CONTENTS

1) The Unique China-Pakistan Relationship – Pak-Relations (TRIBUNE)

2) Mughal India through western eyes – Pak-Relations (TRIBUNE)
3) Fighting Climate Crisis – now more urgent than ever – Climate Change (TRIBUNE)
4) The ‘One Per Cent Republic’ – Economy (DAWN)
5) Education and behavior – Education (DAWN)

1) The Unique China-Pakistan Relationship – Pak-Relations (TRIBUNE)

→ Hedge (verb): limit or qualify (something) by conditions or exceptions.
→ China will continue its fundamental policy of opening up and provide new opportunities to
Pakistan and the rest of the world through continuous development.
→ Both sides (China and Pakistan) issued joint statement and signed or concluded a number of
agreements/MoUs, in areas of:
➢ E-commerce
➢ Digital economy
➢ Export of agricultural product
➢ Financial cooperation
➢ Protection of cultural property and infrastructure
➢ Flood relief and post-disaster reconstruction
➢ Global Development Initiative (GDI)
➢ Animal disease control
➢ Geosciences
➢ Law enforcement and security.
→ The uniqueness of Pakistan-China relationship lies in the high level of strategic coordination
and political mutual trust. ‘Ironclad friendship’ is a special term to describe the relationship
between the two countries.
→ Pakistan gave firm support to China in response to Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and attempts to
stir up Xinjiang-related issues at the Human Rights Council. Likewise, China supports Pakistan
in safeguarding sovereignty, territorial integrity and security, and promoting its socio-
economic development and prosperity.
→ CPEC features 47 projects that have been started or completed with a total investment of
more than $25 billion; 150,000 jobs have also been created.
→ In the next phase of CPEC, China will step up cooperation in industry, agriculture, science
and technology to better serve Pakistan’s industrialization and enhance its export
competitiveness.
→ Pakistan’s exports to China are expected to exceed $4 billion this year. Among them,
agriculture serves as an emerging growth area. Pakistan’s agricultural trade surplus with
China reached $640 million last year, a 13-time increase year-on-year.
→ Weal and woe (phrase): The phrase "Weal and woe" means both in times of happiness and
success and in times of sadness and difficulty.
→ China announced an extra 500-million-yuan emergency aid for post-disaster reconstruction,
making the total aid to 1.16 billion yuan (Rs36 billion).
 → Year 2023 will usher in the China-Pakistan Year of Tourism and Exchange; and the Gandhara
Art Exhibition will be held at the Palace Museum in Beijing to showcase Pakistan’s diverse
culture and long history of interaction with China.
→ China-Pakistan relationship → All-Weather Strategic Cooperative Partnership.
2) Mughal India through Western Eyes – SAARC (TRIBUNE)
→ Teaching of ‘History’ in India and Pakistan suffers from deep religious, ethnic and racial
malaise.
→ The first official historical narration of Mughal India is Tuzzak-e-Babri, or more famously
Babur Nama, the Gazetteer of India.
→ The second official gazetteer Akbar Nama in three volumes, of which the more famous
Aeen-e-Akbari or the ‘Constitution of Akbar’ is a part, was the work completed under
Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar, the grandson of Babur and the greatest Moghul Emperor who
consolidated the Mughal Empire (ruled 1556-1605 AD).
→ It was around Emperor Jehangir’s time (ruled 1605-1627) that the western traders entered
India’s south coast.
→ François Bernier, a physician during some of these travels, stayed for 12 years in India and
his Travels in the Mogul Empire (AD 1656-1668), published in 1670, gives an interesting
account of India under Shah Jehan (ruled 1628-1658), and later Aurangzeb (ruled 1658-
1707), after a protracted war of succession (1656-1661).
→ The vast Indian state of Bengal fell to the three ‘Georgian’ slaves of the last local Monarch,
Ramras and fragmented into Deccan, Visapore and Golkanda kingdoms, before it was
assimilated into the Mughal Empire.
3) Fighting Climate Crisis – now more urgent than ever – Climate Change (TRIBUNE)
→ In Ethiopia, the worst droughts in decades pushed millions into hunger and starvation. In the
Sahel, water scarcity is exacerbating conflicts over resources and land, forcing people to
migrate. All of this shows: the climate crisis is the biggest security challenge humanity faces
in the 21st century, and taking action against it is more urgent than ever.
→ Putin’s war against Ukraine has shaken global energy markets and fueled a hunger crisis,
hitting the most vulnerable hardest.
→ In advancing climate action, it is time for ambitious emissions cutting by all countries to stay
on the 1.5-degree path.
→ Germany is not deviating one inch from its climate goals. On the contrary, we are doubling
down on them.
→ The coal-fired power plants we have reactivated will run only until March 2024. New
permanent pipelines we are building to import LNG are required by law to be hydrogen-
ready. And in the European Union, we have committed to cutting gas consumption by 15 per
cent this winter — not least to push global LNG prices down.
→ Europe is set to be the first climate-neutral continent by 2050.
→ It is time to mobilise financing away from fossils to renewables.
4) The ‘One Per Cent Republic’ – Economy (DAWN)
→ Opportunities, power and wealth, in Pakistan, are limited to the top one per cent of the
people.
→ Pakistan’s economy remains underdeveloped as it ignores the talent of most in the country.
→ This year over four million Pakistani kids will turn 18. Of these, less than 25pc will graduate
from the intermediate stream and about 30,000 will graduate from the O- and A-level
stream. Over 3m kids, or 75pc, will not have finished 12 years of schooling. (Half of all kids in
Pakistan are out of school.)
 → There are around 400,000 schools in Pakistan.
→ A successful economy keeps giving rise to new entrepreneurs, representing newly emerging
industries and technologies, becoming its richest people.
→ The only influential professions where non-elites can enter —bureaucracy and the military
— are also set up such that once their people enter the highest echelons, their lifestyle, like
their elite peers from other fields, becomes similar to the colonial-era gora sahibs.
→ According to UNICEF, 40pc of Pakistani children under the age of five are stunted (indicating
persistent undernutrition); another 18pc are wasted (indicating recent severe weight loss
due to undernutrition) and 28pc are underweight. This means 86pc of our kids go to sleep
hungry most nights and have the highest likelihood in South Asia of dying before their fifth
birthday.
→ Pakistan’s elite compact allows wealth and power to perpetuate over generations and keeps
everyone else out. This is what’s keeping Pakistanis poor and why it’s necessary to unravel
the elite compact.
5) Education and Behavior – Education (DAWN)
→ Education aims to nurture responsible social behaviour. Thus, socially responsible behaviour
is an explicit reflection of an effective education system.
→ Education is governed by poor monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, little clarity of roles,
procedures and responsibilities, and few parameters of accountability.
→ Talking about modifying education, all new interventions are driven by political and
bureaucratic whims rather than a thorough evaluation of previous reforms and estimates of
future needs.
→ To successfully run the programme, one must consider the compatibility of the operating
system with the new programme. Similarly, without understanding the context and systems,
educational interventions, such as SNC and others, will not work.
→ It is unfathomable why any university should require students to wear uniforms, leaving no
room for choice as part of students’ aesthetic development.
→ Curriculum and institutions must take into account the emancipation of women and the
education of their male counterparts to learn how to coexist with dignity.
→ Education processes, at the policy and implementation levels, need to aim for harmony
between learners’ educational and social experiences and their learning needs.