Preventable accidents has sadly been routine in Karachi, but the Gul Plaza inferno may yet mark a rare moment where official acknowledgement is followed by corrective action. The Sindh government’s announcement that a judicial inquiry will be conducted into the deadly fire is a necessary step, though one that comes only after public pressure and […]
This year, Davos was revealing. It reinforced a perception that the world was at the cusp of a major restructuring, even if it was having trouble defining it. A loud din of the lone superpower giving way to multipolarity; Canada’s Mark Carney proclaiming that the era of the rule-based order was over and stood swept […]
Local governments remain the only real antidote to Pakistan’s development rot. Yet in Karachi today, major infrastructure projects dominate the provincial government’s imagination. Flyovers, underpasses, buses, housing schemes and mega water projects are rolled out and defended with great fanfare. In the face of criticism, the government responds with lists: K-IV, mass transit, Shahrah-e-Bhutto, road […]
Power in international politics is mostly linked with acts of decisiveness, or military intervention, sanctions, vetoes, recognition or denial. Yet one of the most influential powers of the present day is in a much less obvious form: delay. Waiting, increasingly, is not an accident of global governance but a technique of it. In a global […]