The Villain of Villains

Re: # 148

Let me try and explain to you what Big Mac index is. It's the price a beef burger sold by McDonald's that is used in coming up with purchasing power parity (PPP) comparison. Obviously, with very little demand for a beef burger in India, the low price of a beef burger would make Indian currency, gdp, income etc more inflated than reality.

What ADB ICP did, instead, was use a basket of 800 different products and services used in various Asian nations to come up with its PPP numbers. And here is what it came up with:

Pakistan has the highest per capita income at HK$ 13,528 in South Asia. It reports India's per capita as HK $12,090, difference of over HK$1500.00 (about US $200)

The "real" here refers to the actual purchasing power and living standard comparisons, not international exchange rates.

Check out complete list in Table H at http://www.adb.org/Documents/Reports/ICP-Purchasing-Power-Expenditures/Highlight s.pdf

As this ADB report explains, "The most celebrated example of a PPP is the “Big Mac Index� compiled and regularly published by The Economist magazine. The Big Mac Index is a PPP that is based solely on the price of a Big Mac in various countries—a commodity that is comparable in quality and available in most locations. Although it is a simple example of a PPP, in practice it is of little use for making international comparisons because it is not representative of all the goods and services included in GDP. More reliable measures of PPPs, such as those compiled as part of the 2005 ICP, are constructed using a large amount of data on the prices of a broad range of goods and services that make up GDP. In ICP Asia Pacific, the participating economies priced items from a list of around 800 household and nonhousehold products in 2005 and early 2006."

http://www.adb.org/Documents/Reports/ICP-Purchasing-Power-Expendi tures/Highl ights.pdf

Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

ajeya: dont address posts to me. thanks.

Hamidm: That's SIR Masadi to you, you intellectual inferior!!

Re: # 151

chowk staff,

please do something about mad masadi - he is offending tahmed

#150 tahmed32

[In the face of all this, the India-Pakistan water dispute seems to be a like two men fighting on a boat for a drink of water as the boat is filling up with water and sinking. They would be better of salvaging the boat. Perhaps we will see greater realization of this as the global community gets involved and saves the two nations from their unthinking quarrels (as the World Bank did in 1963)]

Pakis have this desperate NEED to equate India and Pakistan. Indian military - same as Paki military. Indian progress - same as Paki progress. And so on...

The unfortunate fact is that this is not the reality. India is way, way ahead of Pakiland in all areas, and will continue to pull ahead in the foreseeable future. India and Pakistan are NOT like 2 men fighting on a boat. India holds all the cards here. India does not need to make an agreement with Pakistan. India is doing just fine. WE control the water. It is Pakistan tugging at our sleeves. Not the other way round. Many things have changed since 1963. India is much more powerful, and much less amenable to external pressure. Also, America and the West have lost much of their leverage vis-a-vis India, and more importantly, will continue to have less and less oil-related needs in the coming future. So the Paki-Saudi axis will be less and less relevant in the years to come.

To summarize:

India has a STRONGER military (one proof - Pakistan keeps losing)
India has MUCH better R&D (Pakistani mission to the moon - anybody?)
India has MUCH better educational institutions (GRE is a joke in India in post-graduate circles)
India has MUCH stronger industrial muscle (Mittal, Reliance, Tata and so one...)

The list is very long....

Sorry, Abdur-al-rahimi-bin-ghazi-ghaznavi-illaaaaa-ullaaaa-ukht-ghauri-i-tahmedi-bin-tu ghlaqi32. Those are the facts.

Majumdar writes "Riaz babu,

By almost every measure, Pakistan is better off than India.

Some of the sources you have quoted- wikipedia and " observed/reported by many foreign reporters" hardly qualify as very reliable indicators."


Majumdar sahib alumni WW is wasting his time and ours. Wellness indicators when we talk objectively reveal that we are both f'ckd, while psychological indicators would suggest, due to India's distraction potential in the current world order (and its use as flag bearer of capitalism's success by the US), that India is heads and shoulders above Pakistan, no question about that.

TNITC masadi

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anil sahib #137 In saying that global warming would tend to bring more rain, you point to an important aspect of global warming - the entire process far too complex for us to understand exactly what the end result will be. As for shipping in water from the Antartica - that was once proposed for Saudi Arabia as I recall (i.e. tow in an inceberg), but desalination would seem a more viable solution.

In any case, we dont know for sure what "climate change" will result in. Only yesterday there was news that a revised model predicts twice the amount of global change (i.e. a temperature rise of around 7 degrees F vs 3 degrees F as predicted till now). Last month there was news that, using a global satellite and more careful calculations, it is expected that instead of being uniform (as one would intuitively expect), the ocean's would rise to a higher level in the northern latitudes than in the south.

All we can be sure of is that the earth as we see it today has undergone massive (sometimes sudden) climate change in the past (at one time the entire surface of earth was covered by a thick mantle of ice, at another time there was no oxygen at all and the air was poisonous to life as we know it).

In the face of all this, the India-Pakistan water dispute seems to be a like two men fighting on a boat for a drink of water as the boat is filling up with water and sinking. They would be better of salvaging the boat. Perhaps we will see greater realization of this as the global community gets involved and saves the two nations from their unthinking quarrels (as the World Bank did in 1963).

Re #139
"The fact that India backed off from strikes against Pakistan after Mumbai amply showed the impotence of Indian military power".

Pakistani fauj ki Hindustani fauj ke saath barabari ki baatein sunkar kaan pak gaye hain. Ama, muaf bhi keejiye. 48,65,71,99 mein moonh ki khane key ba'ad bhi itni maghroori, itni masti? Ek haara hua pehalwan bhi doosre muqable ke ba'ad apni naqabiliyat qabool kar leta hai.
Shayad is ghuroor ki wajeh us nucleai dehshatgard Qadeer ka churaya hua aetmi bum ho. Waqt aane par shayad yeah bum bhi naheen phatega.

Riaz babu,

The UNDP HDR report places India higher on overall HDI than Pakistan, not just on PPP.

The Big Mac Index used by UNDP has been discredited.

Well, I am sure that any index which places India better off than Pak wud be similarly discredited in your eyes at least.

Regards

Riaz Katue...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1735912.stm
So, you have to create a web Page and put BS there ( with beduinistic logic) and India is militarily weaker than Pakistan!!!!...
Strange...with stronger military, Pakistan failed to capture Kashmir so far and lost 1/2 of it's territory....

Re: # 139
riaz katue...
oh really!!!
So, that is the reason, Pakistan is not committing on "No first use" of nuke with India?

Re: # 143
majumder...
I don't think, Indians tried to project, overall economic success. We always flaunt about Ambanis, Vinod Dhams etc...and that is part of indian culture for time immemorial ( with 5%-10% literates, India contributed most in science and technology in ancient age).....and whenever Indians talk about Indra Nooyi, Vinod Dham, A G Bose etc..., these Pakis comes up with all these railroad etc...UNDP report...
If you have read "Lokahita" (Rabindranath Tagore), you should remember..."If Kalidasa would have dedicated himself on writting books for the peasants of Ujjain, the peasants would have been little bit better off, but Sanskrit literarure would have been deprived of several gems..."

Re: # 143
I don't think you understand how the per capita PPP is calculated. The Big Mac Index used by UNDP has been discredited. You need to look at ABD ICP report that does a more thorough job and explains it well.
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

Riaz babu,

By almost every measure, Pakistan is better off than India.

Some of the sources you have quoted- wikipedia and " observed/reported by many foreign reporters" hardly qualify as very reliable indicators.

I will quote UNDP's HDI report of 2008 since you have yourself quoted UNDP as a reliable source.

http://hdrstats.undp.org/2008/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_IN D.html

India- HDI index 0.609, Rank 132, GDP per capita PPP - 2489, GDP per capita rank 126

http://hdrstats.undp.org/2008/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_PAK.ht ml

Pakistan- HDI index 0.562, Rank 139, GDP per capita PPP - 2361, GDP per capita rank 130

Btw, this stats shud also be an eye opener for all those Hindoos who think that India is gazillions of times ahead of Pakistan (thanks Salimbhai)

Regards

Good for you, Riaz