This topic comes up kind of frequently and boringly now (IMO)....and the typical circular repeating predictable patterns are given by the various proponents of each side.
The same details and instances come up each time.
Here's the thing, India faced the ravage of the most degrading economic-sapping colonisation known to mankind (by total scale and opportunity cost).
It was a frightfully poor country at independence (and well up to the new millenium).
It literally beggar's belief what kind of bad shape it was in... in the mid 20th century.
Then it picked and stuck to a economic model with deep flaws far past expiry date, exacerbating what it had inherited (w.r.t opportunity cost, though the worst things like drought starvation cycles and food aid dependency were slowly rectified)
It was in
no position to bring to bear its large population into conventional forces....compared to growing food + surviving + saving for rainy day to help with next tier activity downroad.
It was never a country that will tolerate people-are-expendable escapades like Mao did with his human population waves past the Yalu river (due to being constrained by similar agrarian + low industrial + ravaged existence inherited in that case too...but figuring fostering stronger relations with Stalin was more important).
Then Mao thanked the population that sent these waves a decade later with govt-sanctioned totalitarian mass-starvation and internal genocide.
"Better for half the people to die so the rest can eat" - Mao
In India (despite all our faults and serious issues of which there are many) there is ethos of respecting human life...thus a democratic govt has to inevitably respect and base itself on that standard....unlike a despot removed and insulated from it (or the secondary tier of it in some junta or khaki cabal puppetmasters etc...)
So of course our military was never going to be backed by the industrial aptitude/intensity others of the time took for granted. The Indian army under British rule was not one designed for the 20th century relevance either.
1950 - 1980...There was literally next to nothing to export to earn foreign exchange to then buy military goodies at scale.
Abiding commitment to being non-aligned as possible, also meant no huge influx of military aid/loans/umbrellas.
So why would India have any kind of military superiority by way of its population in the cold war pre-nuclear breakout in region?
It designed its military policy to safeguard its borders, and grow and better the situation in far higher priority areas....so you know, there wasnt mass starvation and things like that. As much as the congress administrations got wrong....they operated on an overall good faith w.r.t Indian national priority long term.
That is it....it never was guided by we are X times the size of another thus we need to be X times powerful militarily (at whatever long term cost).
If Pakistan decided to start 3 wars (breaking the standstill agreement with kingdom of kashmir, op gibraltar and then massive scale of atrocities in its eastern wing prompting refugee exodus)...and then come with the same ole "you never got lahore! haha!" as though that is some kind of vindication...that is on Pakistan to do...and for others to be bemused by I suppose.
We on the other hand are content we do not have our name next to the biggest surrender since WW2....and that we persevere with border-wise what we formed with. That is more than sufficient for our cold war era.
The fact haji pir pass was given back in 1965 and simla agreement was done as it was done in 1971, should be ample proof of that.
Anyway now its time for the current era to gather more pace and have a better idea of the next era after it...rather than being stuck like the cold war one relatively was.
It is quite simple....south korea does its thing too (having picked a rational approach) and runs the clock better compared to its northern peer....though they have an existential issue of mutual non-recognition....with their respective capital cities falling to each other in their massive 1st war (of scale just not seen in 20th century south asia).
At time and place that is relevant, it (South Korea) will settle it with the economic+military disparity it has achieved at that point...and simply chart the course in the interim....while the other atrophies and double/triples down on the irrational brittle existence.
India will similarly work to get its total savings per year from 1 trillion to 2 trillion USD (given what this means to basic investment and capital formation) ASAP now. It took way too long to get it double from ~ 500 billion in 2009 and tripled from ~ 300 billion in 2005.
That 300 billion is twice as good per capita than Pakistan is now (15 billion in 2019).
Reads very similar to demographics time-lag between the two too (fertility rate, infant mortality rate etc)...yet another thing Pakistan decides to not focus on working on the pace needed.
Thus we simply have to be in a position to best harness upcoming developments so the next era of deterrence, offence and super-weapons (that make say nuclear weapons obsolete) are well within our grasp....without being dependent on foreign provider for it.
Thus everything military based must be well grounded in our industrial, economic and research capacity too.....we do not plan on having our forex reserves and yearly savings dwindle to something worse than a banana republic in central africa.
We do not want wild swings of what our trade deficit and current account ratio pressures are to our forex.....to wild numbers that register in the three digits % of forex :
A KUH-1 Surion helicopter hovers during the U.S.-South Korea joint military exercise at the Seungjin firing drill ground on Aug. 28, 2015, in Pocheon, South Korea. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images) South Korea’s arms procurement agency plans to replace its fleet of Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk...
defencehub.live
The local missile/radar/sensor/ship etc etc developments monthly (sometimes more frequently) increase at pace and depth each year for a reason.
Simply put, the buffer of rational macro-economic scope gives the base and assured confidence for it.
When we launch a satellite for brazil, it is because we have applied a commited persistence to that capability, rather than be happy with what hot-air brochures generals provide when they feel up to it, when they even spare a little time beyond their palatial mansions and side-hustles (Bajwa Pizza USA etc).
We want to get our patent grants internationally from 5000 or so it is now to 10,000....and then 20,000.
We want our market cap to get well past the 3 trillion USD it is headed to.
We want our forex reserve to stay above 500 billion USD, and hopefully get to a trillion if it makes sense for the time.
Sometimes you got to divide these not by 7 (like the earlier population argument used would suggest), not by 10...not by 20...but sometimes as much as 50 or 100 or even more than that to get to the north-korea attitude equivalent in the region.
Or the population argument suddenly doesnt apply here? Like it strangely doesn't apply for the voids of certain things in "newly named" land between Persia and Bharat.
Having single digits in these (forex bn, int. patents granted, savings rate, tax base) are for countries with their elitists stuck in certain way of thinking...and those elitists too arrogant and/or stupid to correct it.
FATF costs to economy estimated at nearly 40 billion (not including opportunity cost):
FAFT to keep South Asian economy's status despite 'significant progress'
asia.nikkei.com
Essentially that could have been 40 billion (much more than that with opportunity cost) to shore up the country's forex level, or taxable income, or 40 billion less loan pressure or something in the GDP that could have helped.
But sure lets larp about lahore not taken in whatever removed time period to feel better....when India was in even worse state than this back then.
We can see if any of that supposed argument helps Pakistan going forward....or help convince anyone else of Pakistan's past asserted "exceptionalism". As though Taiwan does this against an opponent 100 times its size?
It certainly did not help it (even way back then) in Dhaka when it loudly proclaimed 10:1 superiority man for man.
It certainly did not help it when it projected 1000 year war....and lasted just 2 weeks.
The cost to the Indian economy (as bad shape as it already was) back in that period for just Dhaka result was felt deeply and for extended time...heck Indian economy had not even recovered from the 1965 war.
Food and fuel severe rationing occured for quite many years, experienced by my elder family back then (in completely different part of country, as far away from northern borders as possible pretty much).
Possibly the best govt/leader (at state level) India has ever seen.... lost election because of effects of (earlier) 1965 war on rice supply in my state (and the big bold electioneering shenanigans this opened up for a worthless local party)
In 1971 it needed that scale of human deluge, that scale of atrocity....that scale of those costs to gather muster to plan, strive and achieve that result...even with its costs.
It was ample karma for what caused it not to mention how it was justified by its perpetrators (takfiri and whatever else it took).
Heck, forming a better commensurate doctrine (with better organization + development. of non-infantry divisions) only started in the 80s to begin with under Generals like Sundarji...and could only be really backed up by fiscal resource more recently.
Thus some lahore or kashmir argument with our significant lack of military capability (especially past infantry) in esp first half of cold war (and second half too, but nukes started to enter picture) is severely lacking at best.
We simply were never in the business of forming some juggernaut military (proportionate to population) when we could barely eat....and we didn't want some human-wave mao thing either, nor did we have some krupp steel 3rd reich economy....in all of these lives being just statistical units to be measured and used up for despotic purpose.
The chinese (post mao) realised this folly too over time and adjusted accordingly....leading to them not being able to get to Hanoi in 1979, need I remind you of Vietnams size relative to them?....That war had its own fiscal burden on China too.
Thus the extreme complexes (exceptionalism or lack of as being some black and white, be all end all ....by some very narrow cherrypicked rational/context for it) are more for stalin/mao totalitarianism...or mard-e-momin complex, or juche complex elitist-drivel govts combined with populations with little to no recourse to challenge it.
The current sustained relative scale of that attitude/psyche in the region (and world at large) can be seen for yourself.
It matters to pay attention to the relevant scale and context needed....otherwise you do not rise to that scale even later, having long convinced yourself of the little well's sufficiency.
@VCheng @Paro @crixus @Zapper @Raptor @kaykay @Milspec @Jackdaws et al.
Would like to see if
@Joe Shearer has any comment too.
