What I saw in India and why I think this is India's moment

foreign [Music] let me see can you all hear me I think you can um if you're on the live stream just let me know um that you can hear me um let me see can you hear me okay you can hear me all right so we'll begin I'm using um uh YouTube live directly after a long time foreign [Music] [Music] ended up um in Bombay Bombay said Dubai uh any suggestion for working middle class in Pakistan by EA conversation middle class senior this conversation is about my trip to India and what I saw those but um any questions as I talk please keep them coming though February [Music] but anyways that's this besides the point um the infrastructure I think that was a big a big uh obviously Delhi may you see it um okay infrastructure um development Pakistani audiences you're not going to develop your development trajectory is always going to be stunted and in India you see uh more inclusion and you see more inclusion in the sense Maybe [Music] to educate women to empower women you will see women all over in India driving scooters um somebody who's grown up in Pakistan has a big contrast compared to Pakistan is how many women are part of the workforce in fact um foreign [Music] um all of the highways and I found out in India have been digitized in that sense K it's mandatory to have fast tags in your car so um you pay 2x um foreign Yogi [Music] maintenance you can actually see that it's been taken care of uh quite well we went there and I kid you not her location stood out to me in in Agra in Delhi in actually the whole trip as a Pakistani who travels to Pakistan quite often or a Pakistan foreign which again [Music] on average um so you saw that as well um in in Agra even um at that time you truly saw that digitization um across India Bombay managers um we went all the way down to a village of three thousand people swim um but people still used um you could see it um in the village where I was walking but digital payments um and and so you that digitizations as a revolution it truly is visible front and center um in in that sense or acceptability or digital payments in fact foreign [Music] um so that digitization you saw and it's a superpower in the sandscape there are payments circulation is still there it's growing statistically you had demonetization positives but by and large you see digital payments everywhere um and that stood out in stark contrast um stands out and start contrast as I was traveling um in India also was airports pay um the amount of air travel that has grown um Bombay for example from Rajkot as a layover so the flight got delayed you can get air traffic airport um I saw more foreigners in that airport then frankly I see in what I saw in Karachi Airport this time around airport um nothing fancy but optimal use um good use um a lot of in interest in use um and and and and in that sense um you saw okay infrastructure like an infrastructure is for the many not the fuse I call example you can look it up on your Google Maps in the during the day Pakistan airport says or kilometers or time comparison downtown Delhi say um airport is further away but the time to get there is less concave shortage or Day Road than Iowa um again um in that sense so you know you you see that as well get your infrastructure infrastructure but the way it's being built um is for the many not the few um that stood out as well um another thing for example that you saw in Bombay infrastructure um okay I think eight to ten new Metro lines are being built in Bombay um and if you go through the main city to go from point A to B you have to go through a lot of traffic and again underpasses again it's for the many not the few um and in Bombay you can actually walk uh in most places at least the places I went to and I was primarily in the old parts of the city south Bombay and stuff with our sightseeing um but again my friend said okay um you know it is more walkable as a city than many other cities in South Asia though infrastructure but again infrastructure is um which again uh stand stands out to me and I'll give you the the proper infrastructure example from Rajkot the one is a town called um basically in that whole Drive which is roughly 200 kilometers from Rajkot down all the way each way um we maybe hit five kilometers a bad Road um yeah foreign foreign um so he pointed Us in the right direction is I just started walking around again [Music] um foreign foreign it was beautiful to see that as well education purposes a bigger town um I wanted to find the birth certificates of my grandparents uh so Gaya local office [Music] I want to see uh uh the records for property registration um they remember him still and and that's the impact of this and that Foundation where people remember him so that's his uh contribution um to that part um foreign they're still there um they're about a dozen old mosques in that area that are still there um and again um some renovation work is being done some are dilapidated but overall a lot of that Heritage um still exists um or Goa again is one of the most developed states in India in terms of human development education GDP per capita airport say [Music] for those of you don't know Goa earns about 11 to 13 billion dollars a year in export earnings from tourism alone so um it is quite developed as a state everyone's educators so it's a more equal in that sense you then what you would see infrastructure yeah like and everybody's kind of living a good happy life and and the development is there and you can see it when you talk to the people that you know they're quite happy um as citizens of that state um and again in Goa you saw the same thing I did not land in the new goal airport I landed a double M um so you see um there as well that you know there's a lot of development um a lot of progress um and you go around the the place and then you see you know a lot of compliance with again as I said tax foreign um that um you know the elite Parts even you see a lot more development a lot better infrastructure a lot better governance a lot better rule observation um they're in parts of Pakistan and that's my company that's my vantage point right so maybe this is not enough and by no means they are still a developing country still an Emerging Market um a long long way to go um but when you compare basic things um you see infrastructure education development observance of tax rules um you see and yes I did go to um talasa which was great we had dinner there um or Sunset was beautiful over there um in Goa but you so you see that and I think that was the biggest takeaway for being was there was an energy um and when you go from that energy to Karachi where you know this was before despondency despair um governance every time I go is more and more devastated because of the way it's being run managues so you know you you saw that in India and I think that was the biggest takeaway for why I think this is like you know the optimism we see um and and and and the investment coming into India we see I think it makes sense when you go on the ground and you talk to people um and you see the work and you see the the idea that they have that you know they they they want to progress and they want to be part and be winners globally which Pakistani youth also want to be but existence which we're seeing you know play out at this very moment in time um and again summary in summary I will say okay foreign [Music] foreign technically [Music] [Music] so again there was this concern in you know concerns um culturally historically linguistically and we've been sort of divided for various reasons whether it's you know geopolitics whether it's the tragedy or partition whether it's all that has come between us over the last few decades um but at the individual level even this random person I met he was from somewhere in uttar Pradesh we sort of connected at a human level right and and I think that was the consistent theme wherever you went was that you're from Pakistan oh like come on in like have a conversation and and and all of that um no I was not followed in India um none of that happened um so people are very friendly um overall and I think that's the final point I would like to make here is um overall when you connect with people at a human level when you see the humanity in each other um when you talk to them about their aspirations your aspirations how would you grow up what kind of challenges you face in a country like probably some kind of challenges they face in a country like India 99 of the experience is the same 99 of the aspirations and the Ambitions are the same 99 of the views on how things ought to be is the same 99 of the societal connect the cultural connect is the same it's just that one percent um that ends up dividing uh people from both countries and that's a shame and I think for a young country like Pakistan Pakistan or in India and Pakistan half of the country was not even born when the nuclear tests were conducted in 1998 just think about that um so to be handicapped by the legacy of colonialism by the legacy of Partition by the legacy of War by the legacy of terrorism by the legacy of disputes that remain unresolved um it's a shame and I think again as somebody who's 34 35 years old and many of you who are tuning in right now are young as well um that's the Legacy we kind of have to get over um if we're to sort of progress because again as I said I traveled many parts of India interacted with a lot of people who went all over there's an energy there's development there's a hunger there are things Pakistan can learn from the way India's developed and then eventually maybe one day the political drama the geopolitical drama will come to an end um and the countries will sort of have a more set of normal relations where people can go back and forth my ancestral Villages are in Indian Gujarat my friends who I've met um in Delhi their ancestral Villages are in Pakistani Punjab there are shrines that Pakistani Muslims love would love to go to in ajmer and nizamuddinolia and all of that in Ismail a lot of maimons would love to go there and there are temples in India where a lot of Indian Hindus would love to come and Christians as well and Muslims because yes um historically and Pakistan Pakistan Heritage so maybe we need more corridors to break that um break that Log Jam but again I'll conclude with this okay there is an energy in India there is uh on the ground development you see in India there is growing inclusion particularly of women in India and there is this hunger um in Indians that is if this is not our moment and we don't take this moment um then shame on us um and Pakistan's going through crisis and as I say um crises are not permanent they're temporary they will get done um and the hunger in pakistanis is the same as the hunger and Indians it's just it's currently are working a lot better um and that was in a way good to see as you know you're from the subcontinent you would want the one and a half two billion people that call the subcontinent home all of them to progress to put better food on the table for their family um to digitize to grow to be part of a global community and I think that was um uh good to see that hunger in India so I'll stop there and I hope you enjoyed this take away I read a longer conversation on this with shahzad um on his podcast the Pakistan experience I think they'll be out um in a few days so check that out as well for more uh stuff because we had a back and forth in in terms of my experience there as well um but I figured I'd do this conversation because some of you had said many that said I hope that you found this helpful but until next time take care thank you

Channel: Pakistonomy

Views: 364,322

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Id: Uxju41EMkRE

Length: 35min 38sec (2138 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 02 2023