Columns

To enjoy any LitFest, one needs to be a hyper-active octopus, with eyes and ears at the end of every tentacle. The Lahore LitFest 2025 – the last in a trilogy before the abstinence of Ramzan – offered a banquet of intellect, spread over four halls in cruel competition. To attend one was to forgo […]

Yes, Kejriwal has lost the Delhi elections. But make no mistake- the AAP put up a valiant and courageous fight, and came to within inches of winning. Don’t let these sold out media platforms and sundry Yogendra Yadav clones tell you otherwise, look at the official figures. The BJP at 46% of the vote share

The first Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) 2010 was the crucible. Since then, each year, it has moved higher up the ladder to its present maturity as the 16th KLF, held this year on 7-9 February and as usual at the Beach Luxury Hotel. The first KLF 2010 had an attendance  of 5,000. This year, the number

One key aspect of the Budget which has been highlighted by India’s mainstream press is the tax cut for India’s salaried class earning up to Rs I lakh per month (roughly UK£930 or US$1100 in today’s money). Rather than this inconsequential and inappropriate Rs 1 lakh crore tax cut, the money should have been spent

TIMING is everything, especially in politics. Mistiming can be fatal, as three recent leaders, now out of power, have learned. In October 1999, PM Mian Nawaz Sharif decided to remove COAS Gen Musharraf, even while Musharraf was returning home from Sri Lanka. In June 2019, PM Imran Khan transferred the then head of ISI, Gen

U.S. President Donald Trump has bent diplomacy full circle. He has reversed inter-state relations to a pre-Westphalian age. The conduct of international political relations between states were enshrined in the 1648 treaty of Westphalia. It introduced the concept of territorial integrity, that ‘states, regardless of size, have the right to self-governance.’ Sovereignty shifted from a

So another Sisyphus has surfaced on our corporate horizon, putting his shoulder to the boulder of “nation building”. The Chairman of L+T (Larsen and Toubro), a one lakh crore multi-national behemoth, not satiated with the Rs. 51 crore he brings home every year (which is 540 times what his average employee subsists on), wants his

ANYONE who attended the ThinkFest on Jan 11-12 in Lahore hoping to walk away with a panacea to Pakistan’s ailments, must have been disappointed. The ThinkFest was a master class in dissection of a living corpse. The discussants — scholars, politicians, a former prime and finance minister, serving and retired government officials, artistes, cricketers, financiers

Himachal is gradually slipping into a financial sink-hole, with a debt of Rs.85000 crore and almost 60% of its annual budget going to pay just employees’ salaries/pensions and debt servicing. The Union government, for vindictive political reasons, is further nudging it into the hole by denying it almost Rs.9000 crores of PDNA (Post Disaster National