Pakistan's economic development 1948-78 : failure of a strategy

The book has two purposes: first, to review the development of Pakistan's economy in the thirty year period from 1948 to 1978 and second, to discuss the development policies and strategies pursued by Pakistan during this period. The first is an exercise in economic history, the second, in the theory of growth. The main interest of the book for the general reader will lie in the first; that of the specialist, the professional economist, in the second.

The emphasis throughout, however, is on economic history, which is written around the central theme of the failure of the development strategy that Pakistan pursued, particularly in the "development decade" of Ayub's "revolutionary" regime. The high growth rates of the economy attained during the period were widely acclaimed by western economists at the time. Pakistan was described as a model for other developing countries to emulate.. The series of crises beginning with the overthrow of Ayub in 1969 and the subsequent break-up of the two wings of the country in 1971, ending with the downfall of Bhutto, completely changed the picture.. Instead of success, the story now was one of disaster. Obviously the erstwhile western patrons of the country had no use for it. A discreet silence on the subject has, therefore, been maintained since then by them: as against a plethora of books published in the 1960s, one finds almost a complete black out on this front in the publishing world in the 1970s.

Dr Bhatia takes up where earlier economists left off, and argues that unless Pakistan drastically revises its political structure and economic policies it cannot continue to hold its own in the comity of nations. This book follows an interdisciplinary approach and will be useful to historians, sociologists, economists and the general reader.