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Reforming and modernising Pakistan | Essay Materials for Competitive Exams

Reforming and modernising Pakistan | Essay Materials for Competitive Exams

Reforming and modernising Pakistan | Essay Materials for Competitive Exams

Karachi, our metropolitan city drowned in rain and our efforts to rebuild it are marred in politics. The popular debate these days is:

“Who will contribute how much and who will take the credit for its rebuilding?”

Drowning in rain was unfortunate for Karachi but getting drowned now in politics that fails to deliver is worse. All this forces me to ask this question—what is our sense of the future?

Why can’t this nation and its politics do away with mediocre, self-serving sub-nationalists who cannot see beyond their noses?

The world is moving in the fast lane, identifying and adapting new technological, demographical, geopolitical, cultural, and military and academic tendencies and we are still debating how to clean our cities, lift our garbage and unclog our sewerage system. For how long will the people’s will and their right to happiness be constrained? Do we need and deserve such politics that applies such constraints? This killer of public expectations; all politics has done in this country is procrastinate public goodness and wellbeing.

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Articles Foreign Articles

World Health Organization – who is contributing and who is not (CSS Essay Material)

World Health Organization – who is contributing and who is not (CSS Essay Material)

The World Health Organization operates on a two-year budget cycle with a target of $4.8 billion. The annual budget thus is approximately $2,4 billion per year, with further targets for extreme emergencies.

The WHO receives funds in two ways:

  1. Assessed [pledged by countries] (17% of budget), Contributions (77%) and other contributions (6%)
  2. Voluntary contributions from countries, organizations and individuals.
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Articles Pakistani Newspapers

Pakistan’s Nuclear Diplomacy: Commitment Towards Non-Proliferation | Essay Material

Pakistan’s Nuclear Diplomacy: Commitment Towards Non-Proliferation | Essay Material

By Sher Bano

Ever since Pakistan became a nuclear weapon state, Pakistan’s nuclear diplomacy has been in practice on the principles of restraint and responsibility.

Pakistan was even reluctant to enter the club of nuclear weapon states but soon after India had conducted its first nuclear test in the year 1974, going nuclear became Pakistan’s strategic compulsion. India’s series of nuclear tests in 1998 had compelled Pakistan to demonstrate its nuclear weapon capability accordingly to restore the strategic balance in South Asia. The development of Pakistan’s nuclear weapon capability primarily serves the purpose of a credible and reliable defence against the existential threat from India and to maintain peace and stability in the region.

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Articles Pakistani Newspapers

Foreign Office needs reform by Maleeha Lodhi | Essay Material

Before you leave check our complete range of Essay for CSS/PMS [catlist name="English Essay"]

NO institution can perform effectively unless it is able to adapt to changes around it, leverage the opportunities offered by a globalised world and learn new skills to deal with emerging challenges. Periodic review and reform are essential to reinvigorate any organisation and make it fit for purpose. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is no exception to this rule.

For decades little has changed in its working methods, structure, training of personnel and mode of recruitment — and thus in its outlook and approach. If foreign policy is the country’s first line of defence, Pakistan’s foreign service needs serious attention and reform.

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Articles Pakistani Newspapers

Pakistan’s Kashmir diplomacy | CSS Essay Material

Pakistan’s Kashmir diplomacy | CSS Essay Material

By: Khurram Minhas

On August 5, 2019, the Modi-led BJP government wiped out the special status of Indian Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (IoJ&K). During this year, Pakistan’s diplomatic manoeuvring was effective, calculated and rational, which has been widely acknowledged by the international diplomatic community. Islamabad suspended its diplomatic and trade relationship with India. The Kashmir dispute was, after a long time, discussed at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) after almost five decades due to Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts and with Chinese assistance. Prime Minister Imran Khan’s speech at the UN General Assembly session has been categorised as one of the most persuasive speeches where he declared himself as the ambassador of Kashmir.

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Articles Current Affairs Pakistani Newspapers

Key dates in India-China border tensions

Key dates in India-China border tensions

Key dates in India-China border tensions

Asian regional superpowers India and China share a long history of mistrust and conflict along their lengthy border, and tensions flared up this week in a deadly clash between troops.

The world’s two most populous nations and nuclear-armed neighbours have never even agreed on the length of their “Line of Actual Control” frontier, which straddles the strategically important Himalayan region.

Recent decades have seen numerous skirmishes along the border, including a brief but bloody war in 1962.

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Articles Foreign Articles General

Locusts Pose a Bigger Economic Threat to Pakistan Than the Virus

Locusts Pose a Bigger Economic Threat to Pakistan Than the Virus

By Ismail Dilawar and Faseeh Mangi

Agriculture sector accounts for 20% of Pakistan’s economy
Some provinces diverting resources from virus to fight locusts

Swarms of locusts spreading across Pakistan are emerging as a bigger threat to the economy than the coronavirus pandemic, with the pests threatening farm output, livelihoods and food security.

The locust-invasion now covers an area of 57 million hectares in a country with a total crop area of 23 million hectares, said Falak Naz, director general of crop protection at the Ministry of Food Security and Research. While not all the areas infested now are crop lands, the insects are moving fast, he said.

Agriculture is the second-biggest sector in the economy — contributing about 20% to gross domestic product — and provides a livelihood to half of the nation’s workforce. Faced with devastating losses, authorities are now being forced to divert money set aside to fight the coronavirus to help combat the locust scourge instead.

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Articles Foreign Articles

The Latest Turkish Defence Breakthroughs You Need to Know About

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signs a drone at a military airbase in Batman, Turkey, Saturday, Feb. 3, 2018. The Turkish military says two of its soldiers have been killed in Syria and a third was killed on the Turkish side of the border in an attack by Syrian Kurdish militiamen, saying Saturday's deaths were related to Turkey's operation against the Syrian Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin. (Murat Cetinmuhurdar/Pool Photo via AP)

Following Turkey’s recent test-firing of the native HGK-84 precision guidance kit, we take you through the top Turkish defence industry achievements in recent years.

Native HGK-84 precision guidance kit

On Monday, Turkey’s National Defence Ministry stated that Turkey successfully test-fired a locally-produced precision guidance kit known as the HGK-84.

“The test-firing of our HGK-84 LAB (Precision Guidance Kit-84 Laser Seeker Head) produced by domestic and national facilities were successfully carried out,” announced the national defence ministry.

It is a GPS/INS guidance kit that transforms existing 2,000-pound MK-84 general purpose and penetrator bombs into air-to-ground smart bombs enabling precision-strike capabilities in all-weather conditions.

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Articles General Pakistani Newspapers

CSS 2020 Exams | Falling English Testing Standards

CSS 2020 Exams | Falling English testing standards

By: Anwar Ali

Mediocrity beckons mediocrity. Ask mediocre questions, receive mediocre answers, select mediocre candidates, and engrave mediocrity on the system – the odious concatenation that the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) has been trying to inflict upon Pakistan.

On February 12, with the subject of English, the FPSC initiated the yearly written examination of the candidates yearning for joining the Central Superior Services (CSS) of Pakistan. The first two papers – English Essay, and English precis and composition – laid bare the quality standards the FPSC had set for this year. Except one or two topics or questions, both papers offered a glimpse of the papers of 8th class.

The essay paper opened its door with a hackneyed topic, “Do we really need literature in our lives?” The rest of the essay topics followed suit: Agents of change, the Kashmir cause, democracy in Pakistan, the foreign policy, informal economy, promotion of tourism, freedom of speech, digital revolution, and IMF bailout package. These were oft repeated topics the notes on which have been now travelling from one generation to the next.

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Articles Current Affairs Pakistani Newspapers

Parliamentary vs Presidential | (Pakistan’s Domestic Affairs)

Parliamentary vs Presidential | (Pakistan's Domestic Affairs)

By: Syed Khawar Mehdi

IN over 70 years of Pakistan’s existence, our nation has been embroiled politically due to the ill-advised rabble-rousing tempest of Westminsterian democracy. Ill-chosen by the ruling establishment of the time and their obsession with everything British, and cunningly sustained to date as it diligently serves the well-ingrained vested interests of the rulers more than the ruled, it continues to inflict insult on the creativity, intellect and drive of the people with criminal disregard for the temporally pervasive crisis in governance, all in the name of the much-revered parliamentary system adopted from Westminster.

The Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, though it delivers effectively in England and is fervently admired in Pakistan, is intrinsically ill-suited to the prevailing realities of this land, its people and their needs. Instead, it perniciously and effectively serves political mafias, power brokers and feudal cliques — only to maintain their stranglehold on power without interruption. By no account does the failure of parliamentary democracy justify the military’s historical intrusions and violations, but a weak and unstable system invites all kinds of interference and does not really enjoy the honourable sanctum that its promoters and patrons so intuitively claim when facing critique and censure.

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