Pak Affairs

By: Ifrah Shaukat  Although objectives and scope of forest management diversified and extended before the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), its main objective remained merely timber production. Local communities, indigenous peoples and, most importantly, international NGOs speak out to record their concerns regarding a very narrow definition of forestry. Since then, these voices have managed, somehow, to …

Abdul Rasool Syed The Means to Success in World Politics Kudos to Pakistan Armed Forces, exclusively to Pakistan Air Force, for shooting down two Indian jets that violated Pakistani airspace! It was, for sure, an exemplary display of hard power that Pakistan has earned through the indefatigable industry and selfless devotion of its armed forces which they cherish for the …

By: Engr. Sarfraz Nawaz Imran Khan’s Vision for the Future It is a well-known fact that Pakistan is facing a housing crisis, especially in the urban areas of the country, due to a number of factors. The burgeoning population of the country has spurred rural to urban migration that is taking place on an unprecedented scale at present. In addition, …

Pragmatic policies required to move forward Pakistan is standing at a crossroads. It seems so obvious that Pakistan is at a point where it has to decide its future: how should relations with USA and China fare, how to improve relationship with India (and should they even be improved); what is the right path to take with Iran, how to …

Introduction Pakistan as a country is faced with many challenges. One of the key challenges is of ‘governance’, the term which defies definition. For discussion, a working definition by the Canada-based Institute of Governance may be used here. It states: “Governance is how society or groups within it, organize to make decisions.” Based on this definition, the governance in Pakistan …

Pakistan must acquire interests and instincts of a reviving economy Pakistan’s relationship with India has remained among one of the most contentious in the world. If for nothing, both are especially influential at containing each other, at least. For hawks across the borders, their mutual enmity and distrust of each other form the most important and even the sole support. …

A sine qua non of benefitting from the Fourth Industrial Revolution We are living in exciting yet challenging times. We are in the era of knowledge economy wherein knowledge rather than material resources is considered an asset. Advancements in the field of information technology have brought us to a wondrous stage of human history where a huge amount of knowledge …

Sanity must prevail With each passing day, human rights violations committed by Indian forces in Kashmir are increasing. And, there are no signs of abatement in the near future, mainly because the world powers are mere silent spectators. Use of ruthless power by Indian forces is giving rise to incidents of killings, abductions, forced disappearances and blinding and damaging of …

Tax to GDP ratio projected from 15% to 20% In the recent past, massive changes have been introduced to the taxation regime. To ensure exchange of information in tax matters so as to prevent evasion and avoidance of tax through cross-border trade and financial transactions, Pakistan signed OECD’s Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (MCA) on 14th …

By: Dr S Akbar Zaidi Economic reform without political consensus is impossible By now, it is abundantly clear that the Pakistani economy is not working, at least not for the overwhelming majority of the people in the country, and perhaps not even for the politically well-connected rent-seeking elite for whom the entire economic structure has been distorted in the first …