Pakistan is often compared to India, and rightly so. Both nations share a common history, similar geography, and cultural bonds. However, while a farmer from Pakistan Punjab might enjoy a similar or even better quality of life than a farmer in Indian Uttar Pradesh, the contrast between the lives of a Pakistani IT specialist and an Indian IT specialist is night and day.
Just this week, Indian startups raised over $395 million across 20 deals. That was only in one week. In July alone, Indian startups secured more than $1 billion in funding after the government revised taxes on foreign investors. In the same month, Pakistan’s biggest IT news was a botched implementation of media monitoring software, which led to such severe internet slowdowns that international platforms marked Pakistan as unavailable for their clients.
These incidents highlight the vast difference in professionalism and prioritization of the IT industry between India and Pakistan. Like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and other Asian countries such as Vietnam, India leveraged its large workforce proficient in English, the global lingua franca. India then created an environment that recognized the importance of information technology, established schools and education systems focused on promoting the field, and developed entire urban centers dedicated to becoming global IT hubs. This strategy has produced a steady stream of Indian executives in foreign tech companies and returning Indian executives running multi-million-dollar companies in India, bringing revenue and innovation to the country. Pakistan, however, remains stuck in the past.
Internet services are throttled, IT is a neglected sector, and Pakistan’s entry into the global tech and coding market is largely limited to outsourcing for global call centers or replicating existing international applications for local use. This stark contrast underscores the difference between a well-thought-out policy, diligently implemented over decades, and the complete neglect of what could have been Pakistan’s opportunity to join the ranks of global tech leaders.
