Sindh’s struggle for survival
The Sindh Rural Support Organisation (SRSO) has quietly become one of Pakistan’s most effective engines of resilience. In a country where bureaucracy often confuses motion with progress, the SRSO has…
Art of survival
PAK-AFGHAN tensions are simmering. Talks in Istanbul this weekend focused on improved alignment and coordination for counterterrorism. Also hanging in the balance is the fate of over two million Afghans…
Between water and survival
While I was in Buner helping small shopkeepers rebuild Pir Baba Bazaar after the floods, my phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Family and friends kept calling: ‘Punjab is drowning’, they said.…
Why we need to shift from survival to scale
This article links directly to my article, ‘The real contest of growth’, published in these pages on September 11, where I argued that America invents while China executes. The US…
Budgeting for survival
In the theatre of nations, budgets are more than numbers; they are constitutional manifestos. They reveal how a state sees its people, how it prioritises its future, and what kind…
Budgeting for survival
In the theatre of nations, budgets are more than numbers; they are constitutional manifestos. They reveal how a state sees its people, how it prioritises its future, and what kind…
Budget 2025-2026: No vision beyond fiscal survival
The federal budget for financial year 2025-26 presented on June 10, 2025, in the National Assembly, has laid bare both the ambitions and contradictions of Pakistan’s fiscal strategy. The total…
Cultural survival via Mian Mir
My history professor once referred to a theory that says the developmental telos of modernity loves to claim that the human self is autonomous and rational. Despite and behind these…
Modernity, tradition, survival
The region of Torwal in Swat, where now the language Torwali is spoken by about 140,000 people and which was once the entire area of today’s Bahrain tehsil in the…
Humanitarian women
ON March 8, 2024, the world will commemorate International Women’s Day as it does every year. This year, perhaps much more than other years, the day falls in the midst…
