Parliament ko kis say khatra hai By Rauf Klasra

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In southern Punjab with no protocol – Javed Chaudhry

The city of  Bhong  is 20 minutes away from  Rahimyar Khan . We were a few hundred feet above the land and the noise from the helicopter engines was very loud. Chief Minister  Shahbaz Sharif  looked out and with great sorrow and a deep sigh said, “Look at the devastation. It’s simply mindboggling. How many years will you need to rehabilitate these fields, farm houses, villages and houses?” He was here the very next day after the flood came. “By then the town of Bhong was under water, people had taken refuge on trees, mounds and roofs of houses. Land links, power supply and telephones were suspended; even the famous Bhong Mosque was inundated.” He and his team started the supply of food, clothes, water and tents to people by helicopters and boats. “I haven’t seen destruction on such a large scale in my life… these are the most horrifying days I have ever had. If I had to go to Lahore for an official engagement that could not be avoided, I would but then I would r...
Read more

Flight of the flamingos

ACCORDING to the ‘standard’ theory on state formation and development, usually the first step in the emergence of a nascent ‘state’ historically has been when a ruler, more often than not the thug-in-chief, has managed to impose some degree of centralised authority over a territory by employing scale economies of violence. The next step has been to impose and collect taxes (okay, we missed this one) and promote commerce. The next big step in the stylised evolution comes when the ruler wanted to borrow to protect the kingdom or go to war, and the elites demanded a share of power. Depending on factors such as the size of the ruling elite class, the broad routes that have been chosen next include historically: setting up an ‘extractive’ state that redistributes resources from the masses to the elites, or grow the economy and partially share the benefits (but not power). The first has been dubbed a redistributive state by Professor Tim Besley of LSE (quite opposite to the way the term i...
Read more