Raashid Wali Janjua

Pakistan’s power and energy issues are interlinked and require structural reforms. The problems are interdisciplinary and multidimensional and not amenable to placebo solutions. It is time the anodyne prescriptions gave way to the strong nostrums to yield sustainable solutions. Starting with energy mix of the country that is heavily tilted in favour of fossil fuel sources with 64% fossil fuels, ...

I s our democracy delivering? Are our institutions strong and independent and yet amenable to the civilian democratic control? The above are the live questions begging answers to some of the perennial issues blighting our politico-economic landscape. We need to introspect as to why our democracy has not delivered as per the expectations of our population. Let us have a ...

Do we understand the meaning of doing something for us by the world that we ought to have done ourselves? If not, we need not go farther than 75 years to take a glimpse at our colonial history. The share of the region that accounted for 25-35% of global GDP till 17th century, when the colonisation began, had dwindled to ...

‘All I will say here is that we failed to defeat Pakistan-a smaller power than us.’ –Lt Gen B M Kaul Sixth of September is a day that shall live forever in the juniper memory of Pakistani hearts as a day when a young country warded off a clear and present danger to its national existence. Indian Army Chief JN ...

Central Asia is a veritable heart of Asia and a cradle of civilisations that inspired many a civilisation in Eurasia and beyond. Ellsworth Huntington said, “the evidence points to Central Asia as man’s original home, for the general movement of human migrations has been outward from that region and not inward.” The panegyrics to the glory of those fabled empires ...

Pak-US relations were born out of a transactional necessity. It was this logic that defined their engagement on four occasions despite regular estrangements on account of geo-political differences. In the 60s, it was the Cold War confrontation that kept both countries together, with the US using Pakistan as an anti-communist outpost while Pakistan extracted rents in terms of military and ...

Unassuaged grievances lie at the heart of present Baloch insurgency where the largest ethnic group feels politically excluded and economically marginalised. Measured by Estaban Ray method and validated through Wolfson Index, the two widely employed measures for quantifying the inequality and polarisation, Balochistan figures highest on the index of polarisation. Some social scientists relegate the economic and political deprivations to ...

Pakistan’s politics has entered a torrid phase of confrontation and polarisation. The reasons for the present political turmoil are rooted in changing socio-economic dynamics and emerging equilibrium in civil-military relations. Pakistan’s present civil-military relations are emblematic of an equilibrium defined by Paul W Zagorski according to which in a stable democracy the patterns of civil-military relations are established by public ...