Hard-Hitting

Your last month’s cover story on the Asian Development Bank (ADB) was hard-hitting. All the writers talked about the loopholes of Pakistan’s economy. Two articles that were insightful for me were the Income Growth sans Human Development and The Development Recipe. Pakistan is a nation that has had bad governance for too long. In all these years of foreign aid, loans and deals, Pakistan’s progress had been more or less at a snail’s pace. It’s high time the people wake-up from their slumber. They should stop celebrating and fooling people in the name of deceased political leaders and old victories. Pakistan needs to invest in its economy, health and social sciences to target a stable and prosperous tomorrow. The people have suffered for nearly 40 years or maybe more and now all that is left is the fallacy of a new dawn. Pakistan has incompetent politicians. What it needs are real leaders.

Mohsin Aly,
Lahore, Pakistan.

Print is Reliable

Electronic media is expanding at a high speed but I still feel that print media has more credibility as the news is complete, accurate and thoroughly checked by a number of reporters and editors. The news that comes through electronic media is transmitted very quickly and so it often lacks the complete information required to make a good news story. Also, the facts stated in the news sometimes come out as totally wrong. There are still people who prefer reading newspapers in the morning while having tea or breakfast rather than watching the news on television or viewing it online.

Bilal Zaheer,
Quetta, Pakistan.

Gender Diversity

There have been many debates on how we stereotype a man and a woman. From a long time, we witnessed how women were taught to adjust and compromise to a male-centric world but gone are those days. Now, where on the one hand, women are acquiring almost 50% jobs in the corporate sector and balancing both their jobs and home very well, men are cooking, doing the laundry and taking care of the kids along with doing wonders at the workplace. That’s how we all want to see men and women complementing each other. We all have heard ‘in unity there is strength’. Just imagine how much our nation would prosper if we followed this dictum at home as well.

Sana Sayyad,
New Delhi, India.

Stressful Karachi

I miss the clean wide roads of Karachi. The sides of the roads are blocked with debris and the waste blocks major traffic arteries. The government starts projects that severely disturb traffic. Nearly 70% of Karachi is getting an infrastructural change. I agree that underpasses will help ease traffic on the roads but if the major roads are blocked due to work on underpasses and there is debris and over flowing gutters, how will people commute? People already cannot meet their time schedules and things are getting very difficult for them. I hope there is some way out of this.

Sadia Bano,
Karachi, Pakistan.

Life at IBA

It gives me immense pleasure to express my gratitude for the kind of work SouthAsia magazine is doing. I can’t thank it enough for covering the prestigious institution IBA in the magazine’s ‘Special Feature’ section in its May 2019 issue. Being a current student of IBA, it felt great to see the informative articles written by some of the leading personalities from the institution. Dr. Farrukh Iqbal rightly portrayed what IBA actually does to empower its students, while Dr. Ishrat Hussain’s interview upgraded our knowledge, not to exclude the interesting observations shared by the IBA’s alumni who talked about their wonderful experiences at the country’s leading business institution.

Amna Ilyas
Karachi, Pakistan.

A Social Evil

Street begging is a nuisance. Begging is considered a social evil in the civilized world, but it has become a well-organized profession in our country. We are always greeted by a bunch of beggars in such public places as bus stops, shopping centres, street corners, mosques, etc. Unfortunately, in our society, giving alms is believed to be a part of religion. The most painful thing is that most beggars can earn a living themselves, but they find it easier to live on other people’s hard-earned money. To make things worse, they even encourage their children to follow the same practice. Thus, this so-called charity leads to so many other social evils. I urge the concerned authorities to put an end to this social scourge by declaring it an illegal activity.

Saleha Fatima,
Karachi, Pakistan.

Technological Advancement

Changes in the technological world have made our life much easier than it was many years back but with ease comes difficulty. Starting the day with instant coffee to ending it with ready-to-cook foods, do we still believe that we have a healthy lifestyle? Several studies have shown that consuming too much instant food can lead to various diseases but instead of doing something about it, we continue to resort to having instant food. Gadgets have ruined the childhoods of children as they are now more into spending hours with these gadgets instead of their own family.

Archibald Andrews,
Edinburgh, Scotland.

New Record

A Nepali girl Bandana has set a new Guinness World Record by dancing non-stop for 126 hours (over 5 days) in a long dancing marathon - a record previously held by an Indian girl. The 18 year old took on the challenge to promote Nepalese music and culture.

Kiran Chowdhury,
Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Comeback!

Meera has always managed to be on TV, be it her shifting to the US or her numerous scandals and marriages. This time she is in the news for her role in the coming film ‘Baaji’. According to the cast and crew of the film, Meera turned out to be a phenomenal actress. She will be seen in a new avatar in the film. Everyone is waiting for Meera. Maybe this is the comeback she had been waiting for.

Izma Rasheed,
Faisalabad, Pakistan.