Analyze the major historical, economic, social and physiographical factors that hindered social and economic development in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. In other words, why have these countries suffered from underdevelopment?

South Asia: India Let us embark on our journey into this fascinating continent that is known more for its poverty and violence despite its beauty and many cultural legacies. In the end, I hope we can make some sense out of the sufferings and challenges that have fallen on the people of South Asia which is comprised of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and several minor states. Also, I wish we will realize that India among the South Asian country has enormous potential to become a dominant power in the future. What image do you have of these countries? You probably heard something about the difficult conditions the people of the region live under. Let us start with some figures reflecting the low level of development in this region.

Country GNP/Capita Life Expectancy Infant Mortality (per 1,000 births)

India $3,460 62 (male) / 63 ( female) 56

Pakistan $2,350 61 (male) / 63 (female) 79

Bangladesh $2,090 61 (male) / 62 (female) 54

The Indian Subcontinent’s low level of development is reflected also in adult literacy, which is 50%. That means, half of the adult population cannot read. India, illiteracy rate is about 60 percent. Why does this land suffer from such a profound level of underdevelopment? Let us start with India. Is it the fault of the

physiography? The answer is both yes and no. Geographers in general agree that India is not deprived of resources that enable communities to flourish. To start with, this is a region well known for its rich agricultural diversity. Take a look at the figure titled “Indian: Agriculture” in our textbook. That figure amply shows India’s agricultural diversity. India is also known for its beautiful and diverse topography. There are beautiful mountains to the north, lowland river basin in the middle part, and southern plateaus. In addition, the Indian subcontinent gets plenty of rainfall through monsoon. For about 60 days, there is a continuation of rainfall that replenishes the agricultural land of land. In many ways, monsoon is a lifesaver to this region. These attributes led to the birth of one of the earliest human

civilizations along the two great rivers of Ganges and Indus. Also, India is surrounded by very plentiful Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. Pakistan, on the other hand, is more mountainous and less agriculturally fertile than India. (Right is what Calcutta looked like in the early 19th century; left below is an image of the same city nowadays.) Let us compare the situation in the Indian Subcontinent with that of the U.S. The territorial size of India is about 30% of the size of the U.S. Yet its population is 3.5 times the size of the U.S. Pakistan is no better. The country, whose size is about 8% of America, has to support half of U.S. population. Bangladesh is the worst: the land that is about 1.3% of the American territory has a population slightly less than a half of the U.S. population. In

any event, the population of the seven countries in South Asia combined is 1.4 billion, which means that more than one-fifth of all humankind lives in this realm. And population pressure is getting worse. Birthrate is so high that doubling time for India’s 1 billion people is 36 years. In other words, after 36 years, there will be another billion Indians. Doubling time for Pakistan’s 141 million people is 25 years. Bangladesh -- 35 years. Compare these doubling times with that of other countries with a fairly large population size: the U.S., 116 years; Japan, 231 years; China, 69 years. Population pressure is most severe in the cities, including Calcutta, which has 13.5 million inhabitants. Of these, as many as a half million people are homeless. In any event, in 2025 South

Asia’s population size will increase to 1.85 billion. More importantly, when we analyze the population pyramid of South Asian countries, we see that a significant part of the population is 14 or younger, as shown in the above population pyramid of India.

Poverty is hard on people, but more so on children. Let us now move to other factors. The Indian Subcontinent was a colony of Great Britain until 1949. The British used its Indian colony to produce raw cotton, which was shipped to textile mills in England that produced finished cotton goods that were sold to Indians. The British authorities forbade Indians from developing their own textile industry, thus securing India as a huge market for its textile goods. So consider the following irony. Cotton is one of the largest crops of India. However, India did not have textile manufacturing. Also, Great Britain produced opium in India that was exported to China. One historian called this the largest state-sponsored drug trafficking in history. The authors of our textbook, de Blij and Muller, write the following:

When the Europeans came to India, they found a considerable amount of industry, especially in metal goods and textiles, and an active trade with both Southwest and Southeast Asia in which Indians merchants played a leading role. The British intercepted this trade, changing the whole pattern of Indian commerce. India now ceased to be South Asia’s manufacturer, and soon the country was exporting raw materials and importing manufactured goods – from Europe, of course. India’s handicraft industries declined; after the first stimulus, the export trade in agricultural raw materials also suffered as other parts of the world were colonized and linked in trade to Europe. Thus the majority of India’s people (who were farmers then as now) suffered an economic setback as a result of the manipulations of colonialism.

The British rule certainly had some salient effects. One of them is the democratic tradition that the British fostered in India. Today, India is known as the largest democracy in the world. Also, the role of English as lingua franca has engendered a sense of unity in a society that suffers from various centrifugal forces. However, economically, India existed to benefit its colonizers under the British imperialism. (To the right is the father of India’s independence struggle against Great Britain, Mohandas K. Gandhi. His handwriting on the picture reads, “God is Truth.”) The British rule over in the Indian subcontinent left behind an economic legacy of lop-sided land ownership in the hands of few.

This has led to another problem called fragmented agriculture. Take a look at the following figures. In India, for example, the richest two percent own twenty-five percent of arable land. It is not that difficult to imagine that the British relied on this class to lording over the vast population of India. In any event, a half of India’s farming families own either no land or less than one acre. Three-quarters of farming families tilt less than five acres of farmland. Also, India’s agricultural problems are compounded by the fact that 60 percent of all villages are not

accessible by automobile. Knowing these facts, there is no mystery to the fact that India lacks food sufficiency. One interesting aspect of India’s agricultural problems is the fact that as de Blij and Muller relates, “India devotes more land to rice cultivation than any other country, but yield per acre remain among the world’s lowest….” The same thing is happening with sugarcane: large sugarcane cultivation, but “among the world’s last in terms of [sugar] yields.”

This is not the end of the story. There is another debilitating force, the legacies of Hindu caste system. This system of social differentiation is based on a Hindu belief that a person is born into a given caste, which determines the individual’s experience, and opportunities available to him or

her, for a lifetime. Since a person is born into the current state of being for whatever he or she had done in a previous life, “it would not be appropriate to counter such ordained caste assignments by permitting movement (or even contact) from a lower caste to a higher one,” writes de Blij and Muller. What does that mean in terms of people’s daily life? “One’s caste determines where one would live, where and what one can eat and drink, with whom on will associate, one’s marriage partner, and one’s livelihood,” writes one student of Hinduism. Furthermore, “One must wear only certain clothes and worship only in prescribed ways at particular places.” The following is the four largest castes. (To the left is an image of Maharaja, or Hindu prince. The picture to the right shows lower caste women cleaning the streets.) In any event, following is just four main categories in

Hindu caste system. Each caste has multiple sub-castes.

Brahmans: study, teach, and perform religious rituals and sacrifices Kshatriyas: the warriors, political leaders Vaisyas: the farmers, tradesmen and merchants Sudras: servant class, otherwise known as untouchables. (They are also known as Harijans, Children of God, a term coined by Mohandas Gandhi.)

Well, Hinduism is more than just caste system. It is known as religion in search of purity, spiritual as well as physical. Therefore, as de Blij and Muller relate:

Stand on the banks of the Ganges River in Varanasi, Hinduism’s holiest city, and you will wee people bathing in the holy water, drinking it, and praying as they stand in it -- while the city’s sewage flows into it nearby, and the partially cremated corpses of people and animals float past. It is one of the world’s most compelling -- and disturbing sights.

Tradition has it, the rivers’ water is immaculate, and no amount of human (or other) waste can pollute it. On the contrary: just touching the water can wash away a believer’s sins. Undoubtedly, Hinduism’s sense of purity has led to a rigid caste system. Also, Hindu nationalism is responsible for the recurrences of sectarian violence again Muslim who retaliate against Hindus with

violence as well. However, Hinduism in India is also a centripetal force that glues together this country of many divides. Our textbook writes, “For most Indians, Hinduism is a way of life as much as it is a faith, and its diffusion over virtually the entire country (Muslim, Sikh, and Christian minority notwithstanding) brings with it a national coherence that constitutes a powerful antidote to regional divisiveness.” Unfortunately, however, increasingly, Hindu fanaticism is gaining influence in Indian society. (Here are two more images of Hinduism that show the ascetic aspect of that religion.) India is fractured by more

than competing religions. In India, there are fifteen constitutionally recognized, official languages. And there are 1.600 dialects altogether. In this world, there are 32 different languages spoken by more than 40 million people, and eight of them are used in India. Talk about a divided society. In conclusion, India is a divided country with overwhelming social and economic problems.

There is another problem, a sectarian violence between Hindu majority and Muslim minority. Throughout India’s history, animosity between these two religious groups have frequently erupted in violent clashes that have cost many human lives. This problem is compounded by the rivalry between Pakistan, which is a Muslim country, and India. Two became rivals after the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 by Great Britain in

preparation for its departure from the Indian subcontinent. Over the last half- century, the two counties fought numerous battles because of their animosity and a sense of competition based on different religions. The conflict between India and Pakistan has engendered even a nuclear arms race. As a result, the two counties, despite their poor economy, are nuclear powers. (The pictures here show belligerence Indians harbor towards Pakistan. A Hindu-Muslim conflict is not the only sectarian violence in the region. There is an on-going conflict between Indian government and Sri Lanka, which has a Buddhist majority.) India, despite its poverty -- 97% of the population is considered poor, and 70%

live in crippling poverty -- of course, has strength too. Actually, India is one of the fastest growing economies of the world with the growth rate of 7 percent in the last several years. (By the way, it is the sixth largest economy in the world.) The engine that drives this growth is India’s highly educated population. India, in particular, continues to produce a large number of doctors, scientists and high-tech, computer specialists who have turned such a city as Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore) in southern India into what is called, “Silicon Plateau.” (Below is a company building of Infosys Technologies, India’s leading software exporter.) India’s rising middle class is driving the demands for, as de Blij writes, “goods ranging from mobile phones (in mid-2006, 2. 5 million new subscribers were signing up each month) to motor bikes (10,000 per day were being sold in mid- decade). At this rate, by 2020 India is likely to rank the third largest economy in the world. India’s future can be glimpsed through the fact that many American companies “outsource” part of their operation and production to companies in India where highly educated and trained laborer can be hired at a faction of what Americans workers are paid.

India is also known as the world’s largest functioning democracy. As this title suggests, India, despite its third world economic status, has not had the somewhat typical third world experience of change of government through coup d’état or revolution. The voters, such as above, may not have what the people of western societies have but they do exercise what they learned from the westerners; they have power to form the government and check on it. That is an important ingredient for a better future for India, of course. Let us now move to other countries in the region.