‘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 …

Prime Minister Imran Khan promised to provide relief to citizens when he came to power last year, but his government has only added to their miseries, says Harris Khalique. by Harris Khalique When Imran Khan was elected as Pakistan’s prime minister on August 17, 2018, some Pakistanis saw him as the the best option, but others saw Khan as a messiah, …

https://www.nytimes.com/video/players/offsite/index.html?videoId=100000006653817/     The Indian government has confined about seven million Kashmiris to their homes and imposed a complete communications blackout. By Arundhati Roy NEW DELHI — As India celebrates her 73rd year of independence from British rule, ragged children thread their way through traffic in Delhi, selling outsized national flags and souvenirs that say, “Mera Bharat Mahan.” My India is …

SSR can be an effective instrument for maintaining demographic composition in J&K but it was essentially a colonial tool without roots and perceived legitimacy among the people of GB, writes Aziz Ali Dad by Aziz Ali Dad For the last few years nationalists and increasingly Pakistan Peoples Party in Gilgit-Baltistan are clamouring for the restoration of State Subject Rule (SSR) …

Why Modi’s move on Kashmir is likely to achieve the opposite of what he intends, questions the Economist When the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir joined the fledgling Indian union in October 1947, it had little choice in the matter. Pakistan-backed tribesmen had invaded; only Indian troops could repel them. The consolation was that Kashmir was promised a lot …

#kashmir Posted by Suchitra Vijayan on Sunday, 4 August 2019   By Hassan Akber   What Has India Done? After days of troop surges, arrests, speculation and denials, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah introduced a presidential order and a bill in Parliament on August 5, 2019. Through the order, India has revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution thereby ending …

Professor Faisal Devji on Muslim depoliticisation, Hindu nationalism and historians mimicking detectives. Here is excerpts from an interview with Seema Chishti of The Indian Express   What do you make of contemporary history writing? As Gandhi realised more than a century ago, history, or rather historical consciousness, had not only come to define the self-proclaimed superiority of western civilisation in …