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Thursday April 18, 2024
Adnan Adil
Adnan Adil

  • June 15, 2017

    Our middle class

    Pakistan is no more largely an agricultural, rural society, where landowners hold sway over the economic, social and political space. Society has...

  • June 01, 2017

    A question of priorities

    The utilisation statistics of the Punjab development budget tell the same old story of how education and health are neglected for the sake of...

  • May 14, 2017

    A strategic alliance

    The strategic ties between India and the US are on the rise and are likely to have implications for Pakistan’s security and strategic...

  • March 23, 2017

    The PPP in Punjab

    Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Asif Ali Zardari are trying to restore the PPP’s political standing in Punjab. While Bilawal is taking care of the...

  • March 03, 2017

    Fighting Daesh

    A section of the security establishment has come out of its denial mode about the presence of Isis/Daesh in Pakistan and started recognising the...

  • February 10, 2017

    CPEC for peace

    The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is largely viewed as a significant Chinese investment that will infuse a new life into Pakistan’s...

  • January 31, 2017

    The root of child labour

    The brutal torture of Tayyaba, a 10-year-old housemaid, in Islamabad has triggered the advocacy of child rights in the media and higher judiciary....

  • January 21, 2017

    A balancing act in Afghanistan

    Islamabad is trying to balance its act in Afghanistan with Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa reaching out to the Kabul leadership twice after...

  • December 31, 2016

    Altering Kashmir

    Unnerved by the latest round of Kashmiri intifada, New Delhi has stepped up military and non-military aggressive measures against the Kashmiri...

  • December 24, 2016

    Indian belligerence

    The death toll of civilian and military casualties in cross-border firing along the Line of Control is on the rise. The casualties and injuries...

  • November 07, 2016

    Foggy days

    Winters traditionally begin with foggy days in the plains of Punjab but the fog that enveloped Lahore on November 2 was unprecedented. The smoky...

  • October 09, 2016

    Victims of limestone

    Exploitation of limestone in the Salt Range for the manufacturing of cement has become a nightmare for the local population. The fast depletion and...

  • September 30, 2016

    An economic dystopia

    The economic policies adopted by our self-serving elite have spawned a vicious cycle of low levels of economic growth, socio-economic inequality and...

  • September 18, 2016

    Flooding in Lahore

    Lahore’s sewerage-cum-drainage system was built nearly 80 years ago for a small city with a population of a few hundred thousand....

  • September 08, 2016

    Ensuring quality drugs

    Some recent credible investigations by the Punjab government into the quality of locally-manufactured drugs show that those people who keep...

  • August 18, 2016

    Countering terrorism

    While an array of foreign and domestic forces are involved in fomenting terrorism in Pakistan, illegal movement at the Pak-Afghan border and the...

  • August 04, 2016

    On becoming a citizen

    It seems that in the eyes of the National Data Registration Authority , every man in Pakistan is a suspected alien until he proves it otherwise. I...

  • July 17, 2016

    Lahore takes all

    Punjab is suffering under the burden of Lahore. While around 10 percent of the province’s 101 million people live in Lahore, 30-40 percent of...

  • June 28, 2016

    Punjab’s real budget

    The Punjab government presents its true annual budget at the end of a fiscal year. What it brandishes at the year’s beginning gives only a...

  • June 18, 2016

    Crushing the Margalla Hills

    With every passing day, destruction of the beautiful Margalla Hills goes on with grave implications for the climate and landscape of Islamabad. For...

  • June 11, 2016

    Protecting the Khewra springs

    Natural water springs and lakes in Punjab are suffering from environmental degradation due to human activity and and neglect. While government...

  • May 31, 2016

    Construction and care

    Lahore’s metro-train project is underway, raising several controversies regarding the displacement of people and threat to heritage. More than...

  • May 23, 2016

    Cleaning Sutlej

    The way we are recklessly destroying our water resources can be seen in the rivers flowing through our cities where they have turned into open...

  • May 17, 2016

    The development budget

    During the first nine months of FY 2015-16, the Punjab government utilised only around Rs189.8 billion out of a total development outlay of Rs369.1...

  • May 11, 2016

    Saving our heritage

    With almost half of the civil work completed on the intercity mass transit rail system, aka the Orange Line, in Lahore, there is little use of...

  • April 27, 2016

    Cutting ‘Chotus’down to size

    The Punjab police’s failure to apprehend the outlaws in the Indus riverine area, and the subsequent army action that led to the surrender of...

  • April 07, 2016

    Unsafe water

    Public-sector water filtration plants, which are considered a main source of safe drinking water for the general public in many parts of the...

  • March 30, 2016

    Fleeing to Thailand

    During the last four years, thousands of Christians have left Pakistan to seek asylum in Thailand from where media reports of their plight in...

  • March 19, 2016

    Fighting a formidable enemy

    Terrorism in Pakistan has become quite complex; the military operations in the north-western tribal belt did not fully eliminate militants but...

  • March 06, 2016

    Soot in the air

    As if emissions of hazardous gases and particles from vehicles and industries were not enough to poison the air we breathe, our state plans to load...

  • February 28, 2016

    Beyond tactical gains

    Elimination of sectarian militants and the campaign against their networks in recent months create the impression that sectarian militancy will soon...

  • February 28, 2016

    Beyond tactical gains

    Elimination of sectarian militants and the campaign against their networks in recent months create the impression that sectarian militancy will soon...

  • February 12, 2016

    The delivery of justice

    Even after almost three years in office, the present government has not taken a single step for improving the slow-moving judicial system that has...

  • February 01, 2016

    The forgotten worker

    According to the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association , around 30 percent of the country’s textile units shut down this cotton season owing...

  • January 15, 2016

    Low-cost housing stunts

    It is the standard practice of our rulers that in areas in which they have little interest, they launch a very small project with a massive...

  • January 03, 2016

    Tobacco control loopholes

    Eleven years have passed since Pakistan signed and ratified the World Health Organisations’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2004 but...

  • December 30, 2015

    Flirting with social development

    Having miserably failed to achieve the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals , Pakistan made yet another commitment by signing up to the...

  • December 18, 2015

    Autonomy for Karachi

    The 2015 local bodies elections in Sindh have reinforced the urban-rural ethnic divide: the big cities falling to the MQM and rural Sindh to the...

  • December 11, 2015

    Lessons from Jhelum

    A few miles in the north of Jhelum city a chipboard factory spread over acres lies gutted to ashes. Five homes of the factory staff stand deserted,...

  • November 15, 2015

    Our family planning failure

    Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the chief ministers of the four provinces were to attend the Population Summit in Islamabad on November 5-6, but...

  • November 05, 2015

    The sectarian conglomerate

    The recent sectarian killings of over 35 people in the Bolan district and Shikarpur display the resilience of terrorist groups despite the fact that...

  • October 31, 2015

    United in trade

    The settlement of the Kashmir dispute may be uncertain, but seven years of trade across the Line of Control has united the people of Jammu and...

  • October 21, 2015

    Blocking tobacco control

    Control on tobacco smoking is a major preventive health issue in our country as it is a major cause of fatal diseases such as cancer and heart and...

  • October 14, 2015

    Addressing the basics

    The capacity of terrorists to strike in any part of the country exposes our abiding vulnerability mainly arising from, among other things,...

  • October 04, 2015

    Fighting corruption

    If history is any guide, short cuts are not helpful in fighting corruption. From Gen Ayub Khan’s ABDO to Gen Pervez Musharraf’s NAB, each burst...

  • September 19, 2015

    Schools for scandal

    While visiting a friend who teaches Urdu at the Government College, Gulberg in Lahore, I saw more than 180 students of the intermediate level...

  • September 05, 2015

    The coal cauldron

    The Sahiwal power project, which will burn six million metric tonnes of coal each year – posing grave environmental risks to the soil, water and...

  • September 01, 2015

    Poisonous water

    At least one million people in Lahore are using unsafe drinking water contaminated with different pollutants including arsenic if we take into...

  • August 12, 2015

    The cost of coal

    Lahore is fortunate that the Punjab government last month abandoned its plan of setting up a small coal-fired power station near the BRB Canal...