close
Tuesday April 16, 2024
Naeem Sadiq
Naeem Sadiq

The writer is a management systems consultant and a freelance writer on social issues.

  • July 04, 2020

    Land of guns

    This is the story of C, an imaginary police force of an imaginary city K, located in an imaginary country P. Thus it may be fair to start with a...

  • May 19, 2020

    Esso Peas

    Pakistanis and peas go back a long way. Earliest archaeological finds confirm that peas were popular with the people of the Harappan civilization...

  • April 23, 2020

    Fearvid-19

    Those who mercilessly massacred our Houbara Bustards, Markhors and Siberian Cranes with ferocious falcons and long range guns are now being...

  • February 15, 2020

    Child protection

    Pakistan is faced with a burgeoning menace of child abuse amongst its ‘madressahs’, schools, domestic helpers, child labour and street children....

  • December 21, 2019

    Tipping point

    One must admit at the outset, that some of the most outstanding, upright and accomplished people in Pakistan belong to the legal profession.It may...

  • December 03, 2019

    Preventing accidents

    Seventy-six people died in a single train accident in Pakistan on October 31, 2019. This is about the same number of fatalities that occurred in the...

  • November 19, 2019

    Hygiene for all

    Pakistan’s biggest city Karachi can embarrassingly claim to have built, for its estimated 20 million people, only 124 public toilets in the last...

  • November 12, 2019

    Polio, population and progress

    “In the early twenty-first century the train of progress is again pulling out of the station – and this will probably be the last train ever to...

  • June 23, 2018

    Reforms in the ECP

    Despite numerous proposals and demands for electoral reforms, the Election Commission of Pakistan has been working overtime to keep its processes...

  • May 29, 2018

    A tragedy in waiting

    Five months into 2018 and the US has already experienced 23 school shootings, averaging a little over one school shooting per week. While the...

  • September 11, 2017

    The plundered land

    A citizen of Pakistan recently appealed to the Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to stop the unjust and environmentally destructive allotment and...

  • June 20, 2017

    A haven for lawless vehicles

    In June 2016, the son of the chief justice of Sindh was abducted by kidnappers who used a vehicle with a fake government number plate. It is an...

  • March 20, 2017

    Verify the verified

    My interaction with various government departments, spread over the past many years, created an opportunity to frequently run into and befriend a...

  • February 14, 2017

    Voting from home

    In 1997, David Wolf became the first human to vote from space. This was made possible by Rule 81.35 of the Texas legislature which outlines the...

  • January 12, 2017

    Stray bullets

    Seven-year-old Subhan Irfan did not live to see the dawn of 2017. His right to life was mercilessly wrenched away with a stray bullet fired at...

  • December 15, 2016

    Justice for Houbara Bustards

    By the time this article appears in the press, some 1,000 Houbara Bustards will have been officially annihilated by our friends from the Arab world....

  • October 19, 2016

    Reforming electoral processes

    Two key factors have ensured that the Election Commission of Pakistan continues to remain archaic and ineffective. First, a truly reformed,...

  • September 27, 2016

    Rethinking zoos

    Had animals been as smart, selfish and insensitive as human beings, many of us would be in chains and cages, separated from our families and locked...

  • September 12, 2016

    The ‘relative’ police

    ‘Relative’ police is a police force that works for relatives only. One is entitled to the protection of the ‘relative...

  • July 20, 2016

    Reluctant to reform

    When the wise old man of Sindh ordered recovery of the Sindh chief justice’s son and apprehending the killers of Amjad Sabri within a week, it...

  • July 01, 2016

    Plunder at the hilltops

    Unnoticed in the heat of the moment and the prejudices of the politics, a quiet but remarkable change is taking place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Even a...

  • June 23, 2016

    Architects of our own misfortune

    On Monday, June 20, Karachi experienced yet another traumatic and heartrending incident. The son of the chief justice of the Sindh High Court was...

  • May 02, 2016

    Fragile right to information

    Right to information is a swanky topic. It is the perfect candidate for foreign-funded seminars, suitably lubricated with high-teas in five-star...

  • April 19, 2016

    The tragedy at Rajanpur

    The unfolding events at Rajanpur once again expose the gloomiest chapter of the tragedy of Pakistan. It is not only tragic because a bunch of ragtag...

  • April 05, 2016

    Our travel footprint

    Pakistan may be a minor defaulter in creating the crisis of climate change. Of the 32,100 million tonnes of deadly Carbon Dioxide emitted globally...

  • January 18, 2016

    Today’s ‘thuggee’

    The band of stranglers engaged in ‘thuggee’ in India during the 18th and 19th centuries is estimated to have killed between 50,000 and 100,000...

  • November 25, 2015

    The unholy licence

    Consider the recent public notice by the federal government declaring that all gun licences issued before January 31, 2011 would stand cancelled if...

  • October 27, 2015

    Is de-weaponisation possible?

    Our war on terror is much like trying to fill a bucket without first plugging its numerous holes. Instead of eliminating weapons , the state...

  • August 22, 2015

    Elusive electoral reforms

    Fast forward to May 2018. Riots erupt in all major towns of Pakistan after the announcement of the election results. Political parties complain of...

  • August 08, 2015

    Donor-driven reforms

    The fate of reforms and projects can often be predicted by how they are described in the newspaper ads. Obscure jargon such as “the need for...

  • July 17, 2015

    Fighting without ‘fact-ics’

    Three fundamental questions could have drastically cut down the size and duration of Pakistan’s war against crime and terror. ‘Who owns’,...

  • June 24, 2015

    How not to collect taxes

    Why would a government intentionally make payment of taxes a frustrating ordeal for its citizens? One needs to study the Sindh Excise & Taxation ...

  • June 16, 2015

    Politics of prohibited bore

    Few appeasements entice a Pakistani politician more than a prohibited-bore weapon licence. Needless to say, the massive proliferation of these...

  • June 05, 2015

    The right to 'no'

    "Democratic progress requires the ready availability of true and complete information. To act otherwise is to give way to despotic secrecy.” –...

  • March 11, 2015

    Our ‘napping’ brigade

    ‘We are in a state of war’ this is what we get to hear every day. However, most Pakistanis seem convinced that the much-talked-about war on...

  • February 18, 2015

    The sale of Saiful Maluk

    For years the eco-system of Balochistan has been mercilessly plundered by visitors from rich Middle Eastern states. Trampling upon large tracts of...

  • February 02, 2015

    Unverified SIMs

    The discovery of 5000 illegal SIMs in May 2014, held by just one apprehended terrorist in Karachi, came as a rude surprise to the otherwise highly...