Analysing the Impact of Good Governance on Socio-Economic Development: A Case Study of Pakistan

The concept of “good governance” has emerged as vital driving force in the past few decades to positively shape economic growth and sustainable socio-economic development across the globe in general and developing countries in particular. However, Pakistan’s turbulent political landscape and deeply entrenched systemic corruption in the recent decades have utterly harmed the good governance at large, resulting in socio-economic developmental woes and increased sufferings of the people. This paper focuses on analysing the influences of good governance on the socio-economic development in Pakistan in the light of World Bank good governance indicator and also probe the impact of prevalent perceived corruption in the country in accordance with observation taken by Transparency International, UNDP, and other renowned State Institutions. The paper has emphasized on the last two decades to ascertain the contributory factors by using the appropriate qualitative / quantitative and statistical techniques that debilitated good governance in Pakistan and caused continual political instability, pessimism, and recurring political crises and undermined socio-economic development in the country. Based on the ascertained findings, the paper has identified impediments to existing governance situation and prevalence of corrupt practices and has proposed workable suggestions/ recommendations to assist policy makers, development planners, intellectuals, politicians, and succeeding governments in Pakistan to take corresponding structural or policy reforms to address the said hurdles.

A Study of Stylistic Features of Cricket Commentary: A Discourse Analysis

This study is based on the analysis of language practices and features that different cricket commentators use in international cricket matches. This study explores that cricket commentary forms a complete register on its own with its field, tenor, and mode components. Data for this research have been taken from the 1992 World Cup, the 2015 World Cup, and the Ashes Series 2005 matches available on YouTube. Textual analysis technique has been employed for data analysis. After analyzing the data in the light of Halliday’s notion of register comprising field, tenor, and mode, it is found that cricket commentary is characterized by special syntactic features such as ellipsis, extensive use of exclamatory sentences, the abundant use of the simple present tense and simple sentences, passive construction notably in elliptical form, first and third conditionals, and inversion. Use of idioms, certain action verbs, certain positive and negative adjectives, and certain adverbs are some of the salient features of cricket commentary. Cricket commentary also has a special jargon with words like ‘knock’, ‘mid-on’, ‘mid-off’, ‘innings’ and ‘bouncer’ etc. Cricket commentators also use certain aspects of connected speech such as weak forms of words, elision, and assimilation.

Exploring the Impact of Father’s Demise among Female Adolescents

The present study is intended to explore the impact brought about by parental demise among female adolescents. Moreover, examining the societal role, particularly the part played by the family system, after the death of a father and its effect on an adolescent’s life perception. Data was collected through in-depth interviews from 4 adolescents aged between 17-19 years, accumulated by a purposive sampling method and analyzed through interpretative phenomenological analysis. Findings demonstrated that adolescents who encountered the loss of their fathers face numerous problems impacting their emotional, cognitive, and behavioural well-being. The absence of parents brings a drastic change in an entire life affecting their mental health leading to low self-esteem, depression, anxiety as well as emotional sufferings. The major issues highlighted during the study were life disruption, financial crisis, lack of support in terms of both financial and emotional aspects from extended family. Moreover, the family system played a detrimental role in the adversities encountered. Furthermore, participants stressed that children having both parents attained support, attention, emotional bonding, and encountered fewer social, psychological, and emotional issues. They constantly grieved the parental loss and faced a lack of care, that significantly affected their well-being. These findings help in understanding the problems associated with lack of parental bonding in connection with father’s loss, whereas its long-lasting impact spread throughout one's life.

Experiences and Practices of Contemporary Sufis in Pakistan

In the contemporary world, we cannot underestimate the importance of spirituality in the field of Psychology. Spirituality contributes in psychotherapeutic practice and healing process. Sufism is a subjective science of spirituality that is based on the reparation of the soul and the heart and connects the Sufi to the absolute reality, i.e., God Almighty. The purpose of this study was to explore spiritual and social experiences and practices of contemporary Sufis in Pakistan. For this investigation, a qualitative approach was employed. Based on previous research and theoretical models of Sufism, a semi-structured interview schedule was developed. A purposive sampling strategy was used to collect data from ten Sufis. The information obtained from the Sufis was in the form of audio recordings that were later transcribed. Sufis’ views and experiences were interpreted by using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Five super-ordinate themes that emerged from the data were: inclination towards Sufism, spiritual journey, practicing Sufism, social experiences, and self-actualization. These themes were interpreted in the context of given sub-ordinate themes and verbatim of the participants.

Interlinkages among Terrorism, Macroeconomic Instability, Political Instability, and Economic Growth in Pakistan

This study attempts to establish the relationship between three types of instabilities and economic growth. Political instability, macroeconomic instability, terrorism, and economic growth are analyzed for the period of 1970 to 2019 in Pakistan. The study constructs the indices of the above-mentioned variables by adding some new variables. Results show that terrorism, political instability, macroeconomic instability, and GDP per capita have long-run associations. GDP per capita and political instability is positively related to terrorism. It indicates that political instable environment paves the way for terrorists to achieve their targets in Pakistan. However, the positive association of GDP per capita to terrorism is due to uneven income distribution pattern. It stimulates deprived groups to become a part of violent activities. Furthermore, results show that macroeconomic performance of a country has no significant effect on terrorist activities but persistent poor performance increases the probability of terrorism. Therefore, in the long-run, macroeconomic instability has positive influence on terrorism. Causality relationships indicate no link between political instability and macroeconomic instability. However, terrorism causes both political and macroeconomic instability in Pakistan.

Unriddling Academic Dishonesty through the Lens of Teacher and Student Perceptions

This study sought to explore contributory factors of academic dishonesty. Academic dishonesty is being practiced yet little research has been conducted on the subject. Subsequently, this study employed the qualitative approach for in-depth exploration of the factors of academic dishonesty. In this study, focus group discussions were conducted with two groups of participants; university students (N=12) and university teachers (N=08) of The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan. Participants for this study were recruited through purposive sampling. Three research questions were asked to the participants: Q1) How is academic dishonesty described by students and teachers? Q2) What would be the possible types of academic dishonesty? and Q3) What are the pros and cons of academic dishonesty in the long run? Their responses were audio taped and the collected data were transcribed by following transcription steps provided by Humble (2015). For data analysis, NVivo (12) was utilized and factors were extracted. The prudent findings found that cheating, plagiarism, falsification and failure of system are identified as the most prominent factors. The findings of this study concluded that these factors significantly shape-up academic dishonesty in higher learning institutions. Findings of this study would help educationists to bring about reforms in the educational sector.

Academic Conversation: A Case to Exemplify the Influence of Non-Verbal Communication on Human Interaction

The present study tried to highlight the influence non-verbal communication has on human interaction; academic conversation is specified to exemplify this construct for other spheres of life. It addresses whether teachers’ non-verbal communication has an influence on students’ performance, the students’ perception regarding the non-verbal communication in academics and their respective impact were explored. Literature reflects that non-verbal communication has a significant role in human interactions; it not only elaborates but certainly clarifies the verbal message. The present study was devised to get subjective perceptions of students on board for presenting behavioural upshots serving academics. The sample of 37 Pakistani students of Quaid-i-Azam University within an age range of 19 to 24 years (M= 22.8, SD=1.77) responded to semi-structured interviews and their opinions were recorded in the form of interview transcriptions. Conventional content analysis was used for the analysis of data and categories were adjusted under two broader themes; perceived strong predictors of performance and perceived hurdles for students learning. Almost all individuals responded that non-verbal communication of teacher can be more influential than words. Findings of the study have great implications for behavioural management of people; teacher-student and other human interactions.

The Impact of Investment in Human Capital on the Exports of Goods and Services

With the growth of services economy worldwide, it has become essential for policymakers to comprehend the export competitiveness of nations to identify offshore export locations or alternatively offer their own sites as an exporting location. Human capital investment is considered as a key component in attracting foreign countries for outsourcing purposes. Earlier studies have shown mixed role of human capital investment on off shoring activities. This study assesses the effects of control variables (business environment, wages and IT infrastructure) and human capital investment on export of goods and services from the selected Asian outsourcing countries. Panel Estimated Generalized Least Square (EGLS) technique is used with country weights to specifically overcome the problem of autocorrelation. Empirical findings show that investment in human capital is significant for both goods and services exports. We found a large impact of human capital investment on exports of goods and services in selected Asian countries as compared to selected developed countries. Empirical findings further suggest that human capital is more essential for export of goods than export of services. From these findings, the study draws important implications for policymaking in countries who intend to offer themselves as an attractive location for exporting and for those who intend to locate their production activities overseas.

Globalization and the Sociolinguistic Challenge of the 21st Century Critical Pedagogy: A Case for Language/Culture Minority Students

In spite of the fact that ours is a world of immigration, deepening ethnic textures, globalization, transnational histories, ethnolinguistic diversity, socioecono-mic rivalries, and intercultural complexities, the role and significance of bilingual and multicultural education are far from being adequately realized. These demographic imperatives and a host of other cross-cultural and transnational praxis are bringing about a growing percentage of students who speak a first language other than English. All over the world, classrooms are experiencing a radical transformation due to an unparalleled intercultural diversity which is spreading its tentacles all across the globe including Pakistan which, of late hit by the CPEC spectacle, is likely to experience an unprecedented influx of foreign students. These are paradigm shifting questions and call for a radical re-conceptualization not just of classrooms but also of the entire pedagogic space and curricular habitus. The paper makes a coherent appraisal of these questions and advances a plea for the greater inclusion of a broad-based, bilingual, and multicultural education by laying down key guidelines for teachers, administrators, policy-makers, educators, and parents at large.

Assessing the Impact of Liberalization of Trade Related Services on Services Growth in Pakistan

The services sector has offered sound support to Pakistan’s economic development. It has emerged as one of the fastest growing and highest contributing sectors of the economy. Through the use of Fully Modified OLS Estimation Technique, this study has provided evidence that liberalization of the two key sub-sectors (telecom and banking) of services of Pakistan has played an important role in development of these sectors. The task is achieved by preparing liberalization index for the two sectors. The econometric evidence reveals that results are robust and in accordance with the theory. Relationships are found to be relatively strong for the telecom sector and less strong for the financial sector. The research also shed light on the constraints that the country has to face in the liberalization process of these sectors. Rapid liberalization of the telecom sector has attracted substantial amount of investment, both local and foreign, and has created saturation in the industry, which has hampered further investment opportunities. This resulted in substantial decline of investment in this sector. But due to fast changing technologies, there is a possibility of it picking up again. By the increased liberalization of the telecom and banking services, the GDP of these sectors also increased. Hence, the full scale liberalization in the telecom sector evidently plays important role in growing the share of the services to economy’s GDP. Other economic indicators have also played an important role in defining the development of these sectors. Finally, a set of policy measures has been suggested to make the sector more effective and useful in accelerating the growth process.