That's good. Which means Pakistan was ahead of China too till the 1990s I guess because the Indian economy and Chinese economy were pretty much the same size till the Rajiv Gandhi era in the mid 1980s
GDP measure for developing (non-integrated) economies during cold war is extremely overrated and flawed.
There was barely any trade (certainly little with open capital account) going on....compared to say the trade between developed countries and their trade with highly resource-surplus countries.
Thus the USD exchange rate with the currencies used by developing countries was extremely limited in scope to extrapolate.
It was mostly related to aid intensity from the USD providers....explaining several artificial bumps (with little to no impact on the populace underlying dev) found in the era (that similarly receded as that situation changed post cold war).
This only improved during post cold war era as such economies opened up their current and capital account controls....and had the institutions and cultivated and pragmatic brainpower to absorb and deploy this well.
That is how we now see the actual realisation of the institution, HR and their combined economic potential of such countries.
This is also why GDP (nominal) remains well behind in effective quality (both as an economic or development measure) compared to PPP and constant GDP dollars etc.
India in the region certainly did better in cold war w.r.t Education, Health, HR and institutional parameters that allowed it to capture lot more during the reform period (by abandoning dogmatic socialist principles) that started in 90s. But India obviously could have done far better too globally speaking ,it has several unique issues it did not address well that remains ongoing process.
But overall HDI for example can be compared for a better take on this during this era (a far better measure than cold war GDP). India always did better compared to Pakistan and has certainly now harnessed that underlying development better too.
It is why there is now a 15 year lead on such things as infant mortality rate. It is why even the most impoverished states of India have better demographic indicators (TFR, life expectancy, literacy rate) than any place in Pakistan.
India also has plenty of successes to learn from within itself (state-wise) in various areas, to deploy in lagging states.
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So trumping up some cold war numbers is much like doing the same for North Korea....which enjoyed (by extensive aid given by USSR and its far greater inheritance of heavy industry from the Japanese) considerable "lead" over its Southern peer for majority of the cold war (this would only reverse in the 80s and then expand massively in the 90s).
One can also question (on similar themes asserted in this thread) why North Korea has not been resolved given its population differential with South Korea and Japan (and the US for that matter). Are North Koreans really that much more militaristically potent (say 10:1 often claimed by our neighbour) compared to South Korea+Japan+US...or is it case of geopolitical umbrella-protection + aid-intensity + deterrence proliferation (from those that have surplus of these in any era) that helps/guarantees the political survival?
Let us not forget that there is no somewhat contained crux of issue like Kashmir between the two koreas, both claim the other in their entirety and do not recognise each others basic political existence even.
Thus hermit states that latch onto becoming full client states + assured nuclear umbrella and then have nuclear proliferated transfer to them by the same patron have certain things in common.....as do ones that integrate (with as many other countries, esp developed markets) and broaden their economic girth long term.
No one is talking about "disintegration" of such hermit states and similar, that is not something that can be predicted (or even desired).....and in fact would very likely be dangerous proposition while nuclear weapons remain the apex of deterrence technology.
Actual countries that dont want to atrophy or incline towards hermithood (or extreme mono-patron reliance for basic sustenance) simply take the route of growing and enriching themselves soundly while cultivating a good spread of options for the long term, to have the next generation of technologies to make the earlier ones redundant.
So in the long term, neighbourhood mistakes done by too much weakness+poverty can be corrected when and if that situation should arise.
If the threat wants to stay as weak and poor as possible to cling onto whatever psychology and reliance, they only seal their fate even more.
We are at 7k and marching quickly to 10k patents granted globally per year (an actual physical measure that can be vetted w.r.t where we are coming from and going to in regards to long term knowledge economy foundations).
I don't need to tell you if you divide that by 6, should be an approx reference for another population 6 times less than ours...to be doing "about the same".
The fact that place went from "34" to less than 20 in the most recent year (and has always stagnated around this number for a very long time now) can show you the differential in its final intellectual deployment for actual economic growth compared to what any apologist might claim or deflect to.
It is clearly not 6 times less, or even 20 times less or even 100 times less.
It is more like 350 times less....essentially Pakistan is granted patents internationally 60 times less
per capita than India.
It is further evidenced by market capitalisation and so on...in fact any actual real number that concretely governs investment and economic potential.
But then again thanks to its elitists psychology (of utter mismanaged extremist-islamist-militarism and special degree of corruption that grows from that) causing the level of sustained long term hidden inflation (and only 0.000001% of their "forum" "affluent" population even reads the SBP papers to even know about this, much less try understand it), it is stuck with savings per capita somewhere between Chad and Somalia....and a sustained decade of that in rearview as has happened sets the basic growth potential for a decade or two naturally.
So which one is worse (savings/investment or the intellect/knowledge intensity) is really matter of chicken and the egg now.
Insular sustained low-development hermithood (shielded by nuclear weapons as long as they remain frontier deterrence) is nearly guaranteed for first half of this century at least.
That window is effectively governed only by proven supplanting of next generation technologies (that renders current nuclear weapons and their delivery systems obsolete)....that only the most powerful and richest can do...that all takes actual economic girth and knowledge to take shape in sufficient intensity in the largest populations.
The divergence on this between these two will only grow.
It is why international institutions (and several of their own economists) rubbished even their claimed low growth rate of 4%. You just cannot have any actual meaningful growth as long as your investment+savings+gross capital formation stay in the very low % of GDP.
i.e There are a number of crucial things hard baked in now (and have high effect on actual REAL growth) that will take literal decades to undo if they start right now....but they are not starting is the point.
Hence the continued loan cycle dependence and even the Chinese banks now refusing to renegotiate any of the earlier terms agreed upon for those loans. Then the convenient excuse to cue "hidden economy" or whatever conspiracy theory.
If they have doubled down on what they did in 1971, to let that psychology sink in deeply...everything else is merely a small footnote to that now. The Zia-slamism was pretty much inevitable acceleration of it....and now the establishment cannot backtrack (or even be seen to) and bring their cushy existence into any kind of challenge.
Compare all that with North Korea again (past the shared "umbrella" patron entity of both, though one that refuses to become an actual market for even their limited wares) .....just the insularity degree and (type of fundamentalist psyche) context is somewhat different.
We can see how this evolves this decade too. You don't change the psychology of your most powerful, you just dig further into the hole you are in....the regular laypeople just end up suffering the relative effects even more.
