Zulfiquar Rao

Modernists love to believe that since Jinnah spoke in most secular terms at the very inauguration of the constituent assembly of Pakistan which was going to emerge on the globe three days later — this is what must define Pakistan constitutionally. Conservatives have been of the view that just one speech from Jinnah can’t be […]

While visiting Pakistan on the eve of Kartarpur corridor’s foundation laying ceremony this week, the Indian Punjab’s Tourism minister, Navjot Singh Sidhu, hardly exaggerated when he likened Pakistani Punjab as the Mecca and Madina for the Sikhs world over. Certainly, it was in the Pakistani side of Punjab where Baba Guru Nanak, the founder of […]

So often when I interact with apparently educated young Pakistani men and women, for instance, an engineer, a doctor or a chartered accountant, I am taken aback at their lack of social empathy towards other ethnic, sectarian, religious and racial groups. They seem to have cultivated so narrow a worldview that they fail to accept […]

Over the last three months the newly installed government of PTI has done all that it had promised it would never do if it came to power. Be it Imran Khan’s naïve promises of austerity, a smaller cabinet of ministers and advisors, a no to loans and IMF programmes, a depoliticized police force, a PTV […]

It was second time within the last one year that Tehreek-e-Labbaik Party (TLP) brought the government and the state of Pakistan to their knees through sheer street power, violence, sectarian vitriol. Last year its sit-in was about a rumored change in the election nomination form, which TLP took it as a blasphemous act. The then […]

During all his struggle in the last 22 years and more incessantly so in the last five years Imran Khan rightly voiced for preferential investment into human development. Education and health come up as obvious areas of attention. Given the fact that Pakistan’s population has doubled between 1998 to 2018, still growing at a rate […]

Over the weekend a two-day international symposium titled, ‘Creating a Water Secure Pakistan’ concluded with its declaration consisting of 20 recommendations. Oddly enough, the symposium was organized not by WAPDA or the ministry of climate change but by the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan under the aegis of the populist Chief Justice of Pakistan. […]

In the last ten years Imran Khan sold an adorable dream to millions of innocent people, especially the youth, which is that political leaders — except him — have deceived the masses and looted the public wealth. He wasn’t entirely wrong as by and large our political leadership failed to deliver on the expectations of […]

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led government isn’t just a coalition government at the political level. It has many other partners who have invested in varied degrees in the party and its leadership. These investors range from crony capitalists to members of the judiciary and the deep state. Obviously, the PTI will not formulate any policy […]

Last week Prime Minister (PM)Imran Khan, tweeted with a brimming sense of achievement that the Governor House in Lahore was open for the public for the first time in the history of Pakistan. He also shared a photo of a swarm of disorderly people entering the building. We also saw a TV Show where the […]