However, total GDP isn’t the right comparison. More populous economies will usually produce more output. GDP per capita is the correct metric to consider. Until 2009, India was poorer than Pakistan on a per capita basis. India truly became richer than Pakistan after 2009 and since then it hasn’t looked back. If trends continue for a decade, India will be more than twice as rich as Pakistan soon.
Pakistan’s GDP is about $400 billion while India’s is around $4 trillion. Since the ratio of their economies has stayed roughly constant for decades, their nominal growth rates should be similar from the 1960s onwards.
So why has India pulled ahead in GDP per capita? The reason is simple. Pakistan’s high fertility has driven population growth faster than India’s. In 1952 Pakistan had about one-tenth of India’s population; by 2025 it had grown to nearly one-seventh.
The other explanation why Pakistan finds it easier to maintain the status quo is that it is located in a geopolitically sweet spot. It can extract geopolitical rents from the US. It’s location close to Afghanistan is strategically important and the US has used many Pakistani airbase.
Thanks 0M for the article.
This reminds me of the race between the hare (Pakistan) and tortoise (India). We all know what happened, the hare got cocky and went on a nap while the tortoise steamed ahead at tortoise velocity.
We are currently at the point where the hare is napping. When it wakes up, it will win.
Only difference is that in the fable, there was a finish line, but there is no finish line in the real world.
is 8% annual growth; tortoise velocity?
If you sleep deep enough, for long enough, with no vital signs or indication of stirring, there’s another word for that.
Droll
oh we got Vital Signs, that’s for sure
which of these dudes ended up on the wrong end of a blasphemy allegation?
Pakistan’s economic fortunes are not unlike their cricket – somewhere a couple of generations ago, they were half-decent. But now they’re mostly shambolic, with no way out in sight.
Outside India, cricket is a dying sport, so it does not matter.
However an economy can turn around in less than 5 years. The smaller and more authoritarian a country, the faster the potential of a turnaround. As outlined in the data above, the discrepancy between India and Pakistan in per capita is largely because of India’s fertility falling off a cliff while Pakistan’s continuing at a rapid late 20th century pace. The average age of a Pakistani is 21 years (barely productive) while the median age of an Indian is approaching 30 and will fast increase.
The economic difference is deceiving.. India has more billionaires and more coastal regions (that are an impetus of economic growth in a globalized world), while Pakstan’s only coastal city Karachi has been marred by political problems for the last 4 decades. However things can change fast.
Outside Cricket, Pakistan has no real economically significant internationally competitive sport. Cricket I would say has expanded in the recent world cups beyond its traditional home of Indian subcontinent and Australia, England and West Indies. We saw for the first time nations like Nepal giving England a hard time. The Irish for their part played rather well and the Namibians were an unexpectedly decent team as well. In a couple years the Iceland team might also be at the levels of international competition. We are on the precipice of making Indian cricketing prosperity into a global cricketing engine.
That would’ve been true had Pakistan had the necessary prerequisites to make that transition possible. Vast portion of its land mass is devastated by constant warfare and tumult. Most of its males remains poorly educated and around 30-40% are completely illiterate, such a population is only a liability and never an asset. Pakistan currently ranks 1 in the global terrorism index, even to get to a point where a economic upswing is possible would require decade or more of internal conflict.
None of those things individually are a deal breaker and can be overcome. However, looking at it all at once only leads up to the conclusion that Pakistan will stagnate at what is referred to colloquially as the ‘Hindu rate of growth’ (2-4%) where its state apparatus is engaged in constant crisis management making economic growth not a real priority.
A far greater tragedy is field hockey where Pakistan, a top notch side, has completely collapsed. Sport in Pakistan is mirroring the state of the country. Pakistan is in secular decline. There is no evidence of any will to change course.
I think one shouldn’t be too pessimistic.. Pakistan has tremendous state capacity and has cleverly positioned itself the last few years
I think Q gets it wrong with a quick about turn but so does the other side through endless extrapolation. Somewhere in the middle.
A relative slow decline between India & Pakistan.. the Persian Gulflets *really* need Pakistan..
I am not questioning its ability to survive or remain relevant in some capacity. I question its ability to ever be a “normal” state.
Pakistan’s state capacity is misdirected to solving problems it creates and maintains.
Army creates problems that it helps mitigate to justify its existence.
Pakistan is the best example of the Cobra effect.
Most countries do not play any significantly recognized competitive international sport. They are fine. Outside of cricket, India does not play anything significant either. So I don’t see the point of this conversation or what it relates to.
Cricket is dying everywhere oustide India/England/Australia. Your examples about new countries are all in T20.. where minnows have a better chance to pull off flukes. Under the new revenue sharing scheme, they will never get any significant funding to become good enough to be a test playing nation. Only 3 countries have been awarded test status in the last 25 years, (Ireland, Afghanistan and Bangladesh) And they are all not that good. Bangladesh has finally started to beat big teams in the last 5 years, but any cricket watcher knows they have underwhelmed in these 25 years.. Meanwhile, Pakistan, West Indies, Srilanka and South Africa have declined, possibly because interest in cricket has declined in these nations.
“economy can turn around in less than 5 years. The smaller and more authoritarian a country, the faster the potential of a turnaround.”
Agree with this bit. But Pakistanis can’t stick to one plan: pick something and see it through, don’t flip-flop.
Land reforms, and democracy has been discussed to death. So some new fuel for thought : Pakistan is like Burma in some bad ways. China backed, Junta rule, Imran v Suu-Kyi, drugs, smuggling… One major ethnicity, religious persecution, ~55% Punjabi, ~65% Bamar, at odds with almost everyone else within the country. All Myanmmar needs is a war with Bangladesh.
Endoreic-like or self-contained river basin states, where a single massive river system serves as the country’s central spine and flows almost entirely within its modern political borders.
Pakistan is not investing in education. Only it’s military. In the end education and infrastructure create growth, military spending only keeps the country together but can’t create the growth needed to fund the spending. This is the real difference. Only way out. Make peace with its neighbors (India and Afghanistan) and redirect the resources towards its human capital.
The most direct route to prosperity of Pakistan is in utter submission to India. But Pakistan is the fortress of Islam not the bazaar of Islam.
Pakistani Mojahirs will fuel the fire of hatred till they run out of babies. India baiting is their whole thing. One way is removing dual citizenship and property ownership for non citizens in Pakistan. Land reforms is another.
I wrote a comment on how Chabahar was doing far better than Gwadar before the war and Afghan transit trade is now overwhelmingly through Iran and Central Asia. A rail line from Chabahar to Zahedan will be operational in June 2027. This is impressive work, they are serious about making Afghanistan their vassal again and Pakistan is asleep at the wheels, making a mistake, letting Kabul slip away like the Mughals, Mauryas, Kushans, Hindu Shahis, … before them. History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes.
What we are seeing play out in Afghanistan is a match up between the Punjabi-Mojahir rump of Mughal+British India and Iran. Iranians will crush Pakistanis like they historically have, with superior planning and execution, if the game does not devolve to religious frenzy.
It is in Pakistan’s interest to splinter Afghanistan. It is too big to swallow whole. One bite at a time…
So when will you go back to Pakistan to rouse it from its slumber?
Touche Captain Sahib..
Non-Resident Pakistanis should focus on creating schools for the poor to get liberal education (like missionaries did in Pre independence South India). Madrassas won’t do.
Pakistan has a visible liberal class with considerable freedom of speech but I think this is allowed because they are a tiny minority of no consequence to the establishment. Critical mass of aspirational class is needed to turn Pakistan around. Prosperity of South Asia is dependent on this
This November
Best of luck and hope your efforts bring fruit and you dont end up regretting it.
Hare dies at age 10, race over, that is the finish line in the real world. Turtle lives happily ever after to 250 years, the next generation of hares calls Turtle daddy.
If Pakistan has an advantage its that they can concentrate their investments on essentially one transport corridor from Rawalpindi to Karachi, and also focus on the development of that latter port exclusively. As far as India is concerned, Individual states are surging ahead and have higher GDP than Pakistan, like TN, or nearly so like Karnataka. Its not far-fetched to imagine that they surpass Thailand in the next decade, all with the enormous fiscal handicaps of subsidizing other states. A bright spot for India is also seeing UP turning the corner and sustaining impressive growth, I think it will be a huge morale boost to the gangetic belt.
Yes TN is a rich state. South (Dravidian) India is a different India altogether ..
What’s incredible is that TN was at the rock bottom of all Indian states in terms of poverty rate in the 1950s and 60s (worse than UP and Bihar). Its GDP per capita was middle of the pack, but there was vast landlessness and abject destitution for nearly half the population. Not only have they shot up to the top 3 with regard to GDP per capita, their poverty rates are significantly lower than their peers at the top, Karnataka and Telangana.
One transport corridor is already the reality. Karachi ports (Karachi and Qasim) handle 95% of all external trade of Pakistan. Rail and road both have the same alignments: the main artery going Karachi to Rawalpindi, and a second one that runs parallel to the main line to Dera Gazi Khan and then breaks off to the west, along Indus, to Peshawar.
Karachi ports have a capacity to handle 200 Million Tonnes (MT), they do 102.44 MT. Gwadar, that Pakistanis can’t stop yapping about, has a built capacity of 13 MT and currently does 0.8 MT per year, a 6% utilization rate.
BB, you need to tone down the anti-Pakistan animus.
“Yapping” is a clear signature across all of your many avatars..
I am not BB. I cannot seem to convince you otherwise, so will not be correcting you again.
Where was the animus in this comment?
“Yapping away” is the sort of reference that is very BB. He has a very particular anti-Pakistani animus that no one else shared.
It’s subtle but it’s there.
Afghanistan-Pakistan trade and transit trade is plunging, only about ~5% of Afghan transit trade now passing through Pakistan compared to 60-70% historically. Afghanistan is increasingly moving towards Iran and Central Asia for it’s trade. Pakistan is shooting itself in the foot here. Guesstimates are mutually inconsistent, but probably annual losses to Pakistan are in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Yapping is appropriate because despite all the gateway to Central Asia and ‘geo’ in geopolitics, Chabahar handles ~10X the cargo that Gwadar handles, even with a smaller built capacity. Pakistanis struggle to execute.
How is a statement of fact anti-Pakistan? Oh right, a denial of facts is indeed the foundation of the Muslim Zion.
“Yapping” is the sort of language, BB would use..