Poverty diagnostics
The official poverty figures are out after a gap of nine years. According to the Planning Commission, 29.5 percent of the population or roughly “60 million” (as per the official…
Pakistan’s place
"All predictions are wrong; that's one of the few certainties granted to mankind".-Milan Kundera International Monetary Fund's celebrated quarterly journal Finance & Development (September 2014) did a bold work by asking…
Development deficit
The recent annual Human Development Report places Pakistan in the low human development category Human Development Report is a barometer of the state of human development in different countries of…
The implementation conundrum
The government of Punjab has been in the limelight recently for carrying out much needed legislation, such as prohibiting child labour at brick kilns and curbing violence against women. While…
Microfinance promise
Microfinance during the last century was seen as a panacea for poverty alleviation, but since then there has been greater understanding of it as one among a variety of tools…
Goals for whom?
Everywhere I’ve worked, I’ve seen that people want essentially the same things: they want their children to be educated, they want decent work that enables them to reach their full…
17 goals to transform the world
On September 25, the 193 members of UN General Assembly unanimously adopted Agenda 2030, titled “transforming our world”. Through this agenda commonly known as Sustainable Development Goals, the global leadership…
War on drugs
Global drug policy involving crop eradication contributes to poverty, hunger, and displacement, said Open Society Foundation (OSF) in a new report released here. The report, Drug Crop Production, Poverty, and…
Power to the girls
This is in continuation of the last point I made in the previous column. Boys will be boys unless they are not just socially sensitised to believe in the equality…
The challenge of poverty
Poverty is an ugly state for the majority of the world's people and nations including Pakistan. Why are we seeing this phenomenon? Should it be enough to blame poor people…
