BBC raids show India’s shrinking media freedom
At around 11 a.m. on Feb 14, some 20 Indian tax officials and police burst into the BBC’s offices in New Delhi, shouting at staff to step away from their…
BBC tax raids put India press freedom in spotlight
Just weeks after the BBC aired a documentary examining Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in deadly 2002 sectarian riots, tax inspectors descended on the broadcaster’s offices. Modi’s Hindu nationalist…
Shakespeare on the BBC
My first close encounter with Shakespeare came when I was a first year student at Karachi University in the early Sixties, and a couple of young lecturers decided to stage…
Defending air superiority
When a cake was cut to celebrate the historical victory of the brave armed forces of Pakistan, uniquely, during my PIA flight PK-300 from Karachi to Islamabad, the entire plane…
India’s hybrid warfare
The term ‘hybrid warfare’ refers to a combination of traditional military means and the use of non-military resources deployed to achieve broader military and strategic objectives. That which cannot be…
Fatal decisions
TIMING is everything, especially in politics. Mistiming can be fatal, as three recent leaders, now out of power, have learned. In October 1999, PM Mian Nawaz Sharif decided to remove…
The price of curbing dissent
The government’s latest push to prosecute violators of Pakistan’s electronic crimes through fresh laws against electronic crimes runs the risk of yet another failure to curb growing dissent in an…
More sentient than we imagine
The news earlier this month about the orca (killer whale) named by marine scientists as Tahlequah carrying its dead calf off the coast of Washington State in the US stirred…
Musk projects his hard-right influence in Europe
He demanded new elections in Britain, promoted Germany’s far-right, blasted the European Commission — and that’s just the start. Elon Musk is pushing the hard right in Europe, where progressives…
The larger tragedy
TRAGICALLY, though not unexpectedly, there are more Pakistani bodies in the waters off Greece this month. They include a 13-year-old boy from Pasrur, who insisted on the dangerous trip, enticed…
