Pakistan
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The slippery slope on which the board of Columbia University has stumbled since the start of the Gaza protests has turned out to be very steep, and the crash has been nothing less than spectacular. It also tells us something about the universities at large: the fall of the corporate governance of universities is final
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To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society. For the alleged commodity ‘‘labor power’’ cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting also
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The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), an Islamabad based think-tank, has “suggested forming an economic council under NSC comprising the government, leaders of the opposition in the Parliament (National Assembly and Senate), all four chief ministers and the representatives from top military brass.” This may sound like a harmless proposal. After all, what Pakistani could
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Politics in Pakistan has achieved something truly special. While economics and its practitioners have been taking a continuous beating the world over since the the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-08, Pakistani politics and its most prominent public faces have dragged themselves through so much mud that nobody wants anything to do with them. Politics is
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Conflicting claims: the relationship between political instability and the economy Many people are worried about how political instability is creating an inconducive environment for the Pakistani economy. Khaleeq Kiani writes in Dawn that “The prime minister has not been able to hold a meeting of the federal cabinet for almost a month against the normal
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Mearsheimer and the character of Pakistan’s political economy Political scientist John Mearsheimer has been getting a lot of attention following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While his realist view (in the social scientific sense rather than the literal sense) has been picked apart by Smolenski and Dutkiewicz, it is understandable why it might be popular
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I had written the following letter to the Financial Times in the summer of 2018 prior to the general elections in Pakistan. The FT didn’t publish it. I’m posting it here now. I think I got at least some things right. Some of my observations are still relevant today in light of recent developments, such
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In his February 28, 2022 speech, Prime Minister Imran Khan presented a curious table with inflation data which got me thinking. While the table looked crude and poorly put together, there might in fact have been some method to the seemingly haphazard way the information was presented. The key, I think, is to remember that
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Between a capitalist rock and a democratic hard place Capitalism and democracy, for all their beauty, are also brutal systems, subject to the volatility and absurdities of human decision making. Guided by the profit motive and the exclusionary power of capital, capitalism is a powerful but difficult beast to tame and put to work for
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I had penned the following on Saturday, January 22, 2022. The day after, the prime minister began a surreal broadcast by complaining about not being able to speak in parliament. The recently published National Security Policy of Pakistan (along with its summary) pretends to be technical and apolitical in claiming to put economic resources and their re-distribution at
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Letter in FT: read here.
Daniyal Khan 