Is Pakistan more stable than India?

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I'm a foreigner who has a limited knowledge of South Asia and there's no shame in admitting this. India in particular is sometimes a black box to me and very hard to understand.

But from my point of view, Pakistan - despite everything that goes wrong in the country - seems to be more mature. The Pakistani statehood appears to be more stable and in some ways even more deep-rooted and ingrained than India's.

Why is that so? Or, perhaps, my perception of India is simply faulty.
 

Deliorman

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With what exactly Pakistani statehood looks more mature and with stronger roots than that of India? Do they have better economy or education and science than India? Or maybe whole regions of the country are not turned into paradises of lawlessness and terror?

Both India and Pakistan are still pretty much Third world countries yet India in my opinion has a much bigger potential and will actually one day be a big global power in all fields.
 

Nilgiri

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I'm a foreigner who has a limited knowledge of South Asia and there's no shame in admitting this. India in particular is sometimes a black box to me and very hard to understand.

But from my point of view, Pakistan - despite everything that goes wrong in the country - seems to be more mature. The Pakistani statehood appears to be more stable and in some ways even more deep-rooted and ingrained than India's.

Why is that so? Or, perhaps, my perception of India is simply faulty.

Like you would have to explain what are your metrics of stability perception....

Do they include things like:

Inherited political borders since modern formation and aegis? (i.e changes regarding this and why)

Involvement in largest miltary surrenders since WW2

Perpetration of outright genocides regarding above 2

Military coups

Institutional capacity and development

Number of peaceful transitions of govt achieved

Pluralistic media and society discourse

Foreign Loan cycles and bailouts

Savings rate in the single digit percentage of GDP, meaning no breakout economically

Constant major foreign patron need due to combination of above reasons

Dwindled, near non existent foreign reserves relative to GDP and population

Drone strikes on border areas, large scale casualties from military conflict in these areas

Hosting Osama Bin Laden "unknowingly"....getting a raid from superpower/patron regarding this because it didn't trust your establishment, even though earmarked as "Major non nato ally".

etc etc...

=====

Or we can look at indices like the fragility index:


and analyse/debate the components there.

I mean someone can just as easily say they perceive Iraq or Syria to be more stable than Turkey (going by a similar neighbourhood context)....but again its just their perception right? It would require explanation to back up.
 

Saiyan0321

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I mean someone can just as easily say they perceive Iraq or Syria to be more stable than Turkey (going by a similar neighbourhood context)....but again its just their perception right? It would require explanation to back u
Surrenders? i only remember one nilgiri. So Harsh on poor Pakistan :p and besides we can all take in every single negative of a country and display it as a sign of instability. I could do it with India also however that is not a sign of stability or instability.
What is stability? Is it secure territorial integrity? Then i would say that India and Pakistan are even more 'Stable' than the UK which is repeatedly undergoing Scotland independence votes. Is the UK unstable since it went from half of the world to an Island divided in a century? Absolutely not. Is religious unity a sign of stability? then what happens when one region of the country has religious unity but the other does not? Does that mean half the country is stable and half isnt? or shall we condemn the other half and declare the country unstable?

OP my friend, Terms like Stability or failed state are mere terms. These are deceiving concepts that display nothing and tell no story but our perceptive story. For example an Afghan may argue that it more stable than any nation in the world for since 1930s it has been embroiled in one Civil war to the other and nations that faced 10% of such broke down. An Afghan that it is far more stable than India or Pakistan since despite all that, its territorial integrity exists. A man from Iraq would declare the same and openly declare that it is far more stable than Iran or China that are fighting multiple ethnic and religiuous infightings yet Iraw which lost central authority and became an open region, was able to pick its pieces together, most notably being the kurdish region.

Failed states, stable states are only titles based on our perception. I can argue that Pakistan is very stable since it has been able to survive all that nilgiri pointed out and has survived the worst war in its history, Nilgiri can argue that India is very stable since despite its multi-ethnic nature and religious infighting, the state of India is under no threat. We can all pick up stability and we can all pick up instability.

If you were to ask me, gun to the head, what is a stable state, then i would answer the state which can provide protection, welfare, food, education, equality, opportunity to its people, that is a stable state and it can be for a small amount of period or for a long period for stability is not some badge we can give but a period of prosperity that one gets and that period can be both long or short. So, gun to the head, when a state does all that for whatever period it can, then it is stable, whether that state is democratic or monarch or sultanate is irrelevant.
 

Nilgiri

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Surrenders? i only remember one nilgiri. So Harsh on poor Pakistan :p and besides we can all take in every single negative of a country and display it as a sign of instability. I could do it with India also however that is not a sign of stability or instability.

I am harsh because there is bunch of "guests" watching always...and reporting back somewhere else.

Given what these types inflicted on me ....repeatedly and habitually without a 2nd thought ....when they had the one way opportunity simply by my interest to engage with Pakistanis... (and borne out merely by their troglodyte instincts and emotions)...I might as well give them full due resolution on what I have always thought about their specific control-freak ilk and thinking (since they seem so obsessed with what I say all along and what friends I make or who or what I am)

Goes for all of that sort... be they a pesky buzzard, nagging aunty, claimed agnostic, cordon-bleu font "higher ups"...or whatever rabble rousing general pitchfork mob with entrenched inferiority, superiority and sugar-daddy "patrons be preserved at all and any cost to others" complexes among others.

They ought to show themselves and step into the ring on equal terms, heck I will give them advantage...rather than be faceless guests in audience. I feel I am owed at least that...but they won't.

It all reflects on certain anti-intellectual, anti-logical psychology in the end present in large proportions among Pakistan's elitists (esp those with actionable reins of power)....governing this whole stability and instability thing in the end (IMO). It has been grown, cultivated and doubled down and tripled down upon.

There that edifice stands looking like a diamond to all those sufficiently gaslit...but looking something else carbon-based altogether to those not gaslit.

With time more and more people are brutally shown the above divide and just what degree of chasm it is in the end, leading to the very establishment of this forum for reasons you already know, governing one of the most "allied" of allies ironically.

Faithful iron-clad Allies that cannot even be pinked you see...but left in some "all is ok" purgatory to assuage greater ego. Outright pinking is for a pagan (or similar easy inferior scapegoat) like me....the very same complex of the 10:1 continuing to be played out in fantasy vs reality as it has before (and amnesia or excuse inevitably applied). Differential treatment is the very hallmark of instability.

Just the other day an Iranian buddy of mine got talking with me about the pursuit of shatranj in the modern era, given its a shared historical heritage of the elder regional civilisations (of which Pakistan definitely has its stake in)....and the strength and number of our GMs today. We wondered why Pakistan is a void of GM's....and how and why this extends to other pursuits. Why does the typical Pakistani elitist excuse come up too?

My conclusion on that is there is simply too much mental energy expended among its top 1% or whatever top X% on identity and ideology issues deep down.... that are settled matters for societies more comfortable in their own skin and own history...root psychological "stability" you can call it.

Thus Pakistan simply does not get the rational pursuits of such energy prioritised and deployed for its own betterment. This all inevitably cocoons and entrenches as anti-intellectualism...among other things (When actioned out and called out).

Merely stating one is the 1st muslim nobel laureate (in such a discipline as physics) attracts a grave defacement from the takfiri mob...that too precisely after one as great as that... is under it and cannot defend his identity.

This severe anti-intellectualism follows his worthy student doggedly, when he voices his opinion in newspaper columns persistently and consistently on what ails his beloved country (the half that remains, in the name of stability).

The same takfiri thinking that ripped away half the country earlier too to begin with....can rice eating fish eating gangu delta folks, unwilling to compromise on their underlying "hindu" language and "hindu" customs.... ever really be a proper muslim?...or need sermons and one-way wealth extraction by the asserted proper "Urdu with the right islamic script" piety folks?

What do? You call this stable?

This psyche extends to so many things I have already talked about and simply I don't want to continue...my interest regarding those w.r.t Pakistan has long waned and will not recover....the earlier experience just being one of many things helping to establish that (for that I do thank that place).

Let me be clear, none of this reflects on the Pakistani populace at large in some absolute way, not even close. Much like my own 1.4 billion Indians, I will never meet 99.9999999%+ of Pakistanis to form opinion on that. Sample some slice of them, there are say social media street scenes of regular folks, and they are by and large like regular folks world over in the end.

They after all didn't get together and organise, plan and execute a terror attack on Bombay now did they (that too under the most likely path to peace + resolution thinking PM India had at that time)...that was a specific group of people that bear out only some correlation on the larger country. Same goes for every country in the end in that the buffer I extend to all is the same by default.

But now as an example of that action by those few, you are simply never going to get another Indian PM like that again w.r.t Pakistan. It is full on Indira Gandhi mode (at a minimum) from now on....as that stiffness in spine is apparently the only recourse Pakistan establishment seems to understand.

It's same reason major ally US did not trust Pakistan establishment on the OBL raid. This speaks to the perceived stability of the upper echelon in the end.

Hence I only judge the visible manifestation as I see it of the elitists that have the most power...to exert on others and on their own people.

I have been lucky to meet and know some good Pakistanis that buck the trend (some considerably so) of those elitists and narratives and I would count you among that number.

It will be such people as that, which offer genuine stability of the best kind to Pakistan should they be allowed to occupy the mantle in sufficient number and strength.

But that is matter of being done rather than ignored endlessly or talked about and yawned about endlessly.

I am tired of theoretical and projected semantics in light of the backdrop of results and reality.

Such was an idle curiosity at best to test the waters, they have been found cold, murky and unwelcoming (overall) in Pakistan elitist case and have run their vain course several times over.

With countries/societies where the situation is far more tempered and fair in the basic handling and arbitration of free thought and discourse (from whichever friend or foe), I ultimately judge those to also be more stable too...along with my sustained interest there.

@VCheng @T-123456 @Joe Shearer


What is stability? Is it secure territorial integrity? Then i would say that India and Pakistan are even more 'Stable' than the UK which is repeatedly undergoing Scotland independence votes. Is the UK unstable since it went from half of the world to an Island divided in a century? Absolutely not. Is religious unity a sign of stability? then what happens when one region of the country has religious unity but the other does not? Does that mean half the country is stable and half isnt? or shall we condemn the other half and declare the country unstable?

We can use the fragility index or similar as starting reference on its components. UK is very much different given its constitution (regd its formation) is different. This is fundamentally why they let Ireland leave the union too and were also willing to let Northern Ireland leave too (if the northern ireland parliament voted for it, which they didnt).

It would be different if UK was the original reference for the country at large....it isn't...its a country of earlier countries in union. It is very unique situation.

OP my friend, Terms like Stability or failed state are mere terms. These are deceiving concepts that display nothing and tell no story but our perceptive story. For example an Afghan may argue that it more stable than any nation in the world for since 1930s it has been embroiled in one Civil war to the other and nations that faced 10% of such broke down. An Afghan that it is far more stable than India or Pakistan since despite all that, its territorial integrity exists. A man from Iraq would declare the same and openly declare that it is far more stable than Iran or China that are fighting multiple ethnic and religiuous infightings yet Iraw which lost central authority and became an open region, was able to pick its pieces together, most notably being the kurdish region.
No one (reasonable) is going to go all in on one component of stability. Hence the need for multi-component index and how you prioritise and debate those.


Failed states, stable states are only titles based on our perception. I can argue that Pakistan is very stable since it has been able to survive all that nilgiri pointed out and has survived the worst war in its history, Nilgiri can argue that India is very stable since despite its multi-ethnic nature and religious infighting, the state of India is under no threat. We can all pick up stability and we can all pick up instability.

Hence the need for debate on what are the components of stability that can be measured, analysed and compared.

If you were to ask me, gun to the head, what is a stable state, then i would answer the state which can provide protection, welfare, food, education, equality, opportunity to its people, that is a stable state and it can be for a small amount of period or for a long period for stability is not some badge we can give but a period of prosperity that one gets and that period can be both long or short. So, gun to the head, when a state does all that for whatever period it can, then it is stable, whether that state is democratic or monarch or sultanate is irrelevant.

Yeah well the USSR had: protection, welfare, food, education, equality, opportunity to its people

...arguably (and measurably) in far large abundance than say India and Pakistan today (and much of the developing world in general today) right up to its very end.

But it had that end (driven by tremendous deteoration of stability after all) for a reason. Thus there is more to the story than just these.

Similarly there are countries that provide these components at far worse degree than India and Pakistan, but are arguably more stable than either....given there is enough "institutional"+ political power consolidated for various reasons and there is little to no churning (from inside and outside) to upset that. Some countries are just small enough to not warrant/create a whole host of things larger nations face....or carry inertias long enough from before that add further stability.
 

VCheng

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I am harsh because there is bunch of "guests" watching always...and reporting back somewhere else.

What a post! Given that not only there are "spies" certain titleholders are shared between at least two sites, it certainly puts a damper on things given the past hounding for daring to think differently.
 

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I'm a foreigner who has a limited knowledge of South Asia and there's no shame in admitting this. India in particular is sometimes a black box to me and very hard to understand.

But from my point of view, Pakistan - despite everything that goes wrong in the country - seems to be more mature. The Pakistani statehood appears to be more stable and in some ways even more deep-rooted and ingrained than India's.

Why is that so? Or, perhaps, my perception of India is simply faulty.
Pakistan is basically a country which has survived on the doles handed out to it by whoever is giving them money at that point in their history.

This has to do with with the duplicitous and contrary nature of its rulers beginning with its founder Jinnah. While the people he uprooted on either side of the border were being forced to abandon their ancestral homes and lands and migrate to the new dominions - this "founding father" man was begging Nehru to keep his home in South Bombay intact so that he can retire there. It's like George Washington wanting to move to London after 1776.
 

Kaptaan

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I'm a foreigner who has a limited knowledge of South Asia and there's no shame in admitting this. India in particular is sometimes a black box to me and very hard to understand.

But from my point of view, Pakistan - despite everything that goes wrong in the country - seems to be more mature. The Pakistani statehood appears to be more stable and in some ways even more deep-rooted and ingrained than India's.

Why is that so? Or, perhaps, my perception of India is simply faulty.
I am forced by shear weight of facts to accept that India is way more stable then Pakistan. I mean way more. Pakistan cannot possibly match even one stabilizing force that India has. That force? Having over 25% of it's population or nearly 300 million [population of USA] in state of inhuman caste slavery system which relegates the 300 million to walk on fours or avoid their shadows polluting the upper born in India.


Now I let the Indian's fill the space below in a desperate dance of wiggle, jump, bend, flex and cover up this reality in India ~ most likely along the lines of it is not as bad now or it's all the fault of British blah, blah. How bad it is? It's even spilled over to USA through the Indian diaspora.


@Deliorman @Kartal1 @T-123456
 

Kaptaan

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Pakistan is basically a country which has survived on the doles handed out to it by whoever is giving them money at that point in their history.
Mmmmm very true unlike India.

At $65 bn, India biggest recipient of US economic aid over 1946-2012 period: USAID​



 

Kaptaan

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They ought to show themselves and step into the ring on equal terms
If that is a dig at me then let me place the record clear. The only Indians I have ever had any respect fopr is Sikhs. They indeed are men. I have spent time with them in UK. With regards to the vast mass of 1.4 billion I have nothing but contempt. I don't get dazzled by a few pick of 1.4 billion. And I will never regard a South India as equal to my people. Equal terms? While the British subjugated you people with a few slap and a punch there they never managed to shackle us. You should know the largest British Army deployment in the Raj was in my area of Pakistan and the largest losses of British lives was in our areas.

I intend to address that self induced delusion you have over the greatest military victory India achieved in 1971 at some other time. Just a reminder though, it was a Bangla war in the Bengal delta with Pak Army [including my late uncle] fighting Bangla insurgents. India jumped in and defeated what was at best a two plus sized divisions or 55k men.

Of course if you want to count every wife, daughter, baby, pet dog, pet cat as "Pakistani military" then you can kick those numbers up to your satisfaction. Just to give you some sobering facts in theatre India enjoyed 1:15 superiority in numbers and this is from Indian sources.

1606754401801.png
 

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Mmmmm very true unlike India.

At $65 bn, India biggest recipient of US economic aid over 1946-2012 period: USAID​



Lol. This is what happens when you suffer from selective amnesia.

This is economic aid. Combine economic aid with military aid and let's see the figures. Also the Saudis matched dollar for dollar military aid during the Afghan war. Isn't it?
That's besides all the Chinese loans, Arab loans and IMF bailouts. Haha.

Heck, they even got money from India after the signing of Indus Water Treaty.
 

mulj

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Dont know which one is more stable but at least Pakistan has brighter future, no way that india can manage itself with its population size in long term conditions with this socio religious structure.
 

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Kaptaan

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Lol. This is what happens when you suffer from selective amnesia.
Well, I will add a infantile "lol" as well and state that India has been the biggest begger on the US soup kitchen then any other country. You can slip and give your rendition all you like. And how are the 300 million Dalit's enjoying their "stability and freedoms".
 

mulj

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Sure. That's why so many Pakistanis move to India. https://in.reuters.com/article/refugee-day-india-citizenship-widerimage-idINKBN23N3JB

Infact, not just minorities - the minute a Muslim steps out of his house in Pakistan, he is less safe than he would be in India.
I read recently fhat hindus came back to pakistan dissapiomted with overall conditioms amd discrimimation, who are you trying to deceive? Anyway castic india system which is reemerging on large scale is your cliff to fall, if you think otherwise you are delusional.
 

Jackdaws

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I read recently fhat hindus came back to pakistan dissapiomted with overall conditioms amd discrimimation, who are you trying to deceive? Anyway castic india system which is reemerging on large scale is your cliff to fall, if you think otherwise you are delusional.
What is the percentage which is returning?

The lower castes are a powerful voting block. Even Modi is of a lower caste.

Compare that to the poor Ahmadiya Muslims in Pakistan. They can't even call themselves Muslims and are killed for their beliefs all the time.
 

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You would sit around and think how exposure to foreign ideas when living in foreign countries would actually improve people over a period of time. But then it would actually make some people racists and narcissistic assholes is seen by post in this thread alone unfortunately.

This question is open ended. Define stable? More people die of gun shots in US than people in India or Iraq per year.

India has one of the world's largest affirmative actions or in common term reservation to uplift our poor and lower caste. The first step comes when you recognize the issue and try to resolve it. Our esteemed fan of "handsome" khan and his country hasn't even accepted their issues in the first place. Even in India, where according to rumour monging neighbors, we are a hindutvadic lawless land. But.even our lawless land don't kidnap women's from minority communities and convert them.every week. And people killed in Pakistan accused of blasphemy would be more than our lynching of beef meat over the last 5-6 years.

I don't want to make this another pdf stuff, but if these racist supremacist posts or thoughts are encouraged by Mods, get yourself ready for an pdf version 2.0.
 

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What is the percentage which is returning?

The lower castes are a powerful voting block. Even Modi is of a lower caste.

Compare that to the poor Ahmadiya Muslims in Pakistan. They can't even call themselves Muslims and are killed for their beliefs all the time.

Lame justification, if i start to count apsudities and atrocities in indian society i would need whole night.
Bottom line Pakistan is more manageable country then india and it is matter of time when they will utilize that fact, you need to think why bangladesh is overlapping india just now.
 
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If that is a dig at me then let me place the record clear.

Nope. You are quite the antithesis of "faceless guest".

You have been a straight shooter willing to take on the fight face to face (as much as we clash...hey it is what it is) and not be underhanded.

No I am talking about certain weak coterie of others, that large part have issue with you too may I add.

They always need the temperature to be right before they step in I suppose, among other sensitivities I won't get into.

They are the kind that even banned me one time for bringing up their unfair silencing treatment to you, when I was making yet another futile fight against suppression there.
 

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