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Showing posts from August, 2011

Inflation

Inflation I am frequently invited by our HR Department to do interviews. I generally get to do the 'Management Rounds' after the candidates have been filtered thru the 'Technical Rounds'.. The goals of the Management rounds are a bit vague. You get a good opportunity to look into the minds of our young professionals, nevertheless. I generally ask them topical questions and to my dismay, I never got a good answer to questions related to inflation, interest rates , gold prices etc. Mind you, these candidates are not pure techies but most would have done their post-graduation in Management. I am sure they would have at least one paper on macro-economics in their course. Seldom do they go beyond the text book definition of 'Too much money chasing too few goods” and fail to contextualize and reason what is happening in our economy. They can only relate to inflation as it affects them and their budgets and betray their middle-class bias in favour of the Government '

Know thy neighbour

How would you deal with a country that holds a gun to its head as it negotiates with the world? How would you engage with a neighbour whose elite are bent upon creating chaos in their own country out of spite? This is one ring-side view you never wished for.   More on it later.   How things to came to such a pass?   It is a long story. When Pakistani intellectuals discuss their descent, you are reminded of Atticus's children in the Harper Lee's famous 'To Kill a Mocking Bird'.    Some say it all started with Musharraf   joining the Bush's   war on terror, some say it is the fallout of   Zia-Ul-Haq's 11 year rule , his deadly embrace   of US and his wholesale import of Saudi Wahhabism, still others say it was inevitable when even the most charismatic and powerful civilian ruler aka Z.A Bhutto had to play to the Islamic gallery to stay in power, some even go as far back as   the days of Objective Resolution when Liaquat Ali Khan proposed that sovereignty belong