By Sushil Kutty
When the Narendra Modi government started building toilets for people to use, tens of thousands in India’s hinterlands were reluctant as they were used to open air defecation, the traditional way of clearing the bowels in the relative freedom of an open sky!
After 11 years any last vestiges of phobia have gone down the toilet. Today, toilets are part of India’s architecture. But Pakistanis hadn’t stopped ridiculing Modi’s toilets, comparing India’s toilet-count with Pakistan’s and concluding that India was a crapping joke.
They said it on television, on ‘You Tube’ videos, on TikTok and at seminars and conferences with nose in stratosphere. It was humiliating, all these Pakistanis ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing), for LoL (laughing out loud)! And they did it on the net with social media. Better-off Pakistanis taunting better-off Indians for their toilet inefficiency. Indians were the laughing stock of the toilet world and it wasn’t a joke!
Now, in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s third term and 11th year, the World Bank has put Pakistan in its proper place, which is on the commode. Firsthand proof has been delivered by a third party that the joke was on Pakistan and none the wiser! The headline ‘World Bank Data On India And Pakistan Shows Massive Contrast Over Poverty’ translated to a toilet can make a difference.
According to the World Bank, “over the last 15 years, India and Pakistan show a stark difference in priorities”. In these 15 years (which includes Modi’s 11 years), India lifted more Indians out of poverty than Pakistan’s “entire population”. India’s extreme poverty rate fell from 27.1% in 2012 to 5.3% in 2022, lifting 269 million out of poverty.
But Pakistan’s extreme poverty rose from 4.9% in 2017 to 16.5% in 2021. Today, India’s economy is fourth largest in the world, ahead of Japan’s, for laughing out loud! What does that say, more toilets in India or fewer than in Pakistan?
Actually, it is not about toilets, it is about poverty in general and not having enough toilets is a symptom of the general malaise. World Bank data shows India has beaten Pakistan in the battle against poverty. The stark difference can be attributed to their different priorities.
India’s poverty between 2011-12 and 2022-23 and for Pakistan’s between 2017-18 and 2020-21. When India is poised to become the No.3 economy, Pakistan’s economy stinks, like toilet water.
The governance model is to blame. India’s growth story is linked to development and poverty alleviation while Pakistan’s is about “misappropriation of funds and its policy on terror.”
The operative question is, “What percentage of the population in both countries lives above the ‘extreme poverty’ line?”
World Bank data says between 2012 and 2022, extreme poverty in India declined from 27.1 percent to 5.3 percent of the total population. In India, 75.24 million people were living in extreme poverty in the fiscal 2022-23, a huge fall from the 344.47 million in 2011-12.
As many as 269 million Indians were lifted out of poverty, which translates to “one Pakistan” lifted out of poverty in just 11 years of BJP-led NDA rule! Pakistan’s extreme poverty rose from 4.9 percent to 16.5 percent between 2017 and 2021, i.e., in less than 5 years.
It could have been far worse. Overall poverty headcount in Pakistan – at $4.2 per person, per day, has risen from 39.8 percent of the total population in 2017 to more than 44.7 percent in 2021.
That being said, Pakistan’s economy is dependent on loans and bailouts. IMF, World Bank, Asian Development Bank. And handouts from friendly countries like Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Also loans from China. All in billions of dollars, which is diverted to building and rebuilding the Army.
Pakistan suffers from India-fixation. It cannot but imagine itself as “another India, no less”. Pakistanis living and travelling abroad introduce themselves as “Indians”, though only the Indian craves for ‘Aman ki Aasha’.
The cash-strapped Pakistan isn’t interested. Funding and supporting terror is Pakistan’s policy. And it helps that “Kashmir is Pakistan’s jugular”. Pakistan is patronized by international financial institutions, Islamabad’s legendary lack of accountability is excused.
“Bleeding India with a thousand cuts” and the terror infrastructure, terror outfits and “cross-border terror” have together impoverished Pakistan. Talk that common Pakistanis are unwitting victims is bull! Ordinary Pakistanis idolise the Pakistan Army as the final arbitrar in their miserable lives. All the loans and bailouts are for the Pakistan Army, poverty is not the army’s concern.
Meanwhile, Maulana Masood Madani of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind says ‘Bade Sagheer (Indian subcontinent)’ will replace the USA as the No.1 economy in the world in 50 years’ time and the powers that be at the time shouldn’t “forget us”, or else “we know how to be relevant”. What does he mean by ‘Bade Sagheer’, is he talking of a subcontinent-size country, and is it not ‘India that is Bharat’? (IPA Service)
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