Survey findings: Pakistanis warmer towards India

ISLAMABAD: More Pakistanis than Indians favour “cooperative” relations between Islamabad and New Delhi but people from both countries consider either state the “least friendly” country, said a survey released by Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (Pildat). The survey was conducted nationwide by Pildat with the support and assistance of Danish International Development Agency (Danida) and the Centre of the Study of Developing Sciences (CSDS) Delhi. The purpose for the survey was to measure various trends in both countries on democracy, trust of the people in different state institutions, their expectations of their elected representatives and impact of television and newspapers. The ‘Views on State Democracy in South Asia: 2013 Pakistan Report’ was jointly launched by Danish Ambassador to Islamabad Jesper Moller Sorensen and Pildat executive director Ahmed Bilal Mehmood at a local hotel where experts on the subject and parliamentarians expressed their views on the report. The ‘Indian Report’ was released by CSDS director Sanjay Kumar, who specially flew to Islamabad to attend the event. According to the survey, 33% of Pakistanis think India is a friendly country while only 11% Indians say Pakistan is a friendly country. When Pakistanis were asked about China, 96% responded that it was the ‘friendliest’ country to Pakistan while 77% regarded Bangladesh as a friendly country.

When people were asked how much were they satisfied with functioning of democracy in Pakistan, 53% said they were ‘satisfied’, which showed an increase of 21% in satisfaction with democracy. In Pakistan, 56% male and 50% women were found satisfied with the functioning of democracy. Sanjay Kumar said 55% Indian people were satisfied with democracy while 33% were dissatisfied, adding, 62% males while 54% females were satisfied with the functioning democracy. Interestingly, 54% of Indian people did not know the meaning of democracy, he added. In his remarks, Bilal Mehboob said many Pakistanis were rightly proud of the elections in 2013, where one democratically elected government succeeded another. “Yet democracy is still fragile, so we must continuously keep an eye on the political development and make demands to our politicians to consolidate democracy.” Published in The Express Tribune, February 17th, 2014.