Type in a keyword and see the report right away. Explore your online world!
If you have already a Newsmeter account:
You can free sign up for Newsmeter:
x
An alarming concern in Tharparkar is the reported rise in suicide cases. Media reports state that 122 people died by suicide between January and September 2026 in Tharparkar. These numbers underline the need to investigate the underlying causes of suicide and to strengthen mental health services. The total population of Tharparkar District was 1,778,407 according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics’ 2023 census. Despite its population and spread across seven talukas, Tharparkar has li...
The Federal Committee on Agriculture met in Islamabad this month and confirmed what the fields had already announced. Cotton production in 2026-27 is estimated at 6.71 million bales against a target of 9.64 million. A shortfall of 30 per cent, in a season the ministry itself has not blamed on the weather. It is the sixth consecutive miss. Over the last five years, the state has promised between roughly 10 and 13 million bales and delivered between five and eight and a half. Each spring...
When a woman screams, someone does the arithmetic. What will it cost her family, her job, her children’s marriages, her name? In our part of the world, izzat works like currency, and it is the woman who pays, whether she speaks or keeps quiet. Whatever she does, a label is waiting. Say no in the 1600s and you were a witch; in the 1800s, unladylike; in the 1900s, hysterical; in the 1970s, frigid; by the nineties, a bitch; in the 2010s, bossy. In 2026, we have become gentler and simply s...
Hasan Manzar, who passed away in Karachi last month on the 27th of September at 92, was born on the 4th of March 1934 in Hapur, a village of Uttar Pradesh. His real name was Syed Manzar Hussain, and his pen name was Hasan Manzar. His father, Syed Mazhar Hussain, had earned his BSc from Aligarh Muslim University, while his paternal grandfather held a high post in the Forestry Department and was also given the title of Khan Bahadur by the British government. After 1947, his family settle...
One of the less-discussed challenges facing academic and professional institutions is the declining willingness to examine one’s own reasoning. Beyond knowledge, technical competence, and productivity lies metacognition: the ability to recognise the limits of one’s understanding, question assumptions, and reconsider judgements in light of new evidence. Although essential for sound decision-making and intellectual growth, reflective thinking can become secondary in environments that rew...
The imposition of emergency rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on October 11, 2026, reflects a familiar cycle of failure in Pakistan’s politics: when elected leaders cannot resolve a political crisis through negotiation, extraordinary interventions begin to appear as convenient solutions. Yet the province’s deep-seated problems cannot be solved merely by changing who exercises administrative power. For decades, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has endured conflict, terrorism, displacement, and a persistent ...
Pakistan’s infrastructure debate begins with the wrong question. Roads, power systems and water networks may generate social benefits, but most earn rupees, if they earn revenue at all, while foreign loans require dollars. A 2024 G20/GIF/IMF report identifies mismatches between local-currency revenues and hard-currency financing as a central foreign-exchange risk in infrastructure investment. Calling expenditure “development” does not resolve it. At the national level, dollars must com...
Growing up in Lahore, a beautiful, historic city, and attending Aitchison College’s boarding school, with its lush grounds and wonderful sports facilities, gave me a sense of belonging that distance has never diminished. The friendships we formed there have endured across countries and decades, connecting us to one another and to the place where our lives first took shape. Living outside Pakistan has taught me how firmly those early years remain part of who we are. You build a career a...
For years, the private sector in Punjab has carried a cost that never appears in any official ledger. It is the cost of not knowing how an inspector will decide. A technical breach under the Punjab Environmental Protection Act or the Punjab Food Authority Act can end in a fine or in the registration of an FIR and an arrest. The difference is rarely written clearly into the statute. It is left to discretion. That uncertainty raises the price of remaining formal, slows expansion decision...
“Why don’t you ask your brother to go for therapy?” she asked, but was reassured that the individual in question did not need it. He had got divorced recently and had started spending an inordinate amount of time in the gym, which worried his brother. But of course, going for therapy was out of the question. She remained quiet and did not push the issue, although from what she was told, the individual in question badly needed it. The stigma attached to “shrinks” (as they are popularly ...
The IMF has 'asked' Pakistan to end the concessional tax rate on electric vehicles (EVs). The fundamental rationale reportedly offered is that electric vehicles are a luxury item rather than a necessity for low-income consumers, prompting a call for the concessional rates to be entirely withdrawn, this could result in the sales tax on electric vehicles rocketing from 1% to a standard 18%. To understand the gravity of this proposed rollback, we must examine the glaring incoherence it cr...
Pakistan’s decision to impose an emergency and Governor’s Rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is not simply an administrative response to terrorism. It is a consequential political intervention in a province governed by Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), the principal opposition party at the federal level. The decision must be judged on three grounds: whether the constitutional conditions have been met, whether the intervention can improve security, and what it means for a federation ...
Whenever Mushir Anwar Uncle was leaving our home after dinner, he would gently put his arms around me and give me a warm hug. Then, in his soft, affectionate voice, he would say, “You are my daughter, my darling daughter.” Those words, spoken with such love and sincerity, remain among the most precious memories of my life. My relationship with Mushir Uncle was not one that began in childhood, nor was it one that lasted a lifetime. Yet, in the years we knew each other, he became one of ...
Until the state learns to glorify the health of its citizens rather than the gloss of its advertisements, the bureaucrat will always measure human suffering as a minor rounding error on a distant balance sheet. In the air-conditioned sanctuaries of Lahore, where administrative policy is manufactured, human pain is treated as a statistical inconvenience, leaving the citizen to admire the fresh paint on a crumbling wall while paying for their own quiet erasure. Chief Minister Maryam Nawa...
Forty-five years of one Afghan policy, seventy-nine years of emergencies, operations and declared traitors. It is time the decisions came home to those who answer for them. In December 1979 Soviet forces crossed into Afghanistan. We hosted more than three million refugees and became the conduit of a war whose weapons and narcotics stayed with us. In the 1990s we were one of three states to recognise the Taliban. After 2001 we joined a war against the movement we had recognised while ho...
