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Showing posts from February, 2014

Afghan refugees in Pakistan

Courtesy:- Syed Mohammad Ali For more than three decades, Pakistan has been home to one of the world’s largest refugee communities due to multiple waves of Afghans crossing over the porous international border to flee repeated bouts of escalating conflict within their war-ravaged country. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had unleashed the first wave of refugees into Pakistan and neighbouring Iran, but then more refugees came to escape years of civil war, and then the brutality of the Taliban regime. Since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afg hanistan, some 3.8 million have returned home, but around 1.7 million registered Afghan refugees chose to remain in Pakistan, with roughly another million living among our midst illegally.

Privatization of Ailing SOEs

Courtesy:-   TILA KHAN The economy of Pakistan has been through many phases over the last 67 years of its existence. While there have been long periods of recession, there were times when the country experienced economic booms. Presently, the economy has grown to a level where it can be rightly branded as one of the major economies of the world in terms of volume. However, it has swung from the extremes of nationalization to massive efforts of privatization. The nationalization programme was implemented for the first time as a policy programme by Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in order to lay the foundations of socialist economic reforms to improve the growth of the national economy. The programme began in 1972 to promote economic democracy and liberalization through nationalisation of basic industries including life insurance companies, vegetable ghee units and commercial banks. Even flour mills, rice husking and cotton ginning factories were taken over by the government. Desp

PM’s wise view of security

Courtesy:-  S Rahman Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif has rightly opined that the state cannot survive if the constitutional order was not respected and the rule of law not enforced. These views of the prime minister that he expressed at National Defence University need to be evaluated in the historical perspective with specific reference to the history of democracy. The fact is that ever since the democracy took roots in different systems of governance, from the days of the Athens to date, the constitution has always been viewed globally (with few exceptions) as a noble covenant that forms the very foundation of a state.