Why is Pakistan such a basketcase?

Hmmph, your cites on middle classes in Pakistan do not impress.

One cite is a blog - which is merely an opinion dressed up as fact, one cite states that the sales of a particular very small car has increased - hardly a ringing endorsement of the rise of middle class since this is common in many other countires - and your third states there are around 5 million who have risen from true poverty to lower middle class.

5 million out of a population of over 170 millions, and these are right at the bottom end, which in turn implies that the remainder of the middle classes are of a smaller number than that, so perhaps we have 10 millions. This are significant numbers in absolute terms, but are politically meaningless.

The most optimistic assessment of the middle class numbers is 30 millions, still politically meaningless, they are concentrated into few areas and they have almost no influence.

Some figures do not add up however, because there are allegedly 2.8 million income tax payers in Pakistan, even if that is a gross underestimation, you would have to expect that to qualify as middle class then you would have an income significant enough to be paying income tax.

As for the media, and the courts being free, of course they are not, they are sensible in that they understand the limitations within which they work, and so they self censor, to do anything else would not be physically safe.

You should also note, the definition of middle class in the UK is very differant to that in Pakistan, I would expect that you would call our middle class amongst the most wealthy people in Pakistan.

Until the size of the middle classes grows much more significantly, to around 40-50% of the population, and with a significant income, I really think Pakistan will remain stuck in large areas in the 15th century.

Employment rates are relatively low, and the outlook of Islam is such that women are not yet an economic force in the way they are in most of the G20 nations, when they are, we might expect to see some changes.

What will happen should the middle classes increase in number enough to develop political structures? There will probably be a huge divide between urban Pakistanis and rural ones, just as we see in many other redeveloping nations, where you get a divide that causes immense friction, where politicians end up with geographical power bases and try to use this to dominate over others, and it seems to be the more conservative elements in almost any nation where this happens that do the repressing.

Har jaga milta hai for a sufficient number of years?
I doubt it, once you get beyond even Oghi in the Mansehra District. Kiosk-based dial-up in larger towns, maybe. I was raised (obvious from my former post) before Hazara ceased to be a district. (I’m kind of a geezer.)

But to the point at hand. Yes; NGOs are careful and discreet. And the reason they may not be perceived that way is exactly the distinction I’m trying to make. An NGO that has a woman working in jeans and a T-shirt with uncovered closely-cropped hair in Pakhtunkwa has just offended much of the populace and risks the mullah’s demand to be ejected. They are careful not to do so precisely because the Islamic culture is so militantly restrictive and it’s so easy to offend. It’s one thing when an offense results in hurt feelings because you ignored the cultural norms. It’s quite another when the sanction for an offense is to expel or condemn (literally, put a death sentence on) an aid worker trying to help your citizenry.

I don’t think you have the foggiest understanding how oppressive the Islamic-based culture can be to those who disagree with or are ignorant of it. And how extensively that oppression pervades and destabilizes a democracy. Salman Taseer was executed by his assassin not as a nutcase one-off but by a widely-supported group with a very broad base…