Pakistan's labor force expansion is the 3rd biggest in the world after India and Nigeria, according to UN World Population Prospects 2017. Rising working age population and growing workforce participation of both men and women in…

An often overlooked benefit of buying and sacrificing millions of animals during Eid ul Azha celebration is the massive transfer of wealth from relatively rich urban population to the comparatively poor village population.   In other words, it helps create jobs and redistribute wealth to alleviate poverty in a similar way as zakat, taxes and sadaqa (charity) do.  Here's a blog post I wrote last year (2016) on this subject and I am reproducing it…

There are frequent accusations of forced marriages in India and Pakistan which are regularly reported in the mass media. These reports elicit a strong emotional response from the society at large. Many such cases end up in violence with families taking the law in their own hands. A few of these cases end up in courts with the judges deciding the fate of such marriages. Let's examine the reality of "forced marriages" in South Asia.



Interfaith…

British Afghan war veteran Major Robert Gallimore says he saw no presence of Pakistan's intelligence service ISI in Afghanistan. The Afghan Army saw the " imagined nefarious hand" and "bogeyman" of Pakistan everywhere but he never saw it. He "saw not one piece of evidence" of it. It was all in their minds.…

Announcing the new US strategy on Afghanistan this week, President Donald Trump singled out "valued partner" Pakistan for increased American pressure to act against "agents of chaos" such as the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network who attack American service members and officials. Trump said this "will have to change, and that will change immediately." He also sought India's help in Afghanistan while ignoring the increased…

Nearly half a million people of Pakistani origin call America home. Pakistani-Americans' education and income levels are significantly higher than those of the general population of the United States. Among them are doctors, engineers, lawyers, accountants, journalists, politicians, business executives, professional sports team managers and owners, artists, actors, entrepreneurs, salespeople, policemen, soldiers, convenience store clerks and taxi, bus and truck drivers. United States is the…

Caramel Tech Studios, a Lahore-based mobile games company founded by three Pakistani brothers, is starting a new San Francisco startup, Fizz, that promises to do real-time translation for text chat in mobile games, according to a report by Dean Takahashi in VentureBeat.  Mobile games market represents a huge and rapidly growing lucrative opportunity for Pakistani game developers and…

It is commonly accepted that Iran and Pakistan remained the best of friends until the fall of the Shah. Beginning in 1979, the relations between the two neighbors worsened with Imam Khomeni's Islamic Revolution in Iran and General Zia ul Haq's Islamization in Pakistan.

Opposition to…

The landscape of shopping has changed quite a bit in Pakistan as well along with the rest of the world. From jewellery, clothing, beauty products to books and appliances everything is now just a click away and can be shopped online without getting into long queues at the mall. While some categories such as home appliances, beauty products, clothing and shoes took off really well and gained quick popularity in Pakistan’s online shopping scene, the other categories involving items of daily…

Pakistan has announced plans to develop and produce 5th generation fighter plane, according to media reports. It's part of Pakistan Air Force's highly ambitious Project Azm that includes building Kamra Aviation City dedicated to education, research and development and manufacturing of advanced fighter jets, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and weapon systems.…

Five Pakistani companies are featured in the Forbes magazine’s latest annual ranking of the 200 best companies with under $1 billion in revenue in the Asia-Pacific  region. Pakistan's representation of 5 on the list is down from 7 last year. The number of Indian companies on the list is down to 3, less than half of the seven companies that made it in 2016.

Among Pakistan's five companies on the list is Ferozsons Laboratories which is making its debut this year. The company's…

The Big Sick, a cross-culture romantic comedy based on actual events,  breaks new ground by casting a brown-skinned Pakistani-American in a lead role in a movie produced and widely screened in the United States. Acquired by Amazon Studios for $12 million after a bidding war at Sundance film festival, the film has already grossed over $25 million so far.…

India is among the the top 5 sources of migrants seeking asylum in OECD countries, according to OECD's International Migration Outlook 2017. The other four are: China, Syria,…