Rebuilding trust
PAKISTAN’S institutions seem to be in free fall. Politicisation and polarisation are plaguing our political class, judiciary and security establishment, and few will survive the mudslinging unsullied. One institution, however,…
Democracy Summit
TOWARDS the end of March, the US hosted the second Democracy Summit. The stated objective was to put democracy and human rights at the heart of the Biden administration’s foreign…
Virality & vileness
IN a chapter from his 2005 book The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman outlined “10 flatteners” which contributed to the flattening out of global economies. The fall of the Berlin…
Have faith in facts
I SUSPECT many will agree about the benefits of a digital detox, ie a break from the constant stream of information on mobile devices. I enjoyed my break last week…
Being seen & heard
GOING to graduate school in the US as a mature student meant I felt a disconnect with younger students, especially around language and identity issues. It took some time for…
Getting rich on YouTube
EVERYONE is into it. Before leaving, your dadi’s friend grabs you by the arm and whispers “Beta aap bhi meri subscriber banein na” she says as she adjusts her glasses,…
Conflict and art
MAKE art, not war. On recently seeing that iconic slogan on a T-shirt at London’s Tate Modern museum, I thought: if only it were so simple. But as with many…
State of the youth
YOUNG Americans are miserable. So says a new study out of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. The study found that 18- to 25-year-olds reported the lowest well-being, and that…
Meet the press
I KNOW what happened with the ‘forced’ interviews that recently ran on TV. I know the circumstances that led to them, what happened in the studio, who was/wasn’t there and…
‘We’re worth it’
LATELY, I’ve been wondering what I’m worth. I don’t mean this just from a self-esteem perspective or a religious one. I’m thinking, instead, of how much my life is worth…
