Month: January 2021

(First published on June 27, 2020) Storytelling is no rocket science. Creativity is not the name of a fruit that grows only on the trees of Narnia. And yet Pakistan has mostly…

(First published on June 20th, 2020)Unchecked renegade ideologies can prove expensive. Usually called into existence by political expediency to meet some short-term goals, these ideologies are soon abandoned. But unlike computer subroutines,…

(First published on June 13th, 2020) By the time these lines reach you the federal budget for the fiscal year 2020-21 must have been presented. As I write the total number of…

(First published on June 6th, 2020) Those who have known pain and loss intimately do not take pleasure in another person’s misery. That is if they are not broken beyond repair or…

(First published on May 30th, 2020) What happens if China and India go to war? Who wins and who loses in the end? How did we end up here? If a war…

(First published on May 23rd, 2020) Covid-19 has badly shaken our world. You cannot name a single walk of life which has not been adversely affected by the pandemic. The world economy…

(First published on May 16, 2020) Deconstruct this. The authorities are gradually relaxing the lockdown restrictions. This was to be expected. How long can a society suspend its economics and shutter its…

(First published on May 09, 2020) Pakistan is not the first country that comes to mind when you discuss Covid-19. The infection numbers are still relatively low here. The novel coronavirus related…

(First published on May 2nd, 2020) The First World War was raging when the German authorities struck gold in a clever idea. If they could send Vladimir Lenin and the rest of…

(First published on April 25th, 2020) Democracy around the world is in turmoil. The ongoing turbulence can be attributed to only one global disaster. As many democratically elected leaders around the world…

(First published on April 18th, 2020) During the lockdown, mostly cooped up in the house, I finally managed to finish the TV series that I have been trying to for a while. The…

(First published on April 11th, 2020) Crises bring out the best and the worst among us. The ongoing double whammy does nothing less. On one side it has exposed the poverty of…

(First published on April 4th, 2020) Mankind is failing. On the face of it, a microscopic bug has brought it on its knees. But that is only half of the story. In…

(First published on March 28th, 2020) The novel coronavirus outbreak threatens to permanently alter the way we live. With the ever-increasing number of infections, only a small proportion of the total population…

(First published on March 21st, 2020) As the United States was bracing itself for an impact and the US President and many conservative pundits were still comparing the coronavirus to influenza, Tucker…

(First published on March 14, 2020) Have you ever seen anything that threatens to destroy the fabric of every society and yet has the potential to build an airtight case for unconditional…

(First published on March 7th, 2020) Russia’s powerful President Vladimir Putin recently gave an annual state of the nation address. Whenever he speaks he creates news. That is proof of power and…

(First published on February 29th, 2020) It is official. India has arrived at the worst place possible in its history. The proof of the pudding became evident during President Donald Trump’s 36-hour…

(First published on February 22, 2020) President Donald Trump’s upcoming India visit is an unparalleled feat of remarkable optics and symbolism. He lands in the country on February 24. From Sardar Vallabhbhai…

(First published on February 15, 2020) Roughly two years ago in this space, I quoted Francis Fukuyama’s three-step definition of populism. One, populism chooses short-term popular decisions over the long-term interests of…

(First published on February 08, 2020) Tired of politics? Let’s talk about something better. As the country signs one FTA after another with various states, the question that comes to my mind…

(First published on February 01, 2020) After being totally irrelevant for the past three years, the Palestinians are being mentioned again. And that is only because of Trump’s ‘deal of the century’….

(First published on January 25, 2020) As world leaders and business leaders met at Davos, international media seemed consumed particularly by one politician who was not there and one country which was…

(First published on January 18, 2020) When terrorists killed innocent children in 2014 it was as if a dam had broken — the dam of denial. When terrorists killed others I know…

(First published on January 11th, 2020) This is a moment as good as any to pause and reflect. The world we knew was a good place. Or at least we thought it…

(First published on January 4th, 2020) India has a new army chief. Well, sort of. Are you an army chief if your predecessor is still in uniform, sitting above you, waiting to…

(First published on December 28th, 2019) India seems to have woken up. It took a deeply vile regime’s repeated efforts to ostracise and eliminate a huge chunk of India’s population of 1.3…

(First published on December 21st, 2019) Two controversies raised their heads this week. One legal. The other diplomatic. You have heard much too much about the former; and as more details filter…

(First published on December 14th, 2019) Democracy is on trial around the world. Literally. President Donald Trump faces a bruising impeachment process in the US which may hurt his image but leave…

(First published on December 07, 2019) On Tuesday, December 3, the tech world was rocked by an interesting news. Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced that they were stepping down…