FREMONT, CA, US: This is with reference to Niaz Murtaza’s article of October 28 titled “Comparing Pakistan regionally”. Enough of this self-flagellation!
The writer is factually incorrect on a number of facts. For example, India lags behind its neighbours, Pakistan and Bangladesh, on basic human development indices like life expectancy at birth; average years of schooling; and gender parity, according to the last United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report.
On gender parity, Pakistan ranks 112, 10 places ahead of India at 122.
Titled “Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development”, the report says that life expectancy at birth in India is 64.4 years. In Pakistan it is 67.2 years while in Bangladesh it is 66.9 years. Similarly, the mean years of schooling in India is 4.4 years while in Pakistan and Bangladesh it is 4.9 and 4.8 years respectively.
And India lags behind Pakistan on such basics as nutrition (Indian Planning Commission statistics) and public hygiene (according to Unicef.
Furthermore, in the last decade, Pakistan has graduated more people from schools and colleges and created more jobs as a percentage of its population, than India has.
Riaz Haq
Published in The Express Tribune, October 31st, 2011.
