Elaborate on the problem of Stunted growth in light of the discussion on Structural transformation of the Indian Economy.
Answers
This is a long answer because the question posed here cannot be answered without going over the historical development of South Korea and Pakistan from the colonial era to modern times and understanding how they differed.
Much of the difference in Pakistan’s and South Korea’s different economic track record lies in the historical differences between their political economy.
The key historical difference of note is the differences between how the Japanese Empire colonized and developed South Korea vs how the British Empire colonized and developed the territories that comprised of Pakistan.
For starters, Japanese colonization of South Korea was far more brutal and intense compared to the British colonization of India. The Japanese empire made far more effort to break down the political structure of the then Yi Dynasty of Korea and reshape it into a strongly centralized state structure than the British who were content to let state structures remain in place that co-opted the local elite into the resource extraction model of the British colonial empire.
The British empire was content to utilize India as a market for British goods, extract resources from, rely on as a pool for the Royal Indian army and so forth. Little to no attempts were made to industrialize India.
The Japanese though, were determined to integrate Korea into the overall War Economy of the Japanese empire leading up to the second world war. This meant that a far more intense industrialization effort was undertaken in the Korean territories with nearly 3 decades of GDP growth averaging more than 3% per anum taking place in Korea up until Korean independence. Nothing of the sort happened in India or Pakistan. The Korean economy was comprised of nearly 35% by the manufacturing and mining sectors alone which are key indicators of industrialization.
Even more importantly, the Japanese colonization of Korea dramatically altered the social fabric of Korean society and reshaped the power relations between different social groups that made Industrialization far more easier. They destroyed the predator relationship between the Landowning elite and the peasants as well as the weak control of the Yi ruling elite on the country and replaced it with a technically competent middle class, western style laws of property and inheritance, a strong state structure backed up by a police force and internal security, an industrial class and strong, consistent tax revenues for the state.
Park Chung-Hee, the architect of South Korea’s economic miracle, was for the most part, simply following the lines in the sand left behind by the Japanese empire’s colonial efforts in Korea (and was reported a big admirer of the Meiji reforms in Japan as well).
Thus, it is imperative that we understand Korea and it’s economic miracle under the context of the historical circumstance that led up to it, whether it was Japanese colonization, US patronage, the revolutionary movements of North Korea or the corrupt courtly intrigues of the Choson under the Yi dynasty.