National Geographic January-December 1967. I-II [antikvár]

A FTER A DAY-LONG TOUR of Kara-Z\ chi's booming industries, I eagerly ac- ^ cepted a dinner invitation from my volunteer guide, an engineer I had met aboard the plane on the flight into Pakistan. His pride in his country's industrial progress, in new shipyards, plastics plants, and machine assembly lines, had been infectious. Now he was showing me his country's afterhours life. While we studied an elaborate hotel menu, the waiter broke the bad news to my host: "Sahib, Wednesday is a meatless day." My friend's pride collapsed. As he sadly ordered, he explained that the measure was meant to conserve the country's livestock herds, threatened by a hungry population. "There you have the dilemma of Pakistan," he said. "For every industrial advance we wrestle through, a bursting population devours a bit more of our wealth. We have to run to exhaustion to keep from falling behind." Expanding Nation Needs More Jobs At his suburban home after dinner, as we sipped cups of the sweet, milky tea Pakistanis favor, he expanded on his country's crisis: "Already we suffer from 20 percent unemployment. During the next 20 years we must find new jobs for 28 million more workers— more than the labor force of France or West Germany. Our per capita income now is only $70 a year, and it will be even less if we cannot find those new jobs. We must control our numbers, or we are destroyed." I remarked that my host did not appear to suffer from want. "Not so long as I hold an American engineering degree in a country where not even one in five can read," he said. "But I worry about my countrymen, so many of whom are poor and illiterate. When you finish your tour of Pakistan, give me your impressions. I hope you find me a blackhearted pessimist." Next day, the government sent me a guide and interpreter, Hasan Imam, a young Bengali whose tailored suit and hairline mustache suggested more the matinee idol than the pious Moslem he is. "Karachi exists to do business," Imam said, "so let's go to the Stock Exchange." Silver song of welcome: Turbaned bugler, his uniform a reminder of British colonial days, announces the arrival of the Governor of West Pakistan at Governor's House in Lahore. East Pakistan, the other sector of this divided nation, lies a thousand miles away across India (map, pages 8-9). January 1967 NMTONA GEOGIAFHDC PROBLEMS OF A TWO-PART LAND Pakistan By BERN KEATING Photographs by ALBERT MOLDVAY National Geographic Staff