Syed Mansoor Hussain

Even if we accept the dismal overall situation of public education in Pakistan, we must also accept that, at least in our urban and semi-urban areas, many more girls are getting an education than ever before. Where the public sector has failed, the private sector has stepped in. Educated women are a major resource for […]

Weatherwise this is the best time of the year in Lahore. An early October rain has ended the heat that gripped the city for the last few weeks and the air conditioners are finally off, hopefully for good. The mangoes are also gone and the winter fruits are yet to appear in their usual abundance. […]

The one definite casualty of the political confrontation going on in Islamabad is civility. The political discourse has coarsened to the point where what used to be called parliamentary language has died a natural death. Proponents, opponents and all those in between now use terms that are derogatory in the extreme for those they disagree […]

September is almost done and with the new month comes the festival of the slaughter as well as the annual pilgrimage to the holy land. Soon enough the nights will be full of bleating noises from goats and such collected for sacrifice. And then all the ‘worthies’ in Pakistan will consume large amounts of different […]

A good friend and an acute observer of the political scene asked me an interesting question: is it finally time to start feeling sorry for Mian Nawaz Sharif, the head of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan? My response was a qualified “no”. But let me first present some […]

The good mangoes are finally done with, the weather has turned cooler, the bite of the heat is gone and the monsoons have brought another spate of disastrous floods. Soon enough a horde of goats, sheep and other such will be bought and fattened to prepare them for the festival of the slaughter. We in Lahore […]

Marches and sit-ins will end soon enough and most likely not with a bang but a whimper. Over the last few weeks, much of the country was riveted to its television screens, watching the goings on in Islamabad. Almost every Pakistani, and that includes almost every US Pakistani I came across during my stay in […]

Que sera, sera (whatever will be will be, the future’s not ours to see), and that is as far as I want to go on record about what will most likely happen as a consequence of the ongoing dharnas (sit-ins) in Islamabad. Evidently,the main politicalactors are also in the same boat. The only person who […]

Islamabad is now infested by ideologically driven young men and women, none of whom are just going to walk away without having something to show for their troubles. The problem is that the two leaders, Allama Tahirul Qadri and Imran Khan, have presented such maximalist demands that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government cannot possibly […]

My political sensibilities matured in part during the late 1960s and the early 1970s. That was a time of turmoil the world over. The Cold War was at its height and the war in Vietnam seemed to be interminable. In Pakistan we had gone through the stalemate of a war with India and we had […]