Re: Hijacking and eventual death of Pakistani Right
antiobl is right on the money.
jinnah abhorred socialism and was appalled by leftist rhetoric employed by second generation congress leaders like nehru. jinnah's disagreement with congress over this issue was one of the main reasons for jinnah alienation with congress. important to remember that the original founders of congress, who were also jinnah's mentors, were liberal in the traditional sense of the word. people like dadabhoy naoroji had a very different world view from that espoused by the later day congress leaders like nehru.
jinnah, being the champion politician that he was, never fully outlined his vision because he did not want to create schism in muslim boy-politic. jinnah's goal was to keep muslims united which was best achieved by focusing on a one point agenda. after partition, govt of pakistan implemented a very different set of policies compared to that implemented by congress. india saw the adaption of license-raj socialism which ended up providing economic protection to the traditional backers of congress like the tatas. in contrast pak operated in a free market mode until bhutto's nationalisation which completely ruined pakistan's economy. india operated in a socialist mode until early 90's when the country was bankrupt and was forced to change course by multi-lateral institutions which made policy reform the main condition of aid.
while india was reforming in the 90s, pak was suffering through mismanagement under democratic rule which further destroyed pak's economy and enabled india to catch up. also 90's saw the rise of the internet along with which came the success of indian i.t. companies which profited from labour arbitrage. pakistan, in comparison, has yet to produce an industry in which it has some sort of comparitive advantage when dealing with the west. however most studies show that pakistan's economy is more open than india's and more importantly pakistan has made rapid strides in the agriculture sector which is the most labour intensive section of the south asian economy. also generally speaking, purchasing power of pakistanis, as measured by stats like moble phone penetration, appears to be higher than that of indians.
going back to jinnah, his vision was almost prophetic. important to remember that during the days of jinnah, socialism was the weapon of choice of third world leaders. jinnah however wanted to plot a different course for us and that course was the right course as the example of countries like malaysia, korea and taiwan indicates.