Editorial

Last month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had landed on the world stage with a new sobriquet to define his homeland–the “mother of all democracies.” Quite eloquent but could not be any further off the mark. Anyone still holding out hope in the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi would be better off talking to over five […]

The government celebrated when G20 counted Pakistan among countries that were extended the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, as if it had scored a victory of some sort, but it turns out that the only reason we became eligible was because we are among the 10 most indebted […]

The lightning military victory of the Taliban in Kabul is a song–albeit astounding–of the yore for the daunting realities of an unimaginable humanitarian crisis have begun to set in. With an empty treasury, frozen foreign reserves and skyrocketing inflation, what else could have been expected from an economy already in a catastrophic free fall. Business […]

Dengue has been a killer in these parts a lot longer than Covid yet such was the rush with which the latter overtook the entire world over the last year or so that most people just forgot about the former. Until, that is, it came back with a vengeance not seen in the old days. […]

There’s now way US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman’s statement in Mumbai, that the US was no longer looking for a “broad-based relationship” with Pakistan, was an off-the-cuff remark. The US State Department never makes statements that don’t carry meanings; and this one couldn’t be any clearer. Wendy also made it pretty clear that […]

It’s now only a matter of time before the international community realises that the Indian government has reduced Occupied Kashmir to an ungovernable region; thanks largely to the excesses of the Modi administration. While Delhi has never been fair with the occupied valley, things have never looked as bleak for Kashmiri residents as they do […]

It was inevitable for the US and the Taliban to come to the table, now matter how much Washington tried to make an issue of not recognizing the new government in Kabul, because the simple, straight-forward fact of the matter is that the Americans are primarily responsible for the giant mess that the country has […]

It’s no surprise that the bloating current account deficit as come up in ongoing technical level talks with the IMF because there has been increasing concern, ever since the last couple of months of the last fiscal year, that CAD might be getting out of control once again. The IMF certainly thinks so, believing that […]

No better way to destabilise Afghanistan right now than for anti-Taliban militias like the so-called Islamic State to carry out terrorist attacks against soft targets, preferably minorities (from their point of view); and that is exactly what seems to be happening. No outfit has yet taken responsibility for the Kunduz mosque attack that targeted the […]

Initial reports about the finance ministry’s fresh interaction with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to restart the stalled Extended Fund Facility (EFF), not denied by the government so far, carry no surprises. Apparently the Fund wants the electricity tariff increased by Rs1.4 per unit, steps to increase income tax, sales tax and regulatory duties, privatisation […]