Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister Anwar Ul Haq Kaka  (Balochistan Awami Party)

Episode 36 South Asia Into the 21st Century

A History of India

Michael Fisher (2016)

Film Review

In this concluding lecture, Fisher makes no mention of BRICS, which would seem a major omission in light of current world events.

He outlines three specific problems facing all three South Asian countries in the 21st century:

1. a trend towards evicting indigenous forest people from their traditional homelands*
2. evictions of farmers, pastoralists and indigenous people for dam construction and other development projects.
3. rapid population growth – as of 2016 South Asia hosted 20% of the global population on 3% of its land mass and one-third of the world’s poor.

To their advantage, all three countries have a huge youth labor pool approaching “peak productivity” (ie willing to work for subminimum wage) . This means transnational corporations are greedily shifting manufacturing to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh from China and South East Asia where wages are rising.

All these trends contribute toward the growth of South Asian megacities:

• Karachi pop 24,000,000
• Mumbai pop 12,470,447
• Dakka pop 15,876,105
• Delhi 16,814,838

Gender disparity is rife in all three countries although all three have had women prime ministers.

All three countries have coastal cities threatened by rising sea levels. The most dire prediction predict a loss (via flooding) of 15% of South Asia’s land mass (mostly in Bangladesh). There are also predictions global warming will melt Himalayan glaciers and disrupt the seasonal monsoons essential to agriculture. South Asia also experiences a disproportionate number of earthquakes and tsunamis.

Likewise all three demand that CO2 reduction mandates not restrict their access to fossil fuels, which they view as essential to the industrialization needed for improving their standard of living.

Recent political highlights:

India

The Hindu nationalist party BJP has been in power continuously since current prime minister Narendra Modi was elected in 2014. The BJP is a more right-wing than the Congress party, as well as less secular. They have repealed a number of environmental protection enacted by Congress governments, owing to their view they were limiting economic development. Approximately 20% of India’s residents are non-Hindu (mainly Sikhs, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and Jews).

Pakistan

Only 3% of Pakistanis are non-Muslim, and most residents are Sunni Muslim. Since the coup d’etat removing Imran Khan last year,**Muslim League leader Shehbaz Sharif (brother of Nawaz Sharif) was elected to complete Imran Khan’s term. After the national assembly was dissolved on August 14 2023 (having completed its five-year term), Anwar Ul Haq Kaka was appointed caretaker prime minister until new elections can be called. He’s a member of the Balochistan Awami Party.

Fisher highlights two Pakistani non-governmental organizations assisting poor Pakistani women access microcredit, which he feels have been significant in improving Pakistan’s life expectancy, infant mortality and literacy. The first is the Grameen Bank, founder by Muhammad Yunus in 1976, and BRAC, founded by Sir Frale Hasan Abed in 1972. The latter also helps poor families access education and health care.

*Fisher neglects to mention the growing proportion of indigenous evictions that occur for “environmental” reasons. See http://www.forestpeoples.org/sites/fpp/files/news/2016/08/160831_publication_Human%20Rights%20project_def.pdf

**See Hidden History of the Coup Against Imran Khan

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/366254/366243