Modi’s improbable ambitions
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s well-oiled media machine, and his Western cheerleaders, have created the expectation that his strong leadership will bring rapid growth to India, prosperity to its impoverished millions…
Missing export focus
I recently met a few manufacturers who are not only suppliers of quality products to local manufacturers and markets but are also exporting significant proportions of their output. And the…
A case for Gandhara
Growing up in Lahore I wondered about the gap in my history textbook between the end of Indus Valley civilisation circa 1500 BC and the invasion of Sindh by Mohammad…
Making trade a priority
OUR external account is our Achilles’ heel. Its importance cannot be overemphasised because of the need to finance our imports and service our debt-related obligations. A sustainable improvement in the…
Inequality: reasons and impact
THIS writer has argued in these columns that on the one hand low rates of economic growth in the last decade have resulted in 700,000 to 800,000 youth every year…
Nightmare scenarios
Back in 2011, the American actor George Clooney recalled asking Barack Obama to identify the one thing that kept him up at night. “Pakistan,” replied the US president. Obama did…
Countering corruption
We in Pakistan are slowly beginning to realise that corruption and collusion don’t just take an economic and social toll, but that the institutionalisation of these practices now stands as…
The own-goal of self-flagellation
The last decade and a half in Pakistan has been a time of great distress. Events have reinforced the worst fears of the smartest Pakistanis. Almost every nightmare that we…
Setting export targets – and not meeting them
There is this apocryphal story of a Commerce Secretary, who, responding to how the ambitious export target in the recently-announced Trade Policy will be met, said, with a straight face,…
Living in ‘today’
The debate on Pakistan's role in Yemen's civil war is shifting the focus from the problems that confront Pakistan's economy, but sidelining realities doesn't evaporate them, although that's the Pakistani…
