Any crackdown on illegal immigrants abroad or restricting quotas to Indians are a major concern to India’s politicians. The latest statistics from US Department of Homeland Security shows that the numbers of Indian illegal migrants jumped 125% since 2000! Ever wondered why Indians migrate to another countries but no one comes to India for a living? Here are some Indian facts:
Poverty Graph
According to WFP, India accounts around 50% of the world’s hungry. (more than in the whole of Africa) and its fiscal deficit is one of the highest in the world. India’s Global Hunger Index (GHI) score is 23.7, a rank of 66th out of 88 countries. India’s rating is slightly above Bangladesh but below all other South Asian nations and India is listed under “ALARMING” category. Ref: IFPRI Country Report on India
Around six out of 10 Indians live in the countryside, where abject poverty is widespread. 34.7 % of the Indian population lives with an income below $ 1 a day and 79.9 % below $ 2 a day. According to the India’s planning commission report 26.1 % of the population live below the poverty line. [World Bank’s poverty line of $1 a day, but the Indian poverty line of Rs 360 a month, or 30 cents a day].
The Current Account Balance of India
“A major area of vulnerability for us is the high consolidated public-debt to GDP ratio of over 70 percent … (and) consolidated fiscal deficit,” says the Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Mr. Yaga Venugopal Reddy.
According to CIA world fact book, the Current account balance of India is -37,510,000,000 (minus) while China is the wealthiest country in the world with $ 426,100,000,000 (Plus) . India listed as 182 and China as no.1 [CIA: The world fact book]
Human Development vs GDP growth
The Human Development Report for 2009 released by the UNDP ranked India 134 out of 182 countries, working it out through measures of life expectancy, education and income. India has an emigration rate of 0.8%. The major continent of destination for migrants from India is Asia with 72.0% of emigrants living there. The report found that India’s GDP per capita (purchasing power parity) is $2,753, far below Malaysia’s $13,518. China listed as 92 with PPP of $5383. Read the statistics from UNDP website.
Population:
According to the Indian census of 2001, the total population was 1.028 billion. Hindus numbered 827 million or 80.5 %. About 25 per cent (24 million) of those Hindus are belonging to Scheduled Castes and Tribes. About 40 per cent (400 million) are “Other Backward Castes”.
15 per cent Hindu upper castes inherited majority of India’s civil service, economy and active politics from British colonial masters. And thus the caste system virtually leaves lower caste Hindus in to an oppressed majority in India’s power structure. Going by figures quoted by the Backward Classes Commission, Brahmins alone account for 37.17 per cent of the bureaucracy. [Who is Really Ruling India?]
The 2004 World Development Report mentions that more than 25% of India’s primary school teachers and 43% of primary health care workers are absent on any given day!
Living conditions of Indians
89 percent of rural households do not own telephones; 52 percent do not have any domestic power connection. There are daily power cuts even in the nation’s capital. The average brownout in India is three hours per day during non-monsoon months, 17 hours daily during the monsoon. The average village is 2 kilometers away from an all-weather road, and 20 percent of rural habitations have partial or no access to a safe drinking-water supply. [Tarun Khanna, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization]
According to the National Family Health Survey data (2005-06), only 45 per cent of households in the country had access to improved sanitation.
Education
India has over 35 per cent of the world’s total illiterate population. [UNESCO Education for All Report 2008] Only 66 per cent people are literate in India (76 per cent men and 54 per cent women)
About 40 million primary school-age children in India are not in school. More than 92 % children cannot progress beyond secondary school. According to reports, 35 per cent schools don’t have infrastructure such as blackboards and furniture. And close to 90 per cent have no functional toilets. Half of India’s schools still have leaking roofs or no water supply.
Japan has 4,000 universities for its 127 million people and the US has 3,650 universities for its 301 million, India has only 348 universities for its 1.2 billion people. In the prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities by Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong, only two Indian Universities are included. Even those two IITs in India found only a lower slot (203-304) in 2007 report. Although Indian universities churn out three million graduates a year, only 15% of them are suitable employees for blue-chip companies. Only 1 million among them are IT professionals.
Health
India today allocates lower than one per cent gross domestic product (GDP) to health. According to United Nations calculations, India’s spending on public health as a share of GDP is the 18th lowest in the world. 150 million Indians are blind. 2.13 per cent of the total population (21.9 million) live with disabilities in India. Yet, only 34 per cent of the disabled are employed [Census 2001] India has the single highest share of neonatal deaths in the world, 2.1 million.
107,000 Leprosy patients live in India. 15.3 % of the population do not survive to the age of forty. Serpent attacks kill as many as 50,000 Indians while the cobra occupies a hallowed place in the Hindu religion. Heart disease, strokes and diabetes cost India an estimated $9 billion in lost productivity in 2005. The losses could grow to a staggering $200 billion over the next 10 years if corrective action is not taken quickly, says a study by the New Delhi-based Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.
There are only 585 rural hospitals compared to 985 urban hospitals in the country. Out of the 6,39,729 doctors registered in India, only 67,576 are in the public sector and the rest either in private sectors or abroad, pointing towards the severity of the problem. According to a survey by NSSO (National Sample Survey Organisation), 40 per cent of the people hospitalised have either had to borrow money or sell assets to cover their medical expenses. Over 85 per cent of the Indian population does not have any form of health coverage.
Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problem in India. India accounts for one-fifth of the global TB incident cases. Each year about 1.8 million people in India develop TB, of which 0.8 million are infectious cases. It is estimated that annually around 330,000 Indians die due to TB. [WHO India]
Economy under the siege of Elite Hindus
In India, wealth of 36 families amounts to $ 191 billion, which is one-fourth of India’s GDP. In other words, 35 elite Hindu families own quarter of India’s GDP by leaving 85 % ordinary Hindus as poor!
The dominant group of Hindu nationalists come from the three upper castes ( Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas ) that constitute only 10 per cent of the total Indian population. But, they claim perhaps 80 % of the jobs in the new economy, in sectors such as software, biotechnology, and hotel management.
India is also one of the most under-banked major markets in the world with only 6 bank branches per 1,000 sq kms, according to the World Bank, and less than 31% of the population has access to a bank account. According to India’s national agency, (NABARD), around 60 per cent people are not having access to financial institutions in India. This figure is less than 15 per cent in developed countries.
Corruption
According to TI, 25 % of Indians paid bribe to obtain a service. 68 % believe that governmental efforts to stop the corruption as ineffective. More than 90 % consider police and political parties as the worst corrupt institutions. 90 % of Indians believe that corruption will increase within the next 3 years. “Corruption is a large tax on Indian growth, It delays execution, raises costs and destroys the moral fiber.” says Prof. Rama Murthi.Transparency International estimates that Indian truckers pay something in the neighborhood of $5 billion annually in bribes to keep freight flowing. According to Rahul Gandhi, only 5 per cent of development funds reached their intended recipients due to hierarchical corruption in the country! [Financial Times]
Discrimination against Dalits
Crime against Dalits occur every 20 minutes in India. Every day 3 Dalit women are raped, 2 Dalits are murdered and 2 Dalit houses are burnt down! These figures represent only a fraction of actual incidents since many Dalits do not register cases for fear of retaliation by the police and upper-caste Hindu individuals. Official figures show that there are still 0.343 million manual scavengers in India from Dalit community. More than 165 million Dalits in India are simply abused by their Hindu upper castes for their birth! . [HRW Report2007]
Human Rights
When it comes to Human Rights issues in India, it is not ratified the UN Convention against Torture, its citizens do not have the opportunity to find recourse in remedies that are available under international law. The victims are trapped with the local Hindu caste system, which in every aspect militates against their rights.
India has a very poor record of protecting the privacy of its citizens, according to the latest report from Privacy International (PI). India scored 1.9 points, which makes it an ‘extensive surveillance society’. A score between 4.1 and 5.0 (the highest score) would mean a country “consistently upholds human rights standards”. PI is a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations. [Fake encounter killings are rampant in India. This extra judicial killings are inspired by theological texts of Brahmins like Artha Shastra and Manusmriti which teaches espionage and torture methods. Every such killing of an innocent person, branded a terrorist, has encouraged the killer cops to target socially excluded communities like dalits, tribals and minorities.
India’s intelligence agencies like IB, RAW, etc seems to be thoroughly infiltrated by foreign secret servicesweapon producing nations. Formed in 1947, IB is engaged in wiretapping, spy on political opponents and sometimes indicting on false criminal charges. The IB also has numerous authors, bloggers and media persons. which support powerful
According to the National Human Rights Commission, as on 30th June 2004, there were 3,32,112 prisoners in Indian jails out of which 2,39,146 were under trial prisoners. That’s more than 70 %. India’s jails hold a disproportionate number of the country’s minority Muslims, a sign of discrimination and alienation from the Hindu majority. The bar association in India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, has refused to represent 13 Muslim suspects accused bombing courthouses in 2005 . A large part of police officers, Indian attorneys and judges appear regularly on the events organized by notorious Hindu militant groups. Prison statistics of Indian Jails can be seen from National Crime Record Bureau, here
India is a parliamentary democracy, but rather less than a fully free society. The human rights group Freedom House ranks India as a 2 (on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 the highest) for political rights and 3 for civil liberties. Elections are generally free but, notes Freedom House, “Government effectiveness and accountability are also undermined by pervasive criminality in politics, decrepit state institutions, and widespread corruption.” The State Department observes: “There were numerous reports that the government and its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals and insurgents, or staged encounter deaths.” Read Freedom House Report from here.
Minorities
About 20 %, or 200 million, are religious minorities. Muslims constitutes 138 million or 13.4 5, Christians 24 million or 2.3 %, Sikhs 19 million or 2 %, Buddhists 8 million or 0.8 % and Jains 4 million or 0.4 %. “Others” numbered 6.6 million or 0.6 %. According to Mr. Tahir Mahmood, an Indian Muslim journalist, “The 2.3 % Christians in the Indian population cater to 20 % of all primary education in India, 10 % of all the literacy and community health care, 25 % of all existing care of destitute and orphans, 30 % of all the handicapped, lepers and AIDS patients etc”.
Discrimination against Minority Muslims
Recently, Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee report admitted that 138 Million Muslims across India are severely under-represented in government employment, including Public Sector Units. Ironically, West Bengal, a communist ruled state reported 0 (zero) percent of Muslims in higher positions in its PSUs! It has found that the share of Muslims in government jobs and in the lower judiciary in any state simply does not come anywhere close to their population share. The only place where Muslims can claim a share in proportion to their population is in prison! (Muslims convicts in India is 19.1%, while the number of under trials is 22.5%, which exceed their population ratio) . A note sent on January 9 by the army to the defence ministry in 2004 says that only 29,093 Muslims among a total of 1.1 million personnel — a ratio of 2.6 %, which compares poorly with the Muslims’ 13.8 % share in the Indian population. Officially, Indian Army don’t allow head count based on religion.
A Muslim child attends school for three years and four months, compared to the national average of four years. Less than two percent of the students at the elite Indian Institutes of Technology comprise of the Muslim community. According to the National Knowledge Commission member Jayathi Ghosh, ‘there is a need to re-orient official strategies for ensuring better access of Muslim children to schooling outside the madrasas which cater to only four per cent of children from the community.’
Discrimination in Media
Hindu upper caste men, who constitute just eight per cent of the total population of India, hold over 70 % of the key posts across newsrooms in the country. The so-called twice-born Hindu castes dominate 85 % key posts despite constituting just 16 % of the total population, while the intermediary castes represent a meager 3%.
The Hindu Other Backward Class groups, who are 34 % of the total population, have a share of just 4% in the Indian newsrooms. Muslims, who constitute about 13 % of the population, control just 4 % top posts while Christians and Sikhs have a slightly better representation. But the worst scenario emerges in the case of Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes /Aborgines (STs): Based on CSDS study, 2006. Ref: The Hindu, June 05, 2006
Discrimination in Judiciary
India’s subordinate courts have a backlog of over 22 million cases while the 21 high courts and the Supreme Court have 3.5 million and 32,000 pending cases (2006). In subordinate courts, over 15 million cases are filed and an equal number disposed of annually by about 14,000 judges! Every year a million or more cases are added to the arrears. At the current speed, the lower courts may take 124 years for clearing the backlog. There were only 13 judges for every million people.
Recently a parliamentary committee blamed the judiciary for keeping out competent persons of downtrodden communities from “through a shrewd process of manipulation”. Between 1950 to 2000, 47% of Chief Justices and 40% of Judges were of Brahmin origin!. Dalits and Indian aborigines are lesser than 20 out of 610 judges working in Supreme Court and state high Courts. “This nexus and manipulative judicial appointments have to be broken, it urged”. [Parliamentary standing committee report on Constitutional Review, Sudarshan Nachiappan]. Among 12 states with high-Muslim population, Muslim representation in judicial sector is limited to 7.8%. (Justice Sachar Report).
According to the National Crime Records Bureau, only 31 per cent criminal trials are completed in less than a year. Some take even more than 10 years. According to its study, Crime in India 2002, nearly 220,000 cases took more than 3 years to reach court, and about 25,600 exhausted 10 years before they were completed. The term of the Liberhan Commission, formed 14 years ago to probe the demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya and originally given a mandate of three months, has been extended again!
Discrimination against Children
According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, India has the highest number of street children in the world. There are no exact numbers, but conservative estimates suggest that about 18 million children live and labor in the streets of India’s urban centers. Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta each have an estimated street-children population of over 100,000. The total number of Child labor in India is estimated to be 60 million.
The level of child malnutrition in India is among the highest in the world, higher even than some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, says the report ‘Extent of Chronic Hunger and Malnutrition in India’ by the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food. While around 25 percent children globally were underweight, in India the number was 43 percent. A quarter of all neo-natal deaths in the world, (2.1 million) occurred in India, says UNICEF Report 2007 . More than one in five children who die within four weeks of birth is an Indian. Nearly fifty percent of Indian children who die before the age of five do not survive beyond the first 28 days.
Discrimination against Women
According to the 2001 census, female literacy in India is 54.16 % against male literacy of 75.85 %. Most of the working women remain outside the organized sector: A mere 2.3 % women are administrators and managers, and 20.5 % professional and technical workers.
There are an estimated 40 million Hindu widows in India, the least fortunate of them shunned and stripped of the life they lived when they were married. It’s believed that 15,000 widows live on the streets of Vrindavan, a Hindu holy city of about 55,000 population in northern India. Many widows – at least 40per cent are said to be under 50 – are dumped by their relatives in religious towns and left to live off charity or beg on the streets. Their plight was highlighted in Deepa Mehta’s award-winning film Water, which had to be shot mainly outside India because of Hindu extremist opposition to the production.
Nearly 9 out of 10 pregnant women aged between 15 and 49 years suffer from malnutrition and about half of all children (47%) under-five suffer from underweight and 21 % of the populations are undernourished. India alone has more undernourished people (204 million) than all of sub-Saharan Africa combined. Nearly 20 % of women dying in childbirth around the globe are Indians. Six out of every 10 births take place at home and untrained people attend more than half of them. 44 % of the Indian girls were married before they reached the age of 18. It added, 16 % of girls in the age group 15-19 years were already mothers or expecting their first child and that pregnancy is the leading cause of mortality in this age group.
On an average one Indian woman commits suicide every four hours over a dowry dispute. During Indian marriage, women should bring jewellery, cash and even consumer durables as part of dowry to the in-laws. If they fail, the victims are burnt to death – they are doused in kerosene and set fire to. Routinely the in-laws claim that the death happened simply due to an accident.
Rape is the fastest growing crime in India. Every hour Indian women face two rapes, two kidnappings, four molestations and seven incidents of cruelty from husbands and relatives [National Crime Records Bureau Report 2006]
Fetus Killing
Women to men ratio were feared to reach 20:80 by the year 2020 as female fetus killing is rampant. Ten million girls have been killed by their parents in India in the past 20 years, either before they were born or immediately after, told Indian Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury to Reuters. According to the 2001 census, the national sex ratio was 933 girls to 1,000 boys, while in the worst-affected northern state of Punjab, it was 798 girls to 1,000 boys. The availability of ultrasound sex-determination tests leads to such mass killings in India.
Around 11 million abortions are carried out in India every year and nearly 80,000 women die during the process, says a report from Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecological Societies of India (FOGSI)
Human Trafficking
Out of the 593 districts in India, 378 or 62.5 % are affected by human trafficking. In 2006, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) sponsored study conducted by Shakti Vahini, found that domestic violence, illiteracy, unemployment, poverty; unsafe migration and child marriage are the major reasons for the increasing rate of illegal human trafficking.
95 % of the women in Madhya Pradesh in commercial sex are due to family traditions. So are 51.79 % in Bihar,’ said the study. While 43 % of the total women trafficked are minors, 44 percent of the women are into flesh trade due to poverty. Of the total women who are into sex work in the country, 60 % are from the lower and backward class, which indicates the pathetic living condition of the communities. In Madhya Pradesh, a political bastion of Hindu right wing party, 96.7 % of the women sex workers are from the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.
India has 4 million prostitutes nationwide and 60% of the prostitutes are from the Scheduled Castes and Tribes or other backward caste. UNAIDS says over 38% of those living with HIV in India are women.
High Crime Rate and Communal Riots
India reported 32,481 murders, 19,348 rapes, 7,618 dowry deaths and 36,617 molestation cases in 2006. As far as states are concerned, NCRB has found that Madhya Pradesh recorded the highest number of crimes (1,94,711) followed by Maharashtra (1,91,788), Andhra Pradesh (1,73,909), Tamil Nadu (1,48,972) and Rajasthan (1,41,992) during 2006. According to National Crime Records Bureau, there was 1822602 riots in 2005 alone. [ Incidence Of Cognizable Crimes (IPC) Under Different Crime Heads, concluded, Page 2] NCRB website
On average there are more than 2000 cases of kidnappings per year in India. Under India’s notorious caste system, upper caste Hindus inherited key positions and controls all the governmental branches. Violence against victims largely goes unpunished due to the support of upper caste crooks.
Economic Crimes
Economic Crime continues to be pervasive threat for Indian Companies, with 35 % of the organizations reporting having experienced fraud in the past two years according to PwC Global Economic Crime Survey 2007. Many incidents of fraud are going unreported. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ India findings:
* Corruption and Bribery continues to be the most common type of fraud reported by 20 % of the respondents;
* The average direct financial loss to companies was INR 60 Million (US $ 1.5 million) during the two year period. In addition the average cost to manage economic crime in India was INR 40 Million (US $ 1 Million) which is close to double that of the global and Asia Pacific average;
* In 36% of cases companies took no action against the perpetrators of fraud;
* In 50% of the cases frauds were detected by chance. [PWC Report 2007]
Armed Conflicts in India
Almost every state has separatist movements, many of them armed. A large number of Muslims were killed in the past few years across the country and the numbers are on a steady rise. On top of that India has become a paraya for its neighbours. None of its neighbours appreciate their closeness to India and they all blame it for meddling in their affairs.
63 per cent of India’s new budget will go to the military, police, administration and debt service (2008-09). The military might of centric Hindu elites in Delhi isolated people of Jammu & Kashmir and the northeastern states. It is difficult for any community to feel part of a larger country when the armed forces of the country are deployed to silence them.
According to an Indian official report , 165 of India’s 602 districts — mostly in states like Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar PradeshUS $21.7 billion in 2006 and it planned to spend $26.5 billion during 2008/09 financial year. 85 percent of the Army’s budget is spent on the enormous manpower of 1,316,000, which is the fourth largest in the world. — are “badly affected” by tribal and dalit violence, which government termed as “Maoist terror”. India’s military spending was recorded at
India experienced a rapid increase in demand for security in the period following the Mumbai attacks. Thanks to terrorism imports by world’s weapon industry! India is now one of the world’s most terror-prone countries, with a death toll second only to Iraq, says a report from the National Counter terrorism Center in Washington. India’s crime rates, already some of the highest in the world, are also rising, as is the incidence of corporate espionage. Approximately 5.5 million private security guards employed by about 15,000 security companies in India. As an industry,it is now the country’s largest corporate taxpayer. (CAPSI report)
In 2005, Business Week reported that India became Israel’s largest importer of weapons, accounting for about half of the $3.6 billion worth of weapons exported by the Jewish state.
“Do remember that 34 years ago, NSG was created by Americans. Hence it has been their onus to convince the group to grant the waiver to India to carry out the multi-billion dollar business as India is a large market,” says former Atomic Energy Commission chairman, Mr P K Iyengar.
Booming industry of Terrorism Experts and Security Research Institutes in India
With the emergence of Hindutva fascist forces and their alliance with Neo cons and Zionists, India witnessed a sharp increase in the number of research institutes, media houses and lobbying groups. According to a study by Think Tanks & Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, India has 422 think tanks, second only to the US, which has over 2,000 such institutions.
Out of 422 recognized Indian think tanks, around 63 are engaged in security research and foreign policy matters, which are heavily funded by global weapon industry. India’s Retired spies, Police officers, Military personals, Diplomats and Journalists are hired by such national security & foreign policy research institutes which gets enormous fund from global weapon industry. These dreaded institutions are in fact has a hidden agenda. Behind the veil, they work as the public relations arm of weapon industry. They create fake terror stories with the help of media and intelligence wing, manipulate explosions through criminals in areas of tribals, dalits or minorities in order to get public acceptance for weapon contracts.
By creating conflicts in this poor country, Brahmin spin masters get huge commission from the sale of weapons to government forces. To this corrupt bureaucrats, India’s ‘National Interest‘ simply means ‘their self Interest’. Their lobbying power bring more wealth to their families as lucrative jobs, citizenship of rich countries and educational opportunities abroad.
Mentionable that India is one of the world’s largest weapons importers. Between 2000 and 2007 India ranked world’s second largest arms importer accounting for 7.5 % of all major weapons transfers. It stood fourth among the largest military spender in terms of purchasing power in 2007 followed by US, China and Russia.
Over 1,130 companies in 98 countries manufacture arms, ammunitions and components. 90 % of Conventional arms exports in the world are from the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council namely USA, UK, Russia, China & France. The countries of Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East hold 51 per cent of the world’s heavy weapons.
The Defence Offset Facilitation Agency estimating the expenditure on the sector at USD 100 billion for next five years. At least 38 court cases relating to arms agreements are still pending against bureaucrats and military officers. Hindu fascist forces currently enjoy upper hand in media, civil service, judiciary, defence and educational streams of Indian society. Sooner or later, 25,000 strong democratic institutions in India will be collapsed and the country will be transformed to a limited democracy under the rule of security regime like Turkey or Israel. Hindutva’s security centric nationalism never was capable of bringing peace and protection to the life of our ordinary citizens.
According to Global Peace Index, India currently ranked on bottom, (122 with 2.422 score). Interestingly, our favourite arms supplier, Israel is among the worst performer when it comes to peace ranking. (141). It reminds a simple fact that the peace cannot be attained by sophisticated security apparatus.
Further more, India topped on Asian Risk Prospects -2009, with the highest political and social risk, scoring 6.87, mainly because of internal and external instability (PERC)
Suicides of Farmers and collapse of Agricultural sector
In the last two years, more than 218,000 people across India committed suicide mainly due to poverty, family feud, strained relationship with loved ones, dowry harassment and health problems. In a research by the Indian National Crime Records Bureau, it was noted that suicide cases in the country were registered at 118,112 and over 100,000, in 2005 and 2006, respectively.
Most of those who committed suicide were farmers, and the victims took their lives either by hanging or consuming poison. Aside from farmers, women also topped the list of people in India with suicidal tendencies. Since 1998 about 25 000 Indian farmers have committed suicide because they could not repay their debts. These debts, however, have largely accumulated because these farmers were severely overcharged by their money-lenders asking for up to 32% of interest.
76 per cent of the nation’s land is belonging to 23 per cent of population. More than 15 million rural households in India are landless. Another 45 million rural families own some land, less than 0.10 acre each, which is hardly enough to make them self- sufficient, let alone generate a profit. 340 million people in India are dependent largely on agricultural wage labour, $1 or less a day.[Rural Development Institute (RDI), Washington]
70 per cent of the Indian population still directly depends on agriculture, but growth in this sector declined from a lackluster 3.8 per cent to an even more anaemic 2.6 per cent last year.
Unemployment
Recently, a national report on the employment situation in India has warned that nearly 30 percent of the country’s 716 million-strong workforce will be without jobs by 2020. Government of India doesn’t have the resources or political will to find jobs for such a large population.
Retail trade employs 8 percent of India’s population, the largest employer after agriculture. There are more than 12 million small retailers in India, 96 percent of whom are small mom-and-pop stores, each occupying less than 500 square feet, creating the highest retail-outlet density per capita in the world. [Tarun Khanna, Yale]
Call centers and other outsourced businesses — such as software writing, medical transcription and back-office tasks — employ more than 1.6 million people in India, mostly in their 20s and 30s. Heart disease is projected to account for 35% of deaths among India’s working-age population between 2000 and 2030 says World Health Organization study. That number is about 12% for the United States, 22% for China and 25% for Russia.
Internal Migration and influx to the cities
Mumbai, the commercial capital of India is projected to grow into a city of about 21.9 million by the year 2015 and currently is plagued by vast poverty due to influx from villages. There are 5 million living on the street every night, covered only in newspaper, ” says Dr. Werner Fornos, president of the Global Population Education think tank and the former head of the Population Institute in Washington, D.C.
India is spending more than $400 million (£200m) to polish Delhi’s image as a first-rate capital, a difficult task for a city that seems to exist between the first and third worlds. A third of the capital’s 14 million-plus people live in teeming slums. According to crime statistics of 2006, Delhi continues to be the undisputed ‘crime capital’ of the country for the past 5 years in a row. 35 mega cities in India collectively reported a total of 3,26,363 cognizable crimes in 2006, an increase of 3.7% over 2005. Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore together accounted for more than one-third of all crimes reported in Indian cities having a population of over a million people, for the second year in a row.
India, a closed country
India’s share in world tourism map, was hovering between 0.38% to 0.39% for number of years. Irrespective of its huge area and beautiful nature, the foreign exchange earned from tourism was merely $2.61 billion (2006). India, scored only 4.14 out of seven in The WEF’s recently released Travel and Tourism Competitive Index (TTCI2007). Among 124 countries listed, Switzerland ranked highest while India was placed at 65th rank, which is far below of Malaysia (ranked 31). India was also listed at the bottom of ‘developing and threshold countries’, which listed Tunisia at 34th place.
Indian immigration doesn’t welcome foreigners to visit India . [VISA requirements, T&T index, India ranked 106, while Malaysia ranked 15 . VOA facilities are not available to anyone. The easier entry to India virtually limited to countries with considerable Hindu population like Mauritius or Nepal. The Hindu elite leaders of the country always concerned about India's physical boundaries and its holy cows rather than the life of its 85 % poor people. To them, the national interest means their own economical or political interests.
Indian Embassies are rated as the worst service providers around the globe. They are notorious for ‘red tapes‘ and ‘ corruption friendly service‘ a complaint repeatedly quoted by Non Resident Indians itself. 90 % of Indian businessman believes that India has yet to emerge as a “hospitable country”. ASSOCHAM
Global Warming effects in India
Water tables are dropping where farmers are lucky enough to have wells, and rainfall has become increasingly unpredictable. Economic loss due to global warming in India is estimated between 9-25%. GDP loss may be to the tune of 0.67%. Prediction of loss of wheat is more. Rabi crops will be worse hit which threatens food security. Drought and flood intensity will increase.100-cm sea level rise can lead to welfare loss of $1259 million in India equivalent to 0.36% of GNP. Frequencies and intensities of tropical cyclones in Bay of Bengal will increase. Malaria will be accelerated to an endemic in many more sates. 20% rise in summer monsoon rainfall. Extreme temperatures and precipitations are expected to increase. [Sir Nicholas Stern Report] India got the most foreign aid for natural disaster relief in two decades obtaining 43 such loans of $8,257 million from World Bank alone beating down even Bangladesh and has the 2nd highest loan in the world.
Transportation
Despite the much touted economic boom, only 0.8 percent of Indians own a car most are on foot, motorbikes, or carts. And of all the vehicles sold in India from April to November of last year, 77 percent were two-wheelers – motorcycles, mopeds, or scooters. China has built over 34,000 km of expressways, compared to less than 8,000 km in India. According to Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM), nearly 42o million man hours are lost every month by the 7 million -odd working population of Delhi and NCR who take the public transport to travel to work because of traffic congestion during the peak morning and evening hours. India is having only less than 1% of the world’s vehicle population.
Road Safety
India accounts for about 10 percent of road accident fatalities worldwide and the figures are the highest in the world. Indian roads are poorly constructed, traffic signals, pedestrian pavements and proper signage almost nonexistent. The other reasons are encroachments, lack of parking facility and ill-equipped and untrained traffic police, corruption and poor traffic culture. An estimated 1,275,000 persons are grievously injured on the road every year. Social cost of annual accidents in India has been estimated at $ 11,000. The Government of India’s Planning Commission has estimated there to be 15 hospitalised injuries and 70 minor injuries for every road death.
According to NATPAC, The number of accidents for 1000 vehicles in India is as high as 35 while the figure ranges from 4 to 10 in developed countries. An estimated 270 people die each day from road accidents, and specialists predict that will increase by roughly 5 percent a year. Accidents also cause an estimated loss of Rs 8000 million to the country’s economy. About 80 per cent of the fatal and severe injury occurred due to driving faults. According to World Bank forecasts India’s death rate is expected to rise until 2042 if no remedial action being taken. The number of road accidents in China dropped by an annual average 10.8 per cent for four consecutive years from 2003, despite continuous growth in the number of privately owned cars.
Doing Business in India
It takes 50 days to register a property as compared to less than 30 days in China, and less than 10 days in the United States and Thailand. Average cost of a business start-up is over 60 percent of per capita income, much higher than any of the comparator countries.
India has the highest cost of electricity among major industrialised and emerging economies ($0.8 per kwh for industry as against $0.1 kwh in China), result of the highest transmission and distribution losses in the world, or in other words a quarter of the gross electricity output. Transport costs are very high in India. It accounts for 25% of total import costs as against only 10% in comparator countries. [World Bank Report on India]
Foreign remittance from Non Resident Indians
In 2006, India received the highest amount of remittance globally from migrants, 27 $Billion. Around 20$ billion of this came from the Gulf expatriate workforce. Together, GCC countries are the largest trading partner of India and home of 5 million of Indian workforce. Indian government expects overseas Indians to pump in about US$500 billion into the FOREX reserves of the country in the next 10 years, making them the single largest source of foreign receipts.
Nearly three million people in Africa are of Indian ancestry, and the top three countries having the largest population of Indians are South Africa, Mauritius and the Reunion islands. They also have sizeable presence in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania in the east and Nigeria in the west.
Foreigners Living in India
Historically, about 72 % of the current Indian population is originated from Aryan race. Prominent historians and Dravidians consider Aryans as foreign invaders to India. The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) was postulated by eminent Oxford scholar Max Muller in 1882 and later advanced by several western and Indian historans.
Under the current scenario, potential migrants or ‘invaders’ to India include few ‘hired or weird’ Pakistani bombers, villagers around India’s border with Bangladesh, Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka and Indian import of Nepali prostitutes. 92 year old, Indian Painter Maqbool Fida Hussain lives in Dubai after death threats from Hindu militants. According to Hindu extremists Bangladeshi story teller Taslima Nasrin passed all the tests for an Indian citizenship. Italian born Sonia Gandhi , the Christian widow of Rajiv Gandhi is still considered as a foreigner by Hindu elites while Pakistan born Hindu, Lal Krishna Advani is ‘legally and morally fit’ to become India’s next Prime Minister.
Quit India!
Sixty years ago Indians asked the British to quit India. Now they are doing it themselves. To live with dignity and enjoy relative freedom, one has to quit India! With this massive exodus, what will be left behind will be a violently charged and polarized society.
Hindutva’s fake National Pride on India
A 2006 opinion poll by Outlook—AC Nielsen shows that 46 % of India’s urban class wants to settle down in US. Interestingly, in the Hindutva heart land of Gujarat, 54 % of people want to move to US.
Even Parliament members of the Hindutva party are involved in human trafficking from India. Recently police arrested, Babubhai Katara, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP, who was part of such a racket. He received 20,000 US $ per person for US migration from victims.
When Indians are fleeing around the world to find a job, how can this hindutva idiots can claim on “National Pride of India”?
India is the World Bank’s largest borrower, In June 2007 it provided $3.7bn in new loans to India. Due to the fake ‘India Shining’ propaganda launched by Hindutva idiots, foreign donors are reluctant to help the poor people in this country. According to figures provided by Britain’s aid agency, the total aid to India, from all sources, is only $1.50 a head, compared with an average of $17 per head for low-income countries. [Financial Times]
Gridlocked in corruption, greed, inhumanity and absolute inequality – of class, caste, wealth, religion – this is the Real INDIA. Hindutva Idiots, Your false pride and actions make our life miserable.
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Saturday, 28 August 2010
US Officials Accidentally Deliver Aid To Jamaat’ud Dawa Relief Camp
SUKKUR (Reuters) – The United States will divert $50 million from a development package for Pakistan towards relief funds, the top US aid official said on Wednesday after touring a flood victims camp run by a religious charity, suspected of linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba and its humanitarian wing Jamaat-ud-Dawa.
“Let me be clear: This disaster represents a major logistics challenge. We are committed to supporting this significant relief effort as much as possible,” US Agency for International Development head Rajiv Shah told reporters.
After touring a camp for flood victims set up in a school, Shah told a news conference that $50 million would be diverted from a five-year, $7.5 billion development package for Pakistan to help the flood relief effort.
The camp is touted by U.S. officials as being run by Save the Children and the U.N. World Food Program, which receive USAID funding.
But another visible presence at the operation Wednesday was the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, a charity wing of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which is blamed by India for the deadly 2008 attacks in Mumbai. Charges against the organisation and its chief Hafiz Saeed have twice been thrown out of court in Pakistan due to lack of evidence to support India’s claims.
Shah was in Pakistan to see the destruction caused by the floods, which was apparent as his plane descended into this hardscrabble city in the southern province of Sindh, one of the hardest-hit areas. Below, a sea of opaque brown water, broken only by treetops, stretched to the horizon. It cloaked the sugarcane and wheat fields that sustain the region in normal times.
Under a raging sun, homeless families and their livestock sought shade along roadsides. Thousands of others were staying at a squalid tent camp, where aid workers briefed Shah on the numbers of sick children and their efforts to teach the brightly garbed women there about health and hygiene.
“Everything, everything was destroyed by the flood,” said Baboo Shaikh, 65, who left his village near the city of Jacobabad 22 days before, a day before the water came and swept much of it away. Shaikh sat with his family of 15 in a low-slung, fly-infested tent, which he described as “congested.”
U.S. officials said after Shah’s visit that they had not been aware of the Islamist charity’s role at the camp and that they have no control over which organizations helped when and where.
The government has been accused of moving too slowly in the crisis and could face unrest because anger is rising. Religious charities have moved in quickly to fill the vacuum.
The camp Shah toured is run by Falah-e-Insaniyat, a charity with suspected ties to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its humanitarian wing Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), both blacklisted by the United Nations.
Food and other logistics at the camp are provided by Western aid agencies, said an American official. A spokesman for JuD said Falah-e-Insaniyat runs the camp.
A banner, which read, “Relief Camp Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation,” hung at the entrance to the camp.
Asked if USAID knew the camp was run by the group, Rebecca Gustafson, press officer for the agency’s disaster assistance response team, said: “We work with our international partners to identify locations that reach flood affected populations.”
Friday, 27 August 2010
Pakistan Air Force | A Proud History:
Every Man A Tiger
Pakistan has one of the best, most combat ready airforces in the world. They have to; their neighbour to the east is huge, and the two nations, have a long history of hostilities. For Indian war planners, the Pakistan air Force is their worst fear. Pakistani pilots are respected throughout the world, especially the Islamic world, beause they know how to fly and fight.On one or two occasions, I had the oppertunity to talk with Pakistani instructor pilots, who had served in Iraq. These discussions, didn’t give me great cause to worry. The Russian domination of training prevented the Pakistanis from having any real influence on the Iraqi aircrew training program.
Still, there had to be a few Iraqi pilots, who had observed and listened to their mentors from France and Pakistan and the useless guidence of their inept leaders. It was those few, I was concerned about – the ones with great situational awareness and good eyesight, who had figured out how to effectively use their aircrafts and its weapons to defend their nation.”
(General Chuck Horner (retd) and Tom Clancey. General Chuck commanded the US and allied air assets during Desert shield and desert storm, and was responsible for the design and execution of one of the most devestating air campaigns in the history. He also served as Commander 9th Air Force, Commander US Central Command Air Forces, and Commander in chief, SpaceCom. Book: Every Man A Tiger).
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PAF – Quality If Not Quantity
“Another way in which the PAF satisfies this requirement is in the pursuit of excellence with regard to its combat echelons. Paradoxically, though, that pursuit is by its very nature an expensive procedure and there is a high wastage rate as pilots progress through the training system, with individuals being weeded out all the way along the line. The end result is felt to be well worth the expense involved, however, and personal observations have certainly convinced the author that the average PAF pilot is almost certainly possessed of superior skills when compared with, say, an average American pilot. As to those , who are rated above average, they compare favourably to the very best in a host of western air arms. Standard of accuracy appear comparable to those of the west and may surpass them, one F-6 pilot of No. 15 Squadron having recently put 20 out of 25 shells through a banner in four successive passes. The author can vouch for this having inspected the banner at Kamra and even more remarkably, the pilot responsible for this impressive shooting was a ‘first tourist’.”(Lindsay Peacock. Journal: Air International, Vol 41. No 5)
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YEAGER
“When we arrived in Pakistan in 1971, the political situation between the Pakistanis and Indians was really tense over Bangladesh, or East Pakistan, as it was known in those days, and Russia was backing India with tremendous amounts of new airplanes and tanks. The U.S. and China were backing the Pakistanis. My job was military advisor to the Pakistani air force, headed by Air Marshal Rahim Khan, who had been trained in Britain by the Royal Air Force, and was the first Pakistani pilot to exceed the speed of sound. He took me around to their different fighter groups and I met their pilots, who knew me and were really pleased that I was there. They had about five hundred airplanes, more than half of them Sabres and 104 Starfighters, a few B-57 bombers, and about a hundred Chinese MiG-19s. They were really good, aggressive dogfighters and proficient in gunnery and air combat tactics. I was damned impressed. Those guys just lived and breathed flying.
The Pakistanis whipped their [Indians'] asses in the sky, but it was the other way around in the ground war. The air war lasted two weeks and the Pakistanis scored a three-to-one kill ratio, knocking out 102 Russian-made Indian jets and losing thirty-four airplanes of their own. I’m certain about the figures because I went out several times a day in a chopper and counted the wrecks below. I counted wrecks on Pakistani soil, documented them by serial number, identified the components such as engines, rocket pods, and new equipment on newer planes like the Soviet SU-7 fighter-bomber and the MiG-21 J, their latest supersonic fighter. The Pakistani army would cart off these items for me, and when the war ended, it took two big American Air Force cargo lifters to carry all those parts back to the States for analysis by our intelligence division.
I didn’t get involved in the actual combat because that would’ve been too touchy, but I did fly around and pick up shot-down Indian pilots and take them back to prisoner-of-war camps for questioning. I interviewed them about the equipment they had been flying and the tactics their Soviet advisers taught them to use. I wore a uniform or flying suit all the time, and it was amusing when those Indians saw my name tag and asked, “Are you the Yeager who broke the sound barrier?” They couldn’t believe I was in Pakistan or understand what I was doing there. I told them, “I’m the American Defense Rep here. That’s what I’m doing.” The PAF remains the only foreign air force in the world to have received Chuck Yeager’s admiration – a recommendation which the PAF is proud of. (Source: PIADS)
(General (Retd.) Chuck Yeager (USAF) , Book: Yeager, the Autobiography).
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THE 1965 INDO- PAKISTAN WAR
“The Partition of 1947 signalled the end of the British Empire in India, and the establishment of two independent states, India and Pakistan. They took opposite sides over Kashmir’s struggle for independence in 1947-49, and although open war was averted, India lost 6000 men in the conflict. India annexed Kashmir in January 1957 and there followed a long period of tension with Pakistan. Armed clashes in the Rann of Kutch in western India during January 1965 and Pakistan’s recruitment of a ‘Free Kashmir’ guerrilla army finally erupted into open warfare in August 1965.The ground forces of the two countries appeared to be evenly matched, and their respective offensives (although involving approximately 6000 casualties on each side) were indecisive. The Pakistan Air Force, however, emerged with great credit from its conflict with the Indian Air Force, destroying 22 IAF aircraft in air-to-air combat for the loss of only eight of its own – a remarkable achievement considering that the PAF faced odds of nearly four to one. During the conflict India and Pakistan came under strong international pressure to end the war, and arms supplies to both sides were cut off by Britain and the US. A ceasefire imposed by the UN Security Council then reduced the conflict to a series of sporadic minor clashes, and the national leaders were persuaded to attend a peace conference at Tashkent in January 1966. Their decision to renounce the use of force finally ended the war.”
(Anthoney Robinson, former staff of the RAF Museum, Hendon and now a free lance Military aviation writer . Book: Elite Forces Of The World)
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Combat Over The Indian Subcontinent
“In September 1965 a festering border dispute between India and Pakistan erupted into full scale war. The Indian possessed the larger air force numerically, composed maily of British and French types- Hawker Hunter, Folland Gnat and Dassault Mystere fighters, Dassault Ouragon fighter-bombers and English electric Camnberra bombers. The smaller but highly trained Pakistan air force was equipped in large part with F-86F Sabers, plus a few F-104 Starfighters. Fighting lasted little more than two weeks, but during that time, Pakistan gained a definite ascendancy in the air. It was the well proven Sabers that emerged with honors, being credited with all but five of the 36 victories claimed. The Indians claimed 73 victories – undoubtly a considerable overestimate – for an admitted loss of 35.”(Christopher Sivores, Book: Air Aces)
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Fiza’ya: Psyche Of The Pakistan Air Force.
“This is the first definitive account of a relatively small but fascinating air arm, the Pakistan Air Force. Hitherto either casually studied or written up in propaganda fashion, the PAF has needed a detailed analysis of how a developing country with limited resources can nonetheless produce a first class air force.The Pakistan Fiza’ya (Pakistan Air Force) plays a role in the psyche of its nation unmatched by any air force in the world except that by the Israeli Air Force. The PAF’s motto, loosely translated from the Persian, is ‘Lord of All I Survey’. It calls itself “The Pride of the Nation’, and it is exactly that. Much smaller than India in geographical size and population, Pakistan sees itself as a beleaguered state between India to the East and the Soviet Union/Afghanistan to the West. Since it can never match numbers with India, much in the same way as Israel cannot match numbers with the Arabs, it has always emphasized quality, and projected itself as the Gallant Few against the eastern hordes of many. The mystique of the air warrior, the last jousting knight, the only surviving gladiator on the field of modem war, has been effectively utilized by Pakistan as its symbol of defiance against vastly larger enemies.
The PAF gets the best and the brightest of the country’s young men, and it is given clear preference in the matter of equipment. In 1981, for example, Pakistan paid $1.2 billion for 40 F-16s. By comparison, the entire first five year (1982-87) FMS package from the United States totalled $1.6 billion, of which $0.5 billion was used to cover the shortfalls in the F-16 funding. In other words, virtually half of all military equipment purchased from the US during this period went on one single purchase of fighter aircraft for the PAF.
Had the US been willing to supply an Airborne Warning and Control System to Pakistan in the second package (1987-92), along with additional F-16s again the PAF would have gotten half or more of the total sum. Because the nation spends so much of its precious resources on the PAF, it expects a great dealinreturn. In 1965 the PAF delivered; in 1971,overtaken by circumstances outside of its control, it did not. This took much of the glint, glamour and shine off the PAF. But in the next eighteen years, 1972-90, by dint of solid hard work the PAF did much to restore its prestige.”
(Pushpinder Singh, Ravi Rikhye, Peter Steinemann. Book: Fiza’ya: Psyche of the Pakistan Air Force.)
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On Eagles’ Wings
“He was a formidable fellow and I was glad that he was Pakistani and not Egyptian”(Israel Air Force chief Ezer Weizmen writing about PAF chief Nur Khan in his autobiography, On Eagles’ Wings).
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Pakistan Air Force.
“One of Asia’s most competent air arms…”(World Air Power Journal, Vol 6 Summer 1991)
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Pakistan’s Professionals.
“Overall the PAF are a highly professional air force and this is reflected in their high standards of instructions and flying training.”(Steve Bond commenting about PAF’s flying training program. Journal: Air Forces Monthly, May 1990.)
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Airforces Monthly
An article in the May 1993 issue (pages 46-47) of Airforces Monthly, a reputable UK-based air defence magazine, written by a Russian aviation writer, Sergey Vekhov, for the first time in public, provided a first-hand account about the PAF’s pilots:“As an air defence analyst, I am fully aware that the Pakistan Air Force ranks today as one of the best air forces in the world and that the PAF Combat Commanders’ School (CCS) in Sargodha has been ranked as the best GCI/pilot and fighter tactics and weapons school in the world”. As one senior US defence analyst commented to me in 1992, “it leaves Topgun (the US Naval Air Station in Miramar, California) far behind”.
Article in the May 1993 issue (pages 46-47 by Sergey Vekhov)
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Jane’s International Defense (June 24, 1998)
The PAF, although outnumbered by IAF, has at least one qualitative edge over its rival: Pilot Training. The caliber of Pakistani instructors is acknowledged by numerous air forces, and US Navy pilots considered them to be highly ‘professionals’ during exercises flying off the USS Constellation (as co-pilots). The IAF is in an unfortunate position: it lacks an advanced training (and multi-role combat aircraft)____________________________________________________
During 1965 war, India’s General Chaudri ordered his troops to march on Sialkot and Lahore – jauntily inviting his officers to join him for drinks that evening in lahore Gymkhana. He didn;t reckon on the Pakistani troops.
“The first Indian regiment that found itself face to face with Pakistanis didn’t get clobbered,” said a report in Washington DC, America. “They just turned and ran, leving all of their equipment, artillery supplies and even extra clothing and supplies behind”.
I have been a journalist now for twenty years, ‘reported American Broadcasting Corporation’s Roy Maloni, “and want to go on record that I have never seen a more confident and victoroius group of soldiers than those fighting for Pakistan, right now.
“India is claiming all-out victory. I have not been able to find any trace of it. All I can see are troops, tanks and other war material rolling in a steady towards the front … These muslims of Pakistan are natural fighters and they ask for no quarter and they give none. In any war, such as the one going on between India and Pakistan right now, the propoganda claims on either side are likely to be startling. But if I have to take bet today, my money would be on the Pakistan side.“
The London Daily Mirror reported: “There is a smell of death in the burning Pakistan sun. For it was here that India’s attacking forces came to a dead stop.
“During the night they threw in every reinforcement they could find. But wave after wave of attacks were repulsed by the Pakistani troops.”
“India”, said the London Daily Times, “is being soundly beaten by a nation which is outnumbered by four and a half to one in population and three to one in size of armed forces.”
In Times reporter Louis Karrar wrote: “Who can defeat a nation which knows how to play hide and seek with death“.
“… I will never forget the smile full of nerve the conducting army officers gave me. this smile told me how fearless and brave are the Pakistani young men.
“Playing with fire to these men — from the jawan to the general Officer Commanding — was like children playing with marbles in the streets.
“I asked the GOC, how is it that despite a small number you are overpowering the Indians?
He looked at me, smiled and said: “if courage, bravery and patriotism were purchaseable commodities, then India have got them along with American aid.”
“Pakistan has been able to gain complete command of the air by literally knocking the Indian planes out of the skies, if they had not already run away.”
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“Indian pilots are inferior to Pakistan’s pilots and Indian officers’ leadership has been generally deplorable. India is being soundly beaten by a nation which is outnumbered by a four and a half to one in population and three to one three to one in size of armed forces.”
Sunday Times, London, September 19, 1965.
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“Pakistan’s success in the air means that she has been able to redeploy her relatively small army — professionally among the best in Asia — with impunity, plugging gaps in the long front in the face of each Indian thrust.”
“By all accounts the courage displayed by the Pakistan Air Force pilots is reminiscent of the bravery of the few young and dedicated pilots who saved this country from Nazi invaders in the critical Battle of Britain during the last war.”
Patrick Seale, The Observer, London, September 12, 1965.
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“India is claiming all out victory. I have not been able to find any trace of it. All I can see are troops, tanks and other war material rolling in a steady stream towards the front.”
“If the Indian Air Force is so victorious, why has it not tried to halt this flow?. The answer is that it has been knocked from the skies by Pakistani planes.“
“Pakistan claims to have destroyed something like 1/3rd the Indian Air Force, and foreign observers, who are in a position to know say that Pakistani pilots have claimed even higher kills than this; but the Pakistani Air Force are being scrupulously honest in evaluating these claims. They are crediting Pakistan Air Force only those killings that can be checked from other sources.”
Roy Meloni, American Broadcasting Corporation, September 15, 1965.
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“One thing I am convinced of is that Pakistan morally and even physically won the air battle against immense odds.“
“Although the Air Force gladly gives most credit to the Army, this is perhaps over-generous. India with roughly five times greater air-power, expected an easy air-superiority. Her total failure to attain it may be seen retrospectively as a vital, possibly the most vital, of the whole conflict.”
“Nur Khan is an alert, incisive man of 41, who seems even less. For six years he was on secondment and responsible for running Pakistan’s civil air-line, which, in a country where ‘now’ means sometime and ‘sometime’ means never, is a model of efficiency. he talks without the jargon of a press relations officer. He does not quibble abobut figures. Immediately one has confidence in what he says.”
“His estimates, proffered diffidently but with as much photographic evidence as possible, speak for themselves. Indian and Pakistani losses, he thinks, are in something like the ration of ten to one.”
“Yet, the quality of equipment, Nur insists, is less important than flying ability and determination. The Indians have no sense of purpose. The Pakistanis were defending their own country and willingly taking greater risks. ‘The average bomber crews flew 15 to 20 sorties. My difficulty was restraining them, not pushing them on.‘ “
“This is more than nationalistic pride. Talk to the pilots themselves and you get the same intense story.”
Peter Preston, The Guardian, London – September 24, 1965.
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“One point particularly noted by military observers is that in their frist advances the Indians did not use air power effectively to support their troops. In contrast, the Pakistanis, with sophisticated timing, swooped in on Ambala airfield and destroyed some 25 Indian planes just after they had landed and were sitting on the ground out of fuel and powerless to escape (NOTE: PAF has not claimed any IAF aircraft during it’s attacks on Ambala due to non-availability of concrete evidence of damage in night bombing.)”
“By the end of the week, in fact, it was clear that the Pakistanis were more than holding their own.“
Everett G. Martin, General Editor, Newsweek, September 20, 1965.
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“India’s barbarity is mounting in fury as the Indian army and Air Force, severely mauled, are showing signs of demoralisation. The huge losses suffered by the Indian Armed Forces during the last 12 days of fighting could not be kept from the Indian public and in retaliation, the Indian armed forces are indulging in the most barbaric methods.”
“The Chief of Indian Air Force could no longer ensure the safety of Indian air space. A well known Indian journalist, Mr Frank Moraes, in a talk from All-india radio, also admitted that IAF had suffered severe losses and it was no use hiding the fact and India should be prepared for more losses.“
Indonesian Herald, September 11, 1965.
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Pakistani forces thrusting six miles deep into Indian territory the south-east of Lahore have checked the Indian offensive launched on September 6 against the capital of West Pakistan.
Pakistani infantry supported by armor and guns were today entrenched six miles east of the Indian border, and well beyond Indian town of Khem Karan, the capture of which last week forced Indian tanks and men to make a hasty retreat.
From Khem Karan, an ever-green village now deserted by its 15,000 people, a 40-mile road leads directly to Amritsar, holy capital of India’s restive Sikhs. And a Pakistani offensive along that road could threaten the rear of Indian forces still facing Lahore from East Punjab.
As I visited Khem Karan today with the first party of newsmen shown into India by Pakistani officers, evidence of the Indians’ hasty withdrawal lay everywhere in the flat dust blown fields.
Intact mortars and American made ammunition, much of which was still crated, for 81 and 120 mm mortars, shells for 90 mm tank guns, rifle cartridges in hundred, stacks of fuel in barrel, had been left behind.
India had sent against Lahore one armoured brigade and two infantry divisions. The initial thrust on September 6, carried the Indians two and a half miles deep into Pakistan from Khem Karan and the Pakistanis say they were outnumbered six to one.
The Pakistanis pushed the Indians back at the cost of bitter fighting. One Pakistani armoured unit ran into an Indian armoured regiment, the Ninth Royal Deccan Horse… and no shots were spared.
I saw two Indian Sherman tanks on the road to Khem Karan blown clean through, one in the rear and one in the front, each by a single Pakistani shell with the dead crew still inside.
Indian dead lay unburied in the fields. An Indian border post was riddled with bullets and shells. This is real war, even though Pakistani infantry are now resting at forward posts, with Indians on the defensive and the main action in the air.
Indian British made Canberras, Soviet made Mig-21s and French made Mysteres and Ouragons constantly swoop, strafe and bomb from a safe altitude, for Pakistani anti-aircraft units are very much on the alert. On the the road from Lahore charred trucks lay twisted wrecks, one of them still aflame. It is war run by cool professionals, with every gun and tank well protected by camouflage nets, every trench where it should be, perfect discipline and very high morale.
Almost every Pakistani officers says: “We are not interested in territorial gains, but we are very keen to give the Indians a hard lesson and we won’t stop short of that.”
AFP Corespondent, reporting on September 9, 1965
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Man for man, unit for unit, Pakistan’s smaller Army is at a higher standard of training than the Indian Army. The present Indian intention was to scatter Pakistan’s smaller Army by making several other thrusts apart from the main fighting area in the Lahore sector. The intense air activity had prevented the mass movement of Indian troops by air.
BBC commentary By Charles Douglas Home, September 10, 1965
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The Pakistan-India conflict, in the Pentagon’s early assessment, pits tighter discipline, a higher morale, better training, and some superior equipment among the Pakistanis against considerably larger Indian Land, Air and Sea Forces.
Washington sources see Pakistan aiming to humiliate Indian in a short conflict. They judge India as depending on its juggernaut to crush the Pakistanis under sheer military weight.
Armoured strength between the two forces is about equal but the Pakistani tanks are more modern.
Christian Science Monitor, September 10, 1965
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Pakistan has a somewhat more homogeneous army with less ethnic and religious frictions. Its soldiers have a high reputation for will to fight; and in Mohammad Ayub Khan, the head of state and Sandhurst-trained professional soldier, the army has always had a sympathetic supporter.
The ‘New York Times’, September 10, 1965
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“We fought for you last time,” several Pakistanis told me, referring to their wartime service under British command. “But this time it is our war and we shall fight it to the finish”
Joe McGrown Jr., Washington Post, September 10, 1965
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Nehru wasn’t worried much about aggression when India took Goa. But Shastri has plenty to worry about now, because he is facing penal and disciplinary action by one of the toughest and best trained armies in the world, excellently led, highly organized and totally dedicated. For himself he has a motley, disorganized, low-morale force of four time as many men as Pakistan, but they can’t or won’t fight. They only beg.
The first Indian regiment that found itself face to face with the Pakistanis didn’t get clobbered. They just turned and ran, leaving all of their equipment, artillery supplies and even extra clothing and supplies behind.
The Pakistan military hardware, including tanks, planes, and ground-warfare equipment of every kind is far superior to that of Indians, and one long time expert of the Indian-Pakistan picture told me this afternoon that in his military opinion, there is little doubt but that the Pakistanis will lick the Indians in the long run, despite the fact that the Indian army outnumbers the Pakistan army four to one.
This expert said, however, that there is great disparity between the quality of the two armies, not to mention the disparity in equipment. The Indian soldier is soft while the Pakistan soldier is tough and determined. The Indian leadership is vacillating and uncertain, while the Pakistan leadership is well trained, highly talented and decisive.
The Indian air force is somewhat larger than the Pakistan Air Force in numbers of planes, but there is no organizational pattern to the way they have been acquired or to what is on hand. It is a weird conglomeration of all sorts and conditions of aircraft from a variety of countries, even including France and the maintenance problem is staggering, even if adequate maintenance personnel were available. It means a vast stocking of replacement parts, because the different for virtually ever type of plane they have, while the Pakistan Air Force has been intelligent enough to standardize to a very high degree, and thus reduce their maintenance problem to a minimum. And this is vitally important as any war proceeds beyond the very first stages.
Furthermore, it began to develop today that the Indian claims of having shot down large numbers of Pakistan Air Force planes in the first days of conflict were highly exaggerated, and that the Pakistan losses have been virtually nil in this line.
The Indian claims, frankly, were highly suspicious from the beginning because they are notably poor airmen and their equipment is antiquated and not at all a match for the modern jet equipment of the Pakistan Air Force. It just didn’t hold water to anyone who knew the details of the Indian air inventory as against the Pakistan air inventory, that any such victories could have been achieved by the Indians.
‘Top of the News’, Washington, September 6-10, 1965
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“For the PAF, the 1965 war was as climatic as the Israeli victory over the Arabs in 1967. A further similarity was that Indian air power had an approximately 5:1 numerical superiority at the start of the conflict. Unlike the Middle East conflict, the Pakistani air victory was achieved to a large degree by air-to-air combat rather than on ground. But it was as absolute as that attained by Israel.
USA – Aviation Week & Space Technology – December 1968 issue.
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“Pakistan’s air force gained a remarkable victory over India in this brief 22 day war exploiting its opponents weaknesses in exemplary style – Deeply shaken by reverse, India began an extensive modernisation and training program, meanwhile covering its defeat with effective propaganda smoke screen.”
Encyclopaedia of Aircraft printed in several countries by Orbis Publications – Volume 5
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Alam’s Speed Shooting Classics – One of the great aces of the jet age.
Columnist Air Cdre M Kaiser Tufail has conducted a detailed research of MM Alam’s 1965 feats. Read it here
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