I just don't understand this hate.
I had said before, and I would like to say it again : "The bigger
picture is that India is doing a lot better than Pakistan. It is on
course to continue to do even better. And this is because whereas India
has painstakingly built up a reasonably efficient market economy (thanks
to some fine institutions) over the years, Pakistan has not." India and
Pakistan started out very similar to each other economically speaking 63
years ago. Yet India is on course on its economic targets whereas
Pakistan is not.
Part of the reason for this has to be the adoption of a system based on
religion in Pakistan. This is a point that is not sufficiently
appreciated even by economists (such as Subramaniam Swamy), and so I
might as well spell it out here. The problem with legal systems based on
religion (and here I am talking about the major world religions) is that
the religious laws are sometimes extremely confusing in terms of
interpretation (the interpretation of the books various tremendously
from one person to the next, and so it often comes down to individuals'
interpretations -how many gays would like to have their rights be
decided by the whims of one individual?). Furthermore, the canonical
texts were written before many of the scientific and economic ideas that
we now take for granted were proved.
Conversely, there is an advantage with having a legal system based on
common law or statutory law, and not on religious laws. Under common
law, judges can extremely deliver precise guidance on various matters
that matter to business entities. This "fine-grained control" (to adopt
a term from Database/Systems Software Engineering) allows for very
precise recommendations. For instance, the legal system can specify very
precisely the types of situations under which a certain level of
interest may or may not be charged and, if it may be charged, what the
precise form the contract should take. This may be based on the needs of
the population at a certain place and during a certain time. Islamic
law, on the other hand, in general, frowns up the charging of interest.
Another example is the treatment of homosexuals. It is much easier for
me as a manager of a MNC to be able to move people to country X if the
laws in that country do not prescribe such penalties as death (!) for
gays. It makes a number of business decisions easier. It is more
efficient to have an economic system based on science, economics and,
yes, common sense rather than on religious fantasms.
Pakistan doesn't have good institutions, and it is not going through the
pain-staking process of creating them. Indeed, today, it is hard to see
what Pakistan's (business) strategic direction is, or even if the
country has any. It is time that they focused on their own problems.
India would be more than happy to leave them alone if only they would
leave India alone.
Anand
--- In silk-l...@yahoogroups.com, ss <cybersurg@...> wrote:
>
> On Friday 22 Jul 2011 10:28:42 am M.K.Pai wrote:
> > The Pakistani "establishment" has been unanimous that it was a rogue
> > operation. Of course, if you can point me to contrary evidence, I
> > shall stand corrected.
> >
> There is no "evidence" either way available to me. It's what one
wants to
> believe. I choose to believe what I wrote.
>
> shiv
>
