October 2019

12 Tips to make your STUDY PROCESS more effective? Magazine Desk Making a good plan and sticking to it is the only way to develop a successful strategy for preparation of competitive examinations like CSS and PMS. You have only a limited number of hours that you can spend learning every day or every week. This is why you need …

UNDERSTANDING LEGAL ASPECTS OF THE KASHMIR DISPUTE Kamran Adil “To see an opportunity, we must be open to all thoughts.” — Catherine Pulsifer Introduction Hitherto, Kashmir was discoursed mostly in political, militaristic and strategic terms; the latest, legal engineering by India has, however, carved out an opportunity for the policymakers in Pakistan to, inter alia, understand and explore legal avenues …

Reforming SOEs in Pakistan Dr Omer Javed The state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are defined in Pakistan under the (Corporate Governance) Public Sectors Companies’ Rules (PSC Rules, 2013) as those companies where government exercises either direct or indirect beneficiary control or ownership, whereby the government or any agency holds 50% of voting shares or otherwise has ‘the power to elect, nominate or …

Khyber Pass Economic Corridor (KPEC) Another corridor to development Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to maintain upward trajectory of trade during last two years and has crossed US$ 2 billion mark in year 2017-18. Pakistan remains the largest export market for Afghanistan. On the other hand, Afghanistan continues to increase its imports from Pakistan, as Afghan imports increased from Pakistan by …

Is VAT always a good tax? Bilal Hassan Rapid spread of VAT (value-added tax) across the globe signifies that it may be a good tax. However, VAT can be problematic when the economy has a large informal sector. The basic concept behind the levy of this consumption tax was that the legal incidence of VAT would be on sellers, including …

Elusive India-Pakistan Peace  Shamshad Ahmad With a lingering suspicion that India had never reconciled to Subcontinent’s partition, Pakistan has been living, since independence, in the shadow of India’s hostility and belligerence. This fear was not exaggerated when Pakistan saw Sikkim, Goa, Hyderabad, Junagadh and Kashmir falling to Indian avarice. This fear is not exaggerated today as Pakistan faces India’s continued …

The Rise of Islamophobia How to tackle the challenge Asfand Yar Bhutto Introduction The Muslim world, today, is caught in a vicious cycle of internal and external challenges. As far as internal problems are concerned, it is more than evident that social, political, sectarian cleavages abound with the plight of crumbling economy further adding insult to injury. Externally, the most …

Is stakeholder capitalism really back? Joseph E Stiglitz Stakeholder capitalism is poised to take the investing world by storm. The Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs of America’s top companies, recently issued a statement that redefines the purpose of a corporation. Signed by nearly 200 top CEOs, including those of J.P. Morgan, Apple, Walmart and Amazon, it essentially says that …

Revocation of Articles 370 and 35A A Constitutional Perspective Usman Butt Rule of Law requires that Constitutional due process should be followed for every decision of the government. The term ‘Rule of Law’ has been derived from the French phrase ‘la principe de legalite’ (the principle of legality) which refers to a government based on principles of law, not of …

Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Opportunities, Challenges and the Way Forward Aftab H. Wahla Political, educational, religious and economic decline of Muslim Ummah continues unabated, unchecked and unaddressed. Politically nationalist, religiously sectarianist, economically dependent, militarily vulnerable, socially polarized and academically backward, the Ummah is facing multiple crises, and has failed miserably to respond to those effectively and collectively despite their …