Peaceful Development With Friendly Cooperative Neighborhood : What Can Terrorist Pakistan Learn From Bangladesh at 50

 

Peaceful Development With Friendly Cooperative Neighborhood : What Can Terrorist Pakistan Learn From Bangladesh at 50

Rajiv Upadhyay

Bangladesh at fifty years of age, has many vital lessons for Pakistan, which is now facing an existential crisis due to uncontrolled external debts, Civil strife and terrorism . Fair , stronger, Sharp featured and  extrovert Pakistanis used to secretly   consider short, dark ,fish eating introvert Bengalis as inferior . Z.A.Bhutto , Gen Tikka Khan and General Yahya Khan reflected this mindset of people when they did not let Mujib ur Rahman become the Prime Minister of united Pakistan in spite of his landslide electoral victory. This  independence won with the great sacrifice of people of East Pakistan has finally paid off as in fifty years Bangladesh has marched ahead of  Pakistan in every aspect of human development .The future is even brighter .

General Musharraf , an ex president of Pakistan , in Dubai, had declared International terrorists like Osama  ,  Lakhwi, Hafiz Saeed , Masood Azhar as national heroes of Pakistan . So with this national acceptance and respect of terrorists , it is not wrong to call Pakistan as Terroristan. The current state of Pakistan is the result of Confrontationist army mindset ruling  Pakistan for seventy years and the resultant Mullah Military alliance .Army has neutralised all efforts by civilian prime ministers to normalise relations with India by staging Mumbai for Zardari, Pathankot and Pulwama for Nawaz and Imran .

After Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated in 1975  and Major Zia ur Rahman took over the reigns of Bangladesh in 1977 , it was inevitable that the confrontationist  mode of Pakistan army would be copied by Bangladesh . Another coup by General Ershad in 1982  only continued the same mindset of ruling Janta They harbored and provided safe sanctuaries and money to Indian terrorists operating in North East  . Therefore due to endemic corruption and poor governance, Bangladesh continued to be an extremely poor and  foreign aid dependent country till Sheikh Hasina , the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was god sent to rule Bangladesh in 2009

The wonder that Bangladesh has become in last fifteen  years is due to her deep faith in Secularism , Peaceful Co existence with its neighbors particularly India and commitment to developing a modern welfare state without obscurantist fundamentalism and totally through self help. She was bold enough to launch family planning drive opposed by Islamic fundamentalists and successfully brought down the population growth rate from 2.82% in 1982 to 1.03% in 2022 . She was merciless on terrorists and Jamait e Islam goons .  Life expectancy has increased to 73 years in 2023 from 65 years in 2001. Literacy has gone up from to   74% in 2022 up from 47% in 2000. With an armed force of just 2,27,000 she was able to gain about 500 sq km of Indian territory in a remarkably visionary  border settlement from supposedly RSS hardliner Narendra Modi . The growth of GDP, per capita income , exports and  FDI has even surprised West and now Japan is planning big investments in Bangladesh . This is likely to be followed by other major countries .The illustrative graphs taken from net, support these figures .

While Bangladesh focused on all round development and self reliance, Pakistan was too cunning with partners and  lost their trust and was consumed by religious extremism , hatred for hindus. It made anti Indianism a corner stone of its foreign policy . Army fooled people by fanning anti Indian narrative  in the  garb of existential threat ,  religion , Kashmir etc . It befriended all enemies of India and forgot five thousand years of its shared Indian history .Pakistani army increased from  around  330000 in 1947 to almost eight lakhs now . In spite of taking 17% of national budget it  lost all wars with India that were started by it . Due to its non ending greed , it diversified into all other non core commercial  activities like housing , cement production ,construction , bakery etc  . Instead of learning the right lesson of developing tolerance for regional differences ,languages , people , cultural differences and respect for human rights, it promoted and imposed Punjabi interests and culture on poor provinces and economically exploited them just as it did with East Pakistan. It lived forever beyond its means by ‘ Show Off ‘ culture .Today it is impossible for Pakistan to come out of economic troubles due to having lived beyond its means for seventy years .

Every nation can go into trouble but it can come out if it learns the right lesson . Pakistan refuses to learn and  can not become a normal nation now due to its deeply rooted religious extremism , a greedy army , irresponsible politicians and lack of matured leadership, unless, it can shed its ego and gets a Sheikh Hasina or Narendra Modi type mature , honest and visionary leader with total support of people willing to sacrifice for nation building .

For economic recovery it must begin by learning the right lessons from its turbulent history and accept the path of self reliance and peaceful ,secular, coexistence with its neighbors and shun all forms of overt or covert  terrorism and religious fundamentalism as done by Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina  .

 

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