Forwarded from another list. I met Dr Dossani a few years ago when he
was in India to study outsourcing [1] and he seems a smart cookie. I
find the last paragraph of this article the most provocative -- "This
suggests that Pakistan is only a crucial freedom step away from success."
Comments?
Udhay
[1] One output of that trip is
http://aparc.stanford.edu/publications/offshoring_and_the_future_of_us_engineering_an_overview/
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_6637082
After 60 years, Pakistanis struggle to find right course
By Rafiq Dossani
Article Launched: 08/16/2007 01:51:31 AM PDT
Two countries with a common and ancient civilization, India and
Pakistan, celebrated 60
years of independence from colonial rule this week. At the time of
independence, both
countries were in danger of collapsing from internal and external
threats. This greatly
influenced both countries' subsequent turn toward centralism - in
India's case, statism,
and in Pakistan's case, army rule.
For four decades, both statism and army rule seemed irreversible.
This was despite
failures across the board: In both countries, territory was lost and
the economy stagnated.
Resources were spent on developing nuclear weaponry and on dealing
with the Kashmir
insurgency, which was fostered by Pakistan and repressed by India.
What was left was
often wasted through corruption. By 1990, it was common for Pakistan
to be labeled a
failed state and India, perhaps more damningly, a failed democracy.
Pakistan's army and feudal landlords, who shared political power via
an informal coalition
throughout the first 40 years, deserve most of the blame for
Pakistan's failures. They
carved up the economy among themselves, and let the poor survive by
growing food and
providing simple services to the rich. India's greater failures hid
these strategies from
national or global attention. Pakistan even overtook India for a
while until Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto's nationalizations of the 1970s brought them on par again.
Pakistan, a day older than India, but with an even younger
population, seems to have aged
more poorly over the past two decades. As the Indian economy picks
up speed on the back
of the 1991 reforms, India is on its way to becoming a global player
in services and
acquiring as formidable a reputation as China for job creation. The
IT sector alone creates
three new jobs every minute of each working day. In the four
statistics that really matter -
literacy, life expectancy, infant mortality rates and the
female-to-male ratio - only in the
last does Pakistan perform better than India and that, too,
marginally. In the others, it is
substantially worse.
There is no single reason for Pakistan's poorer performance. It
turned as reformist as India
in the 1990s. This has benefited some parts of its economy. For
instance, the country adds
over 2.5 million new cell phone users each month, or 1 for every
second of the day.
Though below India's rate of 2.7 new cell phone users per second, it
is a much better ratio
to the population.
Religious fervor is often accused, but has not - in either the
subcontinent's history or in
Pakistan's shorter one - been a barrier to development. Despite
incidents such as led to
the recent siege of the Red Mosque in Islamabad, theocratic parties
have never received
more than 15 percent of the popular vote - and that was three
decades ago. Evidence
within all the countries of South Asia provides proof of the
proposition that the poor,
regardless of faith or ethnicity, seek the means of development,
particularly the
acquisition of education. Muslims are no exception to this
proposition. For instance, the
first administrative district to reach 100 percent literacy in the
subcontinent was the
Muslim-majority district of Malappuram in the Indian state of Kerala.
Finally, one cannot simply blame performance on Pakistan not being a
full democracy. The
world abounds with more failed than successful democracies, while
China provides the
most stunning counterexample of a successful dictatorship.
Pakistan's current state of
governance - in which the military, the courts and parliament share
power and the press is
relatively free - has been achieved through decades of negotiation
and may well be the
best framework given its current stage of political maturity.
Yet, there is one difference that may be the real reason for
Pakistan's backwardness, and it
is now becoming evident - again, by comparison with India. It is
linked to bad governance
but does not always follow from the democratic tradition. The
difference is, in a word,
freedom. India provides a good example: The government used to
decide how resources
were spent, leaving citizens with few choices on careers, education
and lifestyles - on
participation in their nation's growth. Since the 1990s, the Indian
state has worked hard to
give its citizens more freedom. The result is an invigorated India.
Pakistan, meanwhile, has moved slowly on freedom. The state has
withdrawn from the
economy, but now grants favors selectively to the private sector,
with the inevitable
corollary of massive corruption and loss of freedom of action.
This suggests that Pakistan is only a crucial freedom step away from
success. In reality,
the immediate future does not look promising because the country's
citizens do not have
the political will to achieve real change. It is a sad commentary
that Pakistan's choices for
the next cycle of political rule look like bad ones: the
continuation of the present system
of quasi-military rule or its replacement with the destructive
feudal forces that Benazir
Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif represent. Surely, Pakistan's citizens
deserve much better -
something worth pondering as their nation celebrates turning 60.
RAFIQ DOSSANI is a senior research scholar at the Shorenstein
Asia-Pacific Research
Center of Stanford University. He is the author of "India Arriving,"
to be published in
November 2007 by Amacom Books. He wrote this article for the Mercury News.
My new book: India Arriving, due November 30, 2007. See:
http://www.amazon.com/India-Arriving-Economic-Powerhouse-Redefining/dp/
0814474241/ref=sr_1_3/002-3711723-0920842?
ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180670100&sr=8-3
Dr.Rafiq Dossani, Senior Research Scholar, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific
Research Center,
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6055
650-725-4237
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
