herballeaves•तुलसी•🌱🌊🌈

Almost 10–20 years ago, when children were doing their Matric or FSC the career choices seemed quite clear in Pakistan. Mostly, You had to secure good marks, build your merit and get admission into either Engineering or Medical. But times have changed. The world is evolving so quickly that I honestly find it difficult to understand what career direction children should take today. IT is one obvious example. Almost everyone seems to be pursuing IT these days, but is that really the best career choice for everyone? With AI, automation and changing job markets, what will the future look like in the next 10–15 years? What careers should children focus on today to remain relevant, competitive and successful in the future? Your thoughts?

Remember, citizens of the world! If your fuel & gas prices finally come down and stabilise it’s because of Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts that helped bring ceasefire from Lebanon to the Persian Gulf. We don’t need your thanks. Just respect our Pakistan and its people. Pakistan Zindabad! Peace through strength.

In Pakistan, in the current scenario, pension income above 150K should be taxable. This may not be a popular opinion, but when even a salaried person earning just 50K is subject to tax, why not high-income pensioner

Ah yes the Sugarcane wolf in the Ethanol sheep's clothing. We will discuss the merits and demerits of Ethanol blending but let us be 100% sure Ali's being self-serving here. Friends let me tell you about one of the greatest evils inflicted on this nation in the last half century, the cannibalization of its agriculture and the sabotaging of Pakistan's future via sugarcane. The sugar industry arguably engineered the systematic destruction of the country's most valuable agricultural export, cotton, in favor of sugarcane, a crop that devours water, and yields a fraction of the economic value per liter of water consumed. This is not an accident or market forces & it sure as hell isn't happenstance. It's an engineered outcome of a captured regulatory system in which the sugar mill cabal are the lawmakers, where free markets have been emasculated and every policy lever, support prices, subsidies, export permissions, import tariffs, water allocation had been deliberately calibrated to favor sugarcane over cotton. Let's look at the numbers: In 2015, Pakistan had 14.9 million bales from production on 7.31 million acres. Over 14% of our cropped area was cotton. Last year we did 5.5-7.1 million bales a decline of 50-63% and our cultivated area was down to 5 million acres, a decline of 31%. Cotton acreage has dropped to 7.9% a decline of 43%. The USDA now estimates Pakistan's 2025/26 cotton crop at just 4.8 million bales on 2 million hectares. Understand this, a nation that was once the world's 4th largest cotton producer is now scrambling to import what it once grew for its exports meaning your input dollar cost dramatically increases for many of your critical export segments. Sugarcane wasn't just the biggest beneficiary of the cotton collapse it was its instigator too. Business Recorder reports that in the two years to July 2025, raw cotton production effectively plummeted ~65%, with the retreat and I quote, "explicitly linked to sugarcane expansion and the influence of sugar interests." Pakistan's greatest intellectual journalist @zaighamkhan wrote one of the best articles I have read on this transition: thenews.com.pk/print/242243-… Now let me explain to you why this entire transition is anti-national. Sugarcane consumes about 3.5x more water than the cotton crop. One litre of water used in cotton production generates about 4 times higher monetary benefit compared to sugarcane. Freeing one acre from sugarcane provides enough water to irrigate 3.5 acres of cotton. The water used for growing sugarcane could provide 100 litres per day to 42% of Pakistan's population!!! Remember Pakistan is one of the most water stressed countries in the world. Pakistan’s freshwater withdrawals are dominated by agriculture commonly cited around 90%+. Globally, agriculture is still the largest water user, but its share is closer to 72%. So Pakistan is much more dependent on water-intensive agriculture than the world average. A big reason for this delta is.... Yup.... Sugarcane. Pakistan's sugarcane uses 4 times the global average of irrigation water per unit of yield, largely because of abysmal flood irrigation methods and poor sucrose content (8–10% vs. the global 12–14%). And because Pakistani sugarcane is so low in sucrose, the country grows 20% more cane to achieve equivalent sugar output, consuming 20% more water for the same result. Also producing 1 kg of refined sugar requires 1,750 litres of water!!! At 6 million tonnes annual production, that's a staggering 1.05 BILLION LITERS!!! (estimating 100KG refined sugar from every one ton crushed). Guess which is the largest sugar group in Pakistan with the biggest share of using up all this water and for all the anti-national effects of this transition? Yes JDW Group owned by my brother Ali Tareen. What kills me is that the Sugar Oligarchy is making over a billion dollars annually, but cannot bother to invest in innovation to improve flood irrigation methods, farmer best practices knowledge transfer, and improving sucrose content in sugar cane. Brazil recovers almost 50% more sugar from its Sugarcane which on average has 10 stalks per clump compared to 5-7 for Pakistan. Why? A combination of varieties, agronomy, harvesting logistics, mill efficiency, and system discipline. Here it is just influencing the government to manipulate best prices possible from export and import. Remember this oligarchy is so powerful it does this in every government. The PTI government allowed sugar exports in 2018–19 even though domestic supply was tightening. The official inquiry later concluded that this export decision was not justified, that warning signs were ignored, and that exporters benefited twice: first from export subsidies, and then from the rise in local sugar prices after supply tightened. The inquiry said retail sugar rose from about Rs55/kg in December 2018 to Rs71.44/kg in June 2019, roughly a 30% increase. What made it a scandal was not just the price rise. The inquiry publicly named people and groups tied to major political actors, including figures linked to the PTI government and its allies, as among the major beneficiaries of subsidy and export decisions. Jahangir Tareen’s JDW group was highlighted as a major beneficiary in the report. Then the scandal widened. A later forensic phase of the inquiry said the issue was not only bad policy; it also involved alleged underreporting of sales, fraud, market manipulation, and cartel-like behavior by mills. Pakistan’s Competition Commission separately found signs of coordination in stock data and said such coordination could be used to influence supply, prices, and policy decisions on exports and imports. Here you have to appreciate that while it did happen on his watch so it was his responsibility, @ImranKhanPTI did order the inquiry into the sugar scandal. Please understand textiles account for 54.3% of Pakistan's total exports or roughly ~$16.7 billion in FY23-24. The entire value chain begins with the cotton crop. Because of the mad sugarcane transition, the entire chain is forced to import raw material: Pakistan's cotton import bill soared to $2.55 billion in July 2024–April 2025, up from $1.19 billion the previous year! That is crazy! The cotton textile sector employs 15 million people! That is 40% of Pakistan's industrial workforce. What you have done via this transition is stopped the creation of MILLIONS OF JOBS not to mention dropped Pakistan's GDP. Cotton and its textile products contribute ~8.5% to GDP. Sugarcane JUST .5%! Sad part is the systemic neglect of cotton as a "secondary" crop has starved the sector of investment in quality, seed development, and mechanization. There is an 18% tax on domestic cotton while the Export Facilitation Scheme allows duty-free cotton imports so you are actively penalising domestic growers while you are subsiding sugarcane growers because well you are making money. Screw the country. The second order effects of this transition are also damning: Cotton picking employs approximately 80,000 rural women seasonally. It is one of the few income-earning opportunities available to women in rural Sindh and Punjab. Women in Pakistan spend on education for their kids and are better savers then men. As sugarcane displaces cotton, this employment vanishes. Sugarcane harvesting is predominantly male, mechanised or semi-mechanised, and requires fewer workers per acre. Sugarcane's enormous water demand is increasingly met by tube wells rather than canal irrigation. This short sighted draining of critical aquafiers causing irreversible ecological damage will lead to lost generations that will not have access to water. Sugarcane's 11-month crop cycle exhausts soil nutrients far more than the 4–5 month cotton cycle. The monoculture pattern spreading across South Punjab is degrading long-term soil fertility. South Punjab is on its way to becoming a desert. Industrial infrastructure of the cotton value chain like ginners, which is hard to build is shutting down. It requires investment that will prove a barrier to new entrants. I mean you are under constant forex stress. Sabotaging your most export oriented value chain's crop is utter madness yet here we are. So why would people related to exploitation and abuse as exhibited by all I have outlined until now, suddenly talk about why ethanol is SOOOOO good for Pakistan's economy? Because this is how Ethanol is made: Sugarcane is crushed>juice is extracted>sugars are fermented>ethanol is distilled So when the biggest sugar producer with highest sugarcane crushing capacity says Ethanol is good for the country what they mean is that Ethanol is good for them. If they loved the country they would not have destroyed the entire cotton belt for a crop much worse for Pakistan's economy and they would have invested in the Sugar ecosystem and value chain for the benefit for all its stakeholders. Honestly read that article by Zaigham Khan above. Look any dollars we save are good with me. But let us be clear on the costs. The savings you make will always be less than if cotton was leading the show. You will earn more dollars than you save. Pakistan already faces chronic water scarcity and the Indus basin system is under severe pressure. Sugarcane is so water intensive the tradeoff esp when it comes at expense of cotton and food crops is not worth it. So you CANNOT expand sugarcane. If you divert instead of expand you will raise sugar prices domestically. OH WAIT THAT REALLY BENEFITS JWD. DIVERTING SUGARCANE TO ETHANOL RAISES DOMESTIC SUGAR PRICES AND BENEFITS JWD SUGAR MILLS THE MOST! Ethanol blending is not really viable unless oil is consistently above $100. If Iran war ends tomorrow the whole program is a drain. You need to set standards and have a transition plan. You need specific types of cars and engines. Many older cars and bikes and rickshaws cannot handle this. We tried E10 fuel in 2009 and 2010 and failed for this reason. For saving imported fuel costs, Pakistan should prioritize EVs, especially bikes and rickshaws. The first and second order effects compound far better here. PTI's own President @ArifAlvi in a conversation with Pakistan's top journalist @HamidMirPAK stated that if findings from an inquiry report on IPP's and related "mafias" (sugar and wheat) were to be believed, the country had been "not only raped but gang-raped". With this suggestion on Ethanol Ali basically does not even want to bother with "protection."

Pakistan should start considering formally taking oil through land route from Iran. There’s no reason why it must suffer along with the sinking ship of the US empire. But easier said than done when the slaves of the Washington run the govt and IMF has the treasury by the throat.