November 2019

State-owned Enterprises How to reform this crucial asset Dr Omer Javed Ownership is an important aspect of management of SOEs (state-owned enterprises or public sector companies (PSCs) in the case of Pakistan). In the context of SOEs, state is the ultimate owner, and its ownership policy should clearly identify first of all the rationale behind such ownership. According to OECD …

Futuristic Needs and Socioeconomic Challenges for Pakistan Hassaan Bin Zubair Pakistan has faced major challenges in socioeconomic domain over the past seventy-two years. However, not all problems have been overcome. The key problems the country is faced with today include: water scarcity, lack of sustainable development projects; an increasingly unemployed youth population, little focus on human development projects, a steep …

  Ibn Khaldun A brilliant polymath Iqra Riaz Abd al-Rahman ibn Khaldun, the well known historian and thinker from Muslim 14th-century North Africa, is considered a forerunner of original theories in social sciences and philosophy of history, as well as the author of original views in economics, prefiguring modern contributions. He is the originator of modern sociology and politics and …

Future of Pakistan-US Relations Javid Husain While Pakistan, by virtue of its geo strategic location, has a key role to play in the Afghan crisis and America’s total dependence on it to help facilitate a settlement with the Taliban, President Trump’s recent remarks urging for the expansion of Indo-US cooperation in security and other fields at Indian Prime Minister Narendra …

ECONOMIC CRISIS IN PAKISTAN How to resolve the issues Ahmad Shakeel Babar Pakistan is the 5th most populous country in the world, having an economy of over $245 billion. Being the only nuclear power from the Muslim world, its importance increases manifolds. However, it is, yet again, undergoing stagnant economic growth and hyper-inflation. Its GDP grew by only 3.8 percent …

E-Commerce in Pakistan Uzair Salman Global e-Commerce has grown exponentially during the last two decades as a sales growth of 13 percent was recorded in FY 2017-18 with estimated sales crossing $29 trillion. The number of online shoppers also grew by 12 percent to cross the mark of 1.3 billion. The situation in Pakistan is also not much different as …

Criminal Justice System of Pakistan Kamran Adil In 2016, the syllabus for Central Superior Services (CSS) Examination was revised by the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC). The revision was not perfect and was inchoate in the sense that it did not attend to qualitative aspects of the examination. It, however, offered the new subject of criminology that provided the candidates …

Climate Change and National Security A Looming Threat for Pakistan? Mehtab Ali Bhatti With far-reaching consequences like food scarcity, climate change is a major security challenge and countries like Pakistan. It is indeed a threat multiplier, exacerbating existing pressures as well as presenting new challenges to our national security. With Pakistan ranked seventh in the list of countries who are …

Getting the Afghanistan Peace Process back on track When US President Donald Trump suddenly called off talks with the Taliban on September 8, at a time when a settlement was in the offing, all hopes of a restoration of peace in Afghanistan appeared to have evaporated. Besides domestic compulsions, what was cited as another reason behind this stunning decision was …

Three Axes of the Future War There is a different vision of the future of war. While previously wars were growing increasingly massive in scale, today they are increasingly remote-controlled affairs as new technologies are influencing the nature of modern conflicts and worsening the international security environment. Information and cyber technologies make this vector practicable. Noteworthy in this sense is …