Indo-Pak History via Mail

nice chatting with you gentlemen. khuda hafiz.

behram #475 actually (despite the crowing of the rss brigade on chowk) the pakistani growth rate has been quite respectable recently (between 6-7%). and indian economic growth is in fact good not just for indians but for pakistanis as well. thus, as a result of the peace initiatives, there seems to have been a large influx of indian investors in pakistan - the islamabad marriott, i was told a few days ago, has now started veggie meals as a result of the large numbers of indian investors coming to pakistan. This increase in investment (much of it a spillover of outsourcing that was started in india) will certainly help sustain Pakistan`s economic progress in future. (good thing about economic competition is that there are no losers, and everybody wins).

ahmedzai #473 Greetings. Those are very pertinent points you make. Clearly, an expatriate community is a source of great strength to Pakistan in a number of ways as you say. It is good to note as you do that Pakistani students have in fact gone to other countries instead of the US, and so the shortfall in US enrollment is not as big a loss at it would seem.

faisaluno #472 Turkey is an example I would present - it is bending over backwards to join the european union (including changing laws to permit greater freedoms). And they have of course followed ataturks direction for almost a century now in seeking to learn from the west. and rightly so. it does not mean that the turks are not a proud people of course.

Thailand`s economic growth is part of the ``east asian miracle`` - and that has been export led. I will acknowledge that you are basically right here though, and there is no single path to development. It is of course possible for Pakistan to still do very well even with reduced student enrollment abroad. but clearly there is a great value to any developing nation of having a large expatriate community - and the two huge examples here are china and india.

Re: # 465

Dear tahmed32:

Yes, you are correct.

In younger days, since I was a boxer, we had to fight amongst our own weight groups. For example, I was in the Bantem Weight. Of course, I would not be able to fight with heavy weights.

India`s economic development has been good compared to Pakistan. However, comparing India with Pakistan is ludicrous. A fair comparison of India`s economic growth is with China. And even then it could be argued that India went through different economic sector growth than China did... for example India went after high technology sector growth, whereas China went after manufacturing sector growth.

These two different policy decisions show that after 20 years foreign direct investments are far greater in China than India.

Also, I have read that every year China produces over 500,000 Engineers and most of them are world class ``good quality engineers.`` Whereas, India produces similar number, but only 100,000 is ``world quality``. That means the efficay of Indian education as far as Engineering curriculam is concerned is 20%. The rest of 80% is just wasted effort.

The only advantage Indians have over Chinese is that Indians can speak English. Of course, that is thanks to the good old colonial rule.

In my opinion, at least in the US, software engineering is a dead field, and has been dead for sometime. Multinationals have complete control over the software industry. That is probably the reason we do not see software innovation coming out of Indians. Can you name a single software by an Indian software engineer?

Why does it always have to be Steve Jobs?

And after their innovation, multinationals then go for the cheapest price. And India is loosing out on that as well, to eastern european countries. I am glad that economically Pakistan has taken a different route.

You are correct regarding lack of visas available for students from Pakistan to the US. This is, of course, due to the geo-political situation in today`s world. Pakistani administration must press the US administration regarding this issue. Once the situation in the world settles down (when? I have no idea) then, we will see improvements in the visa situation as well.

Remember, right up to the middle of 1980`s, you would rarely see Indian undergraduate students. That was due to the wrong policies of their government.

But, there are other places Pakistani students could be encouraged to go.

Respectfully submitted,

dm #470 you sir dont need any religion to know the right path. buddhism is fine, but so is any other religion or lack thereof as long as one takes responsibility for distinguishing between right and wrong, facts from fiction, and so on. and people like you dont need any holy book to tell you that.

i used to stress the universal values of equality of man, peace and tolerance, as taught by islam to some fellow muslims on chowk in the early days here - and that was because simply because they were talking of islam all the time but ignoring (like the ``muslim`` invaders like ghazni have done in past centuries) the fundamental message of islam. (the rss brigade saw red on what they incorrectly assumed was islamic propaganda aimed at them, and i became dubbed the ``mullah``, but that is just btw ;-)

Tahmed 32:

Re: # 469

I learnt a lot from good exchange of posts between Faisal and yourself. My two bits before calling it a day.

1. More Pakistani students are heading for UK, Australia and Canada for education compared to yesteryears. Your point is valid though that education in the uSA counts much more than anywhere else.

2. I agree with you that educated and skilled Pakistanis should have settled abroad from much earlier. Good quality diaspora acts as a catalyst in helping original country to increase its exports, bring investments back and equally importantly, to improve the image of the country - 3 realities which are now biting us in the rear end.

tahmed sahib, thailand with a population of around 65 mn people exports more than the amount exported by india and pak combined. turkey has the same number of people as thailand and its exports equal the amount exported by india and pak combined. both turks and the thais are horrible speakers of english language. also on a per capita basis as well as size of the economy, pakistan send more people to study in the u.s. than thailand or turkey. i think these facts should make it fairly obvious that there is little relationship between citizens of a country studying in the u.s. and the exports of that particular country.

dm #468: sirjee i still think Gandhi`s idea of non-violence is perhaps the greatest one of the last millenium. it is in india (particularly under BJP) that these insecure individuals seek to emulate the ones they claim to hate the most (i.e. the muslim invaders) while treating Gandhi`s ideas with contempt. chowk has, i will agree, been an eye-opener on just how low some individuals can go (the mocking of earthquake deaths by ranjit being about the bottom of the pit), and on just how pakistan-obsessed some individuals like thakeray are. but i still think that the only sane way to live is in peace - and i maintain what i have always said about kashmir, namely that it is not worth one life (civil or military, indian or pakistani).

I agree one hundred percent with you when you say: `` It is this type of encouragement which has made chowk counterproductive as a vehicle of promoting understanding between Indians, Pakistanis, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, etc.``. I consider chowk to have already failed in the noble aims the publishers had set for it - after spending years on chowk, it is still not a place i would consider inviting any real life friend (indian or pakistani) to join. its membership has not significantly grown for this reason too. i used to ask for chowk staff to enforce their guidelines (since that i still think would go a long way towards helping chowk meet its goals), but now realize it is a waste of time given the lack of response to such calls.

tahmed32:

Ashok renounced violence and became a follower of Buddha. There was no ``Hinduism`` at that time, so there was nothing to renounce. For that matter, even Buddha himself did not renounce ``Hinduism``. His contribution was in showing a new path, which did not require renunciation of any exisitng faith/faiths (think of Sai Baba, although Buddha was no charlatan). His main challenge to the existing beliefs was how to achieve Moksha/Nirvana? The existing orthodoxy suggested that one had to undergo a fixed number of births and deaths (184,000) to achieve liberation from this cycle, which the Indic beliefs consider to be a curse to be gotten out of. Buddha suggested that the cycle of life and death can be broken at any time by getting rid of one`s attachment (Moh) to goods and people. Those who followed him were called the followers of Budh-Mat (view) or Panth (religion).

BTW, though not a Buddhist, I like Buddha`s teachings more than the teachings of any other religion.

faisaluno: the US has been, and still remains, the world`s center for learning. it has been, and still remains, the worlds most leading nation in science, technology. the loss of opportunity to study in the US to perhaps about a 1000 pakistani students (which is what the 14% drop roughly represents) is a significant loss not only to them as individuals but to the nation as well - since these individuals would have increased their earning power. and of course pakistan needs every penny of remittances it can get - even rich nations welcome a chance to increase income (US governors including the terminator from california are visiting China nowadays for exactly this purpose - to promote US exports), and for pakistan the value of every dollar of foreign exchange earnings is far greater than that to the US.

hamidm2:

chowk disease

It is unfortunate that you do not read Indian press. If you did, you would find that there is rarely the kind of venom towards Pakistan and Pakistanis in the mainstream media as there is among the Indian chowkies. There is something in the chowk format which seems to bring out the worst confrontationist in us. The format encourges insults, slights and confrontations instead of trying to learn from each other.

I have seen many chowkies who started out full of love and kindness and ended up as being either haters or calling others hate mongers. As an exhibit, you may want to contrast tahmed`s earlier posts with his recent ones, now he doesn`t even care to say nice words about Gandhi, whom he practically worshipped in the beginning. As exhibit Number Two, I would present my dear friend Yasser: As YLH he started out writing fairly balanced articles but left chowk as an embittered man. A sabbatical from chowk cured him of his India-centric hatred and he returned with a new nick and a new India-friendly face; a sustained period of interacts at chowk and it is difficult now to distinguish Manto from YLH. Decent people who wanted to preserve their sanity - Roohi and Eklavya come to mind - left chowk before the hate-bug got to them.

I was reading the following lines from the new Editor, ``Many of you need that space and Chowk is proud to be a part of that geography. It will not, however, play any part in how you use the terrain. If you go there thinking of it as a boxing ring, then be prepared to fight. And fight your own battles, wipe your own blood.`` Those lines are meant to describe Unplugged, but they apply equally to chowk. It is this type of encouragement which has made chowk counterproductive as a vehicle of promoting understanding between Indians, Pakistanis, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, etc.

dm: asok renounced violence...as well as hinduism. i am not saying that hinduism promotes violence (like hindus on chowk never tire from saying about islam) for the simple reason that i think that this merely transfers responsibility away from the perpetrator of violence - but i would be interested in any thoughts you may have on this fact and how easily it goes unnoticed by those hindus who stretch facts to great lengths in order to tar other people`s religions.

tahmed sahib, pakistan suffers from a huge shortage of skilled, talented and hard working manpower. therefore i am glad to see talented pakistanis staying in pak and playing a role in developing their own country. pakistan now has some good universities so its not as if people are losing out by staying at home. and i say this as someone who has earned two degrees from the u.s. i think our goal now should be to improve institutions at home rather than looking outwards for our rotee makhan.

also pakistan now really does not need more remittances. pak`s foreign currency debt can be paid off in about nine years should pak use remittance to service its debt.

behram: while i admire your ganna-charge on the rss mob, i dont see why you are comparing indian with chinese wages. shouldnt we acknowledge the fact that in jobs like software engineer india is slightly ahead of pakistan (not significantly, i will add, although that will not prevent these characters from crowing about it). the figures we should be really troubled by is the reduced influx of pakistani students to the US - a direct result of tighter restrictions as a result of the great efforts of urstruly-types in pakistan.

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China Foreign Reserve Holdings: $ 769 Billion

Indian Foreign Reserve Holdings: $ 237 Billion

Source: The Economist (latest Edition)

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China is about to open its huge financial market to approximately $ 1.3 trillion.

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Nevertheless,

Respectfully submitted,