One fifth of the world’s people live in India and Pakistan. Looking back on their first fifty years of independence, leading specialists on South Asia assess their progress and problems, their foreign and defense policies and their relations with the United States. The three coeditors, who compare the achievements of India and Pakistan in a perceptive introductory overview, combine journalistic, diplomatic and academic experience. Selig S. Harrison, author of India: The Most Dangerous Decades, served as South Asia Bureau Chief of the Washington Post. Paul H. Kreisberg is a former Deputy Chairman of the State Department’s Policy Planning Council. Dennis Kux, author of India and the United States: Estranged Democracies, is a former Director of the India Desk in the State Department. Harrison and Kreisberg are Senior Scholars of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Kux is a former Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow.