Pakistan at Seventy-Five investigates the countrys multi-layered issues in the context of a post-colonial polity marked by diversity, heterogeneity, stratification and volatility. This wide-ranging discourse engages with diverse formal and informal actors as markers of identity, historical events and social conditions, as well as global geo-political and neo-colonial centreperiphery relations that shape narratives about the nation and the constructions of a sense of belonging. The editors and contributors utilise multi-faceted and multi-layered approaches, focusing on (1) identities, and questions of diversity and pluralism; (2) horizontal and vertical technologies and geographies of power related to questions of trust, legitimacy, participation, and governance; and (3) the distribution, deprivation and vulnerability of sociocultural, political, and human resources. Studying Pakistan has been subject to different approaches, including decolonial, indigenous, and feminist perspectives. This volume draws out alternative epistemological and methodological viewpoints: the insideroutsider conundrum, centreperiphery asymmetries, hegemonic discourses, and practices within Pakistans national/international academy. The chapter contributions are the outcome of a unique interdisciplinary research cooperation at Quaid-i-Azam University, focussing on early career researchers. Presenting a multiplicity of voices and trajectories, Pakistan at Seventy-Five provides new input to existing debates and directions for future scholarly endeavour.

This handbook examines Pakistan’s 70-year history from a number of different perspectives. When Pakistan was born, it did not have a capital, a functioning government or a central bank. The country lacked a skilled workforce. While the state was in the process of being established, eight million Muslim refugees arrived from India, who had to be absorbed into a population of 24 million people. However, within 15 years, Pakistan was the fastest growing and transforming economy in the developing world, although the political evolution of the country during this period was not equally successful. Pakistan has vast agricultural and human resources, and its location promises trade, investment and other opportunities. Chapters in the volume, written by experts in the field, examine government and politics, economics, foreign policy and environmental issues, as well as social aspects of Pakistan’s development, including the media, technology, gender and education. Shahid Javed Burki is an economist who has been a member of the faculty at Harvard University, USA, and Chief Economist, Planning and Development Department, Government of the Punjab. He has also served as Minister of Finance in the Government of Pakistan, and has written a number of books, and journal and newspaper articles. He joined the World Bank in 1974 as a senior economist and went on to serve in several senior positions. He was the (first) Director of the China Department (1987–94) and served as the Regional Vice-President for Latin America and the Caribbean during 1994–99. He is currently the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Shahid Javed Burki Institute of Public Policy at NetSol (BIPP) in Lahore. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is a career Bangladeshi diplomat and former Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Government of Bangladesh (2007–08). He has a PhD in international relations from the Australian National University, Canberra. He began his career as a member of the civil service of Pakistan in 1969. Dr Chowdhury has held senior diplomatic positions in the course of his career, including as Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations in New York (2001–07) and in Geneva (1996–2001), and was ambassador to Qatar, Chile, Peru and the Vatican. He is currently a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. Asad Ejaz Butt is the Director of the Burki Institute of Public Policy, Lahore, Pakistan.

The Land of Too Much presents a simple but powerful hypothesis that addresses three questions: Why does the United States have more poverty than any other developed country? Why did it experience an attack on state intervention starting in the 1980s, known today as the neoliberal revolution? And why did it recently suffer the greatest economic meltdown in seventy-five years? Although the United States is often considered a liberal, laissez-faire state, Monica Prasad marshals convincing evidence to the contrary. Indeed, she argues that a strong tradition of government intervention undermined the development of a European-style welfare state. The demand-side theory of comparative political economy she develops here explains how and why this happened. Her argument begins in the late nineteenth century, when America’s explosive economic growth overwhelmed world markets, causing price declines everywhere. While European countries adopted protectionist policies in response, in the United States lower prices spurred an agrarian movement that rearranged the political landscape. The federal government instituted progressive taxation and a series of strict financial regulations that ironically resulted in more freely available credit. As European countries developed growth models focused on investment and exports, the United States developed a growth model based on consumption. These large-scale interventions led to economic growth that met citizen needs through private credit rather than through social welfare policies. Among the outcomes have been higher poverty, a backlash against taxation and regulation, and a housing bubble fueled by “mortgage Keynesianism.” This book will launch a thousand debates.

This book is the main text for post-graduate courses on South Asia's development, economic history and on its political economy. For researchers on Pakistan's economy, it is the key source for reference, and covers a huge and diverse array of data, literature reviews, commentary and analysis.

Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world, the only Islamic state to have nuclear weapons, under military dictatorship for 33 of its 50 years in existence. Its 1000-mile border with Afghanistan is the likely hideout of Osama bin Laden--yet it is the linchpin in the United States' war on terror. With increasingly bold attacks by Taliban supporters in the border regions threatening to split the Pakistan army, with the only political alternatives as corrupt as the regime they seek to replace, and with a newly radicalized movement of lawyers testing its strength as champions of the rule of law, the chances of sustained stability in Pakistan look slim. Tariq Ali, long acknowledged as a leading commentator on Pakistan, combines deep understanding of the country with extensive firsthand research and unsparing political judgment to weigh the prospects of those contending for power today.--From publisher description.

One winter, Dervla Murphy and her six-year-old daughter explored 'Little Tibet' high up in the Karakoram Mountains in the frozen heart of the Western Himalayas. Dervla records their adventures, from crumbling tracks over bottomless chasms, to assaults by lascivious Kashmiris.

Pakistan's transformation from supposed model of Muslim enlightenment to a state now threatened by an Islamist takeover has been remarkable. Many account for the change by pointing to Pakistan's controversial partnership with the United States since 9/11; others see it as a consequence of Pakistan's long history of authoritarian rule, which has marginalized liberal opinion and allowed the rise of a religious right. Farzana Shaikh argues the country's decline is rooted primarily in uncertainty about the meaning of Pakistan and the significance of 'being Pakistani'. This has pre-empted a consensus on the role of Islam in the public sphere and encouraged the spread of political Islam. It has also widened the gap between personal piety and public morality, corrupting the country's economic foundations and tearing apart its social fabric. More ominously still, it has given rise to a new and dangerous symbiosis between the country's powerful armed forces and Muslim extremists. Shaikh demonstrates how the ideology that constrained Indo-Muslim politics in the years leading to Partition in 1947 has left its mark, skillfully deploying insights from history to better understand Pakistan's troubled present.