Usama Ihsan

World has been industrializing rapidly as it did in the past as well. We humans realized its consequences pretty late. Environmental change is the biggest threat to the world collectively because of the excessive exploitation. Careless usage of natural resources now took us to the brink of destruction. In the past few decades, we have lost nearly a million species. This for me is the biggest ever loss we have had because we cannot reverse it ever. Along with specie lost, the overall average temperatures have already risen by more than 1.5 degree centigrade. Now we face frequent droughts and the soil fertility has been lost in many parts of the world. Deforestation led to soil erosion and caused threat to poor regions of the world as majority of the population lives near water sources. Due to global warming and greenhouse effects, our cities face frequent attacks of heat island effect and hundreds of lives are lost yearly in most of the poor countries. Concrete structures standing ...

You can find good and bad in every nation. It depends on which side you portray the most. Pakistan is a country went through so much of the socio-political instability over the years. But still it fought back really well and stool tall even in the harshest times. Most of the time we put our energy into talking about its failures and issues only. Ignoring the fact that the resilience of this nation is worth appreciating as well. The critiques do not understand the real need of the hour; which is positive criticism. Even though the people of Pakistan have gone through some of the hardest times, still they are one of the hospitable people. They only need a healthy environment to progress. Take an example of people migrated abroad earlier; they have become one of the leading businessmen or women of their fields. Medical doctors, engineers, social scientists, artists and sports persons; in every field the people of Pakistan have become global stars. Talking about the history, this cou...

Development is now a most debated topic. In development, participation of beneficiaries is seen as a better approach. Although it is pretty difficult to insure local participation where donor and mediator agencies originate projects. They have their own set of aims, objectives and time frames in which they have to complete projects. They themselves most of the time became barrier to participation. A better type of development in which self-help groups initiate projects themselves for themselves is required. There is a self-help group based in Islamabad achieving great outcomes. These outcomes were never against their needs or wants. The project became successful in a pretty short time span. It became an example for the entire community. Through their journey, they have faced many challenges but still with unity, successfully got out of those. Other communities should also learn from their experiences. In this project report; a member of the community is interviewed to know what the...

As the topic suggests, this book holds pretty interesting combination of history, economy and politics. Providing a gist of the entire book in a summarized way is difficult but appealing to do. This book is written by Ha-Joon Chang; he is a South Korean Institutional Economist. Other than that he has a multi-disciplinary background in academia (Economics, politics and development) for writing such a book comprehensively. The main objective of this book is to present the real face of Now Developed Countries (NDCs) and their historical experience about development. The author historically explains how developed countries hide the way they themselves developed, their motives in hiding and what they dictate to developing countries. The author uses secondary sources of data to explain historical perspective. Author defines how industrialization occurred in Britain first and then it was done in other countries afterwards and how different factors helped them in doing so. A detailed histo...

Let’s start this with a real life example. Once during a lecture on inequality measuring techniques at my university; teacher had drawn supposedly a graph of unequal society, a student passed a comment “This should be of Pakistan”. Doesn't it shows how we think of our mother land? Pakistan is doing or not doing well as a country is a different story. But here comes a question: Why Pakistan is not doing good in our minds? We from our childhood are sensitized in a way that if a person does anything bad, we relate it to Pakistan; "Pakistani awam". Let's get into the depth of it. I read a quote in a book named "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" by Milan Kundara; You begin to liquidate a people," Hubl said, "by taking away its memory. You destroy its books, its culture, its history. And then others write other books for it, give another culture to it, invent another history for it. Then the people slowly begins to forget what it is and wha...

During the industrialization era, cities were becoming the industrial hub and export oriented zones in the United Kingdom. Although the production was done by burning fossil fuels, ultimately harming the environment. But today there are many other ways to get that production done. Basically I want to talk about the real concept of cities. Our cities today are not given role of providing healthy ground for economic activities to grow and develop. Lets start with a question: Why do people migrate from rural to urban centers? Sure! there has been no single factor to be generalized on the general public. Urban centers are seen as the areas where one can upgrade his/her lifestyle. Facilities like better educational institutes, hospitals, transport facilities, electricity availability, better water and sanitation system and much more. All these facilities in the poor countries are expensive for the locals to avail. These facilities comes with heavy cost associated with them. In our villages...

What is difficult to you? When we all were in our childhood, we do have had difficulties like lots of homework assigned. The life we were having is now desirable to us, but why not at that time? This question we all have to focus on. The answer can change our mindset for our current and future difficulties. At the time of childhood, we were having a burden less life except for the school, and tuition work. We did not have financial issues at that time; it was a tension free life. That homework was not a burden in-front of the difficulties we have today. So why is that we do have something as a difficulty at certain times but not afterwards. It is because as we are all human, we do have an inbuilt focus that goes heavily on hardness in our life. When we were children, we did not realize the difference between the adult life and the childhood. This focus is one of the reasons that we make our difficulties to get prominent in our mindset while analyzing our life. How to overcome that? ...

We all know our planet is limited. It means the resources it carries are limited. From the time humans came into being, they are continuously extracting minerals and other natural resources from the land to meet their needs. Human is still searching new and better reserves of resources to meet its ever growing needs and demand. Sustainable development guide human to live their lives in such a way that the carrying capacity of this planet must be taken care of. Good health, long-term wealth and living standards improvements should be accomplished for every human without disturbing the biodiversity. Three key elements of sustainable development: economy or profit, environment or planet, social or people. All of them are interlinked and there should not be any development that make them apart from each other. Definitions of Sustainable Development: "Improving the quality of human life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems" (IUCN, UNEP, WWF) ...

Sustainable development is a wide spread concept. This is because it deals with almost each and every aspect of life. Different public and private organizations, socialists and environmentalists presented their views about the Sustainable development and defined this concept in different ways. Sustainable development is an integrated approach that includes economy, environment and society. All of these three elements should be kept in balance but it is difficult to manage them in equality. " Three Sectors: Economy, Environment, and Society " is the first and most basic view. This model divides sustainable development into economy, environment and society. These are three interconnected rings and where these intersect each other; sustainable development takes place. It is the most simple model and mutually exclusive as well. It means that there is a trade-off between these three elements. Economic growth can destroy environment or society and vice versa. Also there is...

He was a shy boy. Even he also feel shy while saying Salam to anyone he does not know. But he want to follow the teachings of Islam and that includes every Muslim should say Salam even to a stranger because all the Muslims have a strong relation of brotherhood. He took a step towards the elimination of his fear of rejection. On the way from mosque to house after Asar prayer there was an aged man sitting on a chair. He started saying salam everyday to that old man. Few days later, the boy after offering prayer went directly to the ground from mosque. On that day, the boy was excited to play cricket after few weaks. It was a month of Ramadan and he was coming back home with his friend and the time was running out for the Aftari. He saw that old man was sitting on the same place where he daily met him and that old man's eyes were questioning that, where you were little boy? I was waiting for you but you did not came today. The old man cannot stand on his own but he grabed the hand of...

According to the world bank; a person that earn less than 2 dollar a day is poor. But that is not the case in reality. In most of the countries that lies in the catogorie of developing; most of the population is under this poverty line. In under-developed areas the situation is even worse. African people are striving for food. Their children are under-nourished and are not able to find food 2 times a day. By looking at the developed countries we can only see they are focusing on the economic competetion, and weapon or atomic war between them. They are buying food from under-developed or developing countries and in exchange selling them weapons to fight for food. In my point of view development is not that can be only seen, but development is something that is more of an abstract thing. African countries get the most aid from all around the world, but a question rises here. Why they still are the most poor countries in the world? The aid they recieve is not making their lives better an...

Sustainable Development Introduction Development is something that is done for the betterment or well-being of the society. The word sustainable derived from a Latin root sus-tinere , which means to "under-hold" or hold up from underneath. It means durability over time. History The concept of Sustainable Development was first presented by the Brundtland Commission in 1987. This commission was initially known as the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). It was held to realize and stop the destruction of environment and its further impacts on human health. This commission defined Sustainable Development as " Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. "  This definition explained sustainable development as a development that is done to meet the needs of current generation but not compromising the resources of future generations to meet their needs. La...

From the 19 th century there is an industrial revolution in the world and mankind is shifting its occupation from agriculture to industries. In the era of industrial age, large organizations are formed and managed in the international market. There are large numbers of producers of an identical good and that makes a competition worldwide. To compete with other world we need skilled management staff in the organization that focuses on all the new and old management approaches combines. First thing every organization has to be focus on is to know its vision and objectives, then all the objectives has to be followed as well to achieve the organizational goal. Local organization does not produce large amount of revenue and do not need a hard effort as well. But if we want to grow our organization in the global market, we have to be fully loaded with new and new ideas over time so that we survive in the competitive world. To introduce our organization in international arena, we will firs...

Priorities of students in Pakistan: why good grades and job only? Why not the skills and creativity? Introduction: Everyone in this world have a motive to earn money to feed their stomach. In search of money, man doesn't focuses on skill development. Only degree and some experience can secure your future by giving you a healthy job. So why to work on skill development? This is the main reason why most of the students and even their parents consider healthy grades more important. " Demand side should demand for the quality more than the quantity ."  (Usama Ihsan) This means that the organizations should give priority to the quality of education and skills not only the grades. " Demand influence the supply side directly and indirectly ."  (Usama Ihsan) The requirements for the job will set the quality of education, creative thinking and skill development as a priority for the students and their parents. More than that the teaching institutions like sc...