The 'poor' Neighbour

Ranjit,
Indians have money, but the priorties are different from Pakistan. A middle class and lower middle class parent will spend savings on giving their child a good education, they are investing in the kids future, then say renovate their house. In Punjab the attitude is there, to eat well and live well, and you will see houses like villas and flashy cars etc. Ludhiana has the most number of Mercs in India, the people are filthy rich, but Ludhiana in the last decade has become dirtier. People do crib and swear but do nothing about it. The public accepts all the dirt and filth unquestioningly. The municipial cooperation is not held accountable. How may citizens take interest in the Mc elections, hardly any. You need people with vision and not those whose sole purpose is to line their pockets. In the Ludhiana MC elections recently , almost 60 of the contenders were illiterate or criminals.

#151 Posted by HP on August 17, 2007 11:47:42 pm

Ur half knowledge abt India is showing up. In 90s India established a fully automated container port nr Bombay (Uran) called Nhava Sheva.

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Mr. Dalrmyple VISITS Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi and may be Peshawer but he LIVES in Dehli. THAT's the difference.

So as a resident of Dehli he finds it not up to the hype he reads abt India.

Ranjit,
Indians have money, but the priorties are different from Pakistan. A middle class and lower middle class parent will spend savings on giving their child a good education, they are investing in the kids future, then say renovate their house. In Punjab the attitude is there, to eat well and live well, and you will see houses like villas and flashy cars etc. Ludhiana has the most number of Mercs in India, the people are filthy rich, but Ludhiana in the last decade has become dirtier. People do crib and swear but do nothing about it. The public accepts all the dirt and filth unquestioningly. The municipial cooperation is not held accountable. How may citizens take interest in the Mc elections, hardly any. You need people with vision and not those whose sole purpose is to line their pockets. In the Ludhiana MC elections recently , almost 60 of the contenders were illiterate or criminals.

anil #123: "You must present this blueprint to Prime Minister's Office in Islamabad......I do believe decline of nation-state in favor of regional economic blocks."

...i am not too popular within the military, so they will never listen to me......i do know some people amongst politicians, so they would listen to me, perhaps.....however, you really have to see the pakistani political landscape to believe it.....

.....pakistan's political system is like an infant....there are no structures, policy-making groups, procedures amongst political parties.....its just nawaz, bb, imran etc. doing what they want to and think they should do.....e.g. the whole future of the country is being decided by single living room meetings between bb and musharraf, with no participation even from their closest colleagues.....the only parties with some structure are mqm and jamaat-e-islami.....but they have other problems.......

......most of all, all these politicians are so scared of the army, it isn't even funny.....every third politician i met (and i am not exagerating) told me how he had been physically beaten up by the army and/or jailed.....so pakistan's policy making structure is in shambles.....this is why there is, always, so much economic growth when the army takes over....businessmen see policy stability, for a decade; even if it destroys political stability......

where the action is in pakistan is in the private sector...and everything i have expressed in my reply below, will be expressed to you by any senior private sector person in pakistan.......these guys, now, regularly go to india......and to china.....and have always been going to the middle east and europe and north america.......i am sure shaukut aziz understands all this, much better than i do......he is the father of pakistan's current economic turnaround, for which musharraf, incorrectly, gets credit....

however, for some reason, shaukut aziz, has been seduced by the lustful charms of political power....pakistan lost an excellent finance minister and gained a poor prime minsiter, when he decided to move up......

you had earlier asked about pakistan's IT industry......there is nothing there, worthwhile......where the action is, is the banking, telecom, real estate and media industries......people are leaving north america and middle east to come work in these industries in pakistan at gigantic salaries......and these industries and in the loop, both in south asia and internationally......

.......as an example, hbl - the largest private bank in pakistan - is owned by the agha khan, who also owns a bank in india.....so this crowd is regularly in india and works jointly......similarly, other banks, telecom etc. are tuned into india through their parent companies....

.....the trouble is the government....not because of beuracracy, but because of its instability, and the terrible level of leadership available there......one only has to read the commentary of musharraf, nowdays, to realize that he has become psychologically unstable......the other is the power of the army as whole, and the lack of ability and credibility of any politician to take it on....

as for south asia becoming block of economic states......i think it is bound to happen.....however, it will happen internally first........south asia has only been one country for 200 out of its 5000 year history.......even now it is three.....it will soon federate or break up into its historical norm of smaller states, which will exist in a union like europe......economic growth in south asia is never going to be uniform, and it will not suit the richer states to remain with the poorer ones in india, other than for foreign policy......

in pakistan, the opposite will happen.....it was about to happen in 1971.......the smaller sates will rebel against the domination of punjab, and in a civilian political setup will demand their autonomy.......

the above i believe is the best way of existence for south asia.....as a conglemerate of loosely federated states, within a common economic block.......this is how it existed before ashoka, then he united it, then after ashoka till the british, who then united it, and will go back to in the coming centuries.......

Re:HP
"It is the responsibility of the elected government to prioritize what people need"

That is exactly right and that is what the Indian government does as well. People in India give a high priority to education, jobs, business investment etc and the government delivers fairly well on that. People just do not care about infrastructure, sanitation, hygiene etc to that extent. That attitude reflects in the government's lackadaisical attitude towards it as well.

People do not relate the investment in infrastructure to the increased prosperity that it will bring. Wider roads, seaports, 24 hour electricity/water are still viewed as a luxury rather than basic rights. Even highly educated people will say that we need populist programs to give free rice to people or give a free meal to kids, rather than demand top notch infrastructure. The Communists like the CPM party view infrastructure demands as a criminal act of the rich asking for luxury items. For example, they are hell bent against modernising Indian airports, when the domestic airport in Delhi looks virtually like a third class railway station platform. This inherent resistance to investment in these sectors gets manifested in all kinds of dirty politics against such moves, which is why the government fails to deliver on it as well.

Re:amansandhu
"In Chandigarh, which is a fairly clean city, backlanes were made for collection of rubbish, the MC does not collect rubbish for days"

Aman, there is a fundamental problem among Indians regarding collective cleanliness, hygiene, sanitation and being careless about infrastructure investment. Its a really low priority for us and most of us do not care until someone compares us to Pakistan. For some reason, we tend to relate such attributes as being "flashy" and have a weird guilt complex about it. While most Indians give very high priority to education, employment, financial success etc., they just dont care about living properly.

Its not about money but about attitudes and priorities. Just look at the "Indian towns" in the west like Devon Street in Chicago or Jackson Heights in New York. Even there we see the same symptoms emerge. The Patel brothers grocery store owner is probably some very wealthy dude. Yet his desi grocery store would have a 30 year old look, shabby presentation, weird smells of masalas, dirty floors, dirty walls etc. His goods would be of high quality and desis will come and shop there. But the customers dont care that the establishment looks like a dump as compared to the regular American grocery supermaket with its swanky interiors, bright lighting, everything clean and nicely organized. When the owner and the customer both do not care, we end up with a Patel borthers type grocery store. Any westerner visiting it will think that Indians are poor people, when the reality is that both the owner and the customers are significantly wealthy by American standards. The same substandard look and feel is visible in pretty much most stores and businesses in "Indian towns", so anyone visiting these neighborhoods will walk away thinking that Indians are poor people. Just take that and multiply it by a million times all over back home and you can see why India looks like the way it does.

The sad part is that it doesnt have to be that way. We are not a poor people any more but our mindset is still stuck from the days when we were dirt poor. Its all about needless frugality that makes us look shabby for no reason. We got to celebrate our success and spend more to earn even more. It will take many generations for Indians to develop that level of confidence.

#126 tahmed32

Point well taken. I guess I got carried away with IITs, IIMs etc. :)

Regards.

#155 Posted by HP

[One more nonsensical argument presented here is that since India is a democracy everything takes time. That is the most ridiculous thing to say.]

Let me think about this....Ummmmmmm..hmmmmm ummmmmm.....

By God! You are right!

Thanks... Er, do you eat a lot of fish?

As I said, HP, you left too because your country sucked.

One more nonsensical argument presented here is that since India is a democracy everything takes time. That is the most ridiculous thing to say.

The first priority for a democracy is to take care of its voters and develop resources for their benefits, more jobs, more industry and more roads for the movement of commodities. If a democracy fails to do that, then there is some serious flaws in the democracy.

In the 70s, Bhutto was PM and he used to have Khuli Katchery with people all over Pakistan in small villages. In Sindh, he would ask people, "how could he help them?" and invariably a majority of people would say, "Sian Assan ji laiy hitay hikarRy Sarak tahria chadoo" (Please build a road for us.)
He built more road in Sindh in five years than all military governments put together in forty years.

It is the responsibility of the elected government to prioritize what people need. Military governments never do that.

Recently, in Karachi there was a power shortage. People of Karachi came out and spoke their mind on the issue and I am sure they will not have this problem next year. But look at the Indian society. How many Indians come out when power shortages hit their cities and towns?

People living in a democracy need to have some civic sense. Some understanding of what their rights are...But Indians only talk....

face it ,tat country sucked so we left.

The new Chowk is the same old Chowk.
All the Pakistanis are busy telling Indians how their country (and its IT companies) sucks.
All the Indians are gloating at Pakistans internal problems. Why don't we concentrate on our own weaknesses and start to acknowledge (may be emulate or at least learn from) each other's strengths?

#138 Posted by nb on August 17, 2007 7:18:27 pm

"HP, I presume you left Pakistan because it was too good for you?? "

nb,

Why is it always personal with you? first I quoted what Indians wrote at an Indian site, Rediff. Second, I had as good and in some ways, better life in Pakistan. Here I worked for what I have. I might not had this experience in Pakistan. Different strokes for different folks.

I am also amused at the idea that basically says that Indian companies are not capable of building infrastructure and only “foreign companies” can do this. This is from the people who spent millions of hours shouting from the top of their lungs that India has top class engineering education, plenty of billionaires and some top notch companies too that are taking over the world.

What good is all that when those companies cannot and will not invest in developing some top notch engineering firms in India? What good are those engineers who cannot be trusted to supervise quality construction and finally what good are those billionaires that fail to invest in their own countries?

Recently, three big houses from India invested billions of dollars in buying industry outside of India. The irony is that they used their Indian assets to borrow money in the international market to invest outside of India. They pledged the future of India to buy assets that will not bring a single dollar of profit to India.

Indian industrialist is looking more and more to invest outside of India. Even the technology companies are beginning to take funds out of India. The Top three tech companies are now hiring in the US paying more than thrice of what they were paying to Indian to some nikama (bum) out of work, American coders so that they could have a white face in the US.

face it ,tat country sucked so we left.

The truth is India has no money to invest in infrastructure and it is begging all over the world for FDI. The estimate of $150 billion is hogwash. Indian infrastructure needs way, way more than that. We are practically looking at building not only the airports but pretty much all sea ports.
India has not built a single port of the size of Gwadar since Independence. They have only invested what is necessary to keep the current seaports from the British era going.

One joker wrote that India has money for the infrastructure and here is the Indian minister saying India has no money.
“How do we find money?”

Address by Shri Kamal Nath, Hon'ble Minister of Commerce and Industry, Government of India

http://www.ficci.com/media-room/speeches-presentations/2005/march/march 28-
infrastructure.htm

“The investment requirements of the economy are huge. The Prime Minister himself has indicated that the country needs FDI for infrastructure to the extent of 150 billion dollars over the next five years. It is estimated that an additional capacity of 100,000 MW would be required to be installed in the next 10 years. Notwithstanding the spectacular growth in the telecom sector, tele-density continues to be less than 10, and to reach the tele-density level of 25 by 2007, the sector needs investment 20 billion dollars. Airports Authority of India has set a target of investing 1 billion dollars for modernization of airports. The investment requirements in the maritime sector are estimated at 22 billion dollars.
How do we find finances? Taxing people more and then routing it to projects has its limits. I am sure that in this conference, experts would delve upon these issues. How do we attract big-ticket investments into infrastructure sectors? As a society we need to find answers to these questions. “

And the Indian society still can't find those answers. It may take another five years to just find the answers...

This is a good article and would rightfully make most Pakistanis happy and proud of what they are achieving. But on one level, it's also irrelevant. That the good things that are happening in Pakistan are underreported is more of a reflection on the stupid policies that various Pakistani governments have pursued since independence rather than any real bias on the part of the West. Overt and covert support of jihadis and Islamists, actively supporting secessionist movements in neighbouring countries, a blatant disregard for human rights and democratic norms, etc. are only some of these policies.
What the subcontinent needs are two confident nations interacting adult-to-adult, rather than, as it exists today, an insecure sullen Pakistan trying to live down its idiot little brother image and playing a never-ending game of catch-up with the favourite son India. I say more power to Pakistan; the better you guys do economically, the less time you have to wage silly wars and waste time over non-issues like Kashmir and Siachen.

why all idians are shouting about poverty and slum of delhi and mumbai...

why you all indians dont tell the sarkar tyhat why it spend 68% on Defence,,,,,

why this money is not for poor people of india....


due to your 68% ..pakistan also have to spend a lot of on Defence...

why you all indians are mad ..on accumulating arms....

and for whom....

why you not resist against your Warriors government...

why are they crazy ..in destroying others...


solution is very simple....
stop accumulating arms..and weapons ..in india...
use this money for poor people of india...

i dont know why indians are in mental disorder of spending too much on defence


i mean to say.....india cannot reach the foot level of China

regarding sri Lanka..Bhutan..Nepal..and Bangla Desh etc...they are just small country ..so no comparison with India...

and regarding pakistan..again i say....

Pakistan is a nuclear missile power....

are indians are collecting arms against pakistan....






I mean to say....


you can give a threat as a "super power " to bangla desh bhutan





but do you think that by collecting arms....

you can give a threat to pakistan