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Articles by Amer Durrani
Who will deliver now?
A representational image showing local government workers seen busy in cleaning drive. — Facebook/@dglgrd/File For weeks, Pakistan has been arguing about maps and boundaries. The interior minister said the system had collapsed and that new provinces were the answer. The military’s spokesman said any reset must be constitutional. Parties took positions. Editorials took the opposite ones. Eventually, the serious commentary had settled somewhere the minister did not intend.
Completing the bargain
A boy uses a bamboo stick to adjust national flags at an overhead bridge ahead of Pakistan's Independence Day, in Islamabad, August 10, 2018. — Reuters If Pakistan’s problem were a shortage of plans, Islamabad’s creaking cupboards would have rescued us long ago. We have had five-year plans, visions, emergency packages and recurring saviours: a strong ruler, a friendly power, a corridor, a technology boom and now a mineral jackpot.
Completing the bargain
Representational image of youth in Pakistan. — Pildat/File If Pakistan’s problem were a shortage of plans, Islamabad’s creaking cupboards would have rescued us long ago. We have had five-year plans, visions, emergency packages and recurring saviours: a strong ruler, a friendly power, a corridor, a technology boom and now a mineral jackpot. Each promises to bypass the slow, painful work of building a state bound by rules and answerable to citizens. There is no ‘bypass’.
The unfinished bargain
A worker holds a rock at a gold mine. — Reuters/File Pakistan has never lacked plans. It has lacked a bargain. Every generation is told that the country has reached its turning point. In the 1960s, we were the model others would supposedly copy. In the 1980s, strategic geography and remittances promised take-off. After 2001, foreign inflows, finance and telecommunications offered another beginning. Then came CPEC.
The unfinished bargain
A labourer bends over as he carries packs of textile fabric on his back to deliver to a nearby shop in a market in Karachi on June 24, 2022. — Reuters Pakistan has never lacked plans. It has lacked a bargain. Every generation is told that the country has reached its turning point. In the 1960s, we were the model others would supposedly copy. In the 1980s, strategic geography and remittances promised take-off. After 2001, foreign inflows, finance and telecommunications offered another beginning.
Pay again or let the river come home?
Neelum-Jhelum hydropower project in this undated photo. — Wapda/File Every month, on every electricity bill in Pakistan, sits a small ‘line item’ called the Neelum–Jhelum surcharge. We have paid for it for years. Ask yourself a simple question: what did your last payment buy? The answer: since May 2024, nothing. The 969MW Neelum–Jhelum plant has not produced a single unit of electricity for more than two years. Wapda told the Senate this month that it may not produce one until March 2028.
Salvation
Answer it never does Salvation, it's more than just absolution Judas you are not For we live in the land with no fortitude or forbearing
Solace
In reason there is no solace. There is being Reason knocks the door of being under the weight of its sound Solace after all has a price… That of not knowing
My old friend, my childhood, my dreams, how have you been?
Are you still livid about certain cards that life has dealt you? I have not talked to you through this or any other medium for such a long time that I seem to be forgetting your face, your voice, your smell and all that comforts me. The vagaries of life can leave the best of us exhausted. But love and childhood calls. We must talk. It was decidedly delicious hearing your voice which carries so many memories of a heart that defeats the present and lives for a life never foretold.
Life [Poetry]
This is another take from some years ago. Written on a plane, while flying over somewhere in India, February 3, 2008. that it has become you moving in me
Live Life [A Poem]
whether we like it or not tis the way of graves and men such is the sweetness and sourness of life our struggles and deaths in vain tis not us but this world that has kept us Live life, it is our due!
Water for dollars
In the 60-odd years of my life, as far as memory serves, the rain has been falling every monsoon and otherwise. Sometimes with ferocity, and at other times gently, but fallen it has. The water from the rain is another story. It has been this big, bad ogre, which none of us have been able to control and have simply been ravaged by it.
In the 60-odd years of my life, as far as memory serves, the rain has been falling every monsoon and otherwise. Sometimes with ferocity, and at other times gently, but fallen it has. The water from the rain is another story. It has been this big bad ogre, which none of us have been able to control and have simply been ravaged by it.
Pragmatic possibilities
Pakistan's historical and current position on Israel contrasts with the evolving stances of Arab and other Muslim countries. Given the recent troubles between Iran and Israel, the role of the US, the genocide in Gaza and the foreseeable evolving geopolitics, living where Pakistan does, it will naturally be forced to reconsider its options. The latest 60-day Hamas-Israel ceasefire option highlights the enshrined posture and acquiescence of the GCC countries.
Protests vs stability
Over the past decade, the PTI, under Imran Khan’s leadership, has consistently resorted to street protests as a core strategy for political mobilisation. These protests have underscored the party’s grassroots appeal and its dissatisfaction with conventional political mechanisms.
Pakistan, please don’t be Malvolio
The United States and India Joint Leaders’ Statement issued on February 13, 2025, provoked strong reactions in Pakistan. Is it ‘much ado about nothing’ or more a case of ‘where there is smoke, there is fire’? Sifting facts from posturing is important. Pakistan needs to objectively assess its global standing without exaggeration or romanticism.
The elephant in the room
Pakistan’s economic performance in 2024 reflects progress in macroeconomic stabilisation but also highlights persistent structural challenges. Amid global GDP growth of 3.0 per cent, Pakistan achieved 2.4 per cent, short of its target of 3.5 per cent.
Square peg, round hole
Pakistan’s present economic and social machinery from IPPs to BISP lies littered with good intentions gone bad. Giles Firmin’s ‘The Real Christian’ has a line which fits us like a glove: “Hell is paved with the skulls of great scholars and paled in with the bones of great men.” Bureaucrats and politicians, riding on the shoulders of economists, foreign and local, have been at the core of creating the mostly-mess that is now Pakistan.
Net-metering fallout
We wrote about household solar and its adoption in Pakistan last year (October, 2023 for PIDE) and since then many a storm has erupted on the local landscape on this issue coupled with net metering. Net metering is a typical policy area where countries like Pakistan are best served to wait till all research has been done in the local context and a public consensus built around the pros and cons.
Robot-assisted pelvic node dissection has similar operative and melanoma outcomes to open pelvic node dissection with shorter hospital stays
Background: Robot-assisted pelvic lymph node dissection (rPLND) has been employed for the surgical management of enlarged lymph nodes to reduce treatment related morbidity. With the adoption of adjuvant systemic therapy in melanoma reducing surgical indications, we set out to investigate its benefits and long-term outcomes compared to open pelvic lymph node dissection (oPLND).
Outcomes following plastic surgical reconstruction of the pelvic extenteration defect: 24 consecutive cases at a UK centre
Evaluating Online Patient Health Information on Parotidectomy - Is it Readable and of Good Quality?
Regionally Competitive Energy Tariffs: Policy Considerations
A study, on Regional Competitive Energy Tariffs and Textile Sector Competitiveness (Phase II) was conducted between April and July 2022, which analyzed the regional competitiveness of the textile industry in Pakistan from the perspective of energy and related issues faced by the Textile Sector through exhaustive desk research, field surveys, and analyses.
Differences in cutaneous melanoma outcomes with changes in lymphoscintigraphy timings?
Publication History Published online: March 10, 2019Accepted: March 5, 2019;
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