A Justified Aurat March on March 27, 2020Where there will be suppression, needless to say, there will also be the resistance. Aurat March is the movement for the rights of women who have been suppressed since time immemorial by the deeply embedded patriarchal social structures. This movement seeks to break the patriarchal manacles which have hindered women from realising their full potential. […]
Student Unions should be allowed but regulated on December 26, 2019Student unions are nurseries where budding leaders get trained in the art of leadership and debate; engaging in intellectual discussion, thereby, strengthening the roots of democracy. Many politicians have emerged from student politics in Pakistan. Unfortunately, as the violence in our backyards became prevalent, it permeated in our collective social psyche. Resultantly, violence within the […]
Strangulating the state’s fourth pillar on November 9, 2019The importance of the media can be gauged from the fact that it has been informally considered as the fourth pillar of the state. Having been endowed with the responsibility to inform the public, it is the dissemination of undiluted truth, which complicates the situation for media. As a consequence, media persons are subjected to […]
Arab Spring inspired Dharna culture on November 5, 2019Protests per se cannot be dubbed unlawful as permissible under Article 15. freedom of movement; 16. freedom of assembly; and 17. freedom of association of the Constitution of Pakistan. Nevertheless, resorting to ill-advised route to bring the system to a standstill and pressurise the government of the day to budge on the illegal demands is […]
Can we be sincere to our children? on November 3, 2019The members of the UN are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of Child (CRC). States around the world have ratified this landmark convention with a pledge to provide civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights to children. As we set out to mark the 30th anniversary of the CRC, […]
Drangnach Islamabad on October 23, 2019It was my first semester at the School of Political and International Relations (SPIR), Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, when late Sir Imran Hameed familiarised us with the term ‘drangnachosten’. It means ‘move to the east’; it was the intention of the Nazi Germany to invade eastern Europe in the late 1930s. Recently, Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s ‘Azadi […]
Presidential vs parliamentary system on July 29, 2019No government in Pakistan has ever been dismissed through the no-confidence motion. We have witnessed an intense debate on whether the country should revert to the presidential form of government? This issue, which must have been settled at the country’s inception, haunts us to this day. Even though Pakistan has experimented with both forms of […]
Gap between legislation and implementation! on July 22, 2019Every year we come across the budget exercises at the federal and provincial levels with the hope that the budget of that year may improve the living standards than the preceding years. Unfortunately, hopes are yet to be translated into reality. Situation is no different in Sindh. Every year on the one hand, budget statistics […]
Dissecting 18th Constitutional Amendment on July 15, 2019The passage of the 18th Constitutional Amendment is a landmark event in the history of Pakistan. The Special Committee of the Parliament, headed by Senator Mian Raza Rabbani tirelessly and very meticulously, worked on the draft of the Constitutional Amendment. It was a rare moment when the parliamentary parties have forged a consensus on the […]
Economic woes: an existential problem on July 11, 2019The many problems of Pakistan-political, economic, social, security-areas old as the country itself. Since its inception to date, they are the same challenges with merely changed dimensions. Octogenarians and nonagenarians must have a feeling of déjà vu regarding the country’s economic ills. Presently, our country is undergoing a depressing economic state of affairs. Many issues […]