Pak Affairs

Alas! We are today like motionless wooden marionettes singing opera with flapping mouths which somehow fits with the bizarre dark humour of the medieval ages. Our wooden faces do express the most dramatic of human emotions; lust, jealousy, fear, anger, greed and despair, but with a surrealist, weirdly hilarious quality. We are endlessly lost in what could pass for a …

The 21st century is the age of information explosion and it is with the advent of infotech tools that the world has become a global village. However, the reason why Pakistan has attained a progressive aura and a global significance in today’s world is not solely the information technology; the role of media which consists of print (newspapers, journals, magazines, …

In recent months, Indian premier Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Mian Nawaz Sharif have opened first tentative steps to resolving border tensions between the both countries. If the two nations come into a political and, eventually, economic harmony, it could change the geopolitical map of wars and chaos in the world dramatically for the better. It would be the …

The Middle East is undergoing drastic geopolitical change, and the impact is not restricted to within its geographical boundaries. The Afghanistan, Pakistan and South Asia at large are the first to feel the heat of the events in the Middle East. This forces countries like Pakistan, which has been criticized for playing a ‘dubious’ role in the war on terror, …

Whether it pours down from the sky or spouts from the earth, water makes its own way to flow. This is all because of a natural phenomenon the modern science names gravity. But the discovery of laws of gravity is not as old as is man’s knowledge of the fact that water flows down along the slope. Like a Supreme …

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is the most important mega project in Pakistan after the Indus Water Works initiated in the 1960s. There is no doubt that the Corridor will be hugely beneficial for the people of Pakistan as well as China. The $46 billion worth of investment that China has already committed for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is likely …

Public finances are needed for rendering public services; ranging from security, justice and other basic amenities like health, education, etc. One of the striking features of the countries that made extraordinary development in almost every field of life is that they had the capacity to raise much higher tax revenues as a percentage of GDP. Of course, some other factors …

The Baloch problem has so far mostly been seen from the lens of the classic realist angle of national security. The pathologies identified and the remedies suggested for resolution of the crisis also, therefore, bear a strong imprimatur of a security-centred approach. It is time the simmering discontent was doused with a human-security-centric approach appealing directly to the public weal …

Only a few years back, it was like a dream to have a prestigious institution like the Higher Education Commission (previously the Universities Grants Commission) in Pakistan. When we take a retrospective look at the status of higher education in the country, we find that the benefits brought by the HEC for Pakistani students are numerous — though it still …

Even before Plato conceived the philosopher-king, people yearned for clever, dispassionate and principled government. When the usual run of rulers proves cowardly, indecisive or discredited, turning to the wisdom and expertise of a technocrat is particularly tempting. History suggests that technocrats do best when blitzing the mess made by incompetent and squabbling politicians. Technocracy was once a communist idea: with …