["Review of Development Economics, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 882-893, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis paper examines institutional divergence between India and Pakistan using a comparative governance lens. By integrating Critical Macro‐Finance (CMF) theory with a FAIR data workflow, we construct a replicable model of corporate governance quality across fragile democratic contexts. While headline indices such as Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) suggest convergence, our findings reveal persistent and widening institutional asymmetries—especially in judicial independence, rule of law, and regulatory coherence. Our contribution is threefold: (1) we offer new comparative insights into how postcolonial governance regimes evolve under democratic strain; (2) we empirically model divergence in state and market institutions between two formally similar but functionally distinct economies; and (3) we introduce a scalable, transparent approach to modeling institutional risk using open‐source methods aligned with FAIR principles.\n"]