Abdul Basit Khan

Wrath of poverty: Who will see pain behind statistics?
- By Abdul Basit Khan
- October 14, 2026
POVERTY in Pakistan is usually discussed in the language of statistics. We talk about poverty ratios, per-capita income, inflation, unemployment, the Pakistan Economic Survey…

Pakistan needs political stability — but how?
- By Abdul Basit Khan
- October 7, 2026
PAKISTAN desperately needs political stability. Economic recovery, investment, employment, exports and long-term development all require a political environment in which policies are predictable and…

Trump’s America: Democracy under pressure?
- By Abdul Basit Khan
- September 30, 2026
DONALD Trump’s second presidency has reopened an old American debate: how much power should a president be able to exercise, particularly when he believes…

Beyond civil service reforms
- By Abdul Basit Khan
- September 25, 2026
Where political authority is unstable or institutional boundaries are uncertain, the bureaucracy becomes vulnerable to competing pressures. This does not mean that civil-service reform…

Beyond civil service reforms
- By Abdul Basit Khan
- September 24, 2026
Subsequent Supreme Court proceedings have also referred to the principles laid down in that judgment. The question, therefore, is not whether such principles exist.…

Beyond civil service reforms
- By Abdul Basit Khan
- September 23, 2026
PAKISTAN is once again preparing to reform its civil service. The latest initiative is ambitious: the federal government has proposed 11 specialised professional cadres,…

Pakistan’s untapped engine of economic growth
- By Abdul Basit Khan
- September 16, 2026
PAKISTAN is searching for sustainable ways to accelerate economic growth, increase exports, reduce poverty and create employment. We debate industrialization, taxation, investment and productivity—and…

Don’t blame the bureaucracy alone
- By Abdul Basit Khan
- September 9, 2026
PAKISTAN’S governance crisis is often explained in remarkably simple terms: the bureaucracy is inefficient, corrupt, resistant to reform and responsible for administrative failure. There…

Good governance, not more provinces
- By Abdul Basit Khan
- September 2, 2026
PAKISTAN is once again debating creation of more provinces. The demand is neither new nor entirely without merit. In a country of more than…

Pakistan’s growth trap
- By Abdul Basit Khan
- August 26, 2026
PAKISTAN has spent decades discussing economic growth without addressing the structural weaknesses that repeatedly pull the economy back into crisis. Whenever growth begins to…





