September 2017

The tax gap in Pakistan is estimated to be 9.8pc of the GDP as the current tax-GDP ratio is around 12.5pc against a potential of 22.3pc as per a World Bank report. The tax gap is attributed to taxpayers’ non-compliance and limited tax capacity of the federal tax authorities. Withholding taxes to overcome tax evasion The Federal Board of Revenue …

Recently, I heard an argument presented in a TV talk show that the women elected on reserved seats in federal and provincial legislatures are not eligible to contest the election for the top slot of their respective assembly because these women are nominated, and not elected, members of the assembly. Through this article, I would make an effort to elucidate …

The decision by Pakistan’s Supreme Court to remove from office Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who had a comfortable majority in the National Assembly, is viewed by many in the West as an ominous sign of renewed political instability, if not heralding a return to authoritarianism. But, Pakistan’s political history suggests otherwise. By: Shahid Javed Burki Today’s Pakistan emerged not in …

The discipline of international relations treats the application of diplomacy designed to attain core foreign policy objectives as an important source of national power. Since 1947, all the successive governments in Pakistan have adopted different approaches in this realm, with a view to pursue the country’s economic and security objectives. Due to the chronic leadership crisis, most of the political …

A remote corner of the Himalayas has become the scene of a major power standoff between China and India. In June 2017, the Doklam plateau in the Himalayas, where the boundaries of China, India and Bhutan meet, made headlines when Indian and Chinese troops began a standoff over a road construction project. As of now, neither side is spoiling for …

Introduction The history of criminal justice system reform efforts especially vis-à-vis police, the most important component of the system, has been replete with administrative efforts in both India and Pakistan. In case of Pakistan, as many as 21 commissions/committees/initiatives relating to police reforms were recorded till the year 2000. The implementation of these reforms is, however, a challenge in both …

Against the will of the nine nuclear weapon states that boycotted the United Nations negotiations, 122 countries voted to adopt, on 7 July, the text of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The Treaty, which is an internationally legally-binding document that would ban the signatories from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, possessing, transferring, stockpiling, hosting or using nuclear weapons, …

The international system seems heading toward a period of great uncertainty. Established security alliances of the post-World War II era are disintegrating while the fledgling new ones such as the G20 have no capacity to replace them. The dominant discourse of market-friendly neoliberalism is losing prominence while neo-protectionism and economic nationalism are gaining ground. Amidst rising geopolitical tensions among major …

From Donald Trump’s first days in office, news of the damage to America’s international stature has come hard and fast. As if guided by some malign design, the new president seemed to identify the key pillars that have supported US global power for the past 70 years and set out to topple each of them in turn. By degrading NATO, …

Donald Trump has probably never heard of the Grand Old Duke of York and his 10,000 men. But in spelling out his new Afghan strategy, the US president gave a good impersonation of that symbol of military muddle-headedness, incompetence and futility immortalised in the English nursery rhyme. By marching US troops back up the Afghan hill, having previously solemnly vowed …