Reading Time: 4 minutes Since independence, Pakistan and India have been at loggerheads over every possible issue imaginable. Whether it be over distribution of resources at independence, to the issue of water distribution fifty years after, to a seemingly benign game of cricket or hockey, the two countries have been at conflict on all possible levels. So much so, that Pakistan recently celebrated the anniversary of Javed Miandad’s chakka, a game winning six in a legendary match of cricket.
Since independence, Pakistan and India have been at loggerheads over every possible issue imaginable. Whether it be over distribution of resources at independence, to the issue of water distribution fifty years after, to a seemingly benign game of cricket or hockey, the two countries have been at conflict on all possible levels. So much so, that Pakistan recently celebrated the anniversary of Javed Miandad’s chakka, a game winning six in a legendary match of cricket.
Unfortunately, these kinds of wins are not the only kind being celebrated across the two countries. Pakistan and India have been at war multiple times, and on the brink of war constantly. We man our uninhabitable desert borders in the south, and dangerous icy borders in the north just to be sure that the other cannot acquire a few miles of infertile and unusable land. In any case, the kind of conflict between the countries and the military buildup it necessitates has been a drain on both of our nations for more than seven decades now. And we really cannot afford it either. Rates of poverty are way too high in both of our countries for billions to be spent on military buildup and lobbying against each other in international forums. Read about Indus water treaty.
Ironically, there are no more similar countries than us two in the world either. We speak similar languages, and can be understood with ease in both countries. Our food is also similar. We both enjoy biryani at dinner, parathay and lassi at breakfast, and perhaps some gol gappay or pani puri (they are both the exact same thing) from the street vendor on a Friday evening. Both of our countries have similar issues when it comes to women’s rights and sexism and extremism and violence towards our respective minorities. Pakistanis love to watch Indian dramas and Indians love to rock out to some Coke Studio.
Despite all of these similarities, peace between the two countries is extremely difficult to negotiate. Let us take a look at how both the countries have evolved and grown since achieving independence, and how different factors came into play when it involves their development.
Independence brought about two countries with a huge variation in potential of economic growth and development. India had a larger continuous land mass and larger population with a larger potential for growth and resources available for fueling this growth in the future. Pakistan and India were not at par at independence and this was to such a degree that just a year after independence, Life magazine predicted the country’s economic collapse. Pakistan has however been able to recover a little and become the 34th largest world economy whilst India remains as the tenth largest economy of the world by 2007. Read about Indo Pak relations.
Pakistan at independence with a population of 30 million was not able to feed itself and had to import all its food just to feed itself. Currently we feed ourselves and export wheat and rice despite having a population of close to 20 million in the current year. Textile industries have grown and agriculture has remained on par to provide raw materials for this as well. The Pakistani road networks have grown at an incredible rate to support increased trade and travel across the country. The only real problem with this is that there has been a lack of investment in long-term development factors like education, which has left Pakistan in a worse situation than many middle-income countries in south and south-east Asia.
India on the other hand has been able to capitalize much better than its neighbor over the seventy years of separation. Though there was a lower rate of development of agriculture and restraint in industrial growth due to over-regulation and governmental control, at least for the first few decades of the countries development. However, in contrast to their neighbors to the west (and for a few decades, the east too) India was able to smartly invest in its youth with establishment of high caliber educational institutes, scientific organizations, and technological development. IIT and IIM have become global institutes with great reputations with Pakistan having nothing to show in response to these kinds of institutes.
In 1991, Manmohan Singh came and reduced all kinds of restrictions and government control on the country’s industries. This allowed for an explosion in economic development of a country that had been essentially throttled through what became known as “license raj”. This encouraged investment in India’s economy by foreign institutions and investors and the increased stability meant an industrial and trade growth that meant an increase in 20% in the country’s exports.
However, despite India becoming one of the biggest macro economies of the world, the human development index has not improved enough to match the kind of growth one would expect. The literacy rate for the country is a surprising low 63%, the HDI placed the country just above Myanmar at 127th out of 175 countries. 300 million people still are below the poverty line.
Despite this, Pakistan still loses in these indicators. With a literacy rate of 53% and a tertiary education ratio of just 3% (compared to India’s 10%) and thus Pakistan is just not as capable of developing scientific and technological institutions like India has.
Impressive growth until 2007 showed cause for positivity for Pakistan, but since then Pakistan has slipped to depressing levels for the past 15 years. The war on terror and continuing political instability has caused the country to regress on all indicators. We are still non-dynamic in our economy with a large dependence on non-complex products for export that are highly dependent in-turn on agricultural output which itself is fickle.
Political problems and governmental instability have hamstrung our nation when it comes to economic and industrial development. Our neighbor also finds itself at the peak of right-wing political take-over and increase in violence and internal strife. Both our nations suffer from energy scarcity as well as bad infrastructure with development slowed by corruption and political problems.
Hopefully the two can reconcile enough to decrease military funding to fund trains that can carry people on the inside, and babies can be delivered in hospitals.
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