We were never good at taking rejection as a people, but as men, Pakistanis don’t even make it passably human. They retaliate with counter accusations and if that does not match the insult their deified egos faced, they resort to violence. Sometimes even violence is...
There is a lot of talk at the Stockholm Internet Forum 2015 (SIF15) about how Internet rights are synonymous with human rights. It may sound like a #FirstWorldProblem but here why it is not. The Internet is this one unique opportunity where the developing world...
When life takes you down, as it sometimes does, the two things that have brought me back to the light are classical music and knowing I live in the age of Margaret Atwood. Music, because well, there is this glorious instrument called the piano and...
Somewhere in Sahiwal when a woman would now jog at the Ladies and Children Park in Farid Town it would be an act of revolt and bravery. It would be this woman vs. patriarchy, vs. subjugation and vs. the culture of associating women claiming public...
On a TV show discussing if child marriages are kosher, I realized I should not have been there in the first place. It was like discussing if waterboarding, maiming or beheadings were a laudable method of bringing societal change. There can be no discussion when...
It is sometimes the clearest of accusations that one must be most weary of. These accusations, like the one Christine Fair levelled on Pakistan – You are the enemy of the US – that imprisons Pakistan within its own narrowest allegiances. We take on the...
For women, taking back the wheel has always been a herculean task. In neighbouring India for instance a recent International Labor Organization (ILO) report outlines that despite the economy growing significantly, the female labor force participation has fallen by seven percentage points, to 24 percent...
There is a positive, mutually beneficial way of maintaining investments that come in. Then there is the Pakistan way. Part of my work involves advising an UNCTAD-affiliated international Investment promotion agency, and when collating some of the most active investment promotion fronts, India keeps popping...
Its murky business when a country where marital rape has barely become punishable tries to prosecute rape generally – because the concept of consent is practically non-existent. Where would one begin to explain it to men that if someone doesn’t want a cup of tea...
The strange thing about the cloak of overt religiosity is that it squeezes its victims with laws – like a boa constrictor – with such mercilessness, that the victim in its crackling grip has no choice than to feel regretful. In the same way as...
