Ten priorities for UHC
DECEMBER 12 is Universal Health Coverage Day. It commemorates the resolution on ‘Global Health and Foreign Policy’, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2012, urging countries to accelerate progress…
Atypical politics
MANY wonder why our politics is so unlike Western democracies’. Politics emerges from and reflects societal realities. Our society is unlike Western ones and thus too is our politics. But…
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…
Liberal arts taboo
PROF Alexander Key was spot on when he suggested in his talk at a private university in Karachi that students should be offered more options in the field of liberal…
Development & culture
THE dictionary meaning of culture is “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively”. Keeping this definition in mind, we can conclude that most decisions taken on…
Reach the masses
RECENTLY, I attended the Urban Resource Centre’s Forum on the urban poor and land use management in Karachi. NED University’s Prof Noman Ahmed spoke on the subject. This was followed…
We’re asking the wrong questions
WHAT is the primary end of politics and purpose of a sovereign state? What makes a political system legitimate? What gives the right to rule? How should leaders be chosen…
Pakistan’s universities at 75
AT birth, Pakistan inherited Punjab University in Lahore, the only among the Raj’s 16 universities. Seventy-five years later, there are 120-plus officially recognised universities. Roughly an equal number of non-recognised…
Near collapse
IT is said that contrary to its intended purpose of driving social growth and producing well-informed human capital, higher education in the country has fallen prey to a level of…
No one to guide them
“WHAT are you majoring in?” “Economics.” “Why?” “My mum wanted me to. She thinks it will give me better opportunities for employment.” I have had countless such conversations with students…
