Eat cake
IF everything from oil to the roads being built under the CPEC have a political economy angle, then we must say ‘wheat a minute’, before going any further in our…
Sustainable housing
The availability of affordable housing remains a nightmare for middle and lower income groups in Pakistan, despite the government’s ambitious agenda to build five million affordable housing units in five…
Crisis in journalism
TELEVISION doesn’t get an Eid break, so those of us who make a living from this medium are more than familiar with the idea of an Eid show. As Ramazan…
Visible and invisible subsidies
Subsidies, especially those extended to poor people in Western and developed states, have always been resented by free market advocates who argue they amount to encouraging people to be sluggish,…
Navigating net zero
Have you ever walked into an H&M or ZARA store, tried on a pair of pants, and been pleasantly surprised by the ‘Made in Pakistan’ tag? Well, it’s not that…
Modi and the media
For someone who never held a single press conference in his two terms in prime ministerial office and did not present himself for an interview with any bona fide journalist,…
Torture in the shadows
It is often said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. This statement was starkly illustrated in October 2022, when the National Commission…
Can AI help counter terrorism?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a technology capable of performing complex tasks that were traditionally performed only by humans, such as problem-solving, reasoning and decision-making. Machine learning, a subset of AI,…
An intelligent future
Outside the realm of science fiction novels to which artificial intelligence was previously restricted, it is now amongst us in more and more fields of life. This brings both benefits…
FBR: Dwindling tax collection
Pakistan has one of the world’s lowest tax ratios, stemming from five main weaknesses: complexity, a narrow tax base, low compliance, inefficient tax administration, and low and declining provincial tax…
