Pakistan’s de facto power configuration came into existence on April 17, 1953, 70 years ago to this day. The seizure of power by an unaccountable governing corporation of civil servants & military officers permanently fractured Pakistan’s political order. A thread 1/16. It came about as the result of Governor General Ghulam Mohammad overthrowing Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin through use of the modified Government of India Act (1935), which served as an Interim Constitution, in the back drop of the anti-Ahmedi Punjab disturbances.

Exactly 60 years ago, Pakistan’s Pay & Services Commission constituted by the Ayub Khan regime submitted its detailed report. The chair of the commission was Supreme Court Justice A. R. Cornelius, known for resisting extraconstitutional interventions in the 1950s. 1/15 #History You can get my paper “The Lost War for Specialisation: Pakistan’s Higher Bureaucracy in the 1960s and 1970s” for more on this report, for free, here: 
academia.edu/40248095/The_L… 
But back to the main thread. 2/15

Pakistan’s coalition government is set to gut the grant to higher education (from 65 bn PKR to 30bn). What would it mean, in practice, if, say the Quaid I Azam University (QAU), Islamabad, were to try to run like a private enterprise? A thread 1/7. (Rough figures) - QAU has about 10,000 students and total outlay of about 3 billion PKR annual. So, with zero grant, the minimum fees per student would be 300,000 PKR a year or about 150,000 per semester. 2/7