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Welcome to the pakistani perspective. This site covers the international internet media on stories and commentaries relevant to a Pakistani audience. It collects views from a wide variety of sources and presents them Editor Email Syndicate |
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Sunday, November 27, 2005
Things to learn from India: Shahid Javed Burki - Dawn
While I was in India last month I came across an American friend who had also travelled to Delhi to pursue some interest in development economics. This was his first visit to the country and he was initially very impressed with what he saw. He had also read Thomas Friedman’s book from which I quoted in the column last week. “India is indeed an economic superpower; one that will change the structure of the global economy”, he said to me, fully agreeing with Friedman’s thesis.
My friend was impressed with the hotel in which both of us were staying; impressed with the sights and sounds of Delhi; impressed with Gurgaon, the centre of Delhi’s high-tech economy; impressed with the way the Indian middle class was engaged in their country’s development.
He also liked what he saw of Indian art, Indian music, and the country’s film history. He asked me whether there was much in common between India and Pakistan; after all the two were once part of the same economic and political entity. When I said that the two countries had much in common and that what he had read and heard about Pakistan was not the Pakistani reality, he seemed very sceptical about my response. I am sure he attributed it to a misplaced sense of patriotism.
When I left Delhi and returned to Washington, my American friend and his wife went on a tour of the “golden triangle” — tourist sites in Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. They then saw a great more of the real India. Remembering the conversation we had he called me upon returning to the United States. He said that he had seen two Indias; one was well integrated into the global economy, the other was poor, extremely crowded, with poor infrastructure, poor housing, and an incredible number of street dwellers. The second India was not very different from Africa, a continent he knew well. He was now not very sure whether to see India as a success story or one still struggling very hard to succeed.
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