The case of Gilgit-Baltistan is a clear manifestation of the failure of the political imagination of Pakistan’s ruling class by Aziz Ali-Dad Just seven months before his death, the iconic fiction writer of Urdu literature, Saadat Hasan Manto wrote a short story titled Gilgit Khan on June 4, 1954. It is a story of Hamza Khan who comes to a city from …

A new book highlights gaps between aid agencies and communities, the efficacy of aid in poverty reduction and human development Herald Report The debate over development strategies and policies being applied in the developing countries to eradicate poverty has been going on ever since the introduction of the neoliberal economic agenda and the structural adjustment programmes. Independent economists and academics …

The End of History author on what Karl Marx got right, the rivals to liberal democracy and why he fears a US-China war. By George Eaton History is having its revenge on Francis Fukuyama. In 1992, at the height of post-Cold War liberal exuberance, the American political theorist wrote in The End of History and the Last Man: “What we may …

KP Actions (in Aid of Civil Power) Ordinance 2019 is a disgraceful law that violates fundamental rights, principles of justice and undermines freedom, writes Barrister Khwaja Ahmad Hosain By Khwaja Ahmad Hosain The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Actions (in Aid of Civil Power) Ordinance 2019 was quietly promulgated on 5th August 2019. The secrecy is understandable. It is a disgraceful law which violates fundamental …

By Ghulam Amin Beg On Tuesday, September 14, 2010, I had written this article and published on the Simurgh Institute blog, which received several comments and further elaborations. The article analyzed the opinion post by Selig S. Harrison published in the New York Times in August the same year under the title, ‘China’s Discreet Hold on Pakistan’s Northern Borderlands’. Today, …

Herald Report As we celebrate the near four decades struggle launched by women activists for equal rights in Pakistani society and for democratic and secular values, there is a need to learn from past experiences, failures, successes and redefine the objectives, and direction of such movements in the face of emerging challenges like climate change, rising tide of extremism, authoritarianism …

‘Neither the begging bowl has been broken nor 5 million jobs and 100m houses provided’ Farman Ali Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s government has miserably failed to fulfill its electoral promises. The dream of a “change” has shattered within a year. Unless structural and drastic changes are made in state policies, power structure and fair distribution of wealth and resources are ensured, any …

The position of women rests, as everything in our complex society, on an economic base.—Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling by Margaret Benston The “woman question” is generally ignored in analyses of the class structure of society. This is so because, on the one hand, classes are generally defined by their relation to the means of production and, on the other hand, women are …

Gilgit-Baltistan has recently seen peace, tranquility and social harmony after being plagued by sectarian violence for nearly three decades. Amir Hussain Many people think that this peace and tranquility is schematic and short-lived rather than being systemic and long term in nature. Schematic because the peace and harmony has been attained without much political efforts at reconstructing the institutional structures …

Article 370 enabled Kashmir to give land to the tiller. Today, that freedom is gone by Nyla Ali Khan The recent unilateral decision of Prime Minister Modi’s government to revoke Article 370 — which guaranteed the special status of Jammu and Kashmir — the dismemberment of the state, and its diminishment are, to my mind, flagrant violations of the sovereign Constitution of …