<b>T N Ninan:</b> A tale of two countries

Bangladesh has raced past Pakistan by shunning religious fundamentalism and focusing on its economy

In 1971, Bangladesh won independence from Pakistan after years of treatment as a poor relative and its culmination in a bloody war whose after-effects were felt for many years. Eight years later, the new country’s per capita income was a miserable $90; the World Bank ranked it as the world’s fourth poorest country, out of 124. Henry Kissinger’s dismissal of the place as a basket case seemed apt. At the time, Pakistan’s per capita income was almost three times as high, at $260. What is more, Bangladesh had seen no growth in its per capita income since 1960, while Pakistan’s