There are two ways of looking at the graphic presented. One is that the South Asian countries have performed creditably in developing their human resources, especially Nepal and Bangladesh, who have more than doubled or almost doubled, respectively, their positive change over thirty years from the base year of 1980. India and Pakistan have done well also, although the spillover from the Afghan conflict and its internal battle against religious extremism and armed militancy in the new millennium have probably prevented Pakistan from achieving much more than it has. The other way of viewing it would be that the South Asian countries were at a very low stage of human development and a good effort could only propel them forward at a pace faster than those countries which already were in a fairly advanced stage of human development in 1980, and could not bring about the high rate of changes that the South Asian countries could. Of course, this line of argument could be countered by bringing in the examples of China, Turkey, Malaysia, and Thailand.