Caste and I

by Saba Aslam

The diversity of Asia's peoples
Photo credit: Wikipedia/Nordisk familjebok

I come from a family where caste has little or no significance in either getting to know about a person or a particular family. This was one of the reasons why I never really asked my father about the origins of my ancestors. May it be social gatherings, or formal meet ups with colleagues, knowing about a person’s caste had never been a basis of interaction. However, I wasn’t new to the concept and had studied about different castes, cultures, races in an introductory socio-cultural anthropology course in my undergraduate degree. Moreover, caste is definitely talked about in instances when people get married especially in the context of highlighting somebody marrying outside his/her caste. This may be perceived differently depending upon how much weight a person places on his/her caste.

Who Benefits from CPEC?

by Asad Sayeed

Photo credit: Wikipedia/mandarineveryday

The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (henceforth CPEC) has evoked mixed emotions in the country. On the one hand, the Federal Government and the private sector (especially some businessmen and bankers) have called CPEC a ‘game changer’ in the fortunes of Pakistan’s economy and on the other hand, provincial elites – particularly of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) – are apprehensive that their provinces will not get the fair share of benefits that will accrue from CPEC. The debate on CPEC thus is polarized around the issue of horizontal inequality that it is expected to generate.

Passive or Non-Violent?

by Haris Gazdar and Noorulain Masood

Martin Luther King, Jr. at an anti-Vietnam War rally (April 27, 1967)
Photo credit: Wikipedia/Minnesota historical society/Flickr

Bacha Khan is an inspiration for many. Founder of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement, he was a man who directed his vision and political insight to advocate for peaceful social change. The carnage at the Bacha Khan University is not the first time his legacy of non-violence has faced a violent backlash. In fact Bacha Khan spent much of his life in jail or exile. He died in 1988 under house arrest. His funeral in Afghanistan saw two bomb explosions. Fifteen people died. While the attack on the university is a reminder of how far we have strayed from Bacha Khan’s philosophy, so does the response.

How trade with India helped Lollywood

by Asad Sayeed and Kabeer Dawani

The evolution of the Pakistani cinema
Movies released in 2004 [top], 2013 [bottom left] and 2015 [bottom right]
Photo credit: Wikipedia

In 2015, the cinema industry in Pakistan is doing better business than at any point in the last 30 years. This exciting revival of cinema in Pakistan serves as a case in point of the manner in which allowing the import of an Indian product that has cultural and linguistic affinity with most Pakistanis has led to a reversal in the fortunes of that sector.

Pakistani cinema industry was in steady decline for the last three decades. In the early 1980s, there were over 100 feature films being produced annually and were exhibited in over 1200 cinemas all over Pakistan.[1] By 2006, the number of cinemas had fallen into the double-digits and in 2003, not a single Urdu film was released in the country.

The price of political Islam

by Ayesha Khan

RAWA's rally against Taliban in Peshawar, 1998
Photo credit: Wikipedia/RAWA

Why does it come as no surprise to us in Pakistan that Tashfeen Malik spent significant time in Saudi Arabia and was a student at al-Huda in Multan? Because we already know that violent extremism in the name of Islam has been fostered in our country through external funding and religious education emanating from these sources, much as they care to deny this on the international stage. So what are we, ordinary men and women whose lives have been changed by this phenomenon to varying degrees in Muslim countries over the last few decades, doing to stop it?

Politics and social change

by Haris Gazdar

Pakistan's youngest political prisoner: 4 year old MRD activist Fraz Wahlah, 1985
Photo credit: Wikipedia

Last Saturday, I spoke at a panel discussion - “Pakistan: fossilized or quietly transforming” at the 2015 Khayaal Festival. Dr. Ali Cheema who teaches economics at the LUMS and conducts research at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives (IDEAS) and the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP) moderated the discussion. I was privileged to share the panel with the distinguished demographer and social scientist Dr Zeba Sathar who heads the Pakistan country office of the Population Council in Pakistan and does pathbreaking work on fertility and demographic trends.

Has Pakistan changed, or is it caught in a rut? Ali Cheema introduced this question using the work of two commentators on Pakistan, William Easterly and Anatol Lieven. Easterly wonders why Pakistan lags behind in so many social indicators of education, health, and women’s empowerment despite having a relatively educated and sophisticated elite, and having produced many individuals who excel in the professions globally. Lieven characterizes Pakistan as being “governed by the traditions of overriding loyalty to family, clan and religion... a highly conservative, archaic... inert mass of different societies".

How old are you?

by Azmat Budhani and Hussain Bux Mallah

The first National Identity Card issued in Pakistan

Many of us field researchers have had frustrating and at times amusing experiences probing respondents’ ages. For most types of household surveys we need to fill out a family roster which includes an age column where we record the age of each household member. Recording this data is not an easy job because a respondent is often unaware of his or her own precise age, let alone the ages of other household members. This shows up as discrepancies in the data. An adult son, for instance, might have been noted as 25 years and his mother’s age will be recorded as 35, implying that the mother gave birth to her son when she was 10 years old. Clustering of ages around multiples of five years has been reported across surveys in Pakistan and other countries with similar conditions. Although researchers have many tricks to get to the year of birth within certain margins of error, accurate recording of the actual date of birth remains a challenge.