India and Pakistan are choking on each other’s pollution | Hacker News Reader

India and Pakistan are choking on each other’s pollution

economist.com

59 pointsBrajeshwar87 comments

This is a low-effort article trying to use politics as a click-bait title.

>India is trying to follow this example in and around Delhi. In 2021 it launched a pollution-control agency, called the Commission for Air Quality Management (caqm), with responsibility for a 55,000-square-km area, encompassing the capital and parts of Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh...Though many have criticised the CAQM’s pace of progress, the early results are promising.

That's about the only news in the article.

>South Asia’s filthy air

This is the tag associated with the article. When will these haughty sounding articles end, and when some article is written there is more substance to it. There isn't even an author attached to this article. This is one of the reasons these western publications have very low readability and confidence in non-western countries even though they do well in western countries (where quality of articles are much better).

I don't see anything that's triggering. It's just a summary of a World Bank report (which btw is HEAVILY staffed with Indian and Pakistani nationals - big reason there are so many South Asian restaurants on K street, so don't pull the economic nationalism card on me).

Criticisms aside, not having an author byline is an intentional thing the Economist has done since its founding. The article tag that you're correctly pointing out is haughty is also standard for them; they're haughty about everything, not just foreign countries.

Its really sad when people in power are idiots, or malicious idiots that think they are smart.

Pakistan, IMO sucks (not defending India) -> My family has a long history in the State Department and my Uncle was a diplomat in Karachi for many, many years - and I managed a team out of Karachi, and had a Pakistani CEO founder at the startup in the states...

I was asked to go to Karachi a couple times and I refused. I loved my team there, but our internet was regularly taken out because it was via roof-based dishes, that regularly got shot at to take them out.

My uncle was driven directly from the embassy to his residence daily in an armoured car, and basically never left either his residence or embassy for years

The pakistani CEO became a religious zealot IMAM or something and moved back to Pakistan, to become some holy person over there.... even though he was sleeping with the marketing head of his company and cheating on his wife and newborn kids...

but tried to maintain some sort of holy image.

As for India. (ever Indian peer I had was great. Every Indian manager I had sucked.)

The CTO at the division of lockheed was really connected in India and had a collection of Lamborghinis and other really expensive cars (like 20 of them) -- we wound up having to walk him out of the office with security due to him both not doing a damn thing, and lying about his qualifications.

The lady who sat next to me at FB was the daughter of an Indian PM -- and was the most materialistic braggart I have ever had to endure...

In conclusion, every country has douchebags. It just sucks that when Pakistani or Indian professionals get power, it has been my consistent experience that they abuse it.

A magazine owned by European old-money families fanning the flames between two foreign countries they formerly colonized. Just an innocent story, I suppose.

Would you argue that pollution problem isn’t real in India and Pakistan? Or that they’re poor journalists because they have a colonialist mindset?

It's not about the facts, it's about the framing and omissions. They frame it as a "pollution war" and even use the phrase "countries that hate each other" in the lede. This is "FBI Statistics" level of hate-baiting. It's not journalism.

Which part is false?

Please read at least the first sentence of a comment before replying to it. Preferably all of it, though.

The title, if it’s not clear to you already.

It makes it sound like there’s a pollution warfare even though the article makes no justifications on how these countries are choking on each other’s pollution rather than their own. The article also talks about Nepal and Bhutan but the title has only Ind/Pak

it’s hard not to associate a nefarious reason especially because it is the economist

should have simply been “South Asia is choking in its pollution”

Which part of his comment claimed anything was false?

Let's let Desi old money families like the Goenkas (Zee), Adanis (NDTV), Badals (PTC), Ambanis (News18, Firstpost), etc. write stories instead. They've never fanned flames. /s

If partisan Indian or Pakistani media reports like this, it's just another day in the office. It's obvious what the biases are, no one is misled. Not that I condone it.

When it comes from ultra-wealthy foreign families that benefit from the ongoing brain-drain and economic exploitation of those countries (which is directly benefited by foreign and domestic political disunity), this puts it on another level of insidious misinformation.

I wish Kashmir would get resolved so we could get on with our lives. Literally there would be no reason for all the hate / hate-mongering if not for Kashmir.

Which co-incidentally would mean that the powers that be in those nations would lose a lot of their raison d'etre, so maybe that's why that's not happening. :)

If it weren't Kashmir, it'd be some other border province. As you said, it's the politicians and the political (possibly geopolitical) structure that results in this.

I doubt it, I mean, what would they fight over, Junagadh? Who even cares about that?

Kashmir matters because of its resources / Muslims / Hindus.

You failed to understand the meaning of his comment on the political structure.

Basically it comes down to this: The easiest way to gain the favor and unquestioning loyalty of citizens is by antagonizing an outside power. All missteps can be excused by evoking the enemy. The need to justify policies that are usually politically costly drops sharply. Coalition building becomes irrelevant. The best part is, that the feedback loop of attacks between opposing states, verbal or otherwise, keeps the system running indefinitely. Take the lazy, incompetent and corrupt governments of Abbas, Netanyahu and Hamas for example. This is politics on easy mode.

You can identify dozens of examples of this dysfunctional dynamic. Some are internal, like in Belgium or Bosnia, others external, like Serbia vs Kosovo or Azerbaijan vs Armenia. The reason Erdogan, possibly one of the worst statesmen in world history, has clung on to power, is that he can antagonise both the Greeks and the Kurds.

It's inherent to the geopolitical system and there is little that can be done about it.

There's plenty of Musilm-majority areas in India that Pakistan could have made a fuss about, if Kashmir had never existed.

How is that humans look at the problems of Southeast Asia, or anywhere, and say, "I know! The solution is more people!"

They burn the crops to maintain production, allegedly, but beyond the economics of the stuation, the reason that the production must be maintained is to feed the 1.5 billion.

This is, obviously, a death-spiral.

Since we are agenda posting, it also calls into question whether diversity really is a positive after all. All the east asian monoethnic nations long surpassed diverse India despite having similar experiences with colonialism

It's a farming issue like everything else. As I've mentioned before in a couple previous HN comments, most farmers in North India and Pakistan know stubble burning is bad, but no government agency or NGO steps in to buy Rotavators for farmers, so the cycle continues.

Forget pollution, imagine how successful both could be if they got beyond internal religious squabbles. Trend the GDP per capita for India and China, 30 years they were similar, now China's is many times India's.

I visited south India a couple of times. One early morning I had climbed a mountain, and from close to the peak I turned and saw the sun rise a blood red colour. Insane levels of pollution.

I wonder what India would look like without Pakistan constantly pestering them. Would they be more democratic without an existential, aggressive border threat? Would they be less united and collapse? Sure seems like a loose confederation. Maybe they'd have the same problems, just towards China.

I'm not saying that Pakistan shouldn't exist, just that the entire game of Pakistani politics seems to be one-upping each other on who can hate their neighbor more.

Geography really is destiny.

I don't think Pakistan cares much about India except in the case of Kashmir.

Reverse question, what Pakistan would look like without India constantly pestering them?

The entire existence of Pakistan depends on being a strong Islamic entity in South Asia and selling their Nuclear Weapons as being the defender of Islamic Ummah. It is a different issue that all these factors have been exploited by the all powerful Army , extremists and other vocal actors leaving very less modern, practical voices in the country.

To whom exactly did Pakistan export nuclear weapons tech again?

Edit: They sold centrifuges to North Korea. Which is not an islamic country as far as I know...

Allegedly North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

I am reasonably certain it is the opposite. Saudi Arabia funded Pakistani science to make sure they developed nuclear weapons.

Saudi Arabia has no need to develop nuclear weapons or posses them as a result. They can just ask Pakistan for them at a moments notice if they actually need to.

Sure, think of it as buying call options instead of shares from the Saudis POV.

Pakistan is selling nuclear weapons? Can you provide any support for this claim?

* was selling. This isn't happening anymore

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan#Proliferatio...

That is far from selling actual warheads, isn't it? And the history of nuclear prolifiration is long and complicated.

yep! pretty much, but selling the supply chain and specs themselves is almost as bad. It took PK almost 30 years with PRC information transfer to build the Islamic bomb, but 10 for NK thanks to Khan Labs.

And how many new nuclear powers are there since North Korea? I can not think of any.

Libya and Syria both contracted with Khan Labs before the whistle was blown in 2003.

Iran is almost one.

Neither Libya nor Syria have them, do they? And Iran was close, but the treaty (the one the last US admin tore appart) stopped them for the time being.

Libya does not due to sanctions and diplomacy in 2003 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disarmament_of_Libya

Syria does not due to Israeli airstrikes in 2007 and sanctions until the Civil War began - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outside_the_Box

Iran has started building again - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/world/middleeast/iran-mis...

None of what you are saying even contravenes my larger point though

>> selling their Nuclear Weapons as being the defender of Islamic Ummah

They are selling the idea that their nuclear weapons are the defender…

Which is not wrong actually. Pakistan could have been the next US war if PK didn't have Nuclear.

Compare how often Pakistan is mention in r/India and how often India is mentioned in r/Pakistan.

Reddit is really poor sample of how average person or decision makers think in these two countries.

This is true of every country, by the way. Reddit has lost it.

Neither subreddits are realistic snapshots of South Asian social media. Most South Asians use FB+Whatsapp with a smattering of Twitter.

India is finally growing out of thinking too much about Pakistan and other threats most of the time and focusing on growing and at least trying to catch up a bit with China in the future in some respects. Although being a democracy that is difficult to achieve.

In the Indian public discourse Pakistan does not get much airtime as it used to even 15 years ago, there aren’t simply that many border tensions or terror attacks as there used to be and people care lot less, few enough remember the partition or have close relatives on the other side still alive, the emotional connections are all gone .

Pakistan enjoys more political stability in the last decade not withstanding recent drama with Imran khan compared to how it was for most of the last century under military control.

The junta was in power till late 2010s , they still hold a lot of influence over politics of course but don’t really fully control it as they did last century .

Ideally a US-Canada or a France-Germany kind of coexistence, but realistically probably more like Nepal, Bangladesh, or Sri Lanka (close but tense relations due to local level political populism).

Pakistan is not an existential threat, but more of a hot political talking point in India, and vice versa in Pakistan for India. Had Pakistan not been an issue, India's politicians would have invented another populist topic to distract people with. Vice versa for Pakistan.

It's possible it would get worse without Pakistan, because then the artificial boogeyman could be something inside the country, capable of creating pandemonium that can reach the country's sovereignty. But that's just a random speculation.

> Pakistan is not an existential threat,

So, a nuclear power, effectively ruled by military junta and full of religious fanatics is not an existential threat. In that case, I don't know what it.

I guess North Korea is not an existential threat to South Korea (instead of religious it's the communist ideologues) and China is not an existential threat for Taiwan (CCP ideologues).

Your comment is racist and inappropriate for HN.

Just last month, Pakistan's national assembly unanimously voted to expand its country's blasphemy laws, which have previously been used to charge more than 1500 Pakistanis. That doesn't include the more than 70 people who have been murdered by mobs and vigilantes over allegations of "insulting Islam."

Those laws impose the death penalty for "insulting the Prophet Muhammad" and 10 years to life in prison for insulting his "companions." According to Pew Research, 76% of Pakistani Muslims support the death penalty for simply leaving Islam, never-mind "insulting" the religion (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/04/30/the-worlds-m...). Apparently a 10th century drawing of the guy is "prophet worship" (which is also punishable by death), but putting people to death for insulting him isn't.

If you think those surveys are wrong, the unanimous legislative support for these measures would suggest Pakistan really is ruled by a military junta that doesn't represent its people. If you acknowledge the polls are even somewhat accurate, I'm curious how you think demanding the death penalty for leaving a religion doesn't make you a fanatic. According to Gallup Pakistan, a majority of Pakistanis said they wanted the "type of Islamic government in Pakistan that the Taliban have brought in Afghanistan" (https://gallup.com.pk/post/32284).

I am genuinely curious what you do believe constitutes a religious fanatic if demanding the death of people who leave their religion and openly supporting Taliban-style government doesn't fit the bill.

There are absolutely (non-Muslim) religious fanatics in India and other places who do terrible things. Conversely, there are many Pakistanis who are not religious fanatics and oppose these fanatical measures. That doesn't change the truth of his point: that Pakistan is plagued by religious fanatics and a militaristic government. All countries have their religious fanatics, but there is a very real difference between, say, 50 crackpots from the Westboro Baptist Church carrying offensive signs and 76% of the country supporting the execution of people that leave their religion.

This is not a forum for debate on what constitutes rational and irrational policy.

However If you want to discuss the technicals of whether certain laws are correct or incorrect, please feel free to do so.

Instead, what is being discussed in your post is akin to chiding. Example: “The lawmakers have low quality education and therefore have insensible laws.” By using labels and stereotypes and creating logical arguments that are often fallacious, it leads to head spinning debate.

I will not further this discussion simply because too many logical fallacies exist.

"The lawmakers have low quality education and therefore have insensible laws" doesn't logically follow because "low quality education" is not sufficient to establish that they will make insensible laws. I.e. there are lawmakers with low education who have passed decent laws.

Who are the people who support the death penalty for apostasy or "blasphemy" who are not religious fanatics? If those views don't make one a religious fanatic, what does, and who do you consider to be a religious fanatic by your definition?

There are, of course, opportunist lawmakers who support these laws simply to gain political points. That does not, however, explain why overwhelming majorities of the Pakistani population support the same fanatical policies when polled by the most reputable pollsters on earth. Furthermore, the fact that it is politically expedient to support the execution of apostates and "blasphemers" supports his argument that its voters are largely religious fanatics.

You are "not furthering the discussion" because you refuse to provide actual arguments and instead resorted to calling him a racist without any evidence.

India also has nuclear weapons, unlike South Korea and Taiwan, so there is a strong deterrence effect.

Deterrence yes.

But, it all depends on whose finger is on the button and whether they are rational or simply driven by an ideology of hate.

If and when the finger changes, all bets are off.

Sure, if the handful of people who control such weapons act rationally. Of course, 'acting rationally' isn't exactly something humans are known for... Especially when faced with adverse social pressures or fanatical religious adherence.

India also has a clearly stated and un-ambiguous "No First Use" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use rule.

Our neighbour China also has this rule. All the recent border flare-ups with China haven't even involved fire-arms because no commander on either side wants escalation. The border lines have been literally maintained by sticks and fists.

Any escalation there would be an utter nightmare. So even if the media plays it up, at the local commander level, there is a lot of internal mitigation that goes on.

However, any border flare-up with our other neighbour - Pakistan always causes a lot of anxiety, because there are a LOT of hot-heads in the Pakistan Army who have a dream of taking Kashmir by force by any and all means necessary. You don't even have to take my word for it - just listen to what they explicitly state. And read the books their Generals have published.

I am aware of the intricacies - I am Indian :)

Regardless of everything, my comment was pointing out the obvious difference between the other examples and India-Pak dynamic.

India has full confidence in the incompetence of its cute little neighbour. Look at that country's condition right now, it is on its knees with a crippled economy and dysfunctional administration.

How can a country that has consistently shown itself to not be capable of even regular state governance be an existential threat? Just because it got nuclear tech in the cold war? Lol give me a break.

That's exactly what an existential threat looks like - desperate for an external enemy to blame. Consider Putin, Hitler, etc - when things are properly screwed, the easiest thing for a leader to do is blame then annihilate their neighbors.

Nuclear weapons mean that poor troop training means nothing. Trucking a bomb into New Delhi has never been difficult.

I think you can manage a less reductive analysis the considers the possibility that militancy is rooted at least partly in legitimate grievances rather than mental illness.

So, a nuclear power ruled by populists hating your guts because of religion is no existential threat? That is, to a degree, a reasonable stance to take for Pakistan. In this particular conflict both sides suck.

> would have invented another populist topic to distract people with

Probably China. A far more dangerous sparring partner likely, considering China's generalized over-aggressiveness even at minor perceived offenses.

China and India have plenty of contention points. They fought a war in 1962 and have ongoing border disputes to this day.

...and are conducting genocides to their minorities.

Pakistan unites India as much as India unites Pakistan.

But in recent years, India is less relevant to Pakistan as the country has tried to fend off post Afghanistan war terror. On this subject, the country is divided either in favor of taliban or in support of western powers.

Without Pakistan, India has more factions within its borders that they would be fighting amongst themselves.

I dont think India ever got that much airtime in Pakistan (even before 911). When comparing to the level of media coverage India's foxnews-equivalent does on PK (it's hilarious, and pretty popular meme in Pak)

Acting like Pakistan is notable in any shape or form in the global economy.

What does that have to do with what I said?

I’ve noticed that Indian news media is far more interested in covering Pakistan than the other way around. Indeed, I’d wonder what Pakistan would look like without India constantly pestering them, e.g. reducing flow of critical river paths from Indian Panjab that supplies much of the agricultural needs)

Depends on the media. If you read general mass media like OpIndia, Zee, or NDTV that's true, but if you read media aimed at policymakers (ThePrint, ORF, or Himal for example) it's 70-30 China-PK. Same in PK as well - in vernacular media like Ary or Geo it's all Amreeki/Yahudi/Hindu Sazish but English media which policymakers read is more prosaic. I guess the difference is, English has increasingly become a vernacular language in Indian discource, but not yet in PK.

I'm not sure that's a great example. The Indus water treaty has been respected by India despite all the wars and tensions with Pakistan over the decades. Only in the last month is it that it has been brought into question.

India was an empire from Pakistan to Burma which was partitioned because the British wanted to weaken it and divide it. That caused a huge amount of problems, like Kashmir, Bangladesh.. If you read about the history of British perfidy in Bengal, its actually pretty horrifying. Yes India was once very rich and capable, before it was reduced to penury.

You really think, that Hindus and Moslems would have lived peacefully this whole time without British India being split apart? Honestly, I think a civil war between those groups would have been equally as likely as peaceful co-existance.

Anyway, that is pure speculation, isn't it?

Well, India has 200million Muslims.

No civil war yet.

There have been altercations between Hindus and Muslims. There’s no reason to believe it would be significantly worse if you doubled the number of Muslims in India, especially when you consider that a lot of the Hindu-Muslim divisions were sown as a result of partition itself, which was an incredibly divisive and bloody affair.

Further, a larger Muslim population would also have reduced political power of the Hindu fascists as well and lack of funding through Pakistan and increased Democratic power would have led to less political disaffection in the extremist Muslim side.

Maybe, but they did coexist for a long time without any real issues. And the fact does remain that Britain plundered the place something extraordinary. Bengal was once probably the richest place on earth. Today its Bangladesh.

The biggest beneficiary of India's partition was China.

Without India's partition, assuming that the Muslim population that wanted a separate Islamic nation was willing to live peacefully, China may not have had the guts to gobble Tibet, there would have been no friend of China on the other side of India to contain it and population of India + Pakistan + Bangladesh would have surpassed China long time ago.

So, yes, India and the world would have looked a lot different.

But, that's not the reality today, so no reason to ponder over it I guess.

Yup my relatively liberal Pakistani friends used to ponder that a lot... until Modi came and suddenly they were really glad for Pakistan. :)

And then they elected Imran Khan.

What's wrong with Imran Khan?

Pakistan was created for political reasons to keep India busy and to make sure USSR don't get such huge country as its ally.

It is now 75 years and Pakistan is still used by USA, Russia, China, UK and even smaller countries like Sri Lanka to keep India occupied.

Pakistan never should had existed.

It was created with a great human tragedy, it will go down with a great human tragedy.

Pakistan with 250 million population is out of money, power, oil, fertilizer and even food and water because they are spending 1/3rd of their money maintaining their army.

I wonder how long it will take for the people of Pakistan to realize that POK is a money sink and their money could be used much more effectively to develop their own country.

The terrorist organizations that are fostered by their military establishment are simply turning on Pakistan and attacking them.

That time was 2010. That ship has sailed.

Pakistan has to pay 2-3 billion USD in next few weeks or else they will default.

They have to pay 8-10B USD this year or they will default.

They have to pay 70-80B USD in next 5 years or they will default.

Pakistan right now has 2 billion dollars in their forex that too because Saudi gave them 3 billion USD some time back.

Pakistan can collapse in just few months like Sri Lanka.

> Geography really is destiny.

While I generally agree with the importance of geography I think this is glossing over a major part of the history of India and Pakistan.

The partition of India [0] by the British upon their exit from the region should be understood as a major tragedy in human history and very much lead to increased instability in the region.

Writing this off as "mere geography" is to miss the major and well documented impact of British colonialism on today's political climate in the region.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India

Recently there was a survey of Indian and what countries they considered threats. China was top, followed by the US. Pakistan was much lower in the list

> Would they be more democratic

Isn’t being less democratic usually a choice by those in power to hold on or expand their powers? Locally?

Anus mundi

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