Charge of the Guides Cavalry on September 6, 2018The Charge of the Guides Cavalry, a famed armoured regiment of the Pakistan Army, has already become part of our 1965, war martial lore due to the valour displayed by its valiant chargers. The following paragraphs are a humble libation to the valiant men who watch over us, revelling and rejoicing in their acts of […]
Governance reforms in our ‘anocracy’ on September 4, 2018An “anocracy” is a hybrid regime, which falls between autocracy and democracy. In its pure liberal form, democracy is a type of governance where rule of law and strong institutions make arbitrary decision-making impossible. Fareed Zakaria in his book “The Future of Freedom” talks about illiberal democracies as countries that lack a democratic culture of […]
A roadmap for the PTI on August 25, 2018The hurly burly is done and the battles are lost and won. Imran Khan is this country’s Prime Minister (PM). After acting as a barnacle attached to the status quo forces, Imran stands at the doorstep of a new era. Imran’s Cri de Coeur against the stygian stables of doom and gloom that our polity […]
Pakistan’s promised dawn on August 16, 2018So the people have finally spoken. The hurly burly is done and the battles have been lost and won in the tumult of our recently concluded electoral foray. We now look forward expectantly to the promised dawn. Supposedly this dawn shall herald our escape from the dystopian existence we have suffered so far. A messiah […]
Republicanism: any takers? on July 30, 2018What if this democratic experience fails? Would the present system work where the basic ingredients necessary for a rule based and merit oriented governance are amiss? The above questions beg answers if we are to see a new dawn in politics and governance. But before we answer these questions we need to identify those factors […]
Our security challenges on July 22, 2018What is national security? Walter Lipmann’s defines national security as,“A nation has security when it does not have to sacrifice its legitimate interests to avoid war, and is able, if challenged, to maintain them by war.”This definition is too old school and does not fit within this age of multidimensional security challenges. Then there is […]
The poison within on July 16, 2018There is no doubt we have a surfeit of poison within ourselves. The question is whether we want to remove it. Like all pre-industrial democracies struggling to find their democratic moorings, we are a nation weaned on a heavy diet of superstitions, fake spiritualism, overt religiosity, and a belief in the supernatural as a solution […]
Why Kalabagh Dam? on July 9, 2018Kalabagh Dam is one of the most hated dams in the country. It is hated by those weaned on the staple diet of visceral anger pandering more to prejudice than logic. In a country where rumours and innuendoes fill the poisoned chalice of illogic of those on a well-funded mission to mislead others, the facts […]
Doers needed on July 2, 2018We have come to a stage in our national existence where placebos and anodyne solutions do not matter anymore. We need doers, pure and simple, as the luxury of time that several nations have been afforded for national development no longer exists for us. Through a languid fatalism that gelled well with our millennia old […]
The wind that shakes the barley on June 25, 2018Loach and Laverty’s portrayal of the Irish struggle for independence in the 1920s is a risqué portrayal of the gruesome freedom joust that pitted brothers against brothers, all for a noble cause. The Irish Republican Army’s sedulously resilient struggle against British colonialism is an inspiring yet poignant chapter in the history of Irish Republicanism. It […]