A RATHER damning indictment of the seventh NFC Award has just been published by the World Bank in a study titled Strengthening Fiscal Federalism in Pakistan. The study plugs a crucial gap in our under...
TECHNOLOGY has a way of solving problems that policy struggled with. When telecommunications deregulation failed to connect rural Pakistan, mobile phones arrived and did the job. When grid electrifica...
NOW that the war is winding down, an important question needs to be asked. Will the rulers of Iran remember with gratitude the role Pakistan played in helping secure a dignified ending for them? Iran ...
If ever voice mattered, it was now. The budget unveiled today shows the government heard everything that was being said about it and has moved to rectify, albeit the moves are small. Salaried people h...
IT is not yet clear how deep and how sustained they are, but cracks are now appearing in the edifice that is the hybrid plus regime running Pakistan these days. This is a natural consequence of the cu...
THEY all look the same and for good reason. Every budget over the past 10 years (and more) is pretty much the same with minor differences usually in the gimmickry being advanced in the name of a ‘re...
THE conversation about reform in Pakistan is dead. It has been for years. In Islamabad, the government is celebrating its diplomatic success in the war. These achievements are real and deserve recogni...
OVER the past 10 years the state’s tax effort has burdened compliant taxpayers more and more even as it has largely abandoned any attempt to broaden the tax base or bring in more taxpayers. The resu...
ONE year ago, Pakistan scored a big victory in the May war against India and a round of applause went up around the country for the valiant efforts of our armed forces. Today, Pakistan is on the brink...
THERE is a specific kind of quiet that settles over a capital city when its ruling elite begins to realise that the ground beneath their feet is moving. In Canberra and Melbourne, among the scholars a...