Agricultural Terms of Trade in Pakistan: Issues of Profitability and Standard of Living of the Farmers

Liberalisation policies have a major impact on the profitability, employment, and incomes in agriculture sector, as well as on living standards and the poverty levels in the rural areas. In the wake of the IMF structural adjustment programmes and the new emerging trade scenario, the Government of Pakistan, in addition to eliminating input subsidies, is also reluctant to increase support prices for various crops. This has initiated a debate. One view is that the Government must support agricultural prices and farmers must be protected from the decline in market prices of agricultural commodities. The contrasting view is that the subsidies have made the agriculture sector highly dependent on government support, and in order to survive in the WTO trade regime the sector must become highly competitive, efficient, and self-dependent. This paper computes relative price changes in the crop sector to explore whether profitability in this sector has improved or deteriorated. Another goal is to gauge the impact of price changes on the standard of living of the farmers. For this purpose, various terms of trade are calculated. The terms of trade for the crop sector are defined as the ratio of the index of prices received by the crop sector and the index of prices paid by the sector. The paper also probes how movements in international crop prices affect the profitability in the sector and the standard of living of the farmers. The empirical findings, based on the data from 1983-84 to 2002-03, show that the purchasing power and profitability of the farmers in the crop sector have not improved over the last twenty years.Agricultural Trade, Standard of Living, Pakistan

Some More Notes on Notes on a Scandal: Lessons From Producing Pakistan’s First True Crime Podcast

If a country’s podcast scene could be described as a vibe, Pakistan’s would be “dude bro”; that is, politically and culturally right-leaning masculinist narrative. The format is simple: like The Joe Rogan Experience which has over 15 million subscribers and over three billion views in Pakistan, there’s a host and a guest. In addition to Rogan, other popular pods are The Pakistan Experience, Pakistonomy, Thought Behind Things, Talks that Matter, Mooroo, The Pivot, Junaid Akram’s Podcast. The conversations usually revolve around the guest’s life, their political views, the economy – whether Pakistan will default or not, will the IMF give another tranche for relief, will donor money bring in dollars and other burning subjects. There’s also How Does This Work, Misaal (a tech/start-up podcast), Policy Beats, Climate Mahaul (Pakistan’s first podcast on Climate Change), Dragon Road (exploring Pakistan’s relationship with China) and Mosiki which looks at music, freelancing, and other “fun” things. All this changed in December 2020 when the first episode of mine and Saba Imtiaz’s Notes on a Scandal – Pakistan’s first true-crime podcast – made its debut

TINOSPORA CORDIFOLIA AQUEOUS EXTRACT AMELIORATES THE SYSTEMIC INFECTION OF ASPERGILLUS FUMIGATUS IN BALB/C MICE

Objective: The present study was aimed to assess the antifungal activity of Tinospora cordifolia aqueous extract (TCAE) against Aspergillus fumigatus infection. Methods: TCAE was tested for in vitro antifungal activity against the isolates of A. fumigatus, Aspergillus flavus, and Aspergillus niger. To evaluate in vivo activity, various doses (10, 25, and 50 mg/kg) of TCAE were orally administered in A. fumigatus-infected mice for 7 days. The combination of prophylactic and therapeutic effect of TCAE was assessed by pre-treating the mice with 10 mg/kg of TCAE for 3 consecutive days before exposing them to A. fumigatus. Mice were treated with 10, 25, and 50 mg/kg doses of TCAE for 7 consecutive days’ post-A. fumigatus infection. The effectiveness of TCAE was evaluated by monitoring the survival rate and assessing the fungal burden in the kidney of the treated mice. Results: A. fumigatus-infected mice treated with TCAE at the doses of 25 and 50 mg/kg exhibited 50% and 20% survival rate, respectively, observed on day 40 post-treatment. Like to the survival data, the fungal burden was also found to be the lowest in the kidney of mice treated with TCAE at a dose of 50 mg/kg. The results showed that pre-treatment with TCAE (10 mg/kg) followed by post-infection treatment with 10, 25, and 50 mg/kg of TCAE for 7 days resulted in 40%, 50%, and 70% survival rate, respectively. Conclusions: These results suggest that TCAE may potentially be considered for its possible use in the treatment of the systemic infection of A. fumigatus

Vehicle Combustion Quality Monitoring:A scene visibility-level based non-invasive approach

Pollutants interfere with light, restrict its reflection and so impair visibility. Scene visibility level is therefore used as a measure of air quality and pollution. Treating emission efflux as "some additional noise causing visibility impairment," this work examines if the extracted visibility index from a thermal infrared (TIR) image can help in qualitative assessment of combustion efficiency. The thin-film regime like two dimensional TIR images of unleaded-petroleum run vehicles' exhaust-plumes were first accommodated for time and space related compositional effects. The estimated ratios of visibility indices obtained from two sequential TIR images of the same exhaust plume were compared with their respective electrochemically sensed levels of oxides of nitrogen and combustibles. Initial results suggest that visibility indices extracted from TIR images of emission efflux would help in distinguishing low from high levels of emissions. TIR images can therefore assist in qualitative assessment of engine combustion efficiency

The Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony

As perhaps the single most effective method of proving the elements of a crime, eyewitness testimony has been vital to the trial process for centuries. However, the reliability of eyewitness testimony has recently come into question with the work of organizations such as The Innocence Project, which works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted. This thesis examines previous experiments concerning eyewitness testimony as well as court cases in which eyewitnesses provided vital evidence in order to determine the reliability of eyewitness testimony as well as to determine mitigating or exacerbating factors contributing to a lack of reliability

Determinants oF Recent Inflation in Pakistan

The expansionary economic policies of the government and of the central bank (State Bank of Pakistan – SBP), which on one side resulted in impressive economic performance, stimulated a rise in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on the other. This initiated a debate on the determinants of the recent inflation. Some blamed fiscal policy or monetary policy, while others blamed imported inflation, administered prices or mismanagement and loose control of the government. This study, adopting an econometric framework, focuses on the identification of the main determinants of recent inflation trends. Using data from the 1972-73 to 2005-06 period, applying ordinary least square method and verifying results through Breusch-Godfrey Serial Correlation LM and Augmented Dickey-Fuller tests, it finds that the most important determinants of inflation in 2005-06 were adaptive expectations, private sector credit and rising import prices. Whereas, the fiscal policy’s contribution to inflation was minimal.Fiscal policy; monetary Policy; Inflation; Determinants

Problems and Prospects of Islamic Banking: a case Study of Takaful

The paper is an attempt to analyse the working of Takaul in the world and its popularity in the insurance sector in the world. Keeping in view of Sharia we have also tried all possible aspects of insurance system popular in the world and tried to look at its possibility to familiarize more amongst Muslims of the world. It is observed that customer awareness remain low, however this is often attributed to a limited understanding of Islamic finance in the banking and insurance world. We wish to have a proper salesmanship and advertisement of Islamic banking system in India and all around the world.Islamic Banking, Takaful