Daily Current Affairs

By: Shahid Kardar TWO inextricably linked policy distortions, and poor governance, have impacted the economy’s competitiveness. They have created and reinforced potentially grim challenges in the not-too-distant-future for the financing of our external bills. These relate to: An increasingly slanted tax structure conjoined with the unpredictable interpretation of the laws that incentivise the movement of investable funds to either unproductive …

By: Fahad Ikram Qazi Reforming the civil service is prerequisite for good governance Though reforms of all sorts have become a refrain in political manifestoes of all the political parties, the fundamental civil service reforms are yet to be undertaken. The federal government initiated a process with much fanfare, yet the same has been halted with some superficial changes in …

By: Maham Javaid Lack of information and awareness about the virus, delay in government intervention at the national level, persistent dearth and corruption of funds, and common misperception that HIV only affects ‘people with bad characters’ are some factors affecting the spread and prevalence of HIV/AIDS Earlier this year when Tanzil Ur Rehman, the programme manager of Dostana Male Health …

By: Shahid Javed Burki A number of developments have occurred in and around the Middle East that would likely make the region even more volatile than in the past. These events will have consequences for Pakistan for reasons that need to be understood by the policymakers working in Islamabad. Some of what has happened in the last several months is …

By: Dr Farrukh Saleem On December 25, 2015, Ram Madhav, the BJP’s general secretary, said, “India, Pakistan and Bangladesh will one day reunite….” In Bharatiya Ganarajya (Republic of India) Akhand Bharat or ‘Undivided India’ is not just a political slogan but Hindutva’s cultural-cum-religious belief. In 1989, the ruling BJP “adopted it as its official ideology”. In Bharatiya Ganarajya, Akhand Bharat …

By: Zulfiqar Ahmed Cotton farmers and economy have suffered a lot due to non-availability of quality Bt cotton seeds Known as ‘white gold’, cotton is the most important cash crop of a legion of farmers who grow cotton in Pakistan and is a major driver of the economy as around 55 per cent of country total exports i.e. textile exports, …

By: Ume Laila Azhar Social and economic vulnerability of women workers warrants a deeper analysis Despite the government’s commitments on gender equality, Pakistan’s ranking for gender equality remains one of the lowest in the world. Global Gender Gap Report 2015 ranks Pakistan at 143 out of 145 countries on women’s economic participation. 45.6 per cent of the Pakistani population is …

By: Safiya Aftab Students of economic history would be interested in this exhaustive account of the workings of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) since its inception 50 years ago. Written by Australian economist Peter McCawley, who has served on the bank’s board of directors, Banking on the Future of Asia and the Pacific: 50 Years of the Asian Development Bank …

By: Muhammad Amir Rana DESPITE billions of dollars spent and diverse efforts made, including multiple military campaigns, political strategies and reconciliation efforts, peace and stability in Afghanistan remain a distant dream. It’s more than one and a half decades that the world has been trying to solve the Afghanistan puzzle but in vain. Now China has entered the theatre, probably …

By: Saif Asif Khan Ian Talbot is rightly regarded as one of the premier historians working on South Asia. In his latest book, A History of Modern South Asia: Politics, States, Diasporas, he documents the histories of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan from the advent of British rule in the mid-18th century to the countries’ contemporary politico-economic conditions. The introduction explains …