Progressive Literature in the Age of Algorithms: A…

A familiar and recurring phantom is once again haunting the political and intellectual horizon of Pakistan: the clamor for administrative redistribution and the carving out of new provinces. Whenever structural collapse, economic decay, and institutional governance reach their absolute nadir, the sanctums of power and the opaque enclaves of the establishment begin to chant a singular, predictable refrain. The root of all systemic malady, we are told, lies in the sheer geographical expanse of our existing provinces, and the ultimate panacea is the relentless division of the state. When one scrutinizes the subterranean motives, logical contradictions, and political expediencies governing this discourse, an uncomfortable truth starkly emerges. This persistent endeavor to shift the blame for chronic misgovernance and policy failure onto geographical boundaries, cultural entities, and ethnic identities is merely a resurrection of a time-worn colonial playbook—a deliberate diversion designed to distract the citizenry from real structural grievances while consolidating the apparatus of absolute control. History bears poignant witness to the reality that whenever ruling elites fail to mask their administrative ineptitude, systemic incompetence, and constitutional deviations, they seek refuge behind the seductive mirage of better governance, transforming the republic into an endless laboratory of reckless experimentation. One is compelled to ask: does any sound mind truly accept the medical wisdom of amputating a limb simply because a malignant ulcer has taken root in the arm? Are the pathologies of governance so superficial that merely redrawing cartographic lines will spontaneously engender distributive justice, institutional merit, the rule of law, and administrative transparency? A careful, unvarnished reading of pre-partition South Asian history reveals that this formula of administrative fragmentation was never a native or democratic innovation. Rather, it was a tested and ruthless instrument of British imperialism, rooted entirely in the cynical philosophy of “Divide and Rule.” In October 1905, when Lord Curzon partitioned the sprawling province of Bengal under the alluring and deceptive banner of administrative efficiency, improved governance, and better public service delivery, the official justification was identical to today’s rhetoric: that managing such a vast demographic mass from a single center was untenable. Yet history dealt a merciless blow to that colonial experiment. The people of Bengal rightly perceived the partition as a direct, existential assault on their linguistic, cultural, and political integrity, rising in fierce and unyielding resistance. Ultimately, the imperial master was forced into an ignominious retreat, revoking the partition of Bengal in 1911. That historical episode remains an enduring monument and a stark warning to contemporary rulers who imagine they can trifle with the collective historical memory, cultural affinity, and geographical unity of a populace under the intoxicating influence of unchecked power. From the very inception of Pakistan, the ruling classes consistently spurned the genuine principles of cooperative federalism, choosing instead to enshrine coercive and authoritarian centralism as the ultimate guarantee of their survival. During the formative decades of the republic, when the delicate question of distributing democratic rights among diverse constituent units arose, the dominant factions lacked the political maturity required for a pluralistic state. Instead, they forced all the western provinces and states into an unnatural straitjacket known as the “One Unit” scheme. That dark chapter of authoritarian engineering laid bare the callous indifference of the ruling elite toward the historical identities and rich diversity of the people, subjugating all societal bonds to the preservation of concentrated power. When that forced administrative edifice eventually fractured under the weight of unrelenting public resistance, the four-province federal structure was reluctantly conceded. Yet the true spirit of federalism was never allowed to breathe. The constitutional imperatives of provincial autonomy were systematically subverted, resources were inequitably distributed, and the unquenchable thirst for hegemony converted the federation into a fragile, crisis-ridden entity perpetually at war with its own constituent parts. Renowned scholars and theorists of public administration and cooperative federalism universally agree that when any sub-national unit exceeds optimal parameters in territory and population, it inevitably succumbs to bureaucratic inertia and administrative paralysis. According to global academic consensus, effective public service delivery demands a balanced proportional equilibrium between geography and demography, ensuring that the writ of the state and essential services penetrate even the most peripheral districts. However, the high-performing federal democracies of the world—such as the United States, Canada, Australia, or Germany—do not achieve excellence in governance merely because their constituent units happen to be geographically compact. They succeed because they rigorously enforce the foundational principle of **Subsidiarity**, which dictates that governance decisions must always be executed at the lowest possible tier capable of addressing them, rather than being arrogated by a distant center or provincial capital. Conversely, the powerful elite who orchestrate policy from behind the veil in Pakistan remain profoundly detached from this philosophical prerequisite. The core issue here is not the mere physical size of a province; it is the centralization of coercive power, deep-seated fiscal distortions, and a bankrupt political intent. In a country like Pakistan, where provinces already depend abjectly on federal transfers through the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, attempting to carve out new provinces without addressing the fundamentals of fiscal federalism will only exponentially multiply the economic burden. If one merely replicates provincial capitals, bloated cabinets, and superfluous administrative secretariats without dismantling the underlying corruption, nepotism, and systemic incompetence, the public will find no relief from their miseries. Instead, the state will be pushed deeper into fiscal insolvency and bureaucratic suffocation. This brings us to the most fundamental and inescapable question: if four provinces were to be multiplied into eight, sixteen, or thirty-six administrative units tomorrow, would traditional political parties magically vanish? Would the actors occupying the corridors of power in these new provinces descend from another planet, or would they simply be the identical political dynasties and entrenched interest groups of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the Pakistan Muslim League, or Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf donning new nameplates? When the foundational structural architecture, the prevailing political culture, and the patronage networks of the elite remain utterly unaltered, how can the mere shifting of administrative borders dissolve the cancer of corruption, the

A man’s hand emerges from a moving car window on Lahore’s Ferozepur Road, opens, and lets go, garbage tumbling onto the road like something the city never asked for. He drives on, does not look back. Nearby, another man treats a red light as inconvenience, not command, and guns through it because the road, for one careless breath, looks empty, not realizing a motorcyclist is already crossing into that emptiness. Neither would call himself careless. Ask them, and they will say, with the confidence of the unexamined life, that they are decent, law-abiding citizens, and narrowly, they are not wrong. Neither has broken a law that will ever find them. What they are missing is something smaller than law and, in the end, far heavier: civic sense. Civic sense is a phrase worn smooth by overuse and rarely defined. It is not patriotism, that loud, flag-waving thing. It is not obedience, that bowed, fearful thing. It is, instead, a kind of seeing, the awareness that one’s actions ripple into rooms one will never enter: the neighbour’s wall, turned dumping ground; the footpath, swallowed by parked motorcycles, leaving the pedestrian nowhere to stand but the road; the river downstream, carrying someone else’s filth to a family that never asked for it. It is the quiet discipline of behaving as though other people exist and matter, even when no policeman stands at the corner. Pakistan is not short of laws. Karachi’s bylaws on waste disposal would look entirely respectable in any city hall in the world. Islamabad’s traffic regulations are detailed enough to please the most exacting planner. What is missing is not ink on paper but something beneath the skin: the private sense that a rule is worth keeping even when no one is watching. This is why civic sense cannot be legislated into being, however many statutes are stacked atop one another. You can fine a man for littering. You cannot fine him into loving the street he lives on. Take something as unremarkable as a queue. Anyone who has stood at a bank counter, a railway window, a hospital OPD here knows the choreography by heart: the line exists as an idea until someone decides their time outweighs everyone else’s, and it dissolves like sugar in water. This was never really about queues. It is about a deeper assumption: that public space belongs to no one in particular, and rules, somehow, are meant for other people. Multiply that across a city of ten million restless souls, and you get gridlock that swallows whole afternoons, bins overflowing like wounds left untended, and parks abandoned within a year of their own birth. There is a cost to all this, rarely counted honestly. Karachi bleeds away enormous productive hours each year to congestion worsened, not created, by drivers who treat lanes as suggestions and red lights as optional punctuation. Public health suffers when open drains and uncollected waste become nurseries for disease, an arithmetic residents of nearly every major Pakistani city have learned to expect each monsoon. None of this appears, tidy and legible, in a budget document. It appears in hospital wards, in wages lost to sick days, in a low-grade sense that public life is something to survive rather than inhabit. It would be convenient to lay the blame entirely at poverty or lack of schooling, and there is a grain of truth there; a person fighting daily to feed a family has little room left for civic virtue. But the explanation only carries so far. Plenty of well-off, well-schooled Pakistanis fling litter from car windows and treat public parks as private gardens annexed from the commons. Civic sense is not a simple function of income. It is a habit, built through repetition, example, and whatever a society quietly agrees to call normal. This is precisely where schools could do far more. Civic education in most Pakistani classrooms, where it exists at all, survives as a chapter memorized for an exam rather than a practice lived out. A child taught that littering is wrong, who watches the adults around her litter daily without flinching, will absorb the adults’ hands, not the textbook’s words. Civic sense must be modelled, not narrated: teachers who insist on a clean classroom, parents who do not fling wrappers from car windows in front of watching children, local governments that follow a complaint through to its end instead of letting it dissolve into some forgotten file. None of this demands grand reform. It demands a shift in what ordinary people find embarrassing. In cities where civic sense runs deep, a litterer feels a small, hot flush of shame, not because a fine is coming, but because it simply is not done, the way one does not spit at a wedding. That social pressure is more powerful, and far cheaper, than any enforcement machinery a government could design. Building it takes time, and begins small: a shopkeeper sweeping the pavement outside his door, a driver waiting his turn at a roundabout though no one would know if he cheated, a resident reporting a broken streetlight instead of learning to walk around the dark. Cities are not, in truth, built by planners and engineers alone. They are built street by street, choice by choice, by the accumulated decisions of the people who walk them. A country may possess the widest roads and tallest towers in the region and still feel chaotic if the people moving through them share no responsibility toward them. Civic sense is not a lesson for children, nor a slogan for a billboard. It is the invisible infrastructure, unseen and indispensable, that makes every other infrastructure actually work. The writer is serving as Director of the Institute of Humanities and Arts at Khwaja Fareed University of Engineering and Information Technology, Rahim Yar Khan, Pakistan.

Every few months, Punjab returns to the same debate. Dog bites increase, public anxiety rises, and municipal authorities respond with culling campaigns. Dogs are shot, statements are issued, and for a few days it appears that decisive action has been taken. Then nothing changes. The bites continue, waste continues to pile up, and the cycle begins again. The uncomfortable truth is that Punjab does not have a stray dog problem in isolation. It has a waste management problem, an urban planning problem, and ultimately, a governance problem. One only needs to travel through the outskirts of Lahore or many of Punjab’s cities to see overflowing waste heaps, open dumping grounds, discarded food waste, and slaughterhouse refuse left unattended. These sites provide a constant food source for free-roaming animals. Where food accumulates, animals follow. This is not unique to Pakistan; it is basic ecology. Street dogs do not manufacture garbage. They survive on what human beings leave behind. As long as our streets, markets, canals and vacant plots continue to function as open feeding grounds, no amount of culling will produce a lasting reduction in dog populations. Removing one group of animals from an area where food remains plentiful simply creates space for others to move in. For decades, Punjab has relied on culling as its primary response, yet dog bites and rabies continue to challenge public health. That record alone should force us to ask whether we are treating the disease or merely its symptoms. The issue extends far beyond dog bites. Poor waste management contributes to contaminated water, insect infestations, rodent populations, respiratory illnesses and the spread of infectious diseases. It burdens hospitals, damages the environment and undermines the quality of life in our cities. Every neglected dumping site becomes a reminder that sanitation is not merely a municipal service; it is a public health obligation. This is precisely why the constitutional right to life under Article 9 has, over the years, been interpreted by Pakistan’s superior courts to include the right to live in a healthy and clean environment. Environmental jurisprudence in Pakistan has consistently recognised that life means far more than mere existence. It includes the conditions necessary for a life of dignity, health and safety. When waste remains unmanaged and environmental hazards are ignored, these constitutional guarantees lose much of their meaning. Animal welfare forms part of this larger constitutional conversation. Justice Athar Minallah’s jurisprudence transformed the legal understanding of animals in Pakistan by recognising that they are living beings with intrinsic value rather than mere property. More recently, Justice Khadim Hussain Soomro reaffirmed that cruelty towards animals cannot be separated from the constitutional promise of a humane and civilised society. These decisions did not elevate animal welfare above human welfare. They recognised that the two are inseparable. A society that neglects its environment inevitably harms both people and animals. That is why the internationally accepted One Health approach has become increasingly important. It rejects the false choice between protecting humans and protecting animals. Instead, it recognises that the health of people, animals and the environment are interdependent. Rabies control, waste management, environmental protection and humane animal population management are all part of the same public health strategy. Unfortunately, events on the ground often tell a different story. Reports continue to surface of dogs being shot despite the adoption of more humane management policies. Even more troubling are allegations that animal carcasses are sometimes left exposed instead of being disposed of through proper veterinary and municipal protocols. Around areas such as Saggian Pull, residents have repeatedly raised concerns about carcasses remaining in the open. If these reports are accurate, they expose a profound contradiction. Animals are killed in the name of preventing disease, yet their remains are allegedly left in conditions that can themselves create environmental and health hazards. Exposed carcasses attract scavengers, contaminate the surrounding environment, encourage insect activity and reflect a complete breakdown in biosecurity practices. Disease prevention does not end when an animal dies. Proper disposal is an essential part of public health. The solution does not lie in choosing between protecting people and protecting animals. That has always been a false debate. The real choice is between science and symbolism. Science tells us that cleaner cities, effective waste collection, proper disposal of slaughterhouse waste, vaccination programmes, sterilisation, environmental management and public education reduce disease risks far more effectively than periodic culling campaigns. Symbolism tells us that firing a gun creates the appearance of action while leaving the underlying causes untouched. Punjab has an opportunity to move beyond crisis management. It can strengthen municipal waste systems, enforce environmental laws, implement the Animal Birth Control Policy in both letter and spirit, improve vaccination programmes, and ensure that every department responsible for public health, veterinary services, local government and environmental protection works as part of a coordinated strategy rather than in isolation. The Constitution already points us in that direction. The courts have reinforced it. Science supports it. What remains is the political will to recognise that cleaner cities will save more human lives than another culling campaign ever could. Until Punjab confronts the mountains of waste accumulating in its streets, vacant plots and waterways, it will continue fighting the consequences of environmental neglect while ignoring the source of the problem. Bullets may remove a dog from sight, but they cannot remove the garbage that brought it there in the first place.

   For as long as the world can recall, the United States have controllably preserved their seat as the strongest one in the council of global superpowers- defeating the Nazis, USSR and setting their currency as the medium of trade and exchange. However, in recent events this strong hold seems to have become weakened as on the other side of the world a new power emerges, a power that the United States considers the biggest threat to their existence- the new super power China.   Ironically, China was still developing and submerged in poverty a few decades ago holding up its communist views and rejecting the new capitalist western world. Though they were not completely cut off on giving this new ideology a try, opening their first economic zone in Shenzhen in 1980 to pursue foreign investments and market based economic trade. Soon enough they realized the potential it had and once they started, they were quite impossible to stop.   It was in the 2010s that China had found numerous ways to include itself in the exporting and manufacturing industry. Every household was filled with items labeled “made in China”, however they were referred to as a low quality item hence cheaper. China nevertheless learnt, and they were fast learners. They knew that in a world dominated and feared by the United States they would have to have a friendlier approach. They started helping countries including Pakistan and many African nations with infrastructure projects in exchange for leverage and usage of their resources.   On the outside it seemed like a friendly deal, a helpful one even, but China knew that this was their way into achieving ultimate domination. The US was watching this very closely knowing very well what kind of abomination was taking place in front of their eyes, yet they could only spread propaganda about it, calling it “Debt trap Diplomacy” and “Predatory Lending”. The world did not give much thought since theyfinally had someone helping them without any threats and sanctions which they had experienced harshly in the past with the United States .   Uptil now, the USA still had the upper hand on oil and currency domination which was soon to get shaken up as well. Bill Clinton had put a ban on trading Iranian oil in his regime and so was done to Russia after they invaded Ukraine, meaning almost the whole world trading in US dollars could not buy Russian and Iranian oil.  Few of the other powerful currencies that could trade without the US dollar are euro, Japanese yen and Chinese yuan. Thus only China had the willingness to buy the sanctioned oil in their currency under different company names, trade routes which the US would find it difficult to identify and stop.   The United States has had  a history of having these geographical threats against major countries in order to secure their position. The same goes with China, with them using the strait of Malacca in southeast Asia as a passage they could close which would disrupt 80% of China’s oil trade. Chinese leaders have called this the “Malacca Dilemma” in the past.   Since the Iran war, it has come to light that China has once again found a path out of this misery and showed the world silently that this dilemma is far gone. When the whole world was panicking due to the Strait of Harmoz shutting down, China with no hurdles dropped their oil imports by 50% and started using their oil reserves which were more than double than usa. This was a direct showcase to the USA that even if they block straight out of Malacca- China will survive and wont go into an economic shutdown.   Now it is very evident that China has secured its position as an export leader, having significant oil reserves, defenses as well as the support of major countries through mutual diplomacy, and the US is forced down on its knees- especially after the Trump and Biden administration. The US has no options but to comply with China which was seen when Trump and his billionaire delegation visited China- which they were deemed to be intimidated by.

In the digital era, crime has drastically transformed. These days, planned disinformation operations, hate speech, deepfakes and misinformation spread more quickly than traditional crimes, eroding public confidence, escalating tensions within communities and, in severe situations, inciting actual bloodshed. Police must change to protect the information environment as well, since Pakistan’s digital footprint keeps growing. Acknowledging the evolving security environment, Regional Police Officer (RPO) Sohail Akhtar Sukhera has established a Cyber Patrolling Cell in District Jhang as a pioneer model for the Faisalabad Region. By keeping an eye on dangerous online content, spotting emerging digital risks, recording evidence and organising prompt responses through legal processes, the initiative represents a shift from reactive policing to intelligence-led prevention. The framework emphasises adherence to existing legal safeguards while providing clearly defined monitoring categories, reporting channels and escalation procedures. The significance of this initiative extends beyond the boundaries of the Faisalabad Region. It reflects a reality increasingly recognised by law enforcement agencies worldwide: the internet has become an operational domain of public safety. Within hours, a fake video, manipulated image or coordinated disinformation campaign can generate fear, inflame sectarian tensions, undermine institutional legitimacy or provoke violence. Preventing harm in both physical and digital environments has therefore become an essential responsibility of modern policing. Cyber patrolling has already been integrated into contemporary law enforcement in several countries. The European Union’s Digital Services Act requires major digital platforms to mitigate systemic risks arising from coordinated misinformation and illegal content, while Europol strengthens cross-border cyber intelligence. Singapore, through the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), combines legal intervention with public digital literacy campaigns to counter online deception. The United Arab Emirates employs AI-driven cybercrime teams and real-time threat intelligence to combat online extremism and hate speech. In South Asia, Kerala Police’s Cyberdome demonstrates how collaboration among law enforcement agencies, cyber security professionals and academic institutions can strengthen cyber threat intelligence, digital forensics, online fraud investigations and disinformation monitoring. By identifying rumours, verifying information and reducing public panic during emergencies, Cyberdome has emerged as one of the region’s leading cyber policing models. Against this international backdrop, the Cyber Patrolling Cell established by RPO Sohail Akhtar Sukhera represents an important step towards institutionalising digital policing in Pakistan. While still evolving, it demonstrates an understanding that policing must anticipate threats before they materialise rather than merely responding after damage has occurred. However, technology alone cannot counter disinformation. International experience demonstrates that successful cyber patrolling depends upon robust institutions, specialised expertise and public trust. Pakistan should therefore consider several complementary reforms. First, dedicated Digital Threat Intelligence Units should be established within police organisations, integrating cyber investigators, OSINT analysts, digital forensic experts and behavioural analysts capable of identifying coordinated online influence operations. Second, law enforcement agencies should invest in artificial intelligence-assisted monitoring systems capable of detecting bot networks, coordinated disinformation campaigns, multilingual hate speech and AI-generated deepfake content while ensuring meaningful human oversight over enforcement decisions. Third, closer institutional collaboration is essential. Provincial police, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency, universities, technology companies and civil society organisations should operate through an integrated digital information-sharing mechanism. Cyber threats rarely respect institutional or provincial boundaries. Fourth, specialised partnerships with universities and research institutions should support continuous officer training in cyber intelligence, digital forensics, artificial intelligence and data analytics. Institutions such as NUST, FAST, Information Technology University Lahore and other research centres possess expertise that can strengthen law enforcement capacity. Fifth, transparent oversight mechanisms are indispensable. Periodic public reporting, independent legal oversight and clearly defined operational protocols can ensure that cyber patrolling remains lawful, proportionate and fully consistent with constitutional guarantees relating to freedom of expression and privacy. Effective cyber policing should enhance democratic resilience rather than weaken it. Finally, equal attention should be given to digital literacy. Citizens who can verify information, recognise manipulated content, identify deepfakes and report online abuse become active participants in protecting the information ecosystem. Public resilience remains the strongest defence against organised deception. The strategic importance of the information domain has surpassed that of physical infrastructure. Just as police patrol streets to deter conventional crime, responsible cyber patrolling has become essential to protecting democratic institutions, social cohesion and national security. Digital policing has become a fundamental responsibility of contemporary law enforcement, and Pakistan can no longer afford to treat it as an optional function. The Cyber Patrolling Cell established under the leadership of RPO Faisalabad Sohail Akhtar Sukhera should be viewed not merely as a regional initiative but as a policy experiment capable of informing Pakistan’s broader digital policing strategy. Strengthened through advanced technology, specialised training, transparent oversight and interagency cooperation, it offers a practical road map for developing a nationally integrated cyber patrolling framework that safeguards both public security and democratic resilience in the digital age.

On August 14, 2026 the independence day was celebrated with great fanfare. This year a Norwegian team was also here to foster business opportunities. Norway is one of the five Nordic Welfare states (Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland). Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide arrived in Islamabad on August 13, 2026 on a commercial flight. He carried his own luggage. The embassy staff received him and drove him to his hotel. He then held meetings with the foreign minister, prime minister and the chief of defense forces. Being a welfare state, every citizen there is covered from cradle to grave, with no worries. No one is left out to rot in the cold. The Government Pension Fund Global of Norway is valued at $2.39 trillion. Surplus oil and gas revenues are invested to support public services and pensions. During my days at the Literacy Commission, we received a telephone call from the Embassy of Norway. A visiting delegation wanted to meet the Director of the Punjab office. As adviser I was present in the meeting. We were surprised by their agenda. About 40,000 Pakistanis reside in Norway who get married to girls of their own village. These brides then join their husbands to live in the new land. The embassy was very keen to open a school in their home town to educate and train them to assimilate with the Nordic way of life. The purpose was total inclusion with no exclusion. It reminded me of Allama Iqbal’s verse, ‘Har Fard Hai Millat Kay Muqadar Ka Sitara’ (Every individual is the rising star of the nation). No one can be left behind to drag down the nation. While freed colonial states like India and Pakistan have failed to overcome the menace of poverty, China has succeeded. It calls for major soul searching. While the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is on track to dominate the world, we lag behind. Human development is at the core of the Chinese development model. Education and health are taken very seriously. The state acts like a mother; it facilitates its citizens. Resources are protected and spent on the welfare of the people. The PRC has a single party system that focuses primarily on the economic emancipation of the entire nation, not only of a selected few. In recent years India has advanced economically, but poverty persists mainly because of the uneven sharing of resources and opportunities. Norway presents a model of harmony where human freedom and economic growth have been balanced. In the original Pakistan Peoples Party manifesto, it was termed Mixed Economy or Islamic Socialism. While some basic industrialization was needed in the country, for which SOEs (State Owned Enterprises) were created, the nationalization of running industries did not sit well. Perhaps the loss of C.M. Latif’s BECO was the biggest loss, which should have been reversed through de-nationalization. Dr Muhammad Amjad Saqib of the Akhuwat Foundation believes that poverty can be overcome through freedom of mind and easy access to financing. His foundation provides interest-free loans while running a residential university with no fee. The Indus Hospital has a similar model of providing medical coverage free of cost. Despite these private efforts, poverty remains a major challenge for Pakistan. Equitable distribution of resources requires a major reduction in state expenses. Like time, public money has to be carefully handled, as it is always in short supply. Flamboyance, fanfare and protocol consume resources which could be put to better use. Freedom for all comes through sharing and hand holding, not sloganeering. I am not sure if the visiting foreign minister was impressed or concerned by our style of celebrating our independence. Norwegian investments will be a test of the success of his visit. But the poor fellow had to carry his own luggage on the way back and take a taxi upon arrival to reach his residence unnoticed.