I am a senior journalist and writer based in Karachi. I remember one of our former ambassador while addressing a seminar held at Karachi Press Club said there was a think tank in India that wants an arms race with Pakistan to bleed it just as the United States bled former Soviet Union. India can sustain the arms race with Pakistan, the later can't with its ailing economy, massive unemployment and almost total dependence on the United States.

I think its high time that both India and Pakistan resolve their problems peacefully. Pakistan needs schools, clinics and hospitals, eradication of poverty, creation of jobs for hundreds of thousands of disgruntled youth agitating on the streets and most of all tolerance. Similarly India too should focus on feeding the poor.

Only the military industrial complex of the United States would benefit from the arms race between Pakistan and India.

Shahid Husain

Special Correspondent,

The News International, Karachi

As Obama keeps Downsizing our Nuclear stockpile, the rest of our enemies keep adding to theirs. Makes a lot of sense to me.

@hayat - @Charles the Hammerhead is right. I live in India. If you are crediting Islam for all good things in India, please prove it is true in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, etc. -- all are Islamic countries. Right?

the truth about India is a world power is different when we look to the fallowing facts, It may be good that instead of "Arms race"India & Pakistan should spends & invest on their ailing infrastructure , education & people. & bring peace to the region, because of both South Asia is not stable & west is not keen to invest as much as they are doing with China.

India
has been bragging about being a political superpower and a military might. A
brief look will abundantly expose the facade of the Indian economy; which will
collapse at the first signs of uncertainty or instability.

In 2008, its external debts increased to around $221 billion.

In 2007, Indian exports stood around $145 billion, while imports were around
$217 billion; a deficit of $72 billion in a single year.

India’s
trade deficit was $117.3 billion in 2009/10, down from $118.7 billion in
2008/09. In 2010 the deficit has mushroomed beyond reasonable levels. Reuters
survey in April forecast the gap would widen to $132.70 billion in 2010/11 and
$154.50 billion in 2011/12
()

Bharat is one of the largest recipient of foreign aid in the world. The UKs
biggest recipient of British aid is Bharat. The UK
donates 500 million Pound Sterling
to Bharat every year. Many other countries also give foreign aid to Bharat.
Bhart‘s biggest donor is Japan.

India
currently accounts for 1.5% of World trade as of 2007. Bharat’s trade imbalance
with the US
for 2010 is -7,980.5 million or around 8 billion USD.

Bharat is one of the biggest debtor nations on the planet with public and
private debt estimated between $250 billion to $3 Trillion.

India fails to distribute wealth to poor: UN Report (pakistanledger.com)

India falls to 88th spot on World Prosperity Index (rupeenews.com)

India behind Pakistan and Bangladesh, on human development indices: UN Report
(rupeenews.com)

2010 numbers: Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee today presented a budget
with a fiscal deficit of 5.5% of the gross domestic product (GDP).

He pegged the total expenditure at Rs11.09 lakh crore while the total tax and
non-tax revenue was estimated at Rs6.82 lakh crore for the year 2010-11. The
deficit is much lower than the budgeted estimate for the current fiscal (6.8%),
which, however, has been revised to 6.9%.

Bharat has never been a net exporter like China which has colossal surpluses
with almost every country of the world.

Its factory output account for 27.6% of the GDP and employs 17% of the total
workforce. Rest of the workforce is largely dedicated to the agriculture
sector. According to a 2008 World Bank report, 75.6% Indians live on less than
$2 per day. It suffers from higher rates of malnutrition than Sub-Saharan
Africa. Over 70% of its population is either illiterate or educated below the
primary level. Indian tourist industry is 1/6 of Las Vegas. Recently, Standard & Poor’s
announced, India
risks a downgrade from BBB-minus rating to the lowest investment-grade rating.
Clearly, Indians are hardly in a financial shape to even contemplate on waging
a war.

Indian service industry accounts for over 55% of its GDP. Bangalore is called the Silicon Valley of
India. A large number of Information Technology companies are located in the
city. It is the largest contributor of India’s $33 billion IT exports
(2007), . The Statesman. A Gill. Dec. 30th, 2008. It is at $50 billion (2010)
in 2010 but an exponential growth faces Anti-Outsourcing laws in the US and Europe.

Hunger in India
alarming! India at bottom on
Hunger Index in South Asia

How long to extripate penury from india? 300 years!

India’s
budget– fit for a superpower

Around six out of 10 Indians live in the countryside, where abject poverty
is widespread. 34.7 % of the Indian population lives with an income below $ 1 a
day and 79.9 % below $ 2 a day. According to the India’s planning commission report
26.1 % of the population live below the poverty line. [World Bank's poverty
line of $1 a day, but the Indian poverty line of Rs 360 a month, or 30 cents a
day]

India
as a world power? Part 1

World power India?
Part 2

India
as a World Power: Part 3

The Current Account Balance of India

“A major area of vulnerability for us is the high consolidated public-debt
to GDP ratio of over 70 percent … (and) consolidated fiscal deficit,” says the
Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Mr. Yaga Venugopal Reddy.

According to CIA world fact book, the Current account balance of India is -10,360,000,000 (minus) while China is the
wealthiest country in the world with $ 249,900,000,000 (Plus). India is listed as 152 and China as no.1 [CIA: The world fact book].Amnesty
International (AI) 2008 report on issues within India
()

Human Development vs GDP growth

The Human Development Report for 2007-08 released by the UNDP ranked India 128 out
of 177 countries, working it out through measures of life expectancy, education
and income. Malaysia
ranked 63 and listed at under High Human Development category. The report found
that India’s GDP per capita
(purchasing power parity) is $3,452, far below Malaysia’s $10,882. China listed as
81. Read the statistics from UNDP website.

Dalits: Caste discrimination. Poverty stricken and destitute

Sudra Holocaust: Genocide of 1 million Dalits in India
since 1947: About three million Dalit women have been raped and around one
million Dalits killed from the time of Independence.
This is 25 times more than number of soldiers killed during the wars fought
after independence. That is why Dalits do not need Aryan culture or Hindu
Dharma based on caste any more. …” [Dr. Tulsiram]

India: More than 75% live

below Sub Saharan poverty line

India: 3500-yrs of massacres
of Dalit-Sudra Blacks by Arya-Brahmins

Eat Rats:Indian officials ask starving Indians to eat rodents (BBC)

Indian girl Infanticide-Female Foeticide: 1 million girls killed before or
after birth per year

Khumb Mela India:
60 million Filthy Naked Indian sadus

Population:

According to the Indian census of 2001, the total population was 1.028
billion. Hindus numbered 827 million or 80.5 %. About 25 per cent (24 million)
of those Hindus are belonging to Scheduled Castes and Tribes. About 40 per cent
(400 million) are “Other Backward Castes”.

15 per cent Hindu upper castes inherited majority of India’s civil service,
economy and active politics from British colonial masters. And thus the caste
system virtually leaves lower caste Hindus in to an oppressed majority in India’s power
structure. The 2004 World Development Report mentions that more than 25% of
India’s primary school teachers and 43% of primary health care workers are
absent on any given day!

Chilled Urine drinking hot in India.
From Gandhi to PM Desai.

Living conditions of Indians

89 percent of rural households do not own telephones; 52 percent do not have
any domestic power connection. There are daily power cuts even in the nation’s
capital. The average brownout in India is three hours per day during
non-monsoon months, 17 hours daily during the monsoon. The average village is 2
kilometers away from an all-weather road, and 20 percent of rural habitations
have partial or no access to a safe drinking-water supply. [Tarun Khanna, Yale Center
for the Study of Globalization]

Around 60 per cent people are not having access to financial institutions in
India.
This figure is less than 15 per cent in developed countries. (NABARD) According
to the National Family Health Survey data (2005-06), only 45 per cent of
households in the country had access to improved sanitation.

Education

India
has over 35 per cent of the world’s total illiterate population. [UNESCO
Education for All Report 2008] Only 66 per cent people are literate in India (76 per
cent men and 54 per cent women)

About 40 million primary school-age children in India are not in school. More than
92 % children cannot progress beyond secondary school. According to reports, 35
per cent schools don’t have infrastructure such as blackboards and furniture.
And close to 90 per cent have no functional toilets. Half of India’s schools
still have leaking roofs or no water supply.

Japan has 4,000
universities for its 127 million people and the US
has 3,650 universities for its 301 million, India has only 348 universities for
its 1.2 billion people. In the prestigious Academic Ranking of World
Universities by Institute
of Higher Education,
Shanghai Jiao Tong, only two Indian Universities are included. Even those two
IITs in India
found only a lower slot (203-304) in 2007 report. Although Indian universities
churn out three million graduates a year, only 15% of them are suitable
employees for blue-chip companies. Only 1 million among them are IT
professionals.

Why did Buddhism disappear from South Asia?

Health

India has the single
highest share of neonatal deaths in the world, 2.1 million.107,000 Leprosy
patients live in India.
15.3 % of the population do not survive to the age of forty. Serpent attacks
kill as many as 50,000 Indians while the cobra occupies a hallowed place in the
Hindu religion. Heart disease, strokes and diabetes cost India an
estimated $9 billion in lost productivity in 2005. The losses could grow to a
staggering $200 billion over the next 10 years if corrective action is not
taken quickly, says a study by the New Delhi-based Indian Council for Research
on International Economic Relations.There are only 585 rural hospitals compared
to 985 urban hospitals in the country. Out of the 6,39,729 doctors registered
in India, only 67,576 are in
the public sector and the rest either in private sectors or abroad, pointing
towards the severity of the problem.Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health
problem in India.
India
accounts for one-fifth of the global TB incident cases. Each year about 1.8
million people in India
develop TB, of which 0.8 million are infectious cases. It is estimated that
annually around 330,000 Indians die due to TB. [WHO India]Economy under the
siege of Elite HindusMap of India showing the highest concentration of Brahmins
and Hindu extremists known as Hinduvta”]

India Infanticide map: Killing 10 million baby girls before and right after
brith

Amnesty International (AI) 2008 report on issues within India
()India
today allocates lower than one per cent gross domestic product (GDP) to health.
According to United Nations calculations, India’s spending on public health
as a share of GDP is the 18th lowest in the world. 150 million Indians are
blind. 2.13 per cent of the total population (21.9 million) live with
disabilities in India.
Yet, only 34 per cent of the disabled are employed [Census 2001

In India, wealth of 36
families amounts to $ 191 billion, which is one-fourth of India's GDP. In
other words, 35 elite Hindu families own quarter of India's GDP by leaving 85 %
ordinary Hindus as poor!

The dominant group of Hindu nationalists come from the three upper castes (
Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas ) that constitute only 10 per cent of the
total Indian population. But, they claim perhaps 80 % of the jobs in the new
economy, in sectors such as software, biotechnology, and hotel management.

@hayat - @Charles the Hammerhead is right. I live in India. If you are crediting Islam for all good things in India, please prove it is true in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, etc. -- all are Islamic countries. Right?

No iam defending Islam , by the way the majority of Mughal Kings was more liberal than todays liberal, its no the fifgt of Islam or west OR Hindus, its the fight for better futre , above facts shows about India, but far worst facts is also avilable about Pakistan too, Pkaistan religious parties & fantics is the main culprits for alll thsese ills, so my freind fantics are every where, so now this is our term to defuse all thsese folks. so i can work with you, u can work with me & we should both work with other world communty. if u feel happy i can post such data also about Pakistan human idex too lololl take it easy

I'm tired of this merry-go-round world. Jesus, please come SOON.

I think Hayat is correct we need to push for everyone to get rid of there nukes, we as a nation are suffering as the world is no good can come out of a nuclear bomb being dropped, if we are ever going to rise above we have to start a new world one without nukes , we need to let the rest of the world fight there own battles and we need to start working on making america stronger and i mean our economy we need to do something about the jackasses in the white house that keep spending more than we as a nation has, I mean why do we not have a budget and why do we allow our country to be ran into the ground by the people we put in office we need to revamp our goverment and start holding them responsible for the things they do.... what are our children going to do? and there children? we are poisioning the water we drink with the chemicals we put in the ground from drilling oil wells and from herbicides we as a country are on the edge of going broke ... We need to clean up our own back yard and stop worring about all these other countries problems ... let them fight there own wars stop killing our men and women when did we take the joob of being the world police...

What is the sudden obsession with nuclear weapons? We learned from the Cold War that nothing good comes out of using nukes and that they should be restricted to terrorist groups only. Nations with the capacity to use multiple weapons or construct entire caches of them can never use them because if they do we end life on this planet via a nuclear winter.

Once one nation fires one off, another follows suit. Soon Russia gets in on the action and then the US has to join in. Not long after we have hundreds of detonations and the fallout makes large swaths of land uninhabitable and ruins resources. We are already hurting for resources and soon land; do we really need to risk destroying everything of some stupid petty grudges?

World leaders should be required to have an IQ north of 120.

I remember when India and Pakistan conducted their nuclear tests. It was the biggest US intelligence failure under the Clinton administration's noses, and was reported as such all over the newsmedia. We had no idea they had any kind of nuclear weoponization capability at all. And what I find extremely outrageous is that we're praising India for their adherence to the NNPT by testing long range ballistic missiles while we condemn North Korea for testing theirs, or Iran for that matter? It is MAD-NESS at the core. Hell we don't even know what Washington's excuse would be for Pakistan yet, but I guess it was not only under their noses but deaf dumb and blind. The fact is there is a nuclear arms race occurring in the Muslim world and there's nothing we have done or can do to stop it. Now unless the Pentagon draws up plans to invade every one of these countries, secure and confiscate all those nuclear arsenals. Those Muslim countries might realize that nukes won't provide them any security or deterrent effect, they're only making themselves targets for the rest of the nuclear tipped world, ICBM's that are pointed at them right now.

I hope jesus comes soon to take us all home!!! There is no hope , humanity has hit rock bottom and all that is left are the idiots that run this place.America use to be great to live and raise our families in and now it is a living hell that we have to put up with we fought all these wars and now we have lost a big part of we use to be we cant afford to send our kids to college but its funny all the forieners that come to our great land seem to get free housing free college no taxes blah blah blah but could we do the same if we moved to their country I think not.. I do not attend church like I use to but I think its time we need to start getting our affairs in order.... America the great well it use to be ( we cant even use gods) name in our schools, we are not allowed to pray in school ... what happened...

Pakistan and India have a unique opportunity before them. As Hayat has provided quite a bit of useful information about India's poverty and economic status, it would take as much research into Pakistan's economic and state of national poverty. That opportunity would be to have a shared agreement over the Kashmir region, and economic trade agreements. If India is as bad as North Korea pouring all of its resources into its nuclear programs while the rest of its population remains uneducated, living in poverty it continues to maintain an ancient outdated caste system. In spite of India's unique religious visionaries such as Mahatma Ghandi and Mother Theresa it is almost shocking that little has changed on the massive scale in which it needs to change free of a caste system as such where progress can make leaps and bounds in all of the areas above mentioned by Hayat. The same could be said for Pakistan. Both countries are underdeveloped and playing with a nuclear arms race amongst nations that have already for the most part solved and secured a more realistic nuclear deterrent, of which the newest nuclear members-non members are not exactly all that welcome to the nuclear club which brings only increasing uncertainty and disruption to the overall state of the global nuclear security picture that grows ever more complicated. India could solve its humanitarian crisis within ten years if the government of India dedicated itself to that goal. Pakistan could do the same and both countries could each provide and manufacture the commodities both countries need. That is the key ingredient missing in these equations.

If Pakistan and India chose the path of nuclear disarmament they could truly secure their future free of any nuclear threat in the future either between India and Pakistan or any other country. It would also make them far better economic partners to the rest of the world.

Hi eric next time why these two countries battles with each other ? i will tell you in very detail. why they hate each other , there are two main reasons ,i-e , Religon, Resourcses,

but before going to that discussion, see the fallowing please.

Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, believes that while India has several Silicon
Valleys within it, the country also
has three Nigerias
within.

“The Indian private sector is doing extraordinary things and the country is
bursting with energy, yet behind all these is the reality,” Zakaria said alluding
to the rampant poverty that coexists with affluence. That reality, he said, is
that there are still close to 800 million people in India
who live on less than $2 a day despite India being a democracy, which is
its greatest pride.

His remarks came during a keynote address at the Child Relief and You-United States fundraiser May 5 in the presence
of 200-odd guests.

Zakaria said in India,
democracy has not allowed the rule of the majority.

“What you see issue after issue, state after state is that powerful
minorities, farmers, minority interests and landed interests have been able to
capture the political system and extract government benefits for themselves [by
way of] subsidies, etc,” he said.

Noting that Indian democracy is wedded to these powerful minorities, he said
this is not an unfamiliar concept in democracy — in the US they are called special
interests. But he said in India
it has proved deadly because people who do not get represented are the ones who
are powerless. Little wonder, he said, that at the annual United Nations Human
Development Index, India
fares very badly.

“It is a great shame for Indian democracy. The large majority of people have
somehow slipped though the cracks. So you see that India
does worse than Bangladesh,
worse than Cuba, worse than Syria,
on all these measures. It does worse than many other countries that have lower
per capita GDP [gross domestic product] than India has,” Zakaria said.

“It is one of the important things that will make it impossible for India
to continue this extraordinary growth and for this growth to trickle down to
the masses,” he said. Zakaria said there are all kinds of models of economic
policy — from Hong Kong which was totally laissez faire to South Korea which
had lots of tariffs and regulations, to Taiwan which was somewhere in the
middle, to Singapore which was pro-market but had a huge government presence.

“But there were three factors that were in common in all these East Asian
models. First was broad hospitality to markets and trade, investment in
education, particularly for the poorer half of the population, and third was
the investment in health,” Zakaria said. “Those are, so far, lacking in the
Indian case,” he added.

Zakaria said when one looks at India’s great growth story, one has to ask oneself
that if the country does not make significant investments in education and
healthcare — which is essentially the investment in children that CRY is
talking about — will India be able to sustain the growth rate and sustain it in
a way that it spreads to the entire country?

“I have talked about India’s systematic and political
failings. What we have to do in a sense is to take advantage of the great
political strengths that India has — its openness, its democracy, its freedom
and its participation at the civic society sector,” he said. “In other words,
if India’s strength is the society, not the State, if India’s strength is the
micro growth, not the macro growth, if India’s strength is the small
entrepreneur and not the technocrat, then we have to leverage that and use that
as best as we can,” Zakaria said.

Fallowing is the article in Gujarati newspaper.

The article is written in Gujrati. I give below an English
translation of his views as near as possible in his own words. Says Mr. Gandhi:

I believe that if Hindu Society has been able to stand it is because it is
founded on the caste system.

The seeds of swaraj are to be found in the caste system. Different castes are
like different sections of miliary division. Each division is working for the
good of the whole….

A community which can create the caste system must be said to possess unique
power of organization.

Caste has a ready made means for spreading primary education. Each caste can
take the responsibility for the education of the children of the caste. Caste
has a political basis. It can work as an electorate for a representative body.
Caste can perform judicial functions by electing persons to act as judges to
decide disputes among members of the same caste. With castes it is easy to
raise a defense force by requiring each caste to raise a brigade.

I believe that interdining or intermarriage are not necessary for promoting
national unity. That dining together creates friendship is contrary to
experience. If this was true there would have been no war in Europe….
Taking food is as dirty an act as answering the call of nature. The only
difference is that after answering call of nature we get peace while after
eating food we get discomfort. Just as we perform the act of answering the call
of nature in seclusion so also the act of taking food must also be done in
seclusion.

In India
children of brothers do not intermarry. Do they cease to love because they do
not intermarry? Among the Vaishnavas many women are so orthodox that they will
not eat with members of the family nor will they drink water from a common
water pot. Have they no love? The caste system cannot be said to be bad because
it does not allow interdining or intermarriage between different castes.

Caste is another name for control. Caste puts a limit on enjoyment. Caste does
not allow a person to transgress caste limits in pursuit of his enjoyment. That
is the meaning of such caste restrictions as interdining and intermarriage.

To destroy caste system and adopt Western European social system means that
Hindus must give up the principle of hereditary occupation which is the soul of
the caste system. Hereditary principle is an eternal principle. To change it is
to create disorder. I have no use for a Brahmin if I cannot call him a Brahmin
for my life. It will be a chaos if every day a Brahmin is to be changed into a
Shudra and a Shudra is to be changed into a Brahmin.

The caste system is a natural order of society. In India it has been given a religious
coating. Other countries not having understood the utility of the caste system,
it existed only in a loose condition and consequently those countries have not
derived from caste system the same degree of advantage which India has derived. These being my
views I am opposed to all those who are out to destroy the caste system.

Boy that Paki missile has a pretty paint job...

Earlier pasted some long posts have 10% facts but hugely exaggerated, but mostly utter lies with outdated/fudged figures.

There are other Not so great independent reports written on China & their proxy province/state. Hope all should read those.

But have to give a clarification to what is often seen in foreign press.

Where are we saying India is aiming to be superpower?. It is all in foreign press. they deduce, india’s aim is to be super power interpreting some of its actions.

Sorry guys we are not in race to become super power. Don’t want to and can’t afford to. We Indians very well know our limitations. Ask the common man you find in street - will anyone say India is emerging super power. Most probably you will mocked in India, if you say this to Indians. So No thanks.

May be Chinese currency will take the place of present US Dollar, in the long run. We all know the China's holdings of US debt & US seems to have no plans to address the issue.

Only Chinese say they are going to be super power going past US. To be fair to them they are well on course and most probably by 2035 they will be, provided they don’t do some mad adventure showing with their military.

Have to admit as any other country, India also have tremendously benefited from Chinese rise. But saying that we can’t cede territory, to China as Pakistan does.

This is another one that the nation should be proud of and now they can protect themselves just like India, Israel, U.S.A. or other nations.