Columns

While the world is getting worked up over Cairo's Tahrir Square and its clones in the rest of the Middle East, permit me to talk about a square in Delhi, which too is witnessing some action, but of a less revolutionary kind. In a city as big as this, this is a very small, possibly insignificant phenomenon, but it must be noticed and written about before it vanishes. A smoggy traffic square that was once dreaded by commuters for its long jams has become an unlikely urban haven. Check

The ancient Chinese curse 'May you live in interesting times' is apparently only the first of three curses. The other two are 'May the government be aware of you,' and 'May your wishes be granted' or 'May you find what you are looking for.'
There appears to be little doubt that the first has come through in most places, and in the case of Egypt the second and the third have come through as well. It remains to be seen whether Egypt turns out to be curst or blessed. Either way,

The labour laws of the country say that unskilled labour, working 40 hours a week, should be compensated by a minimum wage of Rs 7,000 a month. People, irrespective of what they get hired for, should at the very least be making Rs 7,000 a month.
Although it is not clear how the government of Pakistan has arrived at Rs 7,000 as the minimum wage figure, the usual thought about minimum wage is that it is tied to the idea of a 'bare minimum'. The poverty line in Pakistan is, roughly

This last week was particularly traumatic for a cynic such as myself. The average person would most likely be celebrating an ungrateful Pakistan's shocking win over gracious hosts Sri Lanka. Then there would be those who would be, in sympathy or contempt, bickering over the People's departure from the Punjab cabinet. Environmental geeks and other girls will no doubt be preoccupied by the freak decent of ice into their hitherto green and grey asphalt jungle. And still others may be

Commentary on education sector reform has long been a form of moral catharsis for Pakistan's chattering classes, usually amounting to little more than positions of cliched polemic. For a number of reasons, in the years following 9/11, the volume of pontification from those 'concerned for the welfare of the country' increased substantially - the common factor among much of the commentary being that concrete change in Pakistan was intrinsically dependent on the state pursuing an

Subtlety is definitely not the standout feature of the whole Raymond Davis saga; be it the shots that rang out on Qurtaba Chowk, the driving skills of the get-away driver or the handling of the whole affair by the (largely Urdu)electronic media. The local electronic media with its reach with a local language is now basically reporting the Davis case as symptomatic of everything that afflicts this country and, of course, there is no worse affliction for many than the US calling the

There are many sides to the self-proclaimed Libyan Guide - the man with the so-called Green Book (to rival Mao's Red or so he probably believes). Is it any wonder that one of the multitudes of even trivial debates surrounding the man relates to his name? Few seem to get it right.
Is he Gaddafi, Qaddafi, Qadhafi or Kadhafi (the k, in this instance, sounding like the pretentious k in kool instead of the more regular cool). To compound the moniker blues, there is also confusion

The African country - Libya - which got the status of an independent country in 1951 is facing a revolt by the people who have had enough of injustice by an autocrat. After its independence, it had the status of a constitutional monarchy. And, in 1969 after the military revolution by Colonel Qaddafi Libya, it became the Libyan Arab Republic. In 1977, it was then turned into the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
Qaddafi did not face any difficulty when he changed the

Sometime back, an international painting competition under the title of "Queen of Democracy" was announced to paint portraits of Queen Elizabeth II. In it, Britain was described as the "Mother of Democracies" and the Queen as the living example of equality and the custodian of democracy. These titles are quite inept from the sub continental perspective. The British monarchs starting from George II, who ascended the throne in 1727 up to George VI, who was coronated in 1937 and was

"Listen America: You are agog. You don't understand what's going on. Why China has you by the throat. Why your neatly crafted world is unravelling. Why, why, why... It's time to wake up, time to learn lessons. Time to pull your head out of the sand.
Consider the first three words of your Declaration of Independence - "We the people..." They apply not just to your people; they apply to all humanity. We too have the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
"Why do

Where do you go to think seriously and bring sanity to a maddening situation? Far from the madding crowd to a peaceful Omani luxury resort of course. So that's what the military leadership of the US and Pakistan did. The US side was a phalanx of Admirals and Generals; the Pakistan side was just the Chief of Army Staff with two subordinate staff officers. This should have removed any doubts that existed about exactly where the buck stops in Pakistan - not that there were such doubts.

The inevitable has happened. Punjab Chief Minister Mian Shahbaz Sharif's last minute meeting with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani failed to avert the crisis as the PML(N) finally announced splitting with the PPP in the Punjab because of the federal government's reluctance to implement its 10-point reforms agenda. The decision coincided with the expiry of the 45-day deadline set by the PML (N).
The PPP might have been slow on the uptake but there had been some progress as far as

I grew up on stories of Gama Pahalwan, the iconic champion of an age when wrestling in red langotis still captured the imagination of north India. It seems that apart from ever-increasing quantities of buffalo milk, he ate two dozen raw eggs a day. Like a good Indian, I compromised. Raw eggs seemed the diet of a potential bully, and hard-boiled too wimpish. The solution was clearly half-boiled eggs.
India's foreign policy is the ultimate half-boiled egg; more Indian than foreign

The PML(N) has embarked on a dangerous course. It has joined hands with turncoats and charlatans in order to show the door to the PPP, its erstwhile coalition partner in the Punjab. By giving ministries to the 'unification group' (an oxymoron in this case), Mian Nawaz Sharif can no longer claim the moral high ground. In this sense he is no better than Musharraf and his cohorts who carved PML(Q) from the PML(N) when the chips were down for the Sharifs and the Patriots, a breakaway

For PML(N), it is a classic case of 'to be or not to be' in Punjab. Close to the next elections, whether they are held early or on time, the party had to act to wash a lot of adverse comment that it had generated over the past three years by virtue of its policy of collaboration with the PPP. This support had been extended with the apparent intention of not destabilising the nascent system and also not repeating the debilitating environment of the eighties and the nineties.
After

Political myopia and impatience are leading the government and the PML(N) towards confrontation that could bring the house crashing down on them. As the two abandon the negotiating table and prepare for a full scale war, they forget that they are thus jeopardising the national economy and putting the political system at risk.
Agreed that the PML(N) is an opposition party and as such has to keep the government on its toes, expose its excesses and bring its acts of commission and

Much of what was being suspected about Raymond Davis is proving correct as information on the man, his military service, his operation here and his possible contacts with some terrorist groups attacking Pakistan's interests, trickles in. Soon enough, there will be more, leading to a better, though not necessarily a fuller understanding of the United States' strategic games in this region.
This has led to an error of conflation. Everyone wants to claim the man's scalp. But the