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Effects
of the conflict on Indo-Pak economy
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The citizens of both these developing nations are faced
with widespread poverty, appalling levels of infant mortality, poor health, lack of basic
education and access to basic necessities of life. Yet, "neither India nor Pakistan
seems to scrimp on resources for their expensive military programmes, despite their
economic conditions". (James Woolsey, CIA Director)
In India, with an estimated population in 1995 of 940
million, 423 million people live in absolute poverty, 25 % do not have access to safe
drinking water, and 87 % to sanitation.
In 1990, India spent some Rs 176.84 billion ($30.2 billion)
on military alone. Between 1989 and 1991, India's rate of growth declined by 40 percent,
while its level of debt increased by over 20 percent.
Increased deployment of the Army for tackling the
insurgency situation in the north-east and Jammu and Kashmir was eating into the defence
budget of the country, Union Defence Minister George Fernandes stated.
``The defence outlay needs to be increased substantially,
keeping in view so many aspects, including the salary hike,'' According to Fernandes a
sizeable amount of funds allocated for defence was being regularly diverted to tackle the
insurgency situation at the expense of the defence of the country's external boundaries.
Given its large military presence in Kashmir (300,000
soldiers) almost one soldier for every 20 Kashmiris, a significant proportion of the
military expenditure is spent on operations to deal with militancy. India currently spends
over one million US dollars per day towards the cost of such army operations and subsidies
in Kashmir.
Indian presence in Kashmir has been likened to US
operations in Vietnam and Soviet operations in Afghanistan. "A debilitating war
costing millions of dollars and thousands of innocent lives with no coherent political
policy to control it, and little chance of victory". ( Moore and Anderson 1993)
Pakistan is one of the world's poorest countries, ranked
132 out of 173 in terms of human development. In 1992-1993 Pakistan spent 82 billion
Rupees ($3 billion) on defence. Given debt service payments of US $3.5 billion (93 billion
rupees), little over US $ 0.1 billion (3.3 million rupees) was left for development.
Pakistan's defence expenditure and debt-servicing exceeded government tax revenue with
defence accounting for almost 40 per cent of government spending.
The conflict is sapping the economies of both India and
Pakistan, depriving their own people of basic necessities of life by diverting their much
needed resources to sustain their grip over Kashmir.
Two of the three debilitating wars already fought between
Indian and Pakistan have failed to resolve the conflict and a fourth war, mostly nuclear,
with ruinous consequences for the entire subcontinent must remain a serious concern for
all of us.
With the recent show of their nuclear capabilities which
has brought them world wide condemnation and economic sanctions, let us hope and pray
that these two arch rivals will be persuaded to engage in a meaningful dialogue to
resolve their outstanding issues. But the single most important issue between the two ,
which holds the key to a lasting peace and stability in the sub-continent is the Kashmir
issue.
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