Jahanzeb Awan

After a serious outbreak of polio in 1921, FD Roosevelt became a wheelchair user yet he went on to become the longest occupant of the White House during tumultuous times of economic depression and World War II between 1933 to 1945, showing how his impairment did not turn into disability. It is not the physical […]

Apart from an option of taking Islamic Studies papers in Urdu, the entire civil service examination is conducted in English. Many intellectually brilliant candidates are ousted from the competition just because of their lack of fluency in English — a foreign language In my last article, I highlighted the role of parental background and educational […]

Article 37 of the Constitution of Pakistan promises social justice for citizens. Among several ingredients of social justice, equality of opportunity is probably the most important. How do we fare in providing fair opportunities of social mobility to the socially and economically disadvantaged people in Pakistan? Imagine two children are born on same day, one […]

The provisional results of national population census have brought back to life the catchphrases like a ‘ticking time bomb’ or ‘population explosion’. There is a widely-held belief that a relatively large population size and high population growth rate are major factors which hamper socio-economic development of Pakistan. This traditional neo-Malthusian perception is fuelled by the […]

During recent decades, global airline business has experienced a big boom. In 2015, the annual number of air travellers crossed the landmark figure of 3.5 billion passengers in a single calendar year. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) statistics, the global passenger air fleet now comprises more than 26000 aircraft which daily fly […]

During last financial year Pakistan’s economy has registered a 5.28 percent growth. By any yardstick this growth rate is quite good. Would the dividends of such growth spontaneously trickle down to the low-income strata of society? The previous cycles of higher economic growth have betrayed this trickle-down approach. The well-being of citizens is something more […]

A few years ago, a development economist of international acclaim William Easterly called Pakistan a paradox of ‘growth without development’. This may be a half-truth but a development-gap practically persists despite periods of often good GDP growth rates during post-independence economic history of Pakistan. Persistently low Human Development Index scores, high Multi-dimensional Poverty Index Values […]

  How can Pakistan overcome her development challenges? What hinders us from following the trajectory of East Asian economies? Where does the difference lie? Should we leave larger questions to fate or can we turn the tide? Perhaps this is not all about investment and infrastructure. In the jargon of economists, there are some‘externalities’,which rarely […]

  China’s economic growth over the last two decades is often referred to as a development miracle. When it embraced a free-market economy under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, the readily available high human capital enabled Beijing to immediately attain double-digit GDP growth. This human capital accumulation was an outcome of persistent state investment in […]

Recently, a famous publisher closed one of their decades-old flagship bookstores in Lahore. During the last few years, this is not the first such incident. People with reading habit tend to think critically, become innovative, and act as responsible citizens. In Pakistan, vanishing bookshops and deserted libraries raise serious concern for the society. In Tokyo, […]