A good criticism of my article “India still shining?” Dawn published my article under the title ”Two different paths” . Now a writer critiques the article in a letter to Dawn’s editor here:
Definately worth reading.
The only observation I’ll make here is this: Regardless of the way it was written, it was not my intent in the article to compare a snapshot of India with a snapshot of Pakistan. That has been done many times and the writer is correct that both pictures offer a mixed bag.
The essence of the article was to look at trends , the trajectories both countries have travelled along. That is an open question and readers ought to discuss and determine for themselves.
However, a few questions:
The writer himself says that western visitors visiting the region in the 1990′s rated Pakistan’s standard of living better than India. How come they have stopped visiting Pakistan since then? Meanwhile, how many western expats have moved to live and work in Mumbai … just Mumbai, and with their families? I don’t know but maybe somebody here can provide us an answer. Have we come down the right path? When will these visitors start visiting Pakistan again? We need to think. Maybe all is not well.
The writer again seems to blame Pakistan’s woes on “America’s war against the Soviets in the 1980′s”. But weren’t we calling it jihad … and wasn’t it being waged in the name of the faith?
On the assertion of Pakistani professionals doing well in the west. Is this because of our education system or despite it? Something to think about.
How much research is coming out of the writer’s Engineering Institute where he says he studied in Karachi? How many scholarly articles were published in engineering journals by its faculty say in the last 10 years?
I have chosen not to get into the subject of India Vs China, Japan Korea etc and I would like to explain my reasons. 1) It is beyond the scope of my piece which is primarily about Pakistan.2) The discussion is beyond my “bandwidth” … meaning I do not have enough know how and stamina and 3) maybe its best for the Indians to take that initiative.
Moazzam Husain
Mr.Hussain,
You are being too kind when you say the letter was a “good criticism”.
Pakistan army is a manifestation of the militaristic mindset of Pakistani soceity. A few months ago, there was a very nice article in The News on 10 big blunders in Pakistan’s history since 1947.
One of them was the 1965 war. Frankly, 1965 was the first step in Pakistan’s suicidal path. It has been one relentless downward spiral from 1965 onwards. The same racist, prejudiced, bigoted view of Indians that prompted 1965 war prompted 1999 war and is manifested in Pakistani blogs (you are a rare exception).
Blaming the Americans is silly. Pakistan rented itself very willingly as an eager puppet for lots of US dollars and military gadgets. All in the dreams of hoping to undermine India, “standing up to ” India.
A country with the sole aim of military adventurism with utter disregard to education, industrial development and building instituitions, cannot thrive. This is a no brainer. You are trying to send rays of reality into the closed minds of your country men.
It is hilarious to read if Jinnah had been alive longer, things would have been better. This is based more on speculation and sheer fantasy, not based on reality. He was an elitist, undemocratic man. The way he dismissed Bengali concern on the language issue, and insisted on Urudu is the most glaring example.
I can speculate (on firmer footing) if Jinnah had been alive Bangladesh would have been born in 1955 rather than in 1971.
If you are wondering what racist view in 1965, 1999 I am talking about. Both times they thought Indians would timidly negotiate with the tail curled under the legs.
Visit any blog you will see because of Bill Clinton, Pakistan army had to withdraw from Kargil mountain tops.
The truth is ….India conveyed in no uncertain terms nothing is negotiable, and started implementing what we meant by launching the offensive. This only forced Bill Clinton.
This article is good for saying to Pakistanis is that all is not lost. But, to say that infanticide is widely practiced now is a bit of stretch( but, I am no healthcare expert, I don’t have statistics either way and I may have a blind spot ). Mediocre students are there at IIT as well. And really good Engg. students are spread over at different Engg. colleges. Only that some IITians are God-like in their engineering ability.
And I disagree that govt. should spend on more instituitons like IIT? What for? What will they do for the least privileged? We should spend money on basic health and basic education. That and that alone will make us a nation which is just and awsome powerful( if that is our goal). How will one invent a mechanism to implement these policies – I haven’t got a clue.
I donot have any statistics but the critique of your article pointed out that Pakistani students are as good as the IITians. Genetically they are the same, but, it is hard for me to swallow that Pakistani engineering graduates are as good as the IITians. There are exceptions to everything. I went to one of the top university in US for my MS in engineering.
I did not see Pakistani engineering graduates faring well. What I saw was that the top professors prefer IITians from India and persians from Tehran University or Shariff University and similarly Taiwanese, Koreans or Chinese from their top universities for the phd programs.
I met a lot of Pakistani students there but professors donot prefer them for research. Pakistan government were paying for the expenses of a few Pakistanis others were there with their parents money.
May be Pakistanis are doing as good as the Indians in the west but I donot know the statistics. I have few Pakistani colleagues in the tech industry but not very succesful like me. Succesful Indians are visible though
Vikram Pandit, CEO of City Bank
Indra Nooyi, CEO pEPSI
Sanjay Jha, CEO Motorola mobile
Vinod Khosla, founder of Sun Micro System and a venture capitalist
Atul Kapadia, Venture Capitalist
Sabeer Bhatia, founder of hotmail
The guy who likely to succeed Warren Buffet is an Indian too
One of the founder of Sandisk is an Indian too
There is a Indian VP in almost every Tech company.
Everybody knows about Laksmi Mittal and Swaraj Paul or Naresh Goel
But all these people succeeded because the west welcomed them and gave opportunity for their talents to grow.
Pakistanis can point to successes Pakistanis had in the west.
Also just look at the mathematics olympiad for the last ten years. China and US dominates, India and Iran are in the top fourteen nations most of the time while coming in top three a few times. US team is comprised of mainly chinese kids, few Indians and few whites lately. I did not see Pakistan in that list.
Then there is this spelling compettition which the Indians dominates in the US. Not necessarily an indicator of intelligence.