Indus Waters and Social Change

Indus Waters and Social Change
Author: Saiyid Ali Naqvi
Publisher: Oxford University Press Pakistan
Total Pages: 60
Release: 2012-11-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199063966

Saiyid Ali Naqvi has brought a wealth of knowledge in water resources development, acquired over a 58-year career, to this study of the impact of the harnessing of the Indus waters on the evolution and development of the fabric of society in the region. He follows the Indus in its journey from around 7000 bc to present times, as he develops his thesis that the processes of social change in the region that now constitutes Pakistan are inextricably linked to the harnessing of the Indus waters. At its inception in 1947, Pakistan, with 85 per cent of its population dependent on agriculture, was an agrarian country. Today, with two-thirds of its population still living in villages, the country remains dependent on agriculture. Despite the use of machinery by big landowners, the agrarian social structure remains fettered by quasi-feudal and tribal customs. The book makes a critical assessment of the pace of the social change process in Pakistan and finds that it has reached a phase which could at best be characterized as ‘quasi-industrial’. This disappointing situation is due to the slow pace of industrialization of the agriculture sector. The book provides the research, historical facts, and insights for an informed public debate on the policy measures for overcoming impediments and accelerating the social change process.

Attaining Access for All

Attaining Access for All
Author: Asian Development Bank
Publisher: Asian Development Bank
Total Pages: 151
Release: 2010-10-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9290921382

Universal access to safe, reliable energy is a necessary condition for providing the poor with safe water and sanitation, for maintaining adequate standards of living, and for achieving any of the Millennium Development Goals. The Asian Development Bank recognizes the importance of electricity and water access for the poor and has committed to providing such access by establishing the Energy for All and Water for All initiatives. While broad efforts aimed at regulatory reform and increasing energy and water access may be helpful, targeted interventions, measures, and approaches are often needed to ensure that the poor benefit from these efforts. This publication identifies specific infrastructure and utility service reform measures that can be taken to advance the interests of the poor.

Promoting Information and Communication Technology in ADB Operations

Promoting Information and Communication Technology in ADB Operations
Author: Asian Development Bank
Publisher: Asian Development Bank
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2014-09-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9292546090

Rapid advances in information and communication technology (ICT) continue to create tremendous opportunities for economic and social gains in the world's poorest areas. A key infrastructure of knowledge-based economies. ICT is a driving force for rapidly growing new sectors. The Strategy 2020 of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) reinforces the importance of drawing on ICT to enhance development in Asia and the Pacific. In line with Strategy 2020, ADB's 2013 ICT for Development Strategy and with the support of the Republic of Korea's e-Asia and Knowledge Partnership Fund (EAKPF), this study examines and identifies opportunities for promoting ICT in ADB operations.

Pakistan's Experience with Formal Law

Pakistan's Experience with Formal Law
Author: Osama Siddique
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2013-06-20
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107245214

Law reform in Pakistan attracts such disparate champions as the Chief Justice of Pakistan, the USAID and the Taliban. Common to their equally obsessive pursuit of 'speedy justice' is a remarkable obliviousness to the historical, institutional and sociological factors that alienate Pakistanis from their formal legal system. This pioneering book highlights vital and widely neglected linkages between the 'narratives of colonial displacement' resonant in the literature on South Asia's encounter with colonial law and the region's postcolonial official law reform discourses. Against this backdrop, it presents a typology of Pakistani approaches to law reform and critically evaluates the IFI-funded single-minded pursuit of 'efficiency' during the last decade. Employing diverse methodologies, it proceeds to provide empirical support for a widening chasm between popular, at times violently expressed, aspirations for justice and democratically deficient reform designed in distant IFI headquarters that is entrusted to the exclusive and unaccountable Pakistani 'reform club'.

Pakistan

Pakistan
Author: Asian Development Bank
Publisher:
Total Pages: 72
Release: 2006
Genre: Economic assistance
ISBN:

Islamic Banking in Pakistan

Islamic Banking in Pakistan
Author: Feisal Khan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2019-02-04
Genre:
ISBN: 9780367232023

Islamic Banking and Finance (IBF) has become a growing force over the past three decades, with Pakistan being one of the IBF pioneers by converting to an 'interest-free' banking system in 1985. However, since independence in 1947, there has been continual tension over Pakistan's essential character, between Islamic Minimalists, who favour a Modernist interpretation of Islam, and those who favour an Islamic Maximalist interpretation that sees Pakistan as a model Islamic state. This book analyses the push to Islamize Pakistan and its financial system by Islamic revivalists, following the early 1947 debates in the original Constituent Assembly to the final 2002 ruling on IBF of the Shariat Appellate Bench of the Pakistan Supreme Court. It examines the practice and theory behind contemporary Islamic, "Shariah-compliant", banking. It offers extensive interviews with Pakistani Islamic bankers on the state of their industry and how they see it developing, and provides analysis on how the Islamic banks' customers differ from those of conventional ones. Presenting a critical analysis of Pakistan's IBF experience and offering a new insight into Pakistan's banking industry that illustrates broader political and social trends in the country, this book will be of interest to specialists on Islam, South Asia and International Economics. es analysis on how the Islamic banks' customers differ from those of conventional ones. Presenting a critical analysis of Pakistan's IBF experience and offering a new insight into Pakistan's banking industry that illustrates broader political and social trends in the country, this book will be of interest to specialists on Islam, South Asia and International Economics.

Practical Responses to Real Problems

Practical Responses to Real Problems
Author: Asian Development Bank
Publisher: Asian Development Bank
Total Pages: 111
Release: 2022-07-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9292696106

This publication presents new case studies of recent Asian Development Bank projects in Bangladesh, the Cook Islands, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, and the People's Republic of China. The case studies highlight innovative interventions and effective approaches used to reduce poverty while ensuring equality and inclusion, caring for the environment, securing food for all, and sustaining prosperity through access to finance. The publication builds on the first volume of poverty reduction case studies published in 2019.

Risk and the Rupee in Pakistan's New Economy

Risk and the Rupee in Pakistan's New Economy
Author: Antonia Settle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2020-10-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108851304

In a world of open markets and global trade, development thinking seeks stability and prosperity for the world's poor by expanding access to financial products. This book challenges the development sector's embrace of 'financial inclusion' by exploring how the new risks and instabilities that accompany the pivot towards the global economy undermining the functioning of money itself. Cast against fundamental change in the monetary environment accompanying the globalisation of markets, the book examines the rapid liberalisation of money and markets in Pakistan. It argues that liberalisation has generated substantive problems not only for the central bank as guardian of national currency, but for ordinary households. By pinpointing how globalisation generates new risks for households in the everyday economy, the book reveals jarring contradictions between free markets and financial inclusion whilst challenging money theory by positing substantive and empirically-grounded monetary contestation that demonstrates a burden of risk imposed on ordinary people, that is only exacerbated by financial inclusion.