Pakistaniat From Below?
Dec 31, 2025
With statehood in its 79th year, there is a new response to nation-building that is ‘from below’ (i.e. from online citizens), one that modifies the state-sanctioned position in new ways.
Umair Javed
Coffee Booms and Economic Busts
Oct 29, 2025
Metropolitan Pakistan has seen a coffee-related boom of sorts over the last five years. But what does this tell us about the wider social and cultural changes of urban Pakistan, beyond banal observations about ‘consumer tastes’?
The Limits of Ethnic Politics
Aug 18, 2025
Is the right of self-determination and national liberation an automatic right for any community that claims collective consciousness and shared historical existence? And what are the limits of ethnic politics in Pakistan? Umair Javed explores these questions that remain central to left and progressive politics in Pakistan, even after 78 years of independence.
Shifting Gender Tides
Jun 20, 2025
Sana Yousaf’s brutal murder is not an isolated incident, but may be part of a larger pattern of rising masculine violence in reaction to the recent gains made by women towards greater equality in Pakistan
Beyond Neoliberalism
May 31, 2025
Characterized by deregulation in markets, and trade and financial liberalization, the set of prescriptions commonly dubbed as ‘neoliberalism’ were macroeconomic orthodoxy for nearly four decades. Now it seems to be dying, transforming our world in the process.
Foreign Aid and Fundamental Rights
Apr 29, 2025
Trump’s move to freeze humanitarian assistance has left a vacuum in the social and humanitarian sectors in Pakistan. Is this a move to be lauded or bemoaned?
Notes on a Spectacle
Mar 10, 2025
Cricket in Pakistan may be a deeply political project, but our attachment to the sport - the heady highs and the dismal lows - make it so much more
Explaining the Upsurge
Mar 05, 2025
Why has the PTI emerged as the single most broadly popular political party across Pakistan today?
Pakistaniat and its Future
Jan 09, 2025
Pakistan’s nationalist project has encountered many threats over time, and yet the largely state-led experiment of nation-building is closer to its stated objective, albeit unevenly, than it has at any point in the past eight decades
THE OLD IS DYING
Jan 06, 2025
The 2024 election results mark the end of a political cycle that began in the early 2000s. At first glance, this may not seem apparent from the outcome
15 Years Of Crises
Jan 04, 2025
A reflection on Pakistan’s tryst with democracy and the mammoth challenges along the way