Why we need public intellectuals
When Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani said of the Indian media during the Emergency that “when asked to bend, they crawled”, he received widespread praise from the intelligentsia and…
Managing public investment the mission-oriented way
Two renowned intellectuals – Greece’s former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, and columnist for Guardian George Monbiot – in two separate articles recently, pointed towards a common problem: neoliberalism, and austerity,…
What is the One Percent Republic?
Last week, Dr Miftah Ismail initiated an important debate by terming Pakistan a “One percent Republic” – a society that works for the few and reproduces elite privilege over time.…
How to spot an ‘approved’ intellectual
Being an ‘approved’ intellectual may sound a far-fetched charge, but in countries such as Pakistan there are many who would qualify for it. They are not all fiendish reprobates, but…
Raising a smart public sector
A new world is emerging as the era of Washington consensus has ended on the back of Covid-19. The pandemic did not cause the demise of the consensus, it only…
The Republic versus an emirate
As the Afghanistan fiasco deepens, many important voices have sought to understand and analyse the day-to-day situation in Afghanistan, and how Pakistan should handle the challenges posed by what looks…
Public goods
The consensus is that the current pandemic will be with us for a long time to come. We will enter a period of intermittent outbreaks of Covid-19, whose precise characteristics…
Tackling intellectual and physical poverty
Poverty is news again. As inflation reached new highs, number crunchers got busy trying to estimate how many people have fallen below the poverty line. The government, as usual, has…
Battle to free Mosul of IS ‘intellectual terrorism’
In a classroom of the University of Mosul, in the Islamic State group's former Iraqi capital, around 50 volunteers have undergone a week's training on how to combat the jihadists'…
Republic of fear
Recent events have once again raised the spectre of force and violence in our fragile polity. The arrests of opposition leaders and political activists have ignited memories of the decades…
