Agricultural Tax

 Published in The News on June 1995

This is with reference to a letter by F. Ali under the above caption (May 28). The reason why there are no schools and hospitals in the rural area is that the agriculturists have never been taught to help their fellow human beings.All that the feudals are interested in is to get their loans written off to buy new Pajeros every year and be allowed complete domination over their peasants. On the other hand, industrialists have always taken keen interest in setting up madrassas, schools, mosques and hospitals in their areas.

It should be noted that despite enjoying facilities like exemption from all kinds of taxes, loans being written off, new loans being sanctioned and unlimited access to worldly pleasures, the price of agricultural products continue to rise at phenomenal rates. The agriculturists should be made to realise that they have looted the country for five decades and the people cannot tolerate it anymore. The situation is similar to the days of the French Revolution when the feudals dominated the assembly while the groaning tax-paying urban middle class was unrepresented in the government.

As the IMF and World Bank have noted time and again, the country will never progress until and unless the agriculturists are brought into the tax net

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

Costly PM Secretariat

 Published in The News on February 24, 1998

People are justifiably upset over the massive amount of money spent on building the Prime Minister's Secretariat in Islamabad. I have a suggestion in this regard; the 'edifice' should be made accessible to tourists and the PM should meet them and have his photographs taken with them. The will willingly pay a good amount of money for the privilege of talking to the Prime Minister and being photographed with him. The money that's earned can go the national exchequer and in this manner the cost of building can be covered

Shakir Lakhani.

Karachi

PTV doing wonders

Published in The News on April 10,1999

I simply can't believe it: PTV chose to telecast the one-dayer between England and Pakistan during the time normally devoted to Khabarnama! And, wonder of wonders, the much maligned and hated Khabarnama was aired on the private channel STN!

What's going on? Has somebody made a horrible mistake? If so, he'll be sacked by tomorrow afternoon. Or have those at the top finally discovered that it's better to let Pakistani cricket lovers (most of whom have never seen a cricket ball) forget for half an hour that they are being taken for a ride, not only by the rulers but also by the bookies who have already decided the outcome of the match? 

Shakir lakhani

Canny extortion technique

Published in The News on July 13, 1996

Our high police officials are to be commended for arresting cops for extorting money from couples at the beach.

They should now do something about two traffic cops who have devised a unique and ingenious method of extortion. They stand at the second of the two traffic signals at the Mehmoodabad turning near Nursery on Sharea Faisal. The signals are so situated that when you cross the first one, the light at the other signal turns red and you have to stop. Then they stand in front of your car and accuse you of driving through the red light. Even though you are innocent, you have no choice but to pay, particularly if you are with your wife and kids. Every day they earn enough to ensure that they are kept permanently posted at the same place.

Shakir Lakhani

Trump's arrogance results in Republicans losing midterm electtions

The best argument against democracy is that people like Trump get elected and cause havoc. Future generations of Americans will be amazed that even after four years of Trump ruling over them, they elected him again for another four years, during which he started a  war that resulted in rampant inflation. The man is such a liar that he did everything he had promised not to do, yet about a third of Americans still like him.

Ironically, he tried to change the regime in Iran, yet the regime change took place in his own country. He still maintains that his party would have won if he had been contesting the elections. Like the typical narcissist that he is, he will refuse to take responsibility for the dramatic upset that made the Democrats gain control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

I'd love to see him impeached and convicted, I'm sure there will be enough Republicans who would like to see him go. If he has any shame, he should take responsibility for the debacle and resign tomorrow. But I doubt if he will, he will probably go on saying that it was his defense secretary and others who should take the blame. He might even bomb Iran in frustration. You never know what this madman will do.

 

Violence against women in Pakistan

Even when I was a boy of seven or eight I used to hear things about girls and women that are commonly believed. We had a servant (who used to work for our family in Bombay before migrating to Karachi). He often used say that women are responsible for all the evil on earth and a man should divorce his wife if she didn't obey him. In fact, even at the time of my marriage at the age of 29, one of my Memon friends told me, "Make sure that your wife understands that you're the lord of the house, and every word that you say to her is a command, and if she doesn't do as you say, beat her up, preferably with a cane". His own marriage didn't last more than two years, and I wasn't surprised.

Not a day goes by without some man killing a woman in his family. Yesterday a man killed both his sisters for making Tik Tok videos. The day before, a man shot his ex-wife and her new husband dead. Some time back a guy killed a girl because she didn't want to marry him. Another man killed his mother for re-marrying after she was divorced. Some of our TV dramas make one believe that women are commodities that can be sold to the highest bidder.

I remember a maid and her three daughters who were given shelter by a female lawyer in our neighborhood. One day her husband came with six or seven friends, all of them armed with guns. He didn't want his wife back. He said he should get his female children so he could get sell them to get enough money to buy "gutka" (a popular narcotic in the country).

As long as our mullahs keep preaching that women are meant to be servants as well as baby-producing machines, the situation will not improve and women will continue being subjected to violence, 

Thanks to the budget

Published in The News on June 23, 1996

I wonder why some people are opposed to the recent budget.

After all, it's only fair that city-dewellers should have to bear the brunt of the additional taxes, for they did not vote for the present government. 

And if it seems that the budget is in favour of dacoits, smugglers and feudalists, why should anyone object? It's their leaders who made the budget!

Let's all be thankful that the heavily polluted air we breathe has not been taxed.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

Pakistani politicians' extravagance

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2026 

EXTRAVAGANCE: The recent reports about planes taken by two senior politicians to foreign countries and having them parked there, costing massive amounts, reminded me of the Quaid-i-Azam who had refused to go abroad for medical treatment as Pakistan happened to be a poor country. This is a classic example of extravagance. 

Shakir Lakhani 

Karachi

Why do Pakistani men want many children?

I've always wondered why most Pakistanis believe that birth control is a heinous sin for which the punishment is the Fire. There was a neighbor of ours (a Memon) who had seventeen children from one wife. Another Memon had nine (he looked so much like me that even his three year old daughter once came running to me and sat in my lap instead of his). He would have produced more, but died of heart disease in his forties.

I once told another Memon (an industrialist) that Pakistan's problem is the exponential growth of its population and we should limit the number of our children to two or three. He was so angry that for a few minutes I was afraid he might attack me. "What kind of Muslim are you?" he yelled. "Don't you know we need more Muslims in the world to convert others to Islam?"

We've had a half blind peon (a Pathan) for thirteen years. His wife gave birth to their eighth child (another boy, his sixth son). He's been married for sixteen years. When I think of how tough it was for me to raise three children, I wonder how this guy has managed to feed his wife and kids despite earning the minimum wage. 

But one thing I know: as long as the mullahs keep on saying that Islam doesn't allow birth control, these guys will go on breeding like rabbits. 

Persecution of minorities in Pakistan

The creation of Pakistan was meant to allow the minorities of India (mainly Muslims, but Sikhs and Christians as well), to practice their religion freely, but gradually it has come to mean that the country was created in the name of Islam. I can easily prove that this was not the case, one only has to read the speeches made by the founder (Jinnah) to see that he was strictly secular. For this reason, the non-Muslims of Pakistan are persecuted so much that millions of them have left the country after 1947. Karachi, for instance had many Goan Christians when I was in school, but today one rarely comes across them. Some of them settled in the UK, others are in Canada and the US. 

The problem was that before partition, the British did not trust Muslims (who had been the rulers before they colonized India), so they employed Christians in all government departments. I once asked a retired KPT accountant (a Muslim) how many Muslim officers were employed in the KPT before 1947. His answer shocked me. There were no Muslim officers, there were only three Muslim employees among hundreds, and among these three he was a clerk, the other two were a driver and a watchman. Among the officers were Hindus, Christians, Parsis, and even Sikhs (very few of whom lived in Karachi at the time). Even in the 1970s, when I was working in the petroleum industry, there were many Christians in senior management positions. Perhaps this is one reason why minorities have always been discriminated against by the majority in Pakistan.