How would you know?
Its not like you have conducted extensive economic surveys in Pakistan or have actually visited the country. Pakistan started with nothing, India got everything on the other hand and we created a middle class in a short span of time. Like I said, a number of people who did not have nothing were soon moving up the ladder and I am witness to this fact.
These kind of statements are too common by you guys and they are so far from being true!
India started with mass poverty, pathetic literacy rates and a nation with so much diversity, it was difficult to hold it together. Industrialization was nothing more than a few textile mills and a steel plant started by Tata for the most part.
Even India started almost from scratch. Our leaders just focused on building basic infrastructure first and the license Raj resulting from socialist policies and the massive petty corruption held us back for decades.
Now, I am not saying that you didn't have a middle class. It couldn't have been a large size. Enough to make comments like "there would have been rows of BMWs, Land Cruisers, but you still have your Marutis and Ambassadors”!
What kind of wealth do you need for owning such cars? A hundred times the average income of a common Pakistani? How many such Pakistanis could have been there? How would they earn that kind of money honestly? What professions would earn you that kind of money?
Let's understand that these cars would be owned by the top cream de la cream of Pakistan, not the middle class. So he was comparing apples to oranges when he made the comparison to Marutis.
What sweeping generalization, I used to attend parties, events and other get together's in Pakistan where the car parks were a sight to see. Everyone from the middle class to the upper class had a lot of disposable income and similarly Pakistani's had a penchant for spending big.
They may have a penchant. You just can't produce that kind of money out of thin air when the average national income is 600-700 US dollars.
It is obvious that the money was concentrated in a small number of hands in Pakistan. These people can't be called "middle class" when they are in the top 0.5% bracket of the country (and owning >70% of the wealth).
I am not here to conduct difficult research for you, am I?
Call Dewan motors who are the official sellers of BMW in Pakistan and they will be able to provide you with statistical information.
Dewan Motors Private Limited - BMW Importer Pakistan
It was not a question to you!
It was an obvious fact. A few hundred or a few thousand people don't represent a country of hundreds of millions.
Certainly a lot more than Delhi which I visited in 2006/7, there was not an exotic or high performance vehicle in sight and I was living in Connaught place/Rajiv something place.
Though I gotta give you, I have never seen so many beggars in my life.
In 2006-07, I have personally seen lots of "high performance" cars. Everything from Mercedes to BMW to Lancers to SUVs.
Of course, they would be a drop in the ocean compared to the millions of smaller cars like Marutis, Santros etc, which almost every family in Delhi owns.
I can bet that Delhi alone has a bigger car market than the whole of Pakistan!
Abut beggars, you may be right. It is a menace and a big business. They make better money than many working class people!
It might have been but the fact remains that you could see the wealth on the streets of urban Pakistan a lot more than you would in India.
There is a major difference between rural and urban Pakistan. Though the rural parts remained backwards, the urban areas underwent rapid modernization and a lot of people benefitted as a result.
No denying this. Even if the urban Pakistan has double the income of rural, it would still be in the range of 1000 USD/year.
Far from owning a small car, leave alone luxury cars. The size of your car market will tell you the size of your middle class.
I know the car penetration in Pakistan was about double of India before the Maruti revolution. I am glad that so many more Indian can afford a four wheeler even if a basic one.
Much better than a few thousand owning BMWs and the large majority not even able to afford two wheelers.
I see that more than 3.5 million cars were sold in India last year. Pakistan doesn't figure in the top 20, the last country in the list sold 700,000 cars.
I have refrences from your sources to back up 'such statements', common sense would prevail if you used it.
Tell me have you visited Pakistan?
I have not. I still know on an average how the country progressed and how their average incomes, literacy, industrialization etc. progressed. Also that you never had land reforms and a few families (22?) continued to own the vast majority of the land.
