Renowned British-Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie has won the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction for her novel Home Fire. It was the third time that Ms Shamsie had been nominated for the award, previously known as the Baileys Prize and Orange Prize. The other shortlisted titles included: (a) The Idiot by Elif Batuman; (ii) The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen …

The Bretton Woods Institutions are the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), established at a meeting of 43 countries in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA, in 1944. The World Bank and the IMF are seen as wielding tremendous power and influence, but exclude the voices of developing countries most adversely affected by financial and trade policies. Equally important …

American companies, according to their critics, are so focused on making quick profits that they have abdicated building for the long term. That idea has captivated policymakers, commentators and even some leading business executives. The complaint has reached a fevered pitch amid news that companies are diverting much of their proceeds from the recent tax cut into buying back record …

In its origin, rationale, nature, course and leadership, the Pakistan Movement was truly democratic. During the last phase of the freedom struggle (1937-47), the leadership at the top and at the lower cadre was democratic and Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who overwhelmingly influenced the course of Indian Muslim politics, was a democrat to the core. He believed in democratic ideals, …

We no longer can live in a cocoon and maintain isolation The decision to place Pakistan on the FATF grey list was a foregone conclusion. This will have an immediate effect on Pakistan’s financial institutions reflecting upon ‘deficiencies’ leading to check money laundering and failure to prevent terror financing, making funding by international financial institutions tougher on Pakistan. Acting Secretary …

The January 1973 agreement between North Vietnam and the United States can be applied to the present, stalemated situation in Afghanistan. It was in 2010 that United States President Barack Obama  told an interviewer that he could easily imagine a situation in which “we ended up staying in Afghanistan for another five years, another eight years, another ten years. And …

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has officially put Pakistan on its ‘grey list’ with a hope that it would enforce its plan to tighten its anti-terror financing laws in coming months to get off the list. The country runs the risk of landing in the FATF’s blacklist if fails to enforce the plan of action. According to the FATF, …

Why is Pakistan running dry and how to manage the situation? Pakistan is approaching the scarcity threshold for water. What is even more disturbing is that groundwater supplies — the last resort of water supply — are being rapidly depleted.  And worst of all is that the authorities have given no indication that they plan to do anything about any …

We’ve all benefitted from globalization, in many ways, but it also is a double-edged sword, because people seem to have lost their identity, and a feeling of belonging. An Introduction Madeleine Albright is a Czech-born American public official who has the honour of being the first woman to hold the cabinet post of US Secretary of State (1997–2001). She has …

No one doubts that Pakistan is facing a water crisis. We are already a water-insecure country and as the global climate change takes its toll the problem will only become worse. Where there is disagreement is on the political question of how best to manage our water resources. The Supreme Court is now weighing in on the matter of constructing …