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Pakistan or ‘Plotistan’?

THE recent furore over plot allotments to bureaucrats and judges has again brought to the fore a dark aspect of governance in Pakistan — the practice of gifting away valuable land at…

Press and power

NOT one biographer of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah has cared to explore one important and very instructive facet of his public life. It was his role and conduct vis-à-vis the…

White is not a colour

There is no such thing as race, none” – this is how master novelist Toni Morrison broke it down very simply in a famous interview. “It’s the human race, scientifically,…

About the only sensible news

LOOK at it dispassionately. The world, led by the United States, has agreed to accept the deeply misogynistic Taliban as the next rulers in Afghanistan, reneging on lofty promises made…

The Mountbatten plan

June 3, 1947 holds importance for the success of the Pakistan Movement, led by Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah to achieve a separate and sovereign state of Pakistan. Exactly 74 years…

Support for Palestine

The Balfour Declaration signed at the end of the First World War on November 2, 1917 surprisingly allowed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. This was a big…

A blend of cricket and Tagore

THE thought must be quite urgent that it broke through a riveting day’s cricket match being played in Chennai to pose the question. Since Khalistan is a bad idea, what…

One Unit and Sindh: Part – II

Some other books that have discussed One Unit include ‘Pakistan of Jinnah’ by Ahmed Salim, ‘Pakistan in the 20th Century’ by Lawrence Ziring and ‘Federalism in Pakistan’ by Muntzra Nazir.…

Trifling with governance

OUR administration’s obsession with preserving colonial institutions is truly mind-boggling. Every now and then a post-Partition administrative change is abandoned in favour of a colonial period model. When, some time…