It is said that a single state of Uttar Pradesh has a population bigger than the entire population of Pakistan
Agree 100%. It is not only said but it is very true. Uttar Pradesh alone has as many if not more people then Pakistan. Thus all things considered
equal Uttar Pradesh has as much resources as all of Pakistan and that is only one state in nearly
30 state Indian Union. Uttar Pradesh has about
200 million people and about
same if not more than Pakistan. I know all of those states in India are not as large but it still gives us a idea of population/resource disparity between both countries. This factor has always and will always loom large over Pakistan.
Yes of course you can get specific or peculiar circumstances where one state has massive technological superiority to other like say Israel and Arabs ( in addition supported to the hilt by USA ) but that is not applicable to Pak/India. Both are about in the same league in terms of development.
Actually it is a miracle that Pakistan was not swallowed by India in the first 25 years post independance which would be expected given the massive population/resource disparity. In fact what stopped India doing that in 1948 when Pakistan was barely on it's feet?
The answer is simple. Thanks to British policy of military recruitment from only certain areas of the sub continent (Punjab/Frontier being favourites) Pakistan inherited just over 1/3 of the British Raj Army. In fact the true figure could be as high as
40% if you exclude the Nepali Gurkhas. This created artificial parity between both states despite one being massive.
Therefore thanks to Britain Pakistan had a army that was
far larger then it's size would have warrented and this gave the country the
backbone to stand up to giant India but not enough
resouces to defeat it. The only problem soon to come out was how to pay for this huge military inheritated from the British Raj. No problem very quickly Pakistan ran to the new Anglo-Saxon power - America and got her to finance the huge army under the guise of CENTO and alliance against Soviet Union. By the time that wore out the Chinese began to pitch in and with the start of Afghan jihad the gravy train again flowed.
By now it did not matter. Pakistan had the nukes and thus neautralizing the huge Indian (growing larger) advantage in resources.
Ps. Even Bihar and West Bengal can outdo Pakistan in numbers.
Link >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_union_territories_of_India_by_population