Pervez HoodbhoyUpdated June 15, 2019
The writer teaches physics and math in Lahore and IslamabadNOW that the hype and hysteria he helped create is fading, recently retired chief justice Saqib Nisar deserves to wear a pointed dunce cap on his head as he, with the most powerful men in Pakistan today behind him, walks slowly through the Hall of Shame. Had they understood from schooldays the importance of a few innocent-looking zeros to the left of a decimal point, they’d recognise a million from a billion. We might have then been spared the deep national embarrassment everyone now wants to forget — the Diamer-Bhasha and Mohmand dams.From yesterday (Friday) morning here’s the math: The Supreme Court websiteshows Rs10,669,728,001 in the dam fund with inflows starting July 6, 2018. Looks huge, eh? In US dollars that’s just $0.07bn. Worse, since February the graph is flat because salaried people are fighting against more forced deductions. Still worse: the un-invested fund has lost Rs10m a da…
The writer teaches physics and math in Lahore and IslamabadNOW that the hype and hysteria he helped create is fading, recently retired chief justice Saqib Nisar deserves to wear a pointed dunce cap on his head as he, with the most powerful men in Pakistan today behind him, walks slowly through the Hall of Shame. Had they understood from schooldays the importance of a few innocent-looking zeros to the left of a decimal point, they’d recognise a million from a billion. We might have then been spared the deep national embarrassment everyone now wants to forget — the Diamer-Bhasha and Mohmand dams.From yesterday (Friday) morning here’s the math: The Supreme Court websiteshows Rs10,669,728,001 in the dam fund with inflows starting July 6, 2018. Looks huge, eh? In US dollars that’s just $0.07bn. Worse, since February the graph is flat because salaried people are fighting against more forced deductions. Still worse: the un-invested fund has lost Rs10m a da…