Struggle between state and society
State and society are two distinct institutions. Eroding this distinction opens the doors to state intervention in personal, family and social relations and to loss of individual rights and protection…
Polarization and threat to society
Long hauls often necessitate one to walk around inside the aircraft. I often stand peering through the tiny window on the emergency door, looking down at the passing ‘Lilliputian’ landscape…
A democratic and inclusive Afghanistan
Millions of Afghans face the spectre of hunger and starvation. The recent devastating earthquake is likely to complicate the situation, pushing more Afghans below the poverty line, adding to the…
‘Good Society’
It now looks almost certain that the next general elections would be held by August 2018. The incumbent federal and provincial governments, therefore, have just about five months to complete…
The social democratic model
PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is clearly on a mission to revive the party in Punjab, and especially in Lahore. For the first time in recent times, he tried to…
The civil society’s concerns
Responding to the enormity of crises faced by state and society, leading civil society activists and mainstream and left-oriented activists and intellectuals have come up with an alternative progressive democratic…
Faith and civil society
In my previous article in these pages (July 8, 2019), I discussed the paradox of collective freedom in faith-based communities. The article led to a heated debate around the existential…
Needed: a democratic world order
Although many critics believe that the two terrible world wars that killed more than eight million people in the world were waged to capture markets and colonies, the West claims…
Spare democratic norms
WHOEVER counselled the federal cavaliers to drop their campaign to destabilise the Sindh government has done well by the country’s democracy that still needs oxygen to breathe. There is no…
Democratic deficit in global financial system
The government believes that Pakistani nationals having more than 152,500 offshore bank accounts could have stashed away a hefty sum of $11 billion, half of which is presumed to have…
