The last five years of Pakistan's outgoing government of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) have seen the revival of Pakistan's economy and completion of many long delayed infrastructure and energy projects. Mr. Nawaz Sharif deserves full credit for it.  At the same time, the PML government is responsible for slow progress on human development indicators, major decline in exports, growing twin deficits of budget and external accounts, mounting public debt and lack of transparency in…

SiFive,  a Silicon Valley intellectual property tech startup, has raised $50.6 million in series C funding. The company is headed by Pakistani-American CEO and fellow NED University alumnus Dr. Naveed Sherwani.  SiFive investors include Intel Capital, Western Digital, Sutter Hill Ventures and Spark Capital.…

Alibaba Group (BABA.N) has bought the entire share capital of ecommerce platform Daraz, Rocket Internet said, according to Reuters. American ecommerce giant Amazon is already in Pakistan via its investment in another ecommerce platform Clicky.pk.

Daraz, founded in Pakistan in 2012, operates online…

Why is the violence in Afghanistan intensifying? Why has US-NATO coalition dropped more bombs in Afghanistan in Jan-March 2018 quarter than in any other 3 month period in the last 15 years? Is it in response to the Taliban annual spring offensive? Or the Daish (ISIS) contributing to more killings? Is the Trump administration too busy with the military option and paying too little…

Excluding the minorities, every person wants to own his/her own empire. A home or a business, everyone likes the people to follow his mind and help them fulfill their goals to achieve a life he or she had ever dreamt of.

If you are one such person with dreams like this, you are the one willing to be a leader. Leading a team of professionals is far more different than leading a family. And if you wish to be perceived as a leader, specifically at your work place, you need to change…

Pakistan's exports have declined significantly since former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's PMLN party assumed power in 2013. They are down from about $25 billion in 2013-14 to about $20 billion in 2016-17.  At the same time, the nation's imports have jumped to $47 billion during this period, widening the trade deficit to a record $27 billion. Overvaluation of the Pakistani currency and CPEC related imports are often cited as a reason for it. The other, probably more important reason, may be…

Social media newsfeeds are driven by users' profiles to reinforce their preferences and prejudices.  Newsfeeds are customized for each user. Any posts that don't fit these profiles don't get displayed. The result is increasing tribalism in the world. American and British intelligence agencies claim that Russian intelligence has used social media to promote divisions and manipulate public opinion in the West.  Like the US and the UK, Pakistan also has ethnic, sectarian and regional…

An 8-year-old Muslim girl Asifa Bano was locked in a Hindu temple, drugged, gang-raped for several days and then bludgeoned to death in Indian occupied Kashmir, according to a report in a leading American newspaper.…

Pakistani movie "Cake" is a Sindhi family drama set in Karachi and rural Sindh.  I had the chance to see it on a Silicon Valley theater screen in California.

Cake is nothing like the usual …

Men and ladies ordinarily get puzzled with the time period actual point and real estate Organization. Real estate by itself isn't identified with the association as it connotes a property of land and making that also, including every single characteristic asset, for example, flora, fauna, crops, parks, pools and so on. that is relentless and lies in the property's premises. While genuine estate organization is the control of offering, buying or renting these homes.

True Estate…

The partition of India to carve out the Muslim majority state of Pakistan was strongly contested by the Hindu-dominated Indian National Congress. It was also opposed by many within the Indian Muslim community from both the right and the left ends of the…

Pakistan's per capita daal (pulse) consumption has sharply declined to about 7 kg/person from about 15 Kg/person in 1960s, according to data released by Food and Agriculture Organization and reported in Pakistani media. Meat has replaced it as the main source of protein with per capita meat consumption rising from 11.7 kg in 2000 to 32 kg in 2016. It…

Ahmar Mustikhan, a pro-insurgency Baloch activist based in Washington D.C., has released a video recorded in Urdu in which he has lambasted Indian intelligence agency RAW for letting him down.  Mustikhan has been part of Indian sponsored media campaign to attack Pakistan in the United States. He has collaborated with Tarek Fatah known for his advocacy for …

Some have called London the "Money Laundering Capital of the World" where corrupt leaders from developing nations use looted wealth from their people to buy expensive real estate and other assets. Private individuals and businesses from poor nations also park money in the west and other off-shore tax havens to hide their incomes and assets from the tax authorities in their countries…

India tops the list of charity recipients from private foundations while Pakistan is ranked as the 12th largest recipient of philanthropic giving in the world, according to a report released by OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and…

Media reports suggest global e-commerce behemoth Amazon.com could purchase substantial stake in Pakistan's e-commerce site  Clicky.pk.  This comes on the heels of a…

Construction on the recently completed 893 kilometer long Gwadar-Ratodero motorway, also known as M8, was started by a Chinese contractor back in early 2004 on former President Pervez Musharraf's watch. The work was soon abandoned when three Chinese engineers were killed by a car bomb during the first week of May, 2004.  In 2003, a year before this incident, Indian intelligence agency RAW had recruited Kulbhushan Jadhav as an undercover agent. He was issued a passport under an assumed name…

What is behind the domestic and international aviation boom in India and Pakistan? Why is Pakistan doing better than India in terms of international passenger growth while badly lagging in domestic air travel?…

What common experience have Malala Yousufzai and some of the young shooting victims of Parkland and Sandy Hook schools shared? After being at the receiving end of life-threatening shootings, they became targets of the slings and arrows of conspiracy theorists alleging the attacks were staged. Malala acknowledged this fact in her video…

About 100 million Pakistani adults lacked access to formal and regulated financial services as of 2016, according to a World Bank report on financial inclusion.  Only 2.9% of adults in Pakistan had a debit card, and only 1% of…