India From your digest email Is it fair to say that India would have been a basket case like Pakistan, if not for the South Indian states and Bengal? Alok Pandey, History is nothing but a canvas. 252 upvotes by Pratibha Suku, Niharika Banerjee, Deepak Agarwal, (more) No. There are multiple facets to this questions and I will address them one by one. Why Pakistan is a failed state? There are hardly any nation states in the world that are strictly theocratic and still are progressive and successful. Success can be broadly assessed on the basis of 2 parameters - social and economical. There isnt much scope of social progress in a theocratic nation which itself is based on a regressive definition of religion. Interestingly, Pakistans founding father Jinnah didnt ever want a theocratic nation, as is evident from his first post-independence speech: You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed; that has nothing to do with the business of the State … We are starting in the days where there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another … [If] we keep that in front of us as our ideal … you will find that in the course of time Hindus … cease to be Hindus, and Muslims … cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State. Source: Jinnah, M.A., ‘Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan’, 11 Aug 1947, reproduced in Dawn, ‘Independence Day Supplement’, 14 Aug 1999 Further a countrys economic policy is somewhat a reflection of its social outlook. Mullah influenced politics, Army intervention in state matters, coup fears, large expenditure on defence and intelligence, etc drained Pakistan which was doing almost like India, around the 70s, when it was still in process of becoming a full fledged Islamic nation-state. Zia completed the process that Ayub started and the results were quite obvious. Why India is not a failed state? Only one reason. Our constitution. Just one. And I will tell you why. If we owe anything to the founding fathers of our nation, its this manuscript. In that marathon 3 year discussions and deliberations period, people like Ambedkar, K.T. Shah, Aiyengar, Patel, Nehru, Azad and many others pondered on every possible circumstance where we could go wrong as a nascent republic and these people of fierce intellect took care of almost everything. Our constitution is a phenomenal, living document. It not only empowers those who rule us, but restricts and regulates too. Secularism, liberty, fundamental rights, franchise, etc are simply not political jargon. If you look only through the past 50 years, youll know these words have nurtured and preserved our country in one form or another, directly or indirectly. Even Indira Gandhi, who went to the extent of playing with the Constitutional spirit multiple times and brought the state to the brink of dictatorship, couldnt do it for long and had to lick dust in the next general elections. Here it would be an opportune moment to say this: Dear Pakistani policymakers, Always heed to the advice and vision of the founding fathers of the nation. Always. They loved the nation more than you or me. They knew better. Now the last facet. Why only Bengal and Southern states? If you remember, India never was India. There were 565 odd princely states and a few Britain administered provinces at the time of independence. Around the time the Raj commenced, each of these regions was independently ruling itself and collectively India contributed to 1/4th of the worlds GDP, around the 16th century. After British sucked us dry and left after their 200 year rule, all the parts of our nation contributed to the prosperity India achieved in the last few decades. Punjab, Haryana and Western UP were instrumental in making India self-sufficient in grain production. Gujarat was the place from where White Revolution began. Bihar, Rajasthan and MP gave us stellar policymakers owing to their scholastic traditions. Maharashtra played a significant part in shaping the industrial outlook. With considerable number of hiccups, India has continued forward and the credit owed is not specific to one specific region/state. Each one contributed. Each one is still doing that and thats why India isnt a basket-case and it will never be one. Written 16 Dec. Upvote252 Downvote Comments5+Share1
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 14:22:59 +0000
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