A 7 year peace process with little to show for it is a bit of a joke to be honest. There have always been two arguments that people used, one is Pakistans nuke programme would decrease military spending. Similarly that peace or disengagement with India would make spending less. Now both of these beliefs have proven to be wrong. The nuke test made little difference when you take into account the Kargil misadventure and spending has not changed, in fact in real terms it has increased. If not in percentage terms, while expenditure on paramilitary issues like FC deployment and deployments in waziristan are eating up huge sums of money which are not shown in the military budget through clever figure fudging. In fact the cool down on the eastern border has been followed by a greater heating up on the western border.
While I am all for pak-India peace ( i wonder why it was so hard for the chiefs to salute Vajpayee in 1999 and yet so easy for them to make concessions now) I think this peace process is stalled and when push comes to shove the Indians are fine with the status quo, what they've offered is as much as they are inclined too..anything more requires political capital which I don't see the congress party expending. Similarly i think Musharrafs ability to concede things is fast diminshing. Doubts about the process in Pakistan are growing and unless Musharraf delivers a "deal" soon he will eventually be unable to follow through on any agreement made.
..and what about income tax.
again please teh point here not to get into partisan politicking, there are countless other threads for that, but to explore some hypothesis.
to tell you the truth, i dont know what news or where some of you are getting your info from but pakistan has more military needs today then ever before
improving the quality of life for everyone is important but even if we pour a percentage or two into it, it probably wont make that much of a difference. if opportunities do exist in pakistan then its up to the individuals and entrepreneurs to take advantage. if the governments sets up sustainable businesses then i suppose the money could be channelled both ways.
right now, with further destabilisation of the region expected in the coming years it’s not the time to cut back military expenditure!
wiki military expenditure list
pakistan @no28 just behined totally bankrupt argentina
so when we blame the military and their spending for being a core reason why we do not have funding to invest in social, educational, health and infrastructure, we should be blaming ourselves as a nation for being tax cheats as well.