Pakistan is not unique in this respect. Israel is the only other country in the modern world similarly constructed by partitioning a larger entity, India, in the case of Pakistan, and Palestine, in the case of Israel. More than 50 years since its independence in 1947, Pakistan is a country where the absence of Allah can be measured in the level of human misery and failed expectations. With a population of 140 million and growing at nearly three per cent annually, the demographic pressure on land and resources is immense. Social indicators of the Pakistani society are appalling.
Poverty is widespread.
Its misguided national policy is reflected in government expenditure, with nearly seven per cent of the GDP going to the military and 2.7 per cent and 1.8 per cent allocated for education and health respectively. Pakistan has been ruled by the military for the greater part of its existence and the reason for this is in its origin. It was established by a movement on behalf of the Muslim landowning families of British India. This class remains the exploitative elite and has nurtured an extreme version of regressive Muslim thinking whose offshoot is the Taliban movement. Political leaders, such as former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, both living in exile, have plundered the treasury.