Section 16: Developments and Challenges in South Asia after 1947

The question asks why jute revenues did not benefit East Pakistan economically. The key issue is not commodity prices or geography but who controlled economic decision-making after 1947.

National economic planning was concentrated in West Pakistan, where the capital, military headquarters and dominant bureaucracy were based. Central planners allocated foreign exchange, development budgets and industrial licences for the whole country, with East Pakistanis having minimal input.

East Pakistan generated a major share of Pakistan's foreign exchange through jute exports, but the spending of that revenue was controlled by West Pakistani institutions. Industrial licences, irrigation projects and manufacturing investment were channelled disproportionately to Punjab and Sindh.

The correct answer is that central planning bodies dominated by West Pakistanis redirected jute revenues away from East Pakistan. This explains the investment gap as a product of political and administrative control, not geography or market prices.

The question asks for the best explanation of why East Pakistan's export revenues did not produce equivalent industrial growth — so we are looking for the structural cause of this fiscal imbalance.

The option citing a collapse in international jute prices is inaccurate: jute exports remained a leading source of Pakistan's foreign exchange through the 1950s and 1960s, so this cannot explain the investment gap.

The claim that East Pakistan's geography made it unsuitable for industry is unsupported — the issue was not terrain but deliberate policy decisions about where development spending was directed.

The Awami League did not control economic planning from 1947; it was an opposition movement, not a governing party with authority over national budgets. This option is factually incorrect.

The remaining option — West Pakistani-dominated central planning bodies redirecting revenues toward the west — correctly identifies the structural mechanism behind East Pakistan's economic neglect.

Without a permanent constitution, there was no settled, legitimate framework governing how power should pass between elected leaders, provinces or the military. Pakistan operated under a modified colonial-era act, leaving governance rules ambiguous and contested.

Because civilian political parties and elected institutions lacked constitutional legitimacy and continuity, unelected bureaucrats and army officers increasingly stepped into the resulting power vacuum. The military and civil service were the most functionally organized institutions in the new state.

This pattern culminated in Ayub Khan's military takeover in 1958, just two years after Pakistan's first constitution was adopted and immediately after it was abrogated. The precedent established during the constitutional vacuum made subsequent military intervention easier to justify.

The correct answer identifies the constitutional vacuum as directly enabling military and bureaucratic dominance over civilian institutions — the core structural explanation for Pakistan's recurring political instability.

The question asks for the most significant political consequence of the decade-long absence of a permanent constitution — so we need the option that best explains a real, documented political outcome.

The claim that the constitutional vacuum encouraged East-West cooperation is the opposite of what occurred: the absence of a constitutional framework for power-sharing worsened regional tensions rather than fostering negotiation.

Pakistan conducted independent foreign policy from 1947 and was not dependent on Commonwealth institutions for diplomacy — this option is historically inaccurate.

Pakistan held elections before 1956, and the delay in universal adult franchise was not the primary consequence of lacking a permanent constitution — this conflates two separate issues.

The option about unelected actors filling the governance gap is correct: it accurately identifies the structural consequence of constitutional absence that historians identify as central to Pakistan's early instability.