Middle East fault lines triggered on January 5, 2020The lose cannon in the Middle East has been fired, but the concomitant consequences are beyond imagination. The fault lines in the Middle East never settled after World War 2, but the U.S airstrikes at Baghdad’s international airport that killed General Qassem Soleimani- the head of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC’s) Quds Force; […]
Mr Jinnah’s case for Pakistan on December 27, 2019The world will keep reassessing Mr Jinnah’s contribution and his stature as well as his ability and vision as a political leader and statesman. He brought together, under one flag and on one platform disorganized and scattered Muslims, and made them realize that they were a nation. Mr Jinnah carved out a state where none […]
Law too gentle is seldom obeyed on November 19, 2019Law is the wisdom of the ages wrapped in the opinion of the moment, and every nation state has its own law. However, in the name of that wrapped wisdom, citizens often tend to take the law in their own hands, either claiming to be above the law, or inadvertently jump on the bandwagon to […]
Godse’s India: Coup de grace on November 4, 2019Beyond optics, Indian secularism devolved into political pandering over the years as the country edges towards becoming the poster child of fundamentalism under the label of hindutva-extremism. The Indian history is being shaped by the likes of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his supporters who have resorted to coarsest rhetoric the international community has […]
Inconvenient Truth-FATF Diplomacy on October 10, 2019The glob trotting politicians need to learn a lesson or two from Harry S. Truman the 33rd president of the United States who implemented the Marshall Plan to rebuild the Western European economy, and established the Truman Doctrine and NATO. He said “Tact is the ability to step on a man’s toes without messing up […]
CPEC’s Narrative conundrum on October 5, 2019Public discourse is manoeuvred by the powerful interest groups in the nation states therefore lobbyists find themselves in a heaven erecting their own narratives. The Public opinion is a construction: of media and of everyday discourse influenced by media and the governments .It is therefore acknowledged and treated as though it were an objective reality […]
Misplaced priorities: debt servicing through privatisation on October 2, 2019Pakistan’s debt problem is no less than Armageddon for the economy, as successive governments’ calamitous policies has indebted the country for generations to come, making it a nearly unsustainable situation for the country. Faced with a multi-faceted crisis and dearth of domestic resources in the form of tax revenues- which continues to be an issue, […]
Should Pakistan worry as global recession fear spreads? on September 25, 2019The global economy would expand by 2.9% in 2019, the weakest annual growth rate in a decade. Output could remain low in 2020, at 3%, or fall further if the trade war worsens, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development predicted. The new data shows the worst projected figures since the financial crisis as the chairman […]
Is Pakistan ready to understand the complexity and magnitude of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency on September 17, 2019The State Bank of Pakistan may have announced earlier this year that it is working on a concept of issuing digital currency by year 2025 to promote financial inclusion and reduce inefficiency and corruption. The institutions in Pakistan may have been working at a snail’s pace to achieve the vision of digitisation and wait to […]
Policy rate change on the cards on September 15, 2019The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government was elected to office on the promise of creating ease of doing business, envisaging reduction of bureaucratic morass, lower utility rates for the business to propel their capacity in the economy, but it all became redundant when the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Governor Reza Baqir raised the interest rates […]