Welcoming a ‘democracy’ we do not understand on July 26, 2018Have elections proven to be a panacea for all the ills the people have suffered through for almost 7 decades now? The answer remains disputed.We may have voted 11 times, but not much has changed in the country. It would seem that elections alone do not ensure democratic values in a society, and that more […]
Beyond political correctness on May 17, 2018How to ventilate the stifling ideas entering into intellectual spaces and weed out the ‘constructive’ thoughts? The question is broadly answered by the ‘censorious’ environment which most of the universities in Pakistan have assimilated. The recent removal of Dr Ammar Ali Jan by Punjab University administration draws a flagrant and gloomy image of the embedded […]
Banana Medical College, Balochistan on February 19, 2018Most of you might have come across the term ‘banana’. It is often put before a word to make a compound word which twists the meaning and brings a quite satirical taste in it. The pioneer of the term, as M Akhtar mentions in his book “Civil Society, Secularism and Liberalism”, is American short story […]
Baluchistan’s higher education at crossroads on November 2, 2017It was quite astonishing to see erstwhile Chief Minister of Balochistan, Dr. Malik Baloch, as a both Pied Piper and reformer at the same time, when he commented on province’s declining educational morale in an outspoken way. Accepting the fact that a ‘phantom state’ existed within the educational courtyard of the province, Dr. Malik acknowledged […]