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Unplanned future

The past few years were spent in electioneering and in the wrangling between various political parties. While the lower segment of society faced a miserable time due to inflation and…

Bureaucratic ills

IF there is anything that can expose one’s place in our society, ie, one’s social standing, it is the interaction with the country’s smug, complacent and rotten bureaucracy, particularly the…

Accounting for change

THE resistance to change in Pakistan is an old problem but it wears a new face every few years. These days the resistance to change is wearing the face of…

Plugging the gap

THE term ‘health inequalities’ is understood as avoidable, unfair and systemic differences between health outcomes for different groups in a society. Different groups experience health inequalities differently based on their…

Budgeting chaos

‘STABILISATION’ is the favourite word of mainstream economists. The IMF loves it, and has recently hinted that Pakistan’s economy has ‘stabilised’ enough for it to dole out another three-year handout…

Home-grown economic plans

THE government recently formed a committee of eminent international and Pakistani economists to draft a home-grown economic programme. This article shows that there is little need for such a committee. There is…

UHI and UHC

SEHAT Sahulat is a great programme but universal health coverage has a much larger vision. Sehat Sahulat is a state-financed health insurance system for the curative care of hospitalised patients,…

AJK and GB movements

AMID a grave economic crisis and the recent Dubai leaks embarrassment, the situation in what people generally believe are ‘peripheral’ areas of Pakistan has drawn the attention of the authorities. Be it…

The crooked timber of Modi’s India

WHEN Parakala Prabhakar published his essays in April last year in a book titled The Crooked Timber of New India: Essays on a Republic in Crisis, one ignored it on suspicion…

Governance test

THE Shehbaz Sharif government faces multiple challenges — from the opposition, its political allies and from growing public discontent with a dire economic situation as people struggle with a cost-of-living…