Section 16: Developments and Challenges in South Asia after 1947

When British rule ended in 1947, the successor states of South Asia inherited economies that had been deliberately shaped to serve colonial interests: producing raw agricultural commodities for export rather than manufactured goods for domestic industry. This left Pakistan, East Pakistan and Ceylon/Sri Lanka with economies that were, in the years and decades after independence, still overwhelmingly dependent on agriculture, with low industrialization and limited infrastructure restricting their ability to diversify and grow.

In Pakistan, weak state institutions and the absence of a permanent constitution in the early years made coordinated economic planning difficult. Without strong central direction or investment capacity, the economy remained tied to agricultural output — particularly cotton and wheat cultivation — rather than shifting toward industry. This economic weakness compounded the political instability produced by regional inequality: a state that could not industrialize also struggled to generate the tax base, employment and infrastructure needed to bind together a geographically divided country (West Pakistan and East Pakistan, separated by India).

East Pakistan is the clearest case of how agricultural dependence intersected with political grievance. East Pakistan produced the bulk of Pakistan's export earnings, notably through jute cultivation, yet economic planning, industrial investment and infrastructure spending were concentrated in West Pakistan. East Pakistan's population depended on smallholder agriculture with little industrial base of its own, while the wealth generated from its agricultural exports was used to fund development elsewhere in the state. This pattern of economic neglect reinforced the sense — alongside the denial of linguistic recognition discussed elsewhere in this subtopic — that East Pakistan was being treated as an internal colony rather than an equal partner, feeding the regional nationalism that eventually culminated in the demand for Bangladeshi independence.

Ceylon/Sri Lanka likewise entered independence with an economy structured around plantation agriculture — tea, rubber and coconut — inherited directly from colonial-era production for export. This dependence on a narrow range of agricultural commodities left the economy vulnerable to fluctuating world prices and slow to generate the industrial employment and infrastructure that might have eased the ethnic and economic competition between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority discussed elsewhere in this subtopic.

When British colonial rule ended in 1947, the successor states of South Asia -- Pakistan (including East Pakistan, later Bangladesh) and Ceylon (later Sri Lanka) -- inherited economies shaped by more than a century of colonial extraction rather than balanced development. Colonial economic policy had concentrated industrial capacity, transport networks and administrative infrastructure in a small number of centres useful to imperial trade, while leaving most of the subcontinent dependent on agricultural production for export. This left the new governments with the difficult task of nation-building on top of economies that were, in AO1 terms, structurally weak: low levels of industrialization, inadequate infrastructure, and a heavy reliance on agriculture that limited employment diversification and government revenue.

In Pakistan, this problem was worsened by an uneven distribution of what little industry did exist. Investment, factories and government spending were concentrated in West Pakistan (the political and military centre), while East Pakistan -- despite producing valuable export crops such as jute -- saw comparatively little industrial or infrastructural investment. This economic neglect was not simply a technical failure of planning; it became a source of political grievance, reinforcing East Pakistani perceptions that the union with West Pakistan served West Pakistani interests rather than a shared national project. Ceylon/Sri Lanka similarly remained heavily dependent on plantation agriculture (tea, rubber, coconut) inherited from the colonial period, with industrial diversification proceeding slowly in the early independence decades.

For Paper 3 essay writing, this theme works best as supporting evidence woven into broader arguments about state-building challenges, rather than as a standalone case study. When a question asks you to examine the difficulties facing new South Asian states, or the causes of a specific conflict, be ready to explain concretely how low industrialization and infrastructure deficits constrained government capacity and fuelled regional inequality -- and to connect this economic weakness explicitly to the political and ethnic tensions covered elsewhere in this subtopic (such as the Language Movement and the 1971 war).

When British India was partitioned in August 1947, Pakistan inherited a state apparatus that was fragmented, under-resourced and geographically split between West and East wings separated by over 1,000 miles of Indian territory. Unlike India, which retained much of the pre-existing Indian Civil Service, Congress party organization and a working constitutional framework, Pakistan had to build core institutions almost from scratch. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founding leader and Governor-General, died in September 1948, barely a year after independence, removing the figure with the greatest personal authority to unify the new state. His successor as head of the Muslim League, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated in 1951. The loss of both founding leaders within four years deprived Pakistan of continuous political leadership at precisely the moment institutions needed to be consolidated.

Three specific institutional weaknesses shaped Pakistan's early instability:

• A weak and divided party system: the Muslim League had mobilized Muslims around the demand for a separate state, but after 1947 it struggled to transform itself into a governing party with mass roots, coherent policy programmes and internal discipline. Regional and factional rivalries within the League undermined its authority.
• An underdeveloped judiciary and constitutional order: Pakistan did not adopt its first constitution until 1956 -- nine years after independence -- leaving the country to be governed under an adapted colonial-era framework (the Government of India Act 1935) with an unelected Constituent Assembly performing legislative functions. This prolonged uncertainty over the basic rules of governance weakened the legitimacy of civilian institutions.
• An inherited but imbalanced bureaucracy and military: Pakistan received a disproportionately small share of trained civil servants and financial assets relative to India at partition, yet inherited a large, well-organized military. This imbalance meant the civil service and army became the most functional institutions in the new state, while elected politicians and parties remained comparatively weak.

This institutional fragility also had a regional dimension. Political and administrative power, along with the civil service and military leadership, was concentrated overwhelmingly in West Pakistan, even though East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh) contained the majority of the population. Decisions on language policy, resource allocation and constitutional representation were made by a West Pakistan-dominated centre with limited institutional mechanisms for East Pakistani participation. This is directly connected to the grievances that fed into the Language Movement and, ultimately, the 1971 breakup of Pakistan, discussed elsewhere in this subtopic -- but the root cause examined here is structural: a state whose central institutions were too weak and too narrowly based to manage a large, diverse and geographically divided population.

When Pakistan was created in 1947, it consisted of two territorial wings separated by over 1,600 kilometres of Indian territory: West Pakistan (comprising Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and the North-West Frontier Province) and East Pakistan (the former eastern part of Bengal). Although East Pakistan contained the majority of the new country's population, political power, military command and economic investment were concentrated overwhelmingly in the west. This imbalance shaped Pakistan's early decades and became one of the central, long-running grievances that ultimately contributed to the country's breakup in 1971.

Pakistan's weak and unstable institutions made this inequality worse. Because the country lacked a permanent constitution until 1956 (and that constitution itself was short-lived, suspended after the 1958 military coup), there was no stable, agreed framework for distributing power fairly between provinces. Decisions on resource allocation, civil service appointments and military recruitment were made by a West Pakistan-dominated elite in the capital, with East Pakistan largely excluded from meaningful influence over national policy despite its demographic weight.