Wordfall, by Kaleem Omar

Despite being the mainstay of Pakistan’s economy, agriculture was something of a neglected sector in the Musharraf era

This does not mean that no attention was paid to this sector. But a lot more should have been done to address some the sector’s key problem areas, including adopting less wasteful methods of irrigation and developing crops with higher per-acre yields than the existing varieties. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the nineteenth century, when well-heeled English civil servants and army officers (as opposed to their less well-off counterparts) coming out to postings in Karachi or other parts of British India used to book their passage on steamships belonging to the P & O Shipping Line, they would specify a port cabin on the outward-bound voyage and a starboard cabin on the homeward-bound voyage – on the theory that port-side cabins were supposed to be cooler than starboard-side cabins on the way out and starboard-side cabins cooler than port-side cabins on the way home, those, of course, being the days when there was no air-conditioning or even electric fans.

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That’s why it’s important to remember that when putting cheese in the mousetrap, always leave room for the mouse. That’s also why it is said that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.

First, there was brinkmanship with its devious diplomacy, calculated deceptions and sabre-rattling. Then, there was one-upmanship, the fine art of getting an advantage over others or showing that one is better than them without actually cheating. Then, along came gamesmanship with its attendant books, including one entitled “The Games People Play” explaining the intricacies of such favourite pastimes as power games, social games and business games. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a trout fisherman like me, one of the problems of living in Karachi is that you’re more than a thousand miles from the nearest trout stream. Sure, there is plenty of sea-fishing along the Karachi coast. The waters around Charna Island are a good place for marlin and the waters off Cape Monze teem with black pomfret on moonlit nights. There is also some reasonably good freshwater fishing within striking distance of Karachi.If you want to catch trout, however, you have to travel all the way to the upper reaches of the Kunhar River in the Kaghan Valley or the upper reaches of the Swat River. Pandhar Lake, near the headwaters of the Gilgit River, is also good place for trout. Read the rest of this entry »

If C is for Condi and D is for Democracy, C is also for Chevron – the US oil company that has named one of its oil supertankers after Condoleezza Rice – and D is also for Destruction – of the kind that the Bush administration has unleashed on Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Bush administration’s original name for its invasion of Iraq was “Operation Iraqi Liberation”. But when White House officials realised that the acronym for the name spelt “OIL”, they hurriedly changed it to “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. Read the rest of this entry »

America has had several presidents who were not exactly bursting with intelligence. These luminaries include Republican Chester A. Arthur (president from 1881 to 1885), Republican Benjamin Harrison (1889 to 1893), Republican Gerald R. Ford (1974 to January 20, 1977 – Ford, who people said was solid cement between the ears and interested only in American football, was Nixon’s vice-president and became president when Nixon resigned in August 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal), and the avuncular fuddy-duddy Republican Ronald Reagan (1981 to January 20, 1989). Read the rest of this entry »

In a landmark judgment announced on June 23, a nine-member full bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, cancelled the sell-off deal of Pakistan Steel Mils and declared the government’s Letter of Acceptance dated March 31, 20906 and the Share Purchase Agreement dated March 31, 2006 as “void and of no legal effect.” Read the rest of this entry »

A key element in the formulation of a feasible long-term path of development is a national marketing strategy aimed at optimal economic performance.

Four major problems continue to plague many developing nations: low levels of living; the problem of population growth; a lack of jobs; and a deteriorating plus inadequate infrastructure.

There is a huge per capita income gap between rich and poor nations. Switzerland, one of the world’s richest nations in GDP per capita terms, has over 400 times the per capita income of Ethiopia, one of the world’s poorest countries. Japan’s GDP per capita, at $ 34,715, is 40 times higher than Pakistan’s, at $ 850 (the latest government figure). Read the rest of this entry »

KARACHI: It is not every day that we, in this country, have something to cheer about. But on Friday we most definitely did. For that, of course, was the day the Supreme Court handed down its decision to cancel the sale of the state-owned Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) – the country’s biggest industrial enterprise – to a consortium of buyers comprising a Russian company, a Saudi company and a Pakistani company for a mere $ 362 million (Rs 21.68 billion) at a rate of Rs 16.8 per share.

One says “a mere $ 362 million” because the 4,457 acres of land alone, which is part of the Steel Mills, is worth more than that at current prices. It seems fishy, to say the least, that the price of this land was not included in the Privatisation Commission’s evaluation of what PSM is worth. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a lot of hype in the international press these days about the emergence of India as an economic powerhouse that is likely to rival China in the next few years. The rapid growth of India’s IT export earnings is often cited as an example of the economic and technological progress that India has made on recent years. But there is a darker side to this rosy picture. According to the World Bank, about 500 million Indians still lack access to electricity. That’s nearly 50 per cent of India’s population of 1.1 billion, and more than the total population of the European Union. Read the rest of this entry »