South Asia Investor Review

Number of Indian Muslims attending colleges and universities has declined by 8% to 1.9 million in 2020-21, from 2.1 million in 2019-20, according to Indian government data. In the same period, the higher education enrollment in Pakistan has risen about 12%, from 2.7 million to over  3 million . Both India and Pakistan have about the same population of Muslims.  Higher Education Enrollment of Muslims in India, Pakistan While enrollment of Indian Muslims has fallen by 8%, the enrollment of Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs in higher education has increased by 4.2%, 11.9% and 4% respectively compared to 2019-20.  The  upper caste  Hindus have seen the highest jump of  13.6%  in enrollment in colleges and universities.  Labor Force Education Status of Indian Muslims Worst of all Groups. Source: HT   These results are consistent with a 2018 study by three researchers which reported that "Muslims (in India) now have considerably worse upward mobility (29) ...

Pakistan is among the most  upwardly mobile  nations in the world, according to a new Standard Chartered Bank study titled "Climbing the Prosperity Ladder". The  Standard Chartered study  looks into social mobility, financial proficiency and digital savviness among 11,000 emerging affluent consumers in China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea and the UAE. 34% of Pakistani respondents said their incomes have increased by more than 50% over the last 5 years while 44% said they have seen 10% or more income growth in the last year. Socially Mobile Income Growth. Source: Standard Chartered Bank China, India and Pakistan: Standard Chartered study talks about the  " fast-growing economies of China, India and Pakistan are providing abundant opportunities for scaling the social pyramid".  Here's an excerpt of the Standard Chartered report: The fast-growing economies of China, India and Pakistan are pr...

Over the last two decades, Pakistan has continued to offer much greater upward economic and social mobility to its citizens than neighboring India. Since 1990, Pakistan's middle class had expanded by 36.5% and India's by only 12.8%, according to an ADB report on Asia's rising middle class released recently. The simplest definition of the middle class is a group of people in a society who are neither rich nor poor. The middle class has always been considered vital to a country's political stability and economic growth. The rich and the poor simply distrust each other too much to let the other govern. Nations with large middle class populations find it easier to reach consensus on sustaining good, democratic governance. Unfortunately for Pakistan, the size of the middle class was very small when it came into existence, and the country was dominated by a small powerful feudal elite created by the British rulers to sustain their colonial rule. And the urban middle class r...