Columns

Srinagar's Lal Chowk was a destination for the BJP's Republic Day agenda, but not an objective. The BJP was sending a message to India rather than Kashmir, which it did effectively enough thanks to the caravan of cameras that is in statutory attendance around any drama. Once the curious harmony of military drumbeat and popular-culture rhythm in the January 26 parade is over by noon, it becomes a slow news day. The BJP's tricolour wheeze got screen-to-screen coverage. Point made.<br

Fred Halliday, the celebrated specialist on Middle Eastern affairs, taught international affairs at the London School of Economics until his death last year. A few decades ago, he wrote a book titled "Arabia without Sultans", which from a Marxist point of view, lamented the fact that the kings, sultans and sheikhs still lorded over it. In the context of the present turmoil in Tunisia, this excellent work is still very relevant as nothing much has changed in the region.
With the

Friends and foes both claim that NS has a tangled thought process. He is in fact as complicated as a jalebi. He baffles you with a "deadline", which as his arch critic Chaudhry Shujaat puts it, is really a "headline". He can present himself as the government's severest critic but the next minute he is born again as Islamabad's committed saviour? He is distressed by the government's lavish lifestyle but why is he whizzing around to Cholistan in a private jet compliments of a Pakistani

The spate of unrest sweeping the Middle East is a new phenomenon. It has come as a natural and legitimate reaction of people having suffered immeasurably under the authoritarian regimes in some countries. What is being feared is that the 'Jasmine Revolution' of Tunisia and the drive to oust Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, movements that had been burgeoning for long, would spread quickly across the geographical boundaries and impact governments not only in the immediate region, but those

Most of the targeted killings in Karachi are connected to ethnicity related politics. The mega city whose population has risen to 18 million faces issues related to the representation of various communities in the elected bodies at the city, provincial and federal levels. With those benefiting from the skewed representation are bent on preserving the unjust status quo and those under-represented determined to change it, tension continues to increase. The situation is used by mafias of

Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul is in Islamabad. He arrived Thursday and would be leaving sometime later today. Rassoul has had meetings with the civilian and military leaders of Pakistan and the visit has been billed as part of high level attempts by Islamabad and Kabul to work out a solution to the Afghan problem in the run-up to the February trilateral meeting in Washington, the first of its kind.
For over a year Islamabad and Kabul have been trying to sort out

The engine of economic growth is investment. Around us in South Asia, every economy is booming. Growth is recorded across the board, be it GDP or exports, revenue or investment. It is only Pakistan that is stuck in a time warp! Poor economic management, lack of cohesive economic policies prior to the democratic government and the subsequent lack of will to correct earlier wrong forming the basis of this unhealthy situation. Law and order and the results of the war on terror add the

Child sex abuse is one of the many taboos within Pakistani society, and is shrouded in layers of false piety and religious dogma. It is one of those issues that get talked about when a report by the HRCP or another NGO is published, or the electronic media creates hype about a victim, going into all the morbid details. The harsh reality is that more then sixty percent of the cases do not even get reported.
According to data collected by various rights groups and NGOs in 2007, at

Our intellectuals, commentators and analysts are beside themselves with happiness in predicting that Pakistan will soon be Tunisia. With friends like these, who needs enemies? The democratic system has been restored in Pakistan after many sacrifices of the Pakistani people. The Tunisians cannot even imagine this. Even their oldest citizens have never seen a live functioning democracy. They were first ruled by French imperialists; they did get democracy after independence but it was

I believe Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he says that he and his government will "redouble" their efforts to deal effectively with the challenges of inflation, cleansing of government processes and national security and make the "delivery system work for the aam admi." I do not want to ask the Prime Minister why he has been slow in his reaction so far. Apparently, the number of scams that have tumbled out of his government's cupboard have made him conscious that he needs to

Every so often, among the doom and gloom (mine included) a refreshing story comes along, in this case a story in an English daily on the 20th of January 2011, by Khurshid Anwar Khan entitled, 'Mother: a classmate of sons'.
Coming from a poor family, Rukhsana Batool of Mianwali had no opportunity to obtain education. Married at the age of eighteen, she is now twenty five years old, and the mother of two young boys. When she enrolled her boys in school, she began attending class

It is an understatement to say Pakistan is going through difficult times. But it remains a fact. We do have our back to the wall: the insurgency and military action in the North, the terror activities across the country, the situation in Karachi, the strife in Balochistan and the overall poor economic, political, and social conditions in the country all mix up to make for a particularly challenging set of circumstances. And dealing with all of the above, on a daily basis is surely

The relationship between Islam and politics is not a new issue. However, this attracted a renewed interest after a large number of religious leaders based in mosques and madrassahs as well as associated with Islamic political parties justified the assassination of Salmaan Taseer and publicly defended his killer. Their discourse was extremist and provocative, at times threatening those not sharing their perspective on the blasphemy law. This type of extreme religious fervour was not

Satellite imagery is a beautiful thing in civilian hands. Never before has it been possible to get a bird's eye view of one's country and zoom in on blotches of green and brown that gives us some sense of the rampant urbanisation being experienced. While few can disagree over this crisis, even fewer are intervening to resolve it.
Let's face it, decision-making in Pakistan is no easy task, made more arduous still by our government's ensnarement in the administrative trap. This is

Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk has a paunch. Booker Prize winning novelist Kiran Desai has slender legs. Travel writer Rory Stewart is super tall. Jon Lee Anderson is a bear. Vikram Seth is so short. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has a lovely smile. Jung Chnag looks like an old money lady from Old Shanghai. Karachi's HM 'Home Boy' Naqvi's wife is beautiful. I'm spotting all of them.
Friends, I'm writing from Jaipur Literature Festival. I know, I know. A few weeks ago I'd said that I

Seventy-eight years ago this week, a young Indian Muslim introduced a new word to the world, a word that is now a nation.
When Choudhary Rahmat Ali Khan published his now famous Pakistan Declaration on the 28th of January, 1933, he made it very clear what he thought the new Indian Muslim nation should look like: "At this solemn hour in the history of India, when British and Indian statesmen are laying the foundations of a Federal Constitution for that land, we address this appeal

In a message to the All-Pakistan Educational Conference at Karachi on November 27, 1947, Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah said: ""There is no doubt that the future of our State will and must greatly depend upon the type of education and the way in which we bring up our children as the future citizens of Pakistan. Education does not merely mean academic education, and even that appears to be of a very poor type. What we have to do is to mobilise our people and build up the character of