Author: Dr Khalil Ahmad

Dr. Khalil is a political economist and a political philosopher. He cherishes a cosmopolitan spirit and considers himself a moralist and a rationalist. He founded the first free market think tank in Pakistan, Alternate Solutions Institute. He wrote/published hundreds of articles on the various aspects of political economy of Pakistan, and on a variety of issues.He is author of a number of books that include "Pakistan Mein Riyasati Ashrafiya Ka Urooj"; "Siyasi Partian Ya Siyasi Bandobast"; "Pakistani KashaKash" in Urdu; and "Charter of Liberty" and "Pakistan's Democratic Impasse" in English.

Waiting torture in Pakistan

Yesterday’s Pakistan Print Edition of International Herald Tribune contains Why waiting is torture, by Alex Stone.

A very good piece which discusses our psychology of waiting in line and how we respond to various waiting situations.

Alex Stone writes: “Americans spend roughly 37 billion hours each year waiting in line.”

I wonder, how much time Pakistanis spend waiting in lines here and there, both at private and public establishments! I do not know about any such study for Pakistan. Actually, it’s no “issue” at all here. No guessing – how much time Pakistanis spend in waiting. But no doubt their life is full of suffering related with waiting.

And apart from this, what is important to see in the case of Pakistan is that often and time there are fights on breaking the queues. The queuing culture has no roots here.

Surprisingly, the multinational food chains which have already

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Army Chief defines extremism and terrorism

Usually I do not read statements and speeches given by government officials, elected or nominated; but only when due to the interest in a certain issue it requires to go into its detail.
It was on September 2 that I was going through the op-ed pages of The News that these lines used as teaser caught my eyes: “The preparation of violence with a clear conscience is a delight to ideologues who distort the teachings of religion. This was what General Kayani had in mind when he had said that a person who imposes his views on society is an extremist.”
I stopped on this article, The defeat of extremist ideology, by S. Iftikhar Murshid.
Then I searched for this speech of the Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani. I thought it must be available on the website of ISPR (Inter Services Public Relations). As it was
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Pre-requisites of constitutional rule in Pakistan

It’s strange but is true. Even after the constitution of 1973 was enforced, if we go through the writings, be they are Leftist or Rightist, there is talk of government, society, politics, and such things, but no mention of the constitution, its provisions could be found in the intellectual / political discourse of the country.
I shall share some of such samples later.
For now, here are some thoughts on what are the pre-requisites of a constitutional rule in Pakistan:
Pre-requisites of constitutional rule in Pakistan

(1) Any person who abrogates or attempts or conspires to abrogate, subverts or attempts or conspires to subvert the Constitution by use of force or show of force or by other unconstitutional means shall be guilty of high treason. (2) Any person aiding or abetting the acts mentioned in clause (1) shall likewise be guilty of high treason.
[The Constitution of Pakistan]
It was
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The crimes states commit

This does not relate to the crimes states commit against one another.
This takes exception to the crimes states, or Pakistani state, commit against their own citizens.
As it’s a truism that states kill. Sometimes they kill, as Syria does now, by using the weapons they purchase or manufacture with citizens’ money.
I say Citizens’ Money because most of the times what states extract from the pockets of the citizens in the form of taxes can never be justified as a just tax.
And in many cases, states kill their own citizens by making and implementing unwise and elitist policies, as Pakistan has been doing since its birth.
When I wrote the following piece (it was posted on the website of Alternate Solutions Institute on August 14, 2010) and titled it as “Pakistan – A criminal State,” the friends with whom I shared it first objected to this title. But
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A world without rules

Now it’s a considered view of mine that it is in making rules, just rules, and following them, and implementing them across the board that humanity’s emancipation lies. And, I think, broadly it is rules which saved the West, including the USA, and made it the West.
Not only is it the state of the rule of lawlessness in Pakistan but the same state prevailing in most of  the world that makes one attach so much importance to rules and the institution of the rule of rules.
As Eisenhower once said,“The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.”
[Dwight David Eisenhower, 1890-1969]
Likewise, I have tried to imagine how a world without rules looks like:

A world without rules

There are only two things we should fight for.
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Political Parties Or Political Arrangements: A Philosophical Critique of Pakistani Politics

This August 10, Alternate Solutions Institute released my 2nd Urdu book, Siyasi Partian Ya Siyasi Bandobast: A Philosophical Critique of Pakistani Politics. Copied below are the English and Urdu media releases:

Urdu Book “سیاسی پارٹیاں یا سیاسی بندوبست“ (Siyasi Partian Ya Siyasi Bandobast) published
The book attempts a philosophical analysis of Pakistan’s political parties
The book smashes a number of political myths and cliches
Author dubs political parties as enemies of the citizens and focuses on how to make them friends of the citizens
Lahore August 10, 2012: Alternate Solutions Institute released today Dr. Khalil Ahmad’s 2nd Urdu book, “Siyasi Partian Ya Siyasi Bandobast: Pakistani Siyasat Ke Pech-o-Khum Ka Falsafiyani Muhakma” (Political Parties Or Political Arrangements: Philosophical Analysis of the Intricacies of Pakistani Politics). His first book, “Pakistan Mein Riyasti Ashrafiya Ka Urooj” (The Rise of State Aristocracy in Pakistan) came out in February this year
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Enterprise of history – I

This is in continuation of a previous post, “Hind and Sindh civilizations and getting religion politicized.”
As I see that, and ,of course, for that matter everyone with a keen eye must have observed that, History has been proving, as Samuel Johnson dubbed Patriotism, the last refuge of (not a scoundrel) but all those intellectuals, men of letters, leaders, communities, nations, sections, or any other such introverted individuals or groups, who think themselves victim of this or that “injustice” at the hands of especially those who are ahead of them in any respect, be it economy, politics, philosophy, science, sports, etc. on the one hand, and on the other, in development, social luxuries, technologies, etc.
More than that, I think, in the presence of such a crowd, History hasn’t been able to acquire its true existence, or rationale.  
So a few new slogans may be devised: Let the History
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Hind and Sindh civilizations, and getting religion politicized

Recently I read an interview of Romila Thapar, renowned historian. Here are some questions and their answers which relate to the issue of religious identity in the sub-continent:

Q: Some scholars claim Hind and Sindh to be different civilizations. Do you subscribe to this view?

A: I don’t subscribe to this at all. I think the Indus civilization was very widespread. It spread out to many regions that are now part of Pakistan and India. I strongly object to this view because you can’t push an event that took place in the twentieth century five thousand years back in history.

Q: Why this insistence on two civilizations?

A: This happens when religion gets politicized. When religious organizations begin to feel that they can assert political power, they have to have an identity – a religious identity. And the easiest thing, of course is to say “we will take it as

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Wikileaking clandestine governments

AFP reports that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange urged President Barack Obama to end the US “witchhunt” against his whistleblowing website, in a speech Sunday from the balcony of Ecuador’s London embassy.

“I ask President Obama to do the right thing, the United States must renounce its witchhunt against WikiLeaks,” said Assange, making his first public statement since being granted political asylum by Ecuador on Thursday. [August 20, 2012]
   
I love Julian Assange. His initiative of wikileaking clandestine governments strikes at the root of the politics of ruling elites, or better say, political elites.  

Here is the explanation:

Wikileaking clandestine governments

The latest ‘leaks’ of Wikileaks provide a historical opportunity to re-consider many a taken for granted truth!

This writing too intends to discuss afresh some such propositions which relates to the affairs of the governments. For instance, whether governments are justified in keeping various types of information secret. In Pakistan and
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Signs of decline – 1

Reflections on various things: Signs of decline

I am an integral part of this society; but I am an observer of it also. I feel, i.e. smell, taste, touch, hear, and see the all-encompassing decline of the Pakistani society. 

As I notice, a clear sign of decline is this: Any entity set up for a specific purpose starts working against the same purpose. 

This idea has been reverberating in my mind since long. If A is created to fulfill purpose B, and if it defies that very purpose, and works to achieve purpose C, what will happen. No doubt, by losing B, A will lose its reason to exist, since C is not its purpose. That will set in motion its downfall.

Pakistani society is a case in point, and I would exempt only the present Supreme Court from this list. There are no entities where the signs of decline
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Kamra attack and the nuclear arsenals

“Gunmen who are believed to be Islamist militants attacked a major Pakistani Air Force base where some of the country’s nuclear weapons are thought to be stored early Thursday (August 16), setting off a heavy battle in which eight attackers and one security official were killed.
The attack on the Minhas air force base in Kamra, 40 kilometers, or 25 miles, northwest of the capital, Islamabad, was a stark reminder of the threat to Pakistan’s most sensitive installations despite ongoing military operations against militants in their tribal hide-outs.”
So, the story goes on in the local Pakistan edition of The International Herald Tribune of August 17, 2012.
Yesternight, Kamran Khan, talk show host at Geo News, enumerated about 150 militants attack on military installations and personnel, and estimated that Pakistan Military has suffered losses in these attacks and its fight against the militants it did not suffer in all its
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Enter the Age of Rules

Earlier in the post, The Rise of State Aristocracy in Pakistan, the following was stated:
“. . . the author thinks that humanity is entering a new Age of Rules, superseding the Age of Ideologies, and the present book (The Rise of State Aristocracy in Pakistan) derives its inspiration from the same enlightenment.”
Here is one article (written in May this year) where I tried to formulate this thesis of mine:

At the Confluence of Two Ages
Today humanity is standing at the confluence of two Ages. The one has tenaciously flown from the past, and is trying hard to persist through the present into the future. The other one also emerged in the past – not so distant, though. It seems strong and teeming with hope for the salvation of humanity, but is still unable to withstand the unceasing reincarnation of the symptomatically dying Age.
The dying Age manifests
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Entertainment in Pakistan

Reflections on various things: Entertainment in Pakistan
It was in 2003 that I was in Ankara (Turkey); one of the acquaintances put a question that dumbfounded me. He asked: what’s the people’s entertainment in Pakistan?
I had no immediate answer astonished me. I smiled and told him to let me think and find it.
I tried to imagine Pakistani people (and my family) back home and see what’s there they mostly entertain themselves with and said: They watch TV!
Now it’s 2012, and things haven’t improved a bit. The top most entertainment is still TV watching. Here for most of the citizens, social life, and out of home enjoying is almost non-existent. Music concerts, art exhibitions, and things like that are rare, and it is Ashrafiya, the elite classes who, it seems, have appropriated all such manifestations of higher level of aesthetic life!
I did dwell on that issue in
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