner in her family of four, works as a lady health worker (LHW), employed by the government’s National Programme for Family Planning and Primary Health Care.

Launched in 1994, the programme now has a veritable army of 100,000 LHWs covering 60 percent of the population - the biggest outreach intervention in South Asia.

These women venture where few doctors dare to go, from congested cities to far-flung and underdeveloped rural areas, acting as the link between communities and the public health system.

Over the years, their work has expanded to include health campaigns like administering polio drops to children under five, plus neonatal tetanus, measles, tuberculosis, and malaria control.

LHWs are particularly important in the rural areas where three-quarters of Pakistan’s population live, and where a trip to a health centre may require a hike of a couple of hours to as much as a day. Illiteracy is widespread in these areas and often customs prevent women from seeking health services without being chaperoned by a male family member.

Solangi cited the case of Zahida Sanghi, a woman Solangi’s age but already a mother of seven. Sanghi lives in People’s Colony, a community in Larkana city in Sindh province, some 322 kilometres from the southern port city of Karachi, which is part of Solangi’s coverage area.

"Zahida Sanghi was very weak and would not have survived another pregnancy. The husband is jobless. It took close to two months to convince her mother-in-law that it was all right for her to get a tubal ligation done since her family was complete. This is all part of my job," she said.

Every day, Solangi and her colleagues cover between five to 10 houses and talk to women like Sanghi about the importance of antenatal check-ups, vaccinations, safe delivery, the use and making of oral rehydration salts, and modern methods of family planning.

They also hold about eight group sessions each month where they discuss with local women issues related to mother and child health.

Yet despite the LHW programme, Pakistan remains a maternal and infant health hotspot.

The Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS), conducted from 2006 to 2007, shows an infant mortality rate of 78 deaths per 1,000 live births. It also shows a mortality rate of children under five years old of 94 deaths per 1,000 live births. This means one in every 11 children born in Pakistan dies before reaching his or her fifth birthday.

The maternal mortality rate of 276 per 100,000 live births is also far too high, and has remained virtually unchanged since 1991.

Sadiqa Jaffery, president of the National Committee on Maternal and Neonatal Health, said the statistics would be much worse without the LHWs on the ground.

"It’s been established that where LHWs are present family planning services and routine immunisation is better. The problem is that the coverage is not blanket," Jaffery said.

But Farid Midhet, founder of the Safe Motherhood Pakistan Alliance, remains unconvinced of the impact of LHWs. "Family planning is the cornerstone of women’s health services and it still eludes millions," he said.

Anonymous said...

Good article - but links like "Escape From India" destroy the credibility of article and yours too! You will do yourself a favor by linking to sane sites.

Riaz Haq said...

Here are a few excerpts from a Sydney Morning Herald piece on India:

..India's euphoric victory in this month's cricket world cup final fits with a mood that its time has come. "The World at Our Feet," screamed a headline in The Times of India the morning after triumph.

And yet the numbers show India is a very poor world power. Its per capita income is $US1265 ($1207) according the International Monetary Fund's latest estimate. That's less than one third of China's and just 2.7 per cent of America's. The 2010 United Nations Human Development Index, a measure that combines income, education and life expectancy, ranked India at 119th out of 169 countries. That's only one place above East Timor. China was 30 places higher than India and Russia was 54 places up the list.

In India, more than 700 million people survive on less than $US2 a day and about 42 per cent of children aged five or less are under-weight. A UN report found there are 421 million Indians living in ''multi-dimensional'' poverty, a greater number than in Africa's 26 poorest countries combined.

Rapid economic change in India has created confronting anomalies. High-tech wizardry and medieval squalor live side by side. It is possible to access fast wireless broadband in villages where children are dying of starvation and thanks to the explosive growth of mobiles, more Indians probably have access to phone calls than toilets.

There is mounting evidence that the spoils of economic growth have become disproportionately concentrated among a small group of super-rich industrialists. Research by the former World Bank economist Michael Walton shows the combined worth of India's US dollar billionaires rose from the equivalent of 1.7 per cent of India's gross domestic product in 1999 to a peak of 23 per cent in 2008.

India's economic miracle, so often lauded abroad, is contested at home. Three of India's 28 states have communist governments. Leftist political parties, critical of India's economic trajectory, are an influential force in politics. India's dynamic volunteer sector, which includes tens of thousands of non-government organisations, has produced an army of activists who decry the social and environmental damage being done amid India's rapid development.

The sense of alienation and anger among India's poor has helped stoke a bloody Maoist rebellion in its most destitute regions. These insurgents - called Naxals after the eastern Indian village of Naxalbari where the movement began - are active in more than one-third of India's 626 districts. The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has branded them ''the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country''.

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The World Bank estimates the proportion of Indians living on less than $US1 per day (in 2005 purchasing power parity) fell from 42 per cent in 1981 to 24 per cent in 2005 but population growth meant the actual number of people living below that poverty benchmark was only reduced from 296 million to 266 million in that period.

In a new book, the British writer and historian Patrick French criticises journalists who "make a living by reporting ceaseless tales of woe" from the subcontinent. He is right to challenge the outdated stereotype of India as a poverty-stricken basket case but the media obsession with India's growth rate, urban middle-class and super-rich entrepreneurs can also be misleading.
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Some analysts have attributed an apparent middle-class disengagement from mainstream politics to the power exerted by poorer ''vote blocks''. Very low voter turnouts in wealthy neighbourhoods of Mumbai and Delhi are cited as evidence of this apathy. But if the middle class cannot hold sway at the ballot box, it exerts influence in other ways.--------

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Wall St Journal report on World Well-being Gallup survey that puts Pakistanis ahead of Indians:

The results of the 2010 global wellbeing survey of 124 nations conducted by Gallup reveals that only about 21% of people consider themselves “thriving,” the highest level of wellbeing.

Around 1000 people over the age of 15 were asked whether in their lives they felt they were “thriving,” “struggling,” or “suffering,” measured on a scale from zero to 10. Anything seven or above was considered as thriving, according to the methodology used in the study.

India fared worse than average. Based on the findings, it ranked 71st in the list, with only 17% of respondents reported as thriving. (This was in line with the broader Asian average).

India’s neighbor Pakistan, despite its more volatile political and economic situation, ranked 40th, with 32% of the people describing themselves as thriving.

This category means more than just general wellbeing, and includes better overall health, measured in terms of fewer sick days, less stress or sadness, and more happiness and respect.

Alarmingly, in India 64% of people saw themselves as struggling. The survey describes people who fall into this category as being more stressed, more concerned about their economic wellbeing and less healthy, in terms of their lifestyle and eating habits.

The Danish lead the wellbeing list with 72% falling into the thriving category, while Chad ranked lowest, with only 1% describing themselves as such. Americans ranked average, with 59% of them thriving and only 3% suffering.

China, despite its impressive GDP figures, didn’t do that well, with only 12% of people describing themselves as thriving.

While there were gaps between developed and developing countries, a lot also depended on a country’s political situation and natural disasters, the survey shows. For instance, Haiti, where the 2010 earthquake claimed the lives of up to 250,000 people, those in the thriving range are only 2%.

Overall, the survey findings reveal how GDP figures alone are not sufficient to measure a country’s wellbeing. (This comes close to Gross National Happiness, which the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan famously adopted in the 1970s.)

“As the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt showed earlier this year, leaders should not rely on GDP alone as an indicator of how well their countries and their citizens are doing. Monitoring and improving behavioral economic measures of wellbeing are important to helping leaders better the lives of all their residents,” the survey reveals.

Consultant of psychiatry at New Delhi’s Moolchand Medcity, Dr. Jitendra Nagpal held a similar view. In an emailed response to India Real Time, Dr. Nagpal also agreed that nations whose people claim to be happy may or may not be economically sound. Dr. Nagpal added that happiness is more about the ability to do what you want to do, rather than fulfilling life’s basic needs.

Mukesh said...

Dear Mr. Riaz Haq,

your Post clearly indicated towards how pakistan fared better in the fiels of social development (Like Poverty, Hunger etc.) than india.

Please tell me what india could learn from pakistan in these areas. What are you suggesting that india should do to decrease poverty & Hunger in India. What were steps taken in Pakistan by Govt. or NGO's that it fared better than india.

Thanks.

Riaz Haq said...

Mukesh: "Please tell me what india could learn from pakistan in these areas."

Pakistan is a very poor country and it has a lot more to do to reduce poverty and hunger.

It's hard to put a finger on one or two things, but if I had to pick, I'd say that improving rural productivity and economy has helped bring down poverty and hunger.

Please read the following posts for further info:

1. Poll Finds Pakistanis Happier Than Indians

2. Most Pakistanis and Indians Work in Agriculture and Textiles

3. Pakistan's Rural Economy Showing Strength

Riaz Haq said...

A familiar refrain from many readers of this blog is that "Pakistanis (especially the educated) use India as their yardstick..."

Here's a recent Times of India headline:

Pakistanis happier than Indians: Gallup survey

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-04-21/pakistan/29458679_1_gallup-pakistanis-happiness

Does the above headline suggests that "Indians (especially the educated) use Pakistan as their yardstick"?

Here are a few more Indian news headlines to ponder:

1. Pakistan ahead of India on human development indices: UN report

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Pakistan-ahead-of-India-on-human-development-indices-UN-report/Article1-622313.aspx

2. Doing business? India lags behind Pakistan!

http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-doing-business-india-lags-behind-pakistan/20101109.htm

3. India trails Pakistan, Bangladesh in sanitation

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/uncategorized/india-trails-pakistan-bangladesh-in-sanitation_100120219.html

4. India worse than Pakistan, Bangladesh on nourishment

http://newshopper.sulekha.com/india-worse-than-pakistan-bangladesh-on-nourishment_news_927008.htm

5. India is worse than Pakistan on gender equality

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-11-05/india/28243298_1_maternal-mortality-india-ranks-pakistan

Riaz Haq said...

Got more nonsense from Indian posters like "Pakistan managing to outperform India is one of the few rare cases, which qualifies for - "man biting dog".

Few areas? How many headlines did you see me cite? Few? I wonder?

And what are these headlines about?

These headlines deal with essentials like food, nutrition, sanitation, health, life expectancy, gender gap, roads, etc in which Pakistan is ahead of India.

Let me give you a few more:

1. India Could Use Pakistan's Infrastructure

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/07/20/india-could-use-pakistans-infrastructure/

2. India lags behind Pakistan in missiles

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-02-02/india/28029160_1_short-range-prithvi-missile-agni-iii-missile-arena

3. Affluenza: With love from across the border

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/hindol_sengupta/article429776.ece

4. WITNESS: Failed state? Try Pakistan's M2 motorway

http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/12/16/us-witness-pakistan-motorway-idUSTRE5BF01220091216

Riaz Haq said...

Here are summary and salient points of Anatol Lieven's Pakistan: A Hard Country:

In the past decade Pakistan has emerged as a country of immense importance. Large, heavily populated, strategically placed between Iran, Afghanistan and India, Pakistan has since its creation just over sixty years ago been pulled in several different, irreconcilable directions.

In the wake of Pakistan's development of nuclear weapons, Osama Bin Laden's presence in its unpoliceable border areas, its shelter of the Afghan Taleban, and the spread of terrorist attacks by groups based in Pakistan to London, Bombay and New York, there is a clear need to understand this remarkable and highly contradictory place.

Far from seeing Pakistan as the failed state often portrayed in the media, Lieven's extraordinary new book instead treats it as a viable and coherent state that, within limits and by the standards of its own region rather than the West, does work. Lieven argues strongly against US actions that would risk destroying that state in the illusory search for victory in Afghanistan.

This work is based on a profound and sophisticated analysis of Pakistan's history and its social, religious and political structures. Lieven has interviewed hundreds of Pakistanis at every level of society, from leading politicians and soldiers to village mullahs and rickshaw drivers. In particular, his examination of the roots of popular sympathy for the Taleban in Pakistan draws on the testimony of people whose views are rarely consulted by Western analysts.

1. For most of the years since 1947, Pakistan has had higher economic growth rates than did India. Pakistan does not have the same pockets of extreme poverty, or for that matter the extreme wealth. The level of economic equality in Pakistan is relatively high.

2. Charitable donations run almost five percent of gdp, one of the highest percentages in the world and this reflects the emphasis on alms-giving in Islam.

3. A good quotation from a businessmen: “One of the main problems for Pakistan is that our democrats have tried to be dictators and our dictators have tried to be democrats.”

4. Agriculture pays virtually no tax and the government lends lots of money to businesses and doesn’t seriously ask for it back. As a result Pakistan collects far less revenue than does India, even comparing areas of comparable per capita income. If Pakistan were a state of India, it still would be considerably richer per capita than India’s poorest regions, such as Bihar.

5. The Pakistani state is nonetheless a lot more stable than most people think. In part this is because of the conservative structure of kinship and landholder power in the country.

6. The main threats to the future of Pakistan have to do with ecology and water, not politics.

7. The end of the book has a very interesting discussion about how U.S. actions in Pakistan affect different coalitions, feelings of humiliation, relative status relationships, etc.

Definitely recommended, as are Lieven’s books on the Baltics and Ukraine.


Sources:

http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781846141607,00.html

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/05/pakistan-a-hard-country.html

Riaz Haq said...

In spite of recent poverty declines with its rapid economic expansion, India still has higher poverty rates than Pakistan, according to a 2011 World Bank report titled "Perspectives on poverty in India : stylized facts from survey data" released in 2011.

Overall, the latest World Bank data shows that India's poverty rate of 27.5% is more than 10 percentage points higher than Pakistan's 17.2%. Assam, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh are the only three Indian states with lower poverty rates than Pakistan's.

Riaz Haq said...

Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) by US Dept of Agriculture (USDA) is for 2000 calories per day with 55% cabs, 30% fat and 15% protein.

According to chartsbin.com, South Asians have the following calorie intake and composition:

India Pakistan

2300 Cal 2250 Cal

71% Carbs 63% Carbs

10% Protein 10% Protein

19% Fat 27% Fat

Riaz Haq said...

As Pakistani Army comes under unprecedented sharp criticism by the politicians, the public and the media, here's an excerpts from an interesting piece by Vir Sanghvi on how the Indians treat Indian Army:

Equally, we will never blame the Army for anything. In 1962, we were thrashed by the Chinese but the consensus was that politicians had lost the war while our brave soldiers had done their best. The 1965 war was at best a stalemate (the Pakistanis also claimed they had won) but we treated it as a glorious victory for the Indian Army. Operation Blue Star was a fiasco. But even today, it is Blue Star we remember favourably rather than Black Thunder (conducted by the paramilitary forces to clean up the mess left behind by Blue Star), a bona fide success.

By and large, the social contract has worked. The Army has nearly always got us out of jams when we need its services. Whether it was Delhi in 1984, Bombay in 1993, or Gujarat in 2002, we needed the Army to restore order. And during the Kargil War, young officers led from the front, sacrificed their lives and displayed astonishing bravery in the service of their country.

Consequently, the army sometimes appears to live in a state within a state. Visit a cantonment and you will be struck by the contrast with the civilian part of the town or city where it is located. The roads will be broad and well-maintained, the buildings will be freshly painted, the surroundings will be clean, and an air of good manners and civility will prevail. Visit an army town (Wellington, for instance) and the contrast will be even more striking. The order and cleanliness of the cantonments serves as a contrast to the chaos and filth of modern India.

There is, however, one important aspect of the social contract that now seems to be failing. As corruption has spread in modern India, we have reluctantly accepted that most parts of our society are tainted – civil servants, the schools and even the lower judiciary. But somehow, we have always believed that the army is different.

Oh yes, we hear the stories. We hear about Generals who take kickbacks on arms deals and about officers involved in canteen purchase scandals. But because this corruption appears to be restricted to the Army itself and because we believe that it is not widespread, we are happy to look the other way.



The problem with the Adarsh scandal and the controversies over other land deals that have erupted recently is that they encroach into the civilian space. Senior army officers are seen to be conniving with politicians, bureaucrats and contractors to make millions.

Worse still, at least in the case of the Adarsh scandal, there is a cynical abuse of the social contract. When we say that we will respect and pamper the army, we do not expect senior officers to grab flats for themselves in the name of Kargil martyrs.

Earlier this week, the Army chief spoke about his resolve to cleanse his force. I am not sure he fully grasps how serious the situation is. The problem is not just that there are ‘a few bad apples’ in the army. It is that Army corruption has now spilled out into the civilian space and that Generals are making big bucks by exploiting the regard we have for the heroism of the Army and the sacrifices made by its soldiers.



If more such instances come to light, then the press will begin looking critically at the Army. The politicians will have an excuse to delve deep into the workings of the officer corps. This will give them the opportunity they need to play favourites. And the public, regretfully recognising that the Army has breached the social contract itself, will reluctantly acquiesce in the muck-raking by the press and the interference by politicians.

Once this happens, the social contract will not survive. The image of the Army will not recover. And the perfect balance we have built between the Army and the Indian people will topple over..

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an AFP report about Indian military owning land and running golf courses:

NEW DELHI — The Indian army has developed a sideline in running golf courses using government land but returning no revenue to the state, the nation's auditor claims in a damning new report.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) found that at least 32 square kilometres (12 square miles) of rent-free land had been handed to a privately-run company, Army Zone Golf, which operates 97 luxury golf courses.

The defence ministry is the largest state landowner, holding 80 percent of the 7,000 square kilometres of government land, much of it now prime real estate, according to the CAG report released Friday.

Golf memberships are being sold to present and past service personnel as well as civilians and foreign nationals, the report said, with revenue credited to a private regimental fund which could not be accessed by the auditors.

Army authorities "earn large amounts of revenue by allowing persons other than service personnel to use these facilities," the report said.

"Heavy amounts of revenues were being earned without paying any lease rent and allied charges for use of government assets," it added.

The CAG's account of the misuse of public land will add to growing worries about the military's slide into corruption following a string of recent scandals.

In January, the government ordered a 31-storey apartment block in Mumbai to be demolished after it emerged army officers and local politicians had usurped apartments originally meant for war widows.

Army Zone Golf claims to promote the sport in the armed services and runs "some of the most spectacular golf courses of India," according to its website. No one at the company responded to calls for comment from AFP.

The company's organising council includes several retired army officers, and was once headed by Joginder Jaswant Singh, former army chief of staff and now the governor of the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.

The CAG has been instrumental in exposing mismanagement and possible fraud in the sale of telecom licences in 2008 which it said had led to a loss to the state of up to 39 billion dollars.

The telecom minister at the time, A. Raja, has since been arrested and awaits trial.

Riaz Haq said...

Pakistan Per capita income rises to $1254, according to Daily Times:

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s per capita income rose to $1,254 in 2010-11 from $1,073 during last year, showing tremendous increase of 16.9 percent, according to the Economic Survey of Pakistan. Enhancement in per capita income is mainly because of stable exchange rate as well as higher growth in nominal gross national product (GNP). Per capita real income has risen by 0.7 percent in 2010-11 against last year’s 2.9 percent. Real private consumption rose by 7 percent as against 4 percent attained last year, it added. However, gross fixed capital formation lost its strong growth momentum and real fixed investment growth contracted by 0.4 percent as against the contraction of 6.1 percent last year. Total investment has declined from 22.5 percent of GDP in 2006-07 to 13.4 percent of GDP in 2010-11. National savings rate has decreased to 13.8 percent of GDP in 2010-11 against last year’s 15.4 percent of GDP. Domestic savings also declined substantially from 16.3 percent of GDP in 2005-06 to 9.5 percent of GDP in 2010-11. The national budget for the fiscal year 2011-12 would be unveiled today (Friday). app

Neil said...

Your bias seems to be not so much against India, but against civilian governments in Pakistan. Time and again, you seem to credit military governments with better growth performance and the civilian rule periods as "lost decade". You don't seem to pay much attention to the strength of institutions, due to which India seems to be doing better than Pakistan today, and something which the military governments in Pakistan have either destroyed or failed to nurture.
Thanks,
Neil

Riaz Haq said...

India's IBN Live calls "MV Suez fiaso a PR disaster for India":

New Delhi: It's likely to be three days before the Indian sailors of the MV Suez released last week by Somali pirates after a $2 million ransom was paid come home.

But the Suez saga has been a series of mis-steps. India failed to negotiate the sailors' release, failed to protect them once they were free, and failed to bring them home. And it culminated with a row with the Pakistani govt. Why did India get it so wrong?

"We have already registered our protest with the government of Pakistan," said Foreign Minister SM Krishna.

The protest over and PNS Babur's alleged aggression registered, it’s time to assess India’s own response to the hostage crisis.

India failed to organise the ransom from private parties. The Navy and the government were silent for days even as sailors pleaded for help through the media.

INS Godavari was despatched only after PNS Babur had begun escorting MV Suez. India allowed a full 24 hours to elapse before rejecting Pakistani allegations of aggression by INS Godavari.

The botched up response is despite a naval warship patrolling the Gulf of Aden and a high powered inter-ministerial group created to handle piracy related incidents.

Experts say an inquiry must be conducted and responsibility fixed or else the Navy must be given a free hand to respond to crises.

"There must be an inquiry. Forget what we told Pakistan. We must know what went wrong and who took late decisions. The Navy must be given a free hand or have someone competent in charge," said Admiral Raja Menon.

The Navy sources admit there has been a loss of face but the government insists it did its best.

It's a PR disaster that has left the Navy red-faced and showed the Indian government's claims of being sensitive towards its citizens as false. The 39 sailors still being held hostage can only hope lessons are learnt from the Suez blunders

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