Remembering JFK
Today is the 50th anniversary of assassination of US President John F. Kennedy. Though the 35th US President never visited Pakistan, his wife did. The walls of the US consul…
The feel-good factor
What makes countries tick and sustain high growth rates? Conventional wisdom and experience could never have predicted an economy with a heavy footprint of government (China) to grow at double-digit…
Fiddling with the economy
That the bureaucrat lack imagination has been a given with us in the country. If the bureaucracy is weak in the head that is mentally capable of performing for this…
US retailers tread tight path in shortened holiday race
US retailers have little room for error in the fast-approaching and shortened holiday shopping season, a period that typically generates 30 percent of annual sales. A late Thanksgiving - the…
The ongoing slide
The IMF review team headed by Jeffrey Franks is satisfied with Pakistan's performance in the first quarter following IMF's sanction of its Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and its verdict is…
Nokia: a lesson in how high-tech flyers can fall fast
In just five years Nokia fell from dominating the mobile phone industry to abandoning the handset business, a swift fall from grace with lessons for market leaders. The story of…
Issues of obedience in international law
The analytical jurists like Austin had questioned the validity of the international law on the ground that the system lacked sovereign's command and as such its norms were not enforceable,…
Dangerous trends in rural areas
Pakistan is governed in a miserable way. For what our policymakers do not see does not exist. Pakistan is full of self-opinionated anchors and self-opinionated civil servants. Well, all of…
Modi (mis)appropriates Patel
Whatever its other sins and there are many one charge can never be made against the Sangh Parivar: that of having produced a halfway tall intellectual. No star in its…
Asian tigers and paper tigers
An important new book explains why some countries have become economic tigers in East Asia while others are relative failures or paper tigers. ‘How Asia Works’ by Joe Studwell is…
