Media Watchdog

Primary education has been allocated Rs3.2 billion while higher education has been allocated Rs252.1 billion – many, many times that of primary education spending. This lopsided allocation makes one wonder who the government thinks would enter universities, kids that never went to proper primary school?

When I saw that familar Facebook logo on the menu of a corner-side fast food restaurant, I realized that SMEs are starting to understand the real potential of social media, which will lead the new industry to thrive in Pakistan - sooner or later. If a restaurateur can understand the potential of social media for his small business, why can't other businesses?

How did we think we would be safe visiting a Sufi shrine on July 2? What was I thinking? My family could have been killed. I would never have forgiven myself. One of our elder family friends seated on the sofa interrupts my contemplation: "Well sometimes such attacks should take place. How else will these ignorant people learn that what they are practicing is shirk?”

As a content producer for a current affairs program, these clauses are an ambiguous and scary proposition. The vaguer the law, the more prone it is to abuse. In fact, it’s even possible that if I talked about my puppy Buffy, who was kidnapped a while ago, I could face prison since I depressed readers and 'hurt national sentiment!'

I am a firm believer in the dictum ‘personal is political’ (don’t know who said it and I can’t be bothered to Google it and include the reference here) and even a piece which on the face of it may seem frivolous and magazine-ish, it can still say a lot

Pakistan as a country faces an identity crisis. We range from Honda hi lainsa to Blackberry hi lainsa and do not know what to make of one another or how to coexist in a meaningful way. Thus all we do is just heap blame upon one another and not take action on things that really matter.

Dubai and New Delhi have realized that building flyovers and underpasses or expanding roads is not the solution to traffic congestion and have reverted to establishing new or refurbishing old public transport systems. Here, in Karachi we take pride in building these corridors one after another which cater to only car owners or the elite.

This month's National Geographic feature on Pakistan has gone through every single possible cliche in the book. We are supposed to be surprised by how friendly people in Pakistan actually are, how much they know about our way of life and in how much danger these relatively friendly, sort of liberal people are from some boogeyman (in this case the Taliban).