Columns

Some political leaders are once again trying to cultivate the army top brass to serve their partisan political agendas. Altaf Hussain, MQM Chief, has called upon the "patriotic generals" to facilitate his party-led "revolution" in Pakistan. The Chief Minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, who has met with the Army Chief more often than any other chief minister over the last two years, made an unusual statement on March 7. He said that the prime minister should hold an all-parties

The news this week from Delhi is good. Leaves are falling. As summers get closer, trees across the city have started shedding their leaves. If it's windy, the yellowed leaves drop continuously in a gentle shower. By noon, roads are carpeted with a golden-coloured layer. Many leaves find their way onto the subway stairs, into ATM cabins and even into the open kettles of roadside tea vendors. In the evening, when office-goers reach the parking stands, they first must wipe off the dry

Multiple disasters are heartrending as we take a sobering look at how things in Japan go wrong when conditions are right. A betting man may have laid a wager on a number of places expected to host the next big calamity. After Chernobyl and Deepwater Horizon, it was obvious to foresee some wayward country or corporation endangering society, the economy and the environment somewhere in the world. Few would have put any money on a country that survives severe earthquakes, wars and

Nobel laureate and The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently began an article on education by paraphrasing the opening line of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that education is the key to economic success." Of course, one has to be able to read, and one has to read a lot to get the reference. In Pakistan, given the state of the education system, both private and public, this is not likely.
Only 35 percent of school children in

Face it. We, the people of Pakistan, as a nation, are not world-renowned for our personal hygiene. If anything, the brown man is often at receiving end of slurs that do not refer too flatteringly to his body odour. However, the way we choose to clean our behinds is a mystery even to the most advanced of Western municipal engineers. That anyone would want to blast cold water at their posteriors from a handheld shower is a thought that would boggle many a Caucasian mind. But for us,

I remember when I first did a show on television about fake degrees some people told me I was trying to create a big deal out of nonentity. A few months later it transpired that dozens of parliamentarians were the proud holders of forged degrees and those were not even worth the paper they were printed on. Last week when I brought the scoop of bogus votes, everyone was stunned. Luckily, the NADRA without delay owned up my story and firmly endorsed it though some officials there kept

The Middle East and North Africa are witnessing a 'dance of democracy'. Televisions and newspapers around the world are full of praise for the protestors that have already brought down the well-entrenched regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and are on the verge of toppling Gaddafi in Libya. It is enthusiastically speculated that this 'democratic wave' will have a domino effect that will overthrow the rest of the Arab regimes, one after the other.
Reporters and analysts are projecting

History, it would seem, has decreed that we in the postcolonial world shall only be perpetual consumers of modernity. Europe and the Americas, the only true subjects of history, have thought out on our behalf not only the script of colonial enlightenment and exploitation, but also that of our anti-colonial resistance and postcolonial misery', (Partha Chatterjee, Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Post-Colonial Histories)
As a function of the dismal nature of formal social

There was a feeling that the 2007 cinema-revivalist flick Khuda Kay Liye (In The Name of God) could serve as a rallying cry for a movie theatre or two in Islamabad - at least in name. But it was not to be. Islamabad has the dubious distinction of being perhaps, the only major global capital that is without such entertainment rendezvous. In fact, much like Sahir Ludhianvi's stirring 1975 Kabhi Kabhi lyrics in Amitabh's golden voice it now seems like a gone case:
Magar yeh ho na

Despite the pride that mankind may legitimately take in the role played by rational thinking in its recent history, ideologies and their distortion can still cause a considerable amount of havoc. Every country goes through periods of history dominated by an ideology or by the results of a conflict between different ideologies. How a citizenry is shaped by and eventually responds to competing ideologies is therefore crucial. Citizenship, in turn, presumes a certain amount of civic

"Curiouser and curiouser" said Alice in Wonderland. "Worser and worser" say I in Pakistan. "Badder and badder" say Arabs in the Middle East. Thank God we haven't reached 'worsest' and 'baddest' for we can't guess the limits of worser and badder. Words, damn words: they sublimate anger and frustration till we realise that we still remain in curiouser, worser and badder mode. Depression and frustration return when it eventually dawns on an excited people that their uprising was much ado

An in-depth analysis of the contemporary radical discourse clearly shows how a feeling of experiencing a 'loss of honor' or undergoing humiliation is one of the strongest constituents of the state of mind of radicals. It is one of the many things that constiute the subjective condition of the radical mind.
This theme has been a centerpiece of Al-Qaeda discourse since the very beginning with its first articulation in Osama bin Laden's interview published in Al Islah newspaper in

When President Asif Zardari hit upon a roundtable idea, it was met with scathing criticism from the PML(N) hawks: what is that he wants to discuss now ; it's just an attempt aimed at scuttling our 10-point reforms agenda. Fast forward to March 7. The PPP had already been thrown out of the Punjab Coalition. The floor-crossers were being pampered as they were the only hope left for the Raiwind Squad to save their fledgling government from collapse.
The chances of the two mainstream

It seems reasonable to suggest that any political organisation with both Stalin and Napoleon on its frontlines, as DMK can boast, should make short shrift of a party with a mere Gandhi at its head. But the Karunanidhi vs Sonia Gandhi sideshow within the larger drama of the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections was always a no-contest. Bluster is hopeless against cool. And when Mrs Sonia Gandhi decides to be cool, polar icecaps break into envious applause. Karunanidhi did not melt because

The Supreme Court sending the NAB chairman Deedar Hussain Shah packing and the virtual breakdown of ongoing talks with the IMF for setting new benchmarks to revive the stalled $11.3 billion standby arrangement are not good news for the already beleaguered PPP government. Its talks with estranged coalition partner, the MQM, virtually deadlocked and having been already ousted from the PML(N)-led coalition in the Punjab, the PPP-led government is in all kinds of trouble.
The gunning

A deal is a deal but what does one do when a dealer gets a little greedy and decides to rock the boat. We hear that some time back the boss of Evacuee Property Board came up with a brilliant idea on how to make a fortune. He discovered that a chunk of land belonging to the Board was to be acquired by DHA Lahore. Promptly but discreetly, he arranged an auction of this real estate and a small time real estate dealer with whom he had an understanding, quite conveniently picked up the

The failure of governance is being increasingly attributed to the shortcomings of the system and the inadequacies of the people who get elected. There being little awareness of these limitations among those who have the constitutional powers to initiate remedial measures, the predilection to perpetuate further authority in the hands of individuals in preference to institutions is being increasingly pursued - a trait that is in direct conflict with the spirit of democracy.
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