Mindless Binge

THE stark comparisons and dire predictions are meant to shock and Mahbub ul Haq, ex-Pakistan finance minister,and author of recent annual human development reports on South Asia, does it well: Pakistan and India, whose defence expenditure he puts together at over $12 billion, buy twice as many arms from the global arms bazaar each year as 25-times richer Saudi Arabia does. "By now, both countries have emerged among the poorest, the most illiterate and the most malnourished nations in the world. When modern jet fighters are parked on their runways, poor people are parked on the city pavements."

Haq contends that if Pakistan had not purchased three Agosta 90-B submarines from France in 1995 for $1 billion, the same resources would have provided primary education to 12 million children, supplied drinking water for a year to 56 million people and provided family planning services for a year. Similarly, he claims that when India bought 40 Sukhoi-30 combat aircraft from Russia in November 1996 at approximately $1.8 billion, it denied 35 million children an education and 140 million people health care.

But Dr V.A. Pai Panandiker, president, Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, does not agree that with less than 3 per cent of its GNP going to defence, India is overspending. He says it is Pakistan which is being bled, with almost 6 per cent of its GNP being spent on defence.

Haq, however, is convinced that neither country will enter into an arms race. "The people are demanding education and health, and social despair will be very high if those demands are not met. If we don't read the signals, we will have to pay." During a recent visit to New Delhi, Haq expressed hope that the Gujral Doctrine would not be rendered defunct. "I hope it resurfaces if he is the new secretary-general of SAARC. The BJP government also has an historic opportunity to make a deal with Pakistan where they will never be accused of selling the interests of India."

바카라 웹사이트But some analysts in Delhi do not sympathise with Haq's defence vs development stance. "What is problematic is the direct link he draws between militarisation of security and the deprivation of the larger mass of people," says Kanti Bajpai, associate professor at the School of International Studies, JNU. "If tomorrow you are threatened by someone all your development goes out of the window."