Microfinance promise
Microfinance during the last century was seen as a panacea for poverty alleviation, but since then there has been greater understanding of it as one among a variety of tools…
After sanctions, Iranian and foreign firms await the good times
A decade ago, Foad Fanaei packed his belongings and left sanction-hit Iran in the hope that the family's engineering firm would thrive in Qatar. Starting up in the Gulf Arab…
Foreign policy trials
As if the task of saving the Nawaz-Modi initiative from being derailed was not challenging enough, Saudi Arabia’s aggressive drive to align Pakistan with itself is likely to test this…
Symbolism of the CPI score
Berlin-based Transparency International (TI) launched its annual Corruption Perception Index 2015 on January 27. The index ranks countries on the basis of perceptions regarding incidence of corruption in the public…
Saudi Arabia-Iran spat: Challenges to Pakistan’s mediatory role
Can Pakistan play a meaningful mediatory role in ironing out Arab-Iranian rift? For a country to undertake a mediatory mission it must have strong credentials with effective diplomacy, robust economy…
Power to the girls
This is in continuation of the last point I made in the previous column. Boys will be boys unless they are not just socially sensitised to believe in the equality…
China calm over TPP isolation as it pursues regional deals
A new US-led Pacific trade pact that pointedly excludes China could see it lose influence and key export markets, but observers say the web of bilateral deals Beijing has forged…
Sci-Tech-Human Power Complex: A Phenomenon Reshaping World
So, we have started talking about 4th industrial age. Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Elon Musk are scared of (smart) artificial intelligence robots (thinking machines) that caan create algorithm according…
Forces of divergence in Pakistan
Thomas Picketty, the French economist known for his work on wealth and income inequalities, has challenged the old economic verities about an inverted U-shaped relation between economic growth and inequality.…
Pakistan-Iran relations: a perspective
Of late, some irritants had developed in Pakistan-Iran relations which have coincided with domestic, regional and international factors. In past October/November, border violations and cross-border firing on Balochistan-Seistan border together…
