The Severity and Extent of Environmental Scarcity in Pakistan

Kashmir is the northernmost geographical region of South Asia. It borders Pakistan and India in the Himalayan Mountains. This landscape is known for its raw natural beauty and has stood out in the history and folklore of the Indian subcontinent. At one point in time, Kashmir was aptly named "paradise on Earth". Kashmir excels at diversity. People from all over the world many different religious backgrounds and even more diverse dialects frequent the land. Today however, the Kashmir region is the center a multidimensional problem, with religious hostilities taking center stage.

The major ethnic groups Chinese, Malay, Indian, and others comprise 74.2, 13.3, 9.2 and 3.3 percent of the total population. Although the Mandarin, English, Malay, and Tamil are the official language spoken, others like Hokkien, Teochew, Chinese dialects and others is spoken. Buddhist (33.9 percent), Muslim (14.3 percent), Taoist (11.3%), catholic 7.1%, Hindu 5.2 % are the major religious practices in the country (CIA, World Factbook, 2016).

India has a state named Punjab that was divided in half during the break up with Pakistan, which left half of Punjab in Pakistan and

The consequences of independence from British control over India and demise of British colonial power in the South Asian subcontinent led to the genesis of a new country up on the world map on 14th August 1947. Undoubtedly, the fundaments of the demand of a separate country were based on the religious identity and an intention to provide a secure haven for the Muslims from Hindu dominated India. However, Pakistan was not meant to be a theocratic state, in which the rulers of government are vested with the uncontrolled power of religion. Instead, the founder of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah not only wanted an independent state for Muslims, in which Islam had primary role affirmed by the apparatus of the state but also a place in which other faith groups could live with

In India, the notions of the people specifically the non-Muslim are of the view that Muslim are not non-violent entities. Such pre-conceived animosity regarding the Muslim community by the non-Muslims, have a prolonged history in India. This notion was prevalent because during the colonial rule, the British, were very much successful in creating a division between Hindus and Muslims. Divisions led to clashes between the Muslim and non- Muslim particularly the Hindu community. This gave birth to the creation of Pakistan, a separate state for the Muslim people where those people can carry on their administration freely, efficiently and in a well-organised pattern as per Islamic

English (official) 58.7%, French (official) 22%, Punjabi 1.4%, Italian 1.3%, Spanish 1.3%, German 1.3%, Cantonese 1.2%, Tagalog 1.2%, Arabic 1.1%, other 10.5% (2011 est.)

Historically, the north-west has been one of Pakistan's least developed regions. But Swat, interestingly, has long been a bright spot in terms of

Conflicts between Afghanistan and Pakistan brought to the forefront deep-rooted issues that continue to plague relations between the two neighboring countries. Pakistan and Afghanistan are two neighboring Islamic states in South Asia with sharing borders. Conflicts between the 2 started because Afghanistan never recognized the Durand line, which divides the 2 neighboring countries. Pakistan always wanted to keep Afghanistan under their control, but if Afghanistan opposes it would dispute its boundaries with Pakistan. The differences between the two can differ from economical to political and of course geographical. Economically, Pakistan is better than Afghanistan. Pakistan is a semi-industrialized country, poised to develop at a high rate. As of 2011, Pakistan’s nominal GDP was US$202 billion. Afghanistan, on the other hand, is one of the poorest countries in the world. For a long time, Afghan economy has remained closed with trade between tribes and communities. Prolonged instability caused no foreign investments to come through. As of

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan has 4 provinces, Punjab, Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan besides the federally administered territories and the capital Islamabad. The population of Pakistan is estimated at 182 million in 2013 with an annual population growth rate of 2%. Pakistan is having a birth cohort of 6.2 million infants, with 5.82 million surviving infants [1].

Language Movement: Just after independence, Pakistan ruler with a key resolution at national education summit in Karachi in 1947 began to exclude Bengalis, inhabitant of East Pakistan, adopting Urdu as the only state language of then Pakistan which later elicited language movement in East Pakistan. The declaration of Mohammad Ali Jinnah in Dhaka as “Urdu and only Urdu will remain as the state language of Pakistan” and the reluctance of the successive rulers to recognize the mother language of 56% people of the total Pakistan’s population drew language movement to the street that took its final shape on 21st February 1952. On this day, Salam, Rafique, Barkat, Jabbar, Shafiul were the heroes who laid down their lives to establish Bangla as one of the state languages of Pakistan and “seeds of Bangladeshi nationalism” was sown.

Pakistan, ever since its inception, has been proclaiming a right on the territory of Kashmir. Indeed Jinnah argued that “the new nation would be incomplete without Kashmir…and the ‘K’ in Pakistan stood for Kashmir,” While we hear Pakistan’s commitment to help the poor Kashmirs,

After the partition of India and Pakistan, to stop Kashmir from being a part of India, Pakistan invaded them and tried to gain control. The Maharaja of Kashmir at the time fled to India and offered a deal to let Kashmir be under Indian control if India would defend Kashmir from further invasion. India agreed and immediately sent out troops to fight off the Pakistani invaders. Per the agreement, the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir makes up about 45% of Kashmir. Pakistan controls three areas known as Azad Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan, which make up about 35% of Kashmir. Finally, China controls one area called Aksai Chin equaling to 20% of Kashmir.

At the creation of Pakistan, a large number Mohajirs migrated from India and settled in to Sindh. From 1947 to 1951 nearly 1 million Mohajirs settled into Sindh (Rais, Rasul Buksh). They had also

The State of Jammu and Kashmir is situated between Pakistan and India. Among the key reasons for tension between Pakistan and India is the key problem of Kashmir. Whereas Pakistan has repeatedly termed this the "core issue" in its relationship with India, India has maintained that this matter was settled with Kashmir's accession to India in October 1947. As far as India has been concerned, therefore, the only issue for discussion has been what India regards as Pakistan's continuing illegal occupation of part of Jammu and Kashmir, an occupation that began in 1947–48, during the war between the two. About 63 per cent of the territory is under Indian occupation; while the rest, 37 per cent, is with

Whilst India adopts a pan-Asian strategy, Pakistan has singularly defined its national security agenda in terms of protecting Muslims from a menacing India (Riedel 2008, 41). The resulting physical and ideological fortress (Cohen 2006, 61) has endowed Pakistan with a progressively rigid and myopic outlook. Depictions of a united Islamic community are fallacious, with Pakistan’s greatest threat being state disintegration. Almost every ethnicity, with the exception of Punjabi’s, has or had an ethno-nationalist movement (Mushtaq 2009, 281). The 1971 loss of East Pakistan, achieved partly with Indian assistance, starkly revealed not only the threat of balkanisation but also its congruence with Indian interests. Ominously, Pakistan is now confronted with an exponentially stronger India containing a larger number of Muslims than Pakistan itself (de Riencourt 1983, 420). Attempting to