Faculty Research - Books

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  Timeless College Tales

  Nadya Chishty Mujahid

  At the elite Saeed School of Business, where the cream of the city's student population flock for further education, Professor Madeeha rules the roost with her wisdom and wit, both inside and out of the classroom .

  From the tangled webs of loves triangles to the wisdom of work from classical antiquity, author Nadya Chishty-Mujahid creates a world of the heady and intoxicating college experience bubble that is alive with the richness of her professional experience as a celebrated teacher at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA Karachi).

  Turn the pages to step into the shoes of young students maneuvering the fierce fights, fiery feelings and fun that is intrinsic to the beauty of the college experience.

  These stories will reflect back at you Aristotle's words, ''Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.''

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  Pakistan : economic challenges and solutions

  Ishrat Husain

  Pakistan faces a multitude of economic challenges some of them man made and domestic and the other external and natural. There is very little disagreement on the diagnostics — weak institutions, low productivity. Low savings and investment, burgeoning burden of debt, Macroeconomic instability, poor human capital, indifferent bureaucracy, tough business climate, inefficiencies in energy sector etc. This volume consisting of fourteen chapters attempts to bring together at one place the well-known prescriptions and detailed solutions to address these challenges. The main insight arising from this work is that a lot has been done to define the contents and the contours of reforms but the asymmetry in the accrual of losses and gains is the main stumbling block to their implementation. As losses are immediate, the losers are identifiable, organized groups that agitate and resist the reforms eroding the political capital of the ruling party weakening their chances at electoral cycle. Successive governments have therefore found hardly any champions among the elected representatives. Given that the gains would occur sometime in distant future and would be diffused throughout the economy the credit for success would be preempted by the party in opposition in power at that time strengthening its chances of getting reelected. This disconnect between the timing of political and economic gains and losses thus leads to the maintenance of status quo.

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  Development Pathways: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh 1947-2022

  Ishrat Husain, Shagufta Shabbar, Sarah Nizamani, and Masood Siddiqui

  Development Pathways presents evidence-based comparative analysis of economic and social developments in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh since they gained independence in 1947. Pakistan was further subdivided in 1971 when Bangladesh became independent. In 1947 these countries were mired in poverty, illiteracy, poor health status, underemployment, and rudimentary infrastructure. There was tremendous pessimism about the future economic sustenance of these countries.

  The development pathways adopted by each of these countries differed significantly but they each also went through paradigm shifts in their policies in the period 1990 onwards. All three countries started their journey with centrally planned state control of command heights of economy with Pakistan switching back and forth from liberalization, nationalization and once again liberalization. Institutional decay and frequent political changes brought about a major shift from a fast growing economy in the first forty years to becoming a laggard in the recent thirty year period. India adhered to its initial model until 1991 when it abolished License Raj, opened up the economy to the private sector, and attracted Foreign Direct Investment. India has been recording growth rates of 6-7 percent since then.

  Bangladesh also started its development journey by following a state-controlled model. However, political stability post 1990, continuity of economic policies across political regimes and liberalization widened the scope of the private sector and moved the growth trajectory significantly upwards.

  This study identifies critical success factors, and the risks and pain points for steering the future direction of these economies. This book would be of interest to policy practitioners, opinion makers, academics and researchers, and the students of Development Studies as it takes a multidisciplinary approach rather than a narrow lens of economic analysis.

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  Decision Trees with Hypotheses

  Mohammad Azad, Igor Chikalov, Shahid Hussain, Mikhail Moshkov, and Beata Zielosko

  • Presents the concept of a hypothesis about the values of all attributes

  • Provides tools for the experimental and theoretical study of decision trees with hypotheses

  • Compares these decision trees with conventional decision trees that use only queries, each based on a single attribute

  In this book, the concept of a hypothesis about the values of all attributes is added to the standard decision tree model, considered, in particular, in test theory and rough set theory. This extension allows us to use the analog of equivalence queries from exact learning and explore decision trees that are based on various combinations of attributes, hypotheses, and proper hypotheses (analog of proper equivalence queries). The two main goals of this book are (i) to provide tools for the experimental and theoretical study of decision trees with hypotheses and (ii) to compare these decision trees with conventional decision trees that use only queries, each based on a single attribute.

  Both experimental and theoretical results show that decision trees with hypotheses can have less complexity than conventional decision trees. These results open up some prospects for using decision trees with hypotheses as a means of knowledge representation and algorithms for computing Boolean functions. The obtained theoretical results and tools for studying decision trees with hypotheses are useful for researchers using decision trees and rules in data analysis. This book can also be used as the basis for graduate courses.

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  Pakistan-Afghanistan relations: pitfalls and the way forward

  Huma Baqai and Nausheen Wasi

  The new chapter in Afghanistan-Pakistan relations that will be written now will not be without its history, without national and regional frameworks, without continuities and discontinuities. Therefore, it is important and even urgent to rethink the past, current, and future relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan, if we want this new chapter to be less confrontational and harmful than some of the preceding ones. And in this regard the book in your hand, “Pakistan-Afghanistan Relations: Pitfalls and the Way Forward”, is highly relevant, and a very important contribution. This book has been edited by two eminent Pakistani academics, Dr. Huma Baqai from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi and Dr. Nausheen Wais from the University of Karachi. They have brought together experts from Pakistan and Afghanistan in this field, for this important publication.

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  Agents of Change: The Problematic Landscape of Pakistan's K-12 Education and the People Leading the Change

  Amjad Noorani and Nadeem Hussain

  This book aims to energize open discourse on the education landscape and initiate civil society action for sustainable change. From the historical to the present state, the book vividly describes the feudal and dysfunctional environments which have impeded reforms. It addresses sensitive areas such as the politics of language, the curriculum content, quality improvement measures and inclusive education; the misunderstood and maligned madrasas (Islamic seminary schools); the struggles of transition from poverty to a middle-class position; and the need for organized political advocacy. It interlaces bold ideas and proposes civil society ownership for implementation of reforms. It proposes that the influential elite should lead as committed stakeholders and recommends long-term public engagement to uphold the changes. It urges action to reduce inequities and promote policies and practices that will even the playing field for the underprivileged. Addressing the important area of quality education, it proposes achievable measures of improvement in academic inputs as well as management efficiencies in the school systems.

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  Making a Muslim: reading publics and contesting identities in Nineteenth-century North India

  S. Akbar Zaidi

  Using primarily Urdu sources from the nineteenth century, this book allows us to rethink notions of 'the Muslim', in its numerous, complex and often contradictory forms, which emerged in colonial North India after 1857. Allowing the self-representation of Muslimness and its manifestations to emerge, it contrasts how the colonial British 'made Muslims' very differently compared to how the community envisaged themselves. A key argument made here contests the general sense of the narrative of lamentation, decay, decline, and a sense of self-pity and ruination, by proposing a different condition, that of zillat, a condition which gave rise to much self-reflection resulting in action, even if it was in the form of writing and expression. By questioning how and when a Muslim community emerged in colonial India, the book unsettles the teleological explanation of the Partition of India and the making of Pakistan.

  • Uses previously unseen Urdu sources to further our knowledge and understanding of Muslim North India
  • Challenges the definition of unitary Muslim quam and identity
  • Acknowledges zillat as an agentive force in the remaking of Muslim identities in North India after 1857.

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  Bedtime stories for sleep less entrepreneurs

  Najam Akber Anjum

  We learn through stories. Stories teach us important lessons and principles, which can be grasped in a more nuanced manner than from a lecture. This collection of stories, rooted in Pakistani entrepreneurial behavior, allows the reader to see themselves and their culture in the context of success. Too many entrepreneur text books or the stories that are told to entrepreneurship classrooms are rooted in a different reality, a different cultural narrative than the average Pakistani student will ever experience.

  This can make the goal of entrepreneurship seem out of reach. Well, that simply is not true. We all have entrepreneurial opportunities. Those opportunities just need to be placed within the context of who we are and where we live.

  Najam Anjum does a wonderful job of bringing relevant stories and examples to the reader of this book. There are many lessons in these stories. Lessons that will allow a person to learn important traits and qualities to become an entrepreneur in Pakistan.

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  Making sense of post COVID-19 politics

  Huma Baqai and Nausheen Wasi

  The book, Making Sense of Post COVID-19 Politics, is an attempt to answer the questions thrown up by COVID-19. The book dwells on three powerful shifts: 1) from state security to human security; 2) from greed-driven capitalism to conscience-laced capitalism; and 3) from US-Euro centric global politics to an Asia-centric order. This book brings together some of the best minds in Pakistan to make sense of chaos and confusion and initiate scholarly debates on different aspect of COVID-19 led changes. It identifies potential security threats, challenges to the existing ideological politico-economic divide, issues of human security and response mechanisms, and two very central issues of Kashmir and the 18th amendment.

  The book is pioneering in nature and indicative in style. It dwells on questions thrown up by Covid -19. The editors have managed to create a sequence across eleven chapters starting with thematic issues and rounding it off with regional and domestic challenges and prospects. This book is a remarkable compilation of articles from acknowledged experts. It is an excellent study into the economic and social cost if the pandemic and its impact on international politics.

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  The Political Chess King

  Nadya Qamar Chishty-Mujahid

  This dramatic play focuses on the tensions and power dynamics between a number of student leaders at the Saeed School of Business (SSB). Readers will alternately fall under the spell of the shrewd and virtuous Black Vizier, Salal Zahid, and the tough yet noble White King, Raza Shah. Towering above the others is the figure of the Black King, Umar Kapadia, the powerful founder and head of the SSB student political party Jazba, who is as magnificent as he is Machiavellian. Regardless of his rivals' persistent treachery, the influential Umar continues to dominate the gritty and complex terrain that constitutes the political chessboard of this highly elite business school. Yet, in spite of his considerable power, Kapadia eventually realizes that even the most successful of men are at the mercy of a force that is far greater than politics-fate.

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  Short notes on the economy during the Covid-19 crisis

  Asma Hyder (Ed.)

  The coronavirus – COVID-19 – pandemic has had a huge, catastrophic, impact on the global economy and on economies of almost all countries. Even those countries which were posting record-breaking profits just four weeks ago, such as the US and Germany, are now faced with a substantial fall in incomes, earning, employment and profits. From record low unemployment levels, these countries are already projecting a huge spike in unemployment, and all indicators suggest that a global recession is now imminent.

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  Short notes on the economy during the Covid-19 crisis

  Asma Hyder (Ed.)

  Several months have passed since COVID-19 has continued to wreak havoc globally. While the pandemic has had a major impact on the physical health of individuals, it has also had a considerable effect on their mental well-being. With lockdowns of different extents being imposed throughout the world, this effect is becoming increasingly visible on social media platforms.

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  Short notes on the economy during the Covid-19 crisis

  Asma Hyder (Ed.)

  Pakistan is highly vulnerable to covid-19 as it continues to wreak havoc on its economic and social conditions. By this date, around 1700 people have been confirmed infected in Pakistan resulting in 18 deaths. The countrywide lockdown has forced millions to stay indoors, and halt economic activity in the country. Due to COVID-19, It is projected that poverty will increase from 75 million to 125 million people country wide due to lockdown and recession in the economy.

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  Emerging bond markets: shedding light on trends and patterns

  Tamara Teplova, Tatiana V. Sokolova, and Qaiser Munir

  The bond market is a key securities market and emerging economies present exciting, new investment opportunities. This timely book provides insights into these emerging bond markets through empirical models and analytical databases, i.e. Bloomberg, Eikon Refinitiv and the Russian Cbonds.

  The book looks at the dynamics of the development of emerging bond markets, their competitiveness, features and patterns using macro and micro level data. It also takes into consideration various securities type i.e. government, corporate, sub-federal and municipal bonds, to identify respective challenges and risks. The book also analyses factors that may inhibit or stimulate a well-balanced financial market. It includes case studies of Asian, Latin American and Russian bond markets, as also as cross-country comparisons.

  It will be a useful reference for anyone who is interested to learn more of the bond market and the modelling techniques for critical data analysis.

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  Revolution in reform: Trade unionism in Lahore, c. 1920-70

  Ahmad Azhar

  Late-colonial Lahore witnessed the rise of organised workers’ politics with the unionisation of native Indian workers at the Mughalpura railway workshops in 1920. Various ideological tendencies—the Owenist, Labourite and Communist traditions—began to come together while power struggles gradually led to rifts within the trade-union. Revolution in Reform: Trade-Unionism in Lahore, c. 1920–70 explores these previously unrecognised ambivalences.

  Ahmad Azhar questions previous research that have traditionally considered labour politics of inter-war Punjab as mere preludes to Partition. He studies crucial moments: the railway strike of 1920; Mughalpura’s quest for autonomy in the inter-war years; the relation of labour politics with ‘Swaraj’ and the Indian National Congress (1919–47); and the Meerut Conspiracy Case and the Royal Commission on Labour in India.

  The author also reconstructs events of the time from the narrative of Mirza Ibrahim, a key worker–militant leader, to analyse the repression faced by workers in the Mughalpura movement under communist hegemony. Through hitherto unused ego documents (mostly in the vernacular) of leaders such as J. B. Miller, M. A. Khan, Bashir Ahmed Bakhtiar and Saif-ur-Rehman, the author brings alive the conflicting aspects of trade-union leadership in a politically charged period in the history of inter-war Punjab, and post-Partition Pakistan.

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  Pakistan: the economy of an elitist state

  Ishrat Husain

  This insightful analysis into the prevailing economic situation in Pakistan has three distinguishing features. It is an exhaustive, analytical history of economic development in Pakistan during the last seventy years; it provides an explanation of Pakistan’s economic performance in the political context, and compares it with other South Asian countries and with East Asia; it outlines for Pakistan an agenda of economic and social reforms based on a model of shared growth to see the country into the twenty-first century. The main thrust of the book is that the respective roles of the state and the market have been reversed in the case of Pakistan, with the result that the benefits are reaped by the elite class only. This small minority continues to enjoy the unjust accumulation of wealth in the midst of widespread poverty and squalor. The author establishes that such a situation is socially and economically not sustainable.

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  The Economy of Modern Sindh: Opportunities Lost and Lessons for the Future

  Ishrat Husain, Aijaz A. Qureshi, and Nadeem Hussain

  The Economy of Modern Sindh delves into the different aspects of Sindh’s economy—from geography, topography, climate, administrative history, and demographics, to the political landscape, education, health, labour force and employment, poverty and inequality, agriculture and water issues, infrastructure, industries, energy resources, and public finances—each is covered in a separate chapter. The book highlights the socioeconomic problems that have beset Sindh, arresting the province’s economic potential, and proposes a multi-pronged strategy to address these challenges. It offers an incisive and objective assessment of the various policies enacted and pursued by the Sindh government over the years. It also attempts to identify the particular issues that require reforms at the sectoral and micro level. The analysis on each aspect of Sindh’s economy is juxtaposed with the performance analysis at the national level as well as a comparison with Punjab that allows for a relative appraisal of Sindh’s socioeconomic standing.

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  New perspectives on Pakistan's political economy: state, class and social change

  Matthew McCartney and S. Akbar Zaidi

  This volume makes a major intervention in the debates around the nature of the political economy of Pakistan, focusing on its contemporary social dynamics. This is the first comprehensive academic analysis of Pakistan's political economy after thirty-five years, and addresses issues of state, class and society, examining gender, the middle classes, the media, the bazaar economy, urban spaces and the new elite. The book goes beyond the contemporary obsession with terrorism and extremism, political Islam, and simple 'civilian-military relations', and looks at modern-day Pakistan through the lens of varied academic disciplines. It not only brings together new work by some emerging scholars but also formulates a new political economy for the country, reflecting the contemporary reality and diversification in the social sciences in Pakistan. The chapters in this volume dynamically and dialectically capture emergent processes and trends in framing Pakistan's political economy and invite other scholars to engage with and move beyond these concerns and issues.

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  CPEC & Pakistani economy: an appraisal

  Ishrat Husain

  This publication “CPEC and Pakistani Economy: An Appraisal” is a combine effort of H.E Dr. Ishrat Husain and CoE-CPEC to disseminate the most updated and authentic information about CPEC. We are sure that this booklet will go a long way by serving our effort to reach out all the relevant quarters and stakeholders including masses to know about the ongoing and futuristic projects of CPEC.

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  Governing the ungovernable : institutional reforms for democratic governance

  Ishrat Husain

  Pakistan, since its independence in 1947, had to face tumultuous years for the first four decades. Despite the many challenges, both internal and external, the country was able to register a 6 percent average annual growth rate during the first forty years of its existence. The country was ahead of India and Bangladesh in all economic and social indicators. Since 1990, the country has fallen behind its neighbouring countries and has had a decline in the growth rate.

  This book attempts to examine the reasons behind this slowdown, the volatile and inequitable growth of the last twenty-five years, and through a process of theoretical and empirical evidence argues that the most powerful explanatory hypothesis lies in the decay of institutions of governance. It also suggests a selective and incremental approach of restructuring some key public institutions that pertain to accountability, transparency, security, economic growth, and equity.

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  Pakistan's institutions: we know they matter, but how can they work better?

  Michael Kugelman and Ishrat Husain

  Back in 2012, a Pakistani professor named Farakh A. Khan issued a dire warning about the state of his country’s public institutions. “Pakistan suffers from institutional failure,” he declared in an essay published about a year before his death. “Failed institutions are unable to correct the problems faced by the society and eventually lead to economic failure… If our leaders are sincere for change in Pakistan then they have to first get the institutions working again. But do they know how or have the will to do it?

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  Gender and violence in urban Pakistan

  Nausheen H. Anwar, Daanish Mustafa, Amiera Sawas, and Sharmeen Malik

  The project has focused on the material and discursive drivers of gender roles and their relevance to configuring violent geographies specifically among 12 urban working class neighborhoods of Karachi and Rawalpindi-Islamabad. This project has investigated how frustrated gendered expectations may be complicit in driving different types of violence and how they may be tackled by addressing first, the material aspects of gender roles through improved access to public services and opportunities, and second, discursive aspects of gender roles in terms of public education and media. This report's findings are based upon approximately two thousand four hundred questionnaire surveys, close to sixty ethnographic style interviews, participant observations, participatory photographic surveys, media monitoring, secondary literature review and some key informant interviews. The findings overwhelmingly point towards access to services and vulnerability profiles of households as major drivers of violence, as they intersect with discourses surrounding masculinities, femininities and sexualities. The core discussions and analysis in this final report are anchored in the following four themes: vulnerabilities, mobilities, access to services, and violence. This was a multi-method research project and each of the methods was chosen to address specific types of data relevant to the specific research questions.

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  The corporate governance landscape of Pakistan

  Sadia Khan

  The Corporate Governance Landscape of Pakistan is a story told by the pioneers of corporate governance in the country for the benefit of those who will take it to the next level of policy advocacy and enforcement. It provides a comprehensive guide to the existing policy frameworks, principles, and practices of corporate governance in Pakistan today. It attempts to capture the essence of the corporate environment of Pakistan that existed on the eve of the introduction of the first Code of Corporate Governance. It reveals, through subsequent policy additions, the sea change in mindsets the first set of policy reforms facilitated. The book is meant both as a historical anthology of work already accomplished under the realm of corporate governance as well as a reference book for future regulators, educators, and practitioners. It recognizes the fact that immense effort-some of which remains under-appreciated-has already gone into enhancing the corporate governance environment of the country.

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  Infrastructure redux: crisis, progress in industrial Pakistan & beyond

  Nausheen H. Anwar

  Pakistan's economy is currently semi-industrialized, but it has the high potential for prosperity in the 21st century. The focus of this book is on industrial infrastructures of production and circulation, from power generation and distribution to roads and ports. It looks at how these material technologies underpin visions of progress and mediate relations between the state and capitalist firms in export-oriented industrial and industrializing districts in Punjab, Pakistan.

  In this book infrastructure is understood as a material technology intimately tied to the shaping of modern-industrial society and as a sociotechnical system linked to the specific project of Pakistan's economic development. Like most postcolonial nation-states, the Pakistani state planned, provided and owned infrastructure, which in the aftermath of independence in 1947 was tied to a mode of rule while promising rapid material progress. But today the state is perceived as having failed to provide infrastructure and is disconnected from local-industrial contexts or superseded by the whims of powerful politicians. For industrialists, infrastructure's disruptions are perceived and experienced in two ways: first as literal technological collapse that carries high costs, breakdowns and immobility; and second as the loss of a moral order due to political interference.

  The author argues that in the present conjuncture of an infrastructure crisis, the apparent absence of the state in the planning and provision of industrial infrastructure is somewhat deceptive. Although the state is not absent, its presence is reconfigured through a variety of firm-led initiatives to repair and rebuild infrastructures. Folded into patron-client frames, the ensuing state-firm relational engagements for building infrastructure reinvigorate the promise of progress.

  Furthermore, the strategies of capitalist firms operate within a moral economy in which a pervasive narrative of national moral decline and uncertainty explains the disintegration of a specific type of public infrastructure: electricity. Straddling the disciplines of development economics, history and anthropology, this study will appeal to students, scholars and researchers interested in industrialization and globalization.

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  Esoteric-orientalist elements in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey: the nexus of gothic and cultural studies

  Nadya Q. Chishty-Mujahid

  A significant work that directs readers to re-examine the classic texts and tropes of Austen’s novel, Northanger Abbey, Orientalist sub-fields of Cultural studies, and intriguing aspects of the Tarot in a postmodern context. The author directs students and scholars to examine neglected aspects of academia.