Economic dystopia incentivized
Can you guess what country has the world’s worst financial inclusion statistics? It is Pakistan. With 115 million unbanked adults (adults with neither a bank account, nor a mobile money…
The utopia of elections
Pakistan is facing a three-pronged attack of political instability, economic meltdown and renewed terror insurgency in an election year. This is proving to be a lethal cocktail. All three streams…
Conflict in Ethiopia
The unfolding Russian assault on Ukraine is pushing other global conflicts into the shadows, but the latter keep festering nonetheless. Some of these will also have important geostrategic consequences. One…
Fixing PIA
The government recently announced its intention to offload majority shares and management control of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) to one of the sovereign states in the Gulf, leading to repetitive…
PIA: fab past, grim present, vague future
Ivy league’s business schools are always looking for cases to study in-depth by their students about corporations who after achieving their glorious periods, decline and struggle for their survival. Harvard,…
Modi’s dystopia
Fiction, it is said, is a figment of imagination. However, if decades or centuries later, characters and events from a work of fiction attain reality, one can only marvel at…
PIA: govt’s left with only one option
The Federal Minister of Aviation, while making a statement on the floor of the National Assembly that a significant number of pilots on active duty in PIA carry fake licences, perhaps…
Face-first into dystopia
Flying into Dallas Fort Worth International Airport from Mexico in December, I queued in the immigration line for US citizens and was taken aback when – rather than request my…
PIA under greater govt focus
Adviser to Prime Minister on Institutional Reforms and Austerity, Dr Ishrat Husain has proposed to the federal cabinet bifurcation of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) into two companies - one as…
Living in dystopia
Squid Game is one of the best aesthetic depictions of the essential situation of capitalism: it reveals the destructive social fabric that capitalism generates, especially the profound barbarism that exists…
