India to Spend More on Military

India is planning to raise its military budget by 50% to almost $40 billion, making military expenditure 3% of the annual gross domestic product (GDP), the Indian defense minister said.

"Our current defense spending is lower than 2% [of GDP]...and it should be at least 3%," A. K. Antony said at a meeting with top military commanders on Tuesday, without specifying a time-frame. India raised its defense spending in February by 10% to $26.5 billion for the fiscal year 2008-2009, but it still fell below 2% of GDP for the first time in at least a decade.

India's neighbors and long-term rivals, Pakistan and China, allocate around 3.5% and 4.3% of GDP to defense, respectively. The minister said top priority must be given to the modernization of the Indian Armed Forces and half of the defense budget should be allocated for the purchase of new military equipment.

Currently two-thirds of India's budget is allocated for military, paramilitary, police, various security forces and debt servicing. That leaves one-third for everything else, including infrastructure development projects, education, healthcare, poverty alleviation, and various human services. This new arms buildup by India will leave even less for what India needs most: to lift hundreds of millions of its citizens from abject poverty, hunger, squalor and disease.

Such an arms buildup by India is sure to fuel an arms race that South Asians can ill afford with widespread abject poverty, hunger, malnutrition and very low levels of human development.

The human cost of this unfortunate escalation by India will mainly be born by its most vulnerable citizens who will probably lose the few crumbs of bread they are forced to live on now. It will continue the horrible sanitation situation that forces two-thirds of Indians to defecate in the open that spreads disease and kills millions of various diseases each year.

India has failed to use a period of high economic growth to lift tens of millions of people out of poverty, falling far short of China’s record in protecting its population from the ravages of chronic hunger, United Nations officials said on Tuesday. Last year, British Development Minister Alexander contrasted the rapid growth in China with India's economic success - highlighting government figures that showed the number of poor people had dropped in the one-party communist state by 70% since 1990 but had risen in the world's biggest democracy by 5%.

The World Hunger Index of 88 countries published by IFPRI last year ranked India at 66 while Pakistan was slightly better at 61 and Bangladesh slightly worse at 70.

In the context of unprecedented economic growth (9-10 percent annually) and national food security, over 60 percent of Indian children are wasted, stunted, underweight or a combination of the above. As a result, India ranks number 62 along with Bangladesh at 67 in the PHI (Poverty Hunger Index)ranking out of a total of 81 countries. Both nations are included among the low performing countries in progress towards MDG1 (Millennium Development Goals) with countries such as Nepal (number 58), Ethiopia (number 60), or Zimbabwe (number 74).

Pakistan ranks well ahead of India at 45 and it is included in the medium performing countries. PHI is a new composite indicator – the Poverty and Hunger Index (PHI) – developed to measure countries’ performance towards achieving MDG1 on halving poverty and hunger by 2015. The PHI combines all five official MDG1 indicators, including a) the proportion of population living on less than US$ 1/day, b) poverty gap ratio, c) share of the poorest quintile in national income or consumption, d) prevalence of underweight in children under five years of age, and d) the proportion of population undernourished.

The stinging criticism of India’s performance comes only two weeks after the Congress party-led alliance was overwhelmingly voted back into office. Its leaders had campaigned strongly on their achievement of raising India’s economic growth to 9 per cent and boosting rural welfare. With the exception of Kerala, the situation in India is far worse than the Human Development Index suggests. According to economist Amartya Sen, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on hunger, India has fared worse than any other country in the world at preventing recurring hunger.

India might be an emerging economic power, but it is way behind Pakistan, Bangladesh and even Afghanistan in providing basic sanitation facilities, a key reason behind the death of 2.1 million children under five in the country.

Lizette Burgers, chief of water and environment sanitation of the Unicef, recently said India is making progress in providing sanitation but it lags behind most of the other countries in South Asia. A former Indian minister Mr Raghuvansh Prasad Singh told the BBC that more than 65% of India's rural population defecated in the open, along roadsides, railway tracks and fields, generating huge amounts of excrement every day.

Economically resurgent India is witnessing a rapid unfolding of a female genocide in the making across all castes and classes, including the upper caste rich and the educated. The situation is particularly alarming among upper-caste Hindus in some of the urban areas of Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, specially in parts of Punjab, where there are only 300 girls for every 1,000 boys, according to Laura Turquet, ActionAid's women's rights policy official.

I see hunger and poverty and lack of opportunity as the root cause of most of the ethnic, religious and other forms of violence. The situation is further complicated when nations with the largest number of poor and hungry choose to spend more on military than on fighting poverty, hunger and disease.

In fact, letting millions die of hunger each year, is what Amatya Sen calls "quiet violence", a form of ongoing brutality that claims far more lives than all of the other causes of violence combined.

Neither Pakistan nor India can or should continue their misguided arms race, with India using China as its excuse, and Pakistan citing India's current arms buildup, the largest in its history. In Poverty-Hunger Index(PHI), designed to measure progress toward UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), China, ranked 31, is closest to achieving these goals, followed by laggards such as Pakistan at 45, India at 62, and Bangladesh at 67. And clearly, India, lagging behind both China and Pakistan in terms of basic social indicators of hunger and poverty, is fueling this crazy South Asian arms race. India continues to show a total lack of leadership on this front.

The South Asian rivals need to recognize, in words and in deeds, that their people are their biggest resource, who must be developed and made much more productive to make the nations more competitive and powerful economically, politically and militarily.

Related Links:

Challenges of Indian Democracy

India's Female Genocide

Pakistan Military Business

India-Pakistan Military Balance

India's Disappearing Daughters

The land of former Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi is killing its daughters by the millions. Economically resurgent India is witnessing a rapid unfolding of a female genocide in the making across all castes and classes, including the upper caste rich and the educated. The situation is particularly alarming among upper-caste Hindus in some of the urban areas of Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, specially in parts of Punjab, where there are only 300 girls for every 1,000 boys, according to Laura Turquet, ActionAid's women's rights policy official.

ActionAid collaborated with Canada's International Development Research Center (IDRC) to conduct research and produced a report called "Disappearing Daughters".

The report cites findings from sites across five states in north and northwest India reveal that the sex ratio of girls to boys has not only worsened but is accelerating compared to the last national census in 2001. One of the reasons for this accelerated rate of female feticide is the abuse of ultrasound technology to determine the gender of the unborn. The purveyors of the ultrasound business in every city, town and village of India entice parents by telling them to "spend 500 rupees now and save 50,000 rupees later.” The cost of the ultrasound scan is Rs. 500 and the required dowry for marrying daughters off exceeds Rs. 50,000.00.

And everywhere else, with the exception of Rajasthan, already low figures are continuing to slide. Even in Rajasthan, the proportion of girls is well below what should be the norm of around 950 girls born for every 1000 boys.

ActionAid has also found that girls are more likely to be born but less likely to survive in areas with more limited access to public health services and modern ultrasound technology. In rural Morena and Dhaulpur, deliberate neglect of girls, including allowing the umbilical cord to become infected, is used as a way to dispose of unwanted daughters.

Such neglect ensures fewer surviving daughters, with the best chances of being born and surviving as a girl depending on the birth order in your family.

All survey sites showed a decline in the proportion of girls among second-born children. And in three of the survey sites, for every 1000 third-born boys, there were fewer than 750 girls.

The problem of female infanticide is not just limited to the states in Northern India. In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, female infanticide is so frequent that all second daughters are known as "the girl born for the burial pit", according to a documentary produced by ABC Australia.

The Indian diaspora is not immune from the cultural bias against female children, either. The male-female ratios of British Indians are also getting increasingly skewed in favor of male children. Since the 1970s, the at-birth male-female ratio of British Indians has dramatically change from 103:100 to 114.4:100, excluding the birth of the first or the second child.


Here are the latest statistics from the CIA's The World Factbook on male-female ratios in India and Pakistan:

India at birth: 1.12 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.1 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.06 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.9 male(s)/female
total population: 1.06 male(s)/female (2009 est.)

Pakistan at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.06 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.05 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.88 male(s)/female
total population: 1.04 male(s)/female (2009 est.)

China at birth: 1.1 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.13 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.06 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.91 male(s)/female
total population: 1.06 male(s)/female (2009 est.)

The at-birth male-female ratios in Pakistan are comparable to most of the rest of the world, including the West, but the Indian ratios are the worst in the world. In spite of China's one child policy, the ratios in China are better than India's.

India Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh, who has three daughters, has recognized the accelerating horror of female genocide in India. In response, he has launched the “Save the Girl Child” campaign. He has said that no nation could claim to be part of a civilized world if it condoned female feticide. An estimated 50 million girls have been sacrificed because of son preference.

"Census figures illustrate that in some of the richer states the problem is most acute. These states include Punjab which had only 798 girls (per 1,000 boys), Haryana 819, Delhi 868 and Gujarat 883 girls in the 2001 Census. Growing economic prosperity and education levels have not led to a corresponding mitigation in this acute problem," he said.

"Female illiteracy, obscurantist social practices like child marriage or early marriage, dowry, poor nutritional entitlements, taboos on women in public places make Indian women vulnerable. The patriarchal mindset and preference for male children is compounded by unethical conduct on the part of some medical practitioners," Mr. Singh said.

When the facts of this tragedy are brought up, many defensive Indians offer the examples of famous Indian women like Indra Nooyi, Kalpana Chawla, Saina Nehwal, Kalpana Morparia, Sunita Williams and Naina Lal, and ask how India is still able to produce such women of accomplishment with growing female infanticides. Instead of looking at the accomplished middle-aged Indian women, Indians should compare the at-birth male-female ratios and worry about the fact that India is now killing future Indra Nooyis.

If this female genocide continues unabated, India's male-female ratio will be so badly skewed in a decade or two that girls' families will start demanding dowry to marry off their daughters, representing a fundamental shift in the balance of power. And the contributions of the well-educated and economically string girls will earn new respect by the male-dominated Indian society.

The first step toward correcting a problem is to acknowledge it, as India's prime minister has done. But legislation alone will not help. As early as 1795, female infanticide was declared murder by the initiative of John Duncan, the British East India Company's resident in Benares, according to Dharma Kumar. But the enforcement has been extremely difficult. The key is to couple stricter enforcement with grassroots education effort to change Indian society.

My sincere hope is that men of honor and goodwill such as Manmohan Singh will step up their national campaign to stop this ongoing female genocide in India before it's too late.

Here are a couple of video clips about India's female genocide:




Related Links:

Status of Women in Pakistan

A Woman Speaker: Another Token or Real Change

"Disappearing Daughters"

The World Factbook

India's Save a Girl Child Campaign

Chinese Fireworks Light Up US Skies on July 4th

The Chinese technology will be on full display in the United States as America celebrates its Independence Day today. As the world's factory, China's fireworks industry provides 98 percent of America's overall needs, and 80 percent of the pyrotechnics needed for professional displays. Liu Donghui, the secretary-general of China-based International Fireworks Association, told the USA Today that Liuyang's factories alone produced $1 billion worth of fireworks last year, some $430 million of it to meet overseas orders.

Chinese fireworks business literally booms every 4th of July as millions of pounds of explosives soar as high as a thousand feet in America's skies, creating beautiful patterns of red, white, blue and other colors. The U.S. has celebrated its Independence Day with increasingly spectacular fireworks since the first celebration in 1776 when John Adams ordered that July 4 should be marked with “illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forevermore.”

Fireworks originated in China some 2,000 years ago. China's Liu Yang region of Hunan Province continues to be the factory of the world for fireworks. It is important to remember the geographic origin of fireworks, because often critics of the fireworks industry say that fireworks are produced in China to take advantage of cheap labor. But the reality is that the fireworks industry developed in China long before the modern era of globalization and long before the disparity in east-west wage rates. The rapid industrialization of China during the last two decades has only strengthened its fireworks industry exports.

Pyro Spectaculars, one of the family-run firms that dominate U.S. fireworks, puts on the New York fireworks show, according to the Wall Street Journal. Its chief executive, James Souza, makes several scouting trips to Liu Yang, China, each year to meet with manufacturers about new shells, cardboard balls as wide as 12-inches in diameter, filled with gun powder and chemicals. The rest of the year he spends at a 160-acre World War II military munitions facility in the desert outside Rialto, Calif. There, at Pyro headquarters, he can freely test explosives.

While the basic chemistry of fireworks has not changed much since its early origins in China, there have been dramatic advances in how the pyrotechnic shows are created and managed for their spectacular visual and sound effects synchronized to music. The extravagant pyrotechnic shows have now become a beautiful blend of art and science.

New microchips embedded in shells now make it possible for fireworks to explode at a specific height. Last July 4, Grucci’s of New York wrote “U.S.A.” in the sky as singer Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” played, reports the Wall Street Journal. It’s tricky to get a shell to break precisely so that it looks like an M, not a W. Next year’s goal: high-definition bursts that explode at lower levels but look crisp on TV.

According to the Journal, fireworks companies began using computers in the late 1980s to remotely ignite fireworks with an electric match that makes contact with a gun powder fuse. The gun powder, called “black powder,” launches the shell skyward. When the fuse reaches the explosive matter inside the shell, the firework goes off and the stars explode in a fixed pattern and color. Popular “cakes,” the name for a cluster of fireworks linked with a single fuse that burst at various heights, are called “Apocalypse Now,” “One Bad Mother-in-Law,” and “Dante’s Inferno.”

In addition to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Chinese fireworks, most of the US flags, estimated at $5 million dollars a year, on display on this 4th of July are imported from China as well.

So the Chinese fireworks and flag businesses celebrate 4th of July each year with the Americans by exporting what America needs to have fun on its Independence Day each year.

Fireworks and flags are among the myriad exports from industrialized China that make up about 25% of the Chinese economy, significantly higher than the exports accounting for 15% of India's GDP and only 10% of Pakistani GDP among the less globalized economies in South Asia.


Related Links:

Chinese PLA's Role in Industrialization

China's Checkbook Power

Military Business and Pakistan's Industrialization

There has been a great deal of criticism of Pakistani military's role in the industry and the economy of Pakistan since the release of Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa Agha's book "The Military Inc: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy" last year. The book describes in some detail the size and the activities of what Dr. Agha calls "MILBUS", the military business in Pakistan. MILBUS, according to the author, includes banks, insurance, cereals, fertilizer, cement, hospitals and clinics, radio and TV, schools, universities and institutes, etc.

In her strongest criticism of Pakistan's military, the author argues that Pakistani military is a giant which has strong political control, economic control, and a very dominant social presence; a military that has over 7% share of the GDP, which controls one-third of heavy manufacturing in the country, which controls 6-7% private sector assets. It has a huge economic presence. It is a constant story of uneven development, between different organizations and institutions.

While some commentators have challenged Dr. Agha's data and her allegations about the dominance of Pakistan's military in the country's business and economy, this post is designed to question why is it bad for Pakistan's military to play an important role in the nation's business.

To explore the possibility of the Pakistani military playing a much bigger positive role in rapid industrialization and globalization of Pakistani economy, let us take a look the role the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) has played in China's phenomenal economic progress and its emergence as a new superpower in the last few decades.

China's PLA began its manufacturing role for the defense sector that picked up steam after the Sino-Soviet tensions during Mao's time. Manufacturing purely military products, such as arms, ammunition, as well as electronics, plastics and metals for military applications, these so-called "third-line" factories were built in remote mountain regions, far away from transportation routes and power sources. The factories bought supplies at subsidized costs from other factories, manufactured the weaponry and related products -- generally low-tech and low-quality -- and then sold them to the military at subsidized prices.

With the change of leadership after Mao's death in 1976, the new government encouraged the military plants to begin exploring civilian uses for their products and to engage in the broader liberalization of the economy. The most nimble managers were free to exploit new markets for their goods. During the early 1980s, the PLA's share of the national budget declined, spurring it to look to other sources for cash, especially hard currency. The higher organizational levels of the PLA created trading companies like China Xinxing, China Poly and China Songhai to take advantage of the opening of China's economy to the international market, according to British analyst Gary Busch.

They formed banks, holding companies and international trading companies like Everbright to market these goods worldwide. Now the PLA runs farms, factories, mines, hotels, paging and telephone companies and airlines, as well as major trading companies.

Busch says the number of military-run businesses exploded during the boom of the late 1980s. The "third line" factories opened branches in the coastal areas, earning increasingly higher profits from the manufacture and export of civilian goods. Even the lowest levels of the PLA set up production units. In fact the PLA had a largely captive audience of Chinese who had never really had the chance to acquire personal goods produced in China before. In addition to their international arms sales, their production of consumer goods for the domestic market soared.

Since the 1980s, many of the PLA companies have now become part of the global economy. According research done by David Welker for Multinational Monitor, in pursuit of hard currency, many of the companies have listed themselves on capital markets in Hong Kong and elsewhere, opened representative offices in overseas markets, solicited foreign companies for joint ventures and partnerships in China and emphasized exports. The so-called red chips, companies listed on the Hong Kong exchange but which are in fact mainland Chinese firms, are the hottest stocks on the market. Hong Kong is the PLA's favored stock exchange because of its loose disclosure guidelines. China Poly Group has two listed companies: Continental Mariner Company Ltd. and Poly Investments Holdings Ltd. Both Continental Mariner and Poly Investments have a large number of subsidiary companies in mainland China, Hong Kong and tax havens like Liberia, the British Virgin Islands and Panama. China Carrie's listed company in Hong Kong is Hongkong Macau Holdings Ltd. China Carrie also owns HMH China Investments Ltd. on the Toronto Stock Exchange and HMH Gold Mining on the Australian Stock Exchange. 999 Enterprise Group, another company controlled by the PLA General Logistics Department, operates Sanjiu Pharmaceuticals Group, the largest pharmaceuticals manufacturer in China. 999 recently listed on the Hong Kong exchange.

Smaller military enterprises, like the Songliao Automobile Company owned by the PLA Shenyang Military Region, have also listed in the domestic Chinese markets.

China Poly Group is a commercial arm of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) General Staff Department. The PLA General Logistics Department operates China Xinxing. The PLA General Political Department owns and operates China Carrie. The Northern Army Group runs NORINCO and the PLA Navy runs China Songhai.

Some of these international Chinese companies with PLA connections are very rich and powerful. Some have entered into very controversial projects. A good example is the Hutchison-Whampoa, Hutchison Port Holding (HPH). HPH is a huge, multibillion-dollar company which has set up operations in ports all around the world, according to Busch From Panama to the Philippines, an arm of Hutchison-Whampoa, Hutchison Port Holding (HPH), has become the world's largest seaport operator, embedding itself in strategic seaports all across the globe. In fact now Hutchison holds the exclusive contract to operate the Panama Canal.

Hutchison-Whampoa has spread everywhere. It has a base in Tanzania where it runs Tanzania International Terminal Services Ltd. In the Western Hemisphere it has seaport services in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Freeport, the Bahamas; Veracruz, Mexico; and at both ends of the Panama Canal. HPH's latest acquisition involved taking over eight Philippine ports. New ports in Mexico, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Tanzania and Thailand make Hutchision-Whampoa the world's largest private port operator with 23 cargo berths, bringing its worldwide total of ports to a staggering 136.

Other ports include Jakarta, Indonesia; Karachi, Pakistan; India (where the company runs the cellular phone services); Burma; China; and Malaysia. There are port operations in Britain at Harwich, Felixstowe (Britain's largest port), and Thames port, and in the Netherlands at Rotterdam. The company is bidding to set up in South Korea's largest port, Pusan, and is already in Kwangyang, another South Korean port.

The Chinese have pursued liberalizing their economy without political liberalization, in the same way other East Asians did. Such a strategy has allowed them to pursue rapid economic growth while forcefully controlling chaos on the streets, as the PLA did at Tienanmen square in 1989. At the same time, the Chinese PLA businesses have sparked a great industrial revolution that has transformed the nation's economy, accelerated its human development, greatly enriched China and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Just as it has in other East Asian nations, it can be expected that political liberalization and democracy will follow the rapid wave of industrialization and human development in China.

India, another member of the emerging powers now called "BRIC", has failed to use a period of high economic growth to lift tens of millions of people out of poverty, falling far short of China’s record in protecting its population from the ravages of chronic hunger, United Nations officials said recently. Last year, British Development Minister Alexander contrasted the rapid growth in China with India's economic success - highlighting government figures that showed the number of poor people had dropped in the one-party communist state by 70% since 1990 but had risen in the world's biggest democracy by 5%.

Retired PLA officers also continue to support China's transformation to a powerful first world economy by founding such companies as Huawei, the Chinese router giant challenging Cisco's dominance.

Since the early 1990s, there has been an ongoing effort to spin off the PLA's commercial enterprises into private companies managed by former PLA officers, and to reform military procurement from a system in which the PLA directly controls its sources of supply to a contracting system more akin to those of Western countries. The separation of the PLA from its commercial interests is now believed to be largely complete. But the stamp of the PLA influence continues on most large enterprises in the form of retired PLA personnel managing these businesses.

Pakistan's record in alleviating poverty and increasing human development is not much better than India's. But Pakistani military has shown that it is capable of building and operating a wide variety of businesses profitably, ranging from heavy weapons manufacturing to industrial and consumer goods, construction and finance. The country now boasts a powerful industrial, technological and research base developing and manufacturing for its armed forces and exporting a wide variety of small and large weapons ranging from modern fighter jets, battle tanks, armored vehicles, frigates and submarines to unmanned aerial vehicles and high tech firearms and personal grenade launchers for urban combat. Comparing with the Chinese PLA, it is also clear that Pakistan's military currently has a very small footprint in industrial and economic development and globalization of the nation's economy. It is now recognized that without PLA's crucial role, it would have been very difficult for the Chinese to build the modern industrial base and attract massive foreign direct investments to become the factory of the world. It is also clear that, as a powerful and stable institution, Pakistani military can and should take inspiration from the PLA to play a much bigger role in Pakistan's economic development and rapid industrialization to help increase the nation's prosperity and lift millions out of poverty, as China has done.

Pakistan's military should take a leaf from the Chinese PLA playbook. It should do what is necessary to strengthen the nation's industry, economy and national security, regardless of any critics, including Ayesha Siddiqa Agha and her myriad fans. This is the best way forward to a well-educated, industrialized, prosperous and democratic Pakistan in the future.

Related Links:

Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Goes Global

Chinese Military-Commercial Complex

Pakistan's Defense Production Goes High Tech

Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa Agha on Pakistan Military Inc.

Military Inc: A Deflective and Derogatory Book

Extreme Kayaking and Climbing on Karakoram

The high Karakorum mountains in Pakistan offer great adventures in mountain climbing and kayaking for those looking for high danger and extreme thrills at fairly low cost. Hunza valley with its steep and dramatic river falls on the Indus, in particular, offers some of the most challenging white water adventures in the world. While K2 mountain climbing expeditions are not uncommon, extreme kayaking in the area around K2 appears to be a fairly well-kept secret.

Writing for Jackson Kayak website recently, Kayaker Darin McQuoid said as follows: "In my short career of paddling, Pakistan wins the prize for the lowest cost of living once in country. Being a notoriously cheap kayaker, this motel on our fifteenth night was right up my alley at thirty cents per person. We never spent a night in a heated building while in Pakistan, so as an added bonus, it was nice and one warm."

Another extreme kayaker Ben Stookesberry, who is one of about half a dozen professional kayakers who tackle waterfalls above 100 feet, was reported by Wall Street Journal as saying he "views the fast-charging Lower Mesa Falls (in US) as preparation for even more ambitious drops on kayaking expeditions down uncharted rivers in Brazil, Chile and Pakistan.

On a recent expedition on the Indus in Pakistan, when Kayaker Bernhard Mauracher saw the massive wall of water in front of him it was already too late. He had planned to slip through a small gate in the huge rapids but underestimated the power of the roaring currents of the Indus river. A brief moment later he found himself captured in a swirl of foam and glacier water. The lion river showed its claws and wouldn't let Bernhard go. Like in a washing-machine paddler and kayaker were tumbled through masses of water. Bernhard decided to leave his kayak...a deadly risk in the floods of the Indus. Immediately, Bernhard was drawn downwards and everything turned dark. After a very long time, in a breathless silence, he made out a shimmer of light. The surface, the sunlight, life...

First descent in a kayak in the land of the highest mountains on earth around Karakorum. On 3 May,2007, the AKC expedition "Taming the lion II" came back from Pakistan, from the roof of the world to Germany. During the first two weeks of April, the whitewater kayak team led by Olaf Obsommer and Bernhard Mauracher mastered 30 km of first descents in one of the last unchallenged big canyons of the Himalaya - the Rondu Canyon of the Indus river. 30 km more remain untouched due to extremely fast rising water levels.

An expedition to the world's second highest peak, K2 in Pakistan, runs around $50,000 per climber. A trip to Everest has the steepest price at $65,000. Excluding gear and clothing, the cost estimates for K2 climb range from $15000 to $30,000. Individual climbers can easily spend $5,000 on equipment. The total Mt. Everest annual revenue runs into tens of millions of dollars and provides employment to several thousand people. 3,681 people have made the summit so far, but thousands more have tried. About 170 climbers have died in their attempts to reach the summit.

Kayakers in Pakistan can enjoy extreme kayaking at a tiny fraction of the cost of climbing Mount Everest or K2.

There have been many inspiring stories of great adventure, success and survival of climbers after storms and avalanches on K2, the story of Greg Mortenson stands out. In 1993, Mortenson, an American from the state of Montana, went to climb K2 in northern Pakistan. After more than 70 days on the mountain, Mortenson and three other climbers completed a life-saving rescue of a fifth climber that took more than 75 hours. After the rescue, he began his descent of the mountain and became weak and exhausted. Two local Balti porters took Mortenson to the nearest city, but he took a wrong turn along the way and ended up in Korphe, a small village, where the villagers took care of him and he recovered.

To pay the remote community back for their compassion, Mortenson said he would build a school for the village. After a frustrating time trying to raise money, Mortenson convinced Jean Hoerni, a Silicon Valley pioneer, to found the Central Asia Institute. A non-profit organization, CAI's mission is to promote education and literacy, especially for girls, in remote mountain regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Hoerni named Mortenson as CAI's first Executive Director. Reviewing Greg Mortenson's book "Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time", New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff argues "a lone Montanan (Mortenson) staying at the cheapest guest houses has done more to advance U.S. interests in the region than the entire military and foreign policy apparatus of the Bush administration". Kristoff quotes Greg Mortenson, an Army veteran, as saying “Schools are a much more effective bang for the buck than missiles or chasing some Taliban around the country".

While some international and Pakistani climbers, kayakers and tourists may be dissuaded by the extreme dangers of K2 climbing (or rather descending) or extreme kayaking or the fear of the Taliban, many more would be drawn to it for the very same reason. As the stories of the challenging mountain and white water rapids kayaking reach the worldwide audience, I expect much larger numbers to flock to it for the risks and thrills Pakistan's northern areas offer. With relatively modest investments for average tourists and serious climbers and kayakers facilities such as access roads, hotels, restaurants, guided tours, a climbing history museum, a climbing or kayaking skills school, mountaineering equipment and clothing stores, Pakistan tourism department can develop a strong revenue stream to create jobs, build schools and promote opportunities for the friendly natives in its picturesque northern areas.

Here's an excerpt from a recent Time Magazine article on Pakistan's tourism potential:

The truth is Pakistan could be — should be — an incredible tourist destination. It offers wonderful Mughal ruins, evocative British colonial architecture, world-class hiking and climbing in the Karakoram Mountains, gorgeous rolling green meadows, captivating culture, great food (especially the fruits and kebabs), and some of the best carpet shops in South Asia. Unfortunately, it is also regularly described as the world's most dangerous country — which, while more intriguing than slogans like "Malaysia, Truly Asia" or "I Feel Slovenia," is not exactly an inducement for people to visit.

Related Links:

Pakistan Indus River Kayaking

Kayaking Goes Over the Edge

Climbing K2: The Ultimate Challenge

Three Cups of Tea

Pakistan Tourism