 I'm Salvatur Babonis and today's lecture is the Asian peripheries. The majority of the world's poor and socially excluded people live in South Asia. South Asia includes several of the most populous countries in the world and these countries are very poor. Other than India they also face serious problems of political stability and even some regions of India do too. The problems of South Asian countries often dwarf the problems of other poor countries simply because these countries themselves are home to so many poor people. Three of the eight most populous countries in the world were all once part of the British colony of India. The three regional giants are India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. India were the combined population of more than 1.5 billion people. Other countries in the region can seem small by comparison but they're actually relatively large countries. Afghanistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka all have more than 20 million people each. So these are big countries even the small countries in the region are big countries. Now the other peripheral area of Asia are the relatively smaller countries and more isolated countries of Southeast Asia, Cambodia and Laos. I'm not going to cover those here because the enormous global social problems in Asia are really concentrated in South Asia. Cambodia and Laos are even poorer but they're relatively small by comparison. I'm going to use Sri Lanka as an example because Sri Lanka is actually by far the richest country in the region about three times as rich as the rest of the region and even Sri Lanka suffers from serious economic, political and social problems that are among the worst in the world. The GDP per capita is over $3,000 by some measures it's around $3,500 per person per year. Still 80% of the population is rural and most of those rural people are poor. The country is just emerging from a 25 year civil war that pitted the Tamil minority in the north and northeast of the country against the Sinhalese majority. The war was recently ended in a bloody final assault that left unknown numbers of people dead but most estimates are in the tens of thousands. The national health and education systems of Sri Lanka are practically non-existent. Sri Lanka spends less money on health and education as a percent of GDP than just about any other country in the world. The ranking is in the 160th and 170th highest spending countries in the world on health and education and note that that's spending as a percent of GDP. The actual spending levels are even lower because GDP is relatively low in Sri Lanka. Infectious disease is rampant. Sri Lanka has greater problems with infectious diseases including especially waterborne diseases than any other country in the world and a full one-quarter of the children are estimated to be malnourished and stunted that is are estimated to be below the expected height for their age due to lack of nutrition. If Sri Lanka has these kinds of problems and Sri Lanka as I said is two or three times as rich as other countries in the region just imagine how bad it is in the rest of the region. Even India which by most accounts is considered a semi-priferal country has it hosts some of the most severe poverty and social problems in the world and to see that what you really have to do is think about what India is. India is a collection of relatively you know well well middle-income areas that are in the true semi-prifery of the world for example Maharashtra the state that surrounds Mumbai which is one of the richest states in India and home to some 150 or more million people but other states of India are extremely poor and extremely large so for example the most populous state in India Uttar Pradesh and the third most populous state in India Bihar 200 million people and 100 million people are the poorest and second poorest states in the whole country. So together Uttar Pradesh and Bihar combined make up 300 million people who live at a level of GDP per capita that is well below the levels that predominate in Sub-Saharan Africa. These are extremely poor parts of the world and I can't emphasize enough extremely large in demographic terms the 300 million people of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar together make up something like 37% of the total population of the continent of Africa. The other two large states of South Asia Pakistan and Bangladesh were both carved out of British India in 1947 to serve as Muslim homelands or places that would be Muslim majority countries coming out of South Asia. India itself was left as a Hindu majority country but still with a very large Muslim minority of what is today some 200 million people. Both Pakistan and Bangladesh were once a single country called Pakistan but East Pakistan seceded from Pakistan in 1971 to become the new country of Bangladesh. Bangladesh essentially means home of the Bengalis and East Pakistan is the Bengali speaking Muslim majority country of South Asia. No one knows the exact number but something like a million Bangladeshis estimates range from half a million to three million Bangladeshis were massacred by the Pakistani army in 1971 and what's known as the Bangladesh genocide. Tensions remain very high between Bangladesh and India on one hand and Pakistan on the other. Now today of course Bangladesh does not have any border with Pakistan so most of the tension is directly between India and Pakistan both of which have nuclear weapons. Both Bangladesh and especially Pakistan show signs of being failed states that is they show signs of being or becoming places where the government and the national bureaucracy are unable to exert control of the country. Both states have regions that are outside completely outside of central government control both have extremely unstable governments with winner-take-all politics meaning that whoever wins control in an election completely excludes and often prosecutes and jails in prisons or even murders the people who served in office before them. Neither state is able to collect taxes in any normal way to provide government services or to enforce the law in both countries extradition judicial killings are common people rely on gangs and private security for their for their safety nobody trusts the police forces crimes go on uninvestigated and unprosecuted in both countries the main unifying institution that keeps the country from disintegrating is the army in other words Bangladesh and Pakistan do not have civil institutions that unify the country instead both are kept together primarily by force India is more stable than either Bangladesh or Pakistan but only just many people believe that lurking just below the surface in India are tensions that could also tear the country apart the result of government failure and uneven rule of law is that most people in South Asia are essentially on their own in facing the challenges and pressures of the global economy the worst illustration of that is the Rana Plaza collapse of a garment factory in Dhaka the capital of Bangladesh that killed more than 1,000 people in 2013 the people who worked in the factory simply had no one to turn to to enforce factory safety regulations or even to make sure that they weren't fired when it was clear that the building was unsafe and should not be occupied key takeaways for this lecture first most of the world's poor people live in a small number of very populous countries in South Asia right next door in Southeast Asia is Indonesia another relatively poor country that adds another 300 million to the total of the region second the two poorest provinces of India are also two of the largest with a combined population of 300 million people to Pradesh and Bihar put together Bangladesh and especially Pakistan are virtually failed states with little holding them together except their respective militaries thank you for watching this lecture you can find out more about me at salvathorbo bonus calm where you can also download my popular writing and sign up for my monthly newsletter