Development policy researcher and practitioner | @LSE_ID and @MGSHSS_LUMS Alum | @CheveningFCO Scholar | #MUFC
Joined May 2010
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Delighted to share this new @ACE_soas paper with @asad_sayeed on private sector corruption in Pakistan's pharmaceutical sector.
Brief summary follows in the thread below.
ace.soas.ac.uk/wp-content/up…
Kabeer Dawani retweeted
We got your back, New York!
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Several figures here aren’t federal results or NY-specific. The $472B combines US wide pledges: Micron's $250B is nationwide (NY site $100B) Anthropic's $50B covers TX and NY. The 48% murder drop is from NY's state run GIVE program (28 departments, Jan – May 2026).
arkolith.com/news/news-micr…
therepublic.com/?p=843020
governor.ny.gov/news/safer-str…
Kabeer Dawani retweeted
This is huge.
A just-released SEC filing makes an extraordinary revelation: Mark Zuckerberg is getting ready to pay California’s 5% billionaire wealth tax and has signed an agreement to remain in California for 8 years.
We are witnessing a global turning point unfold before our eyes. 🧵
Kabeer Dawani retweeted
Probably the most damning visual illustration of Pakistan's economic & fiscal crisis I've ever seen. That cluster of flags on the left is the rest of the world. To compare historically, our int payment/revenue ratio was 35% in 2008 (at the height of the global financial crisis).
🤖 Made with AI
Anwar Shaikh's obituary by Vivek Chibber.
Based on this and other accounts from former students and colleagues, what a remarkable man.
jacobin.com/2026/10/shaikh-o…
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Kabeer Dawani retweeted
Imagine the scale of anti-women indoctrination that Pakistani young women are more supportive of wife beating compared to less literate, pre-social media grandmothers xitter.cf/_alice_evans/status/20…
Pakistan is one of the most patriarchal countries in the world.
It has one of the lowest rates of urban female employment, since men's honour depends on female seclusion.
Only 30% of female respondents said they could go to local markets or health clinics alone. One fifth of women reportedly never go to the local market!
Wife-beating is justified by almost half of young women. Grandmothers are much more opposed. This bucks a global trend.
ggd.world/p/is-pakistan-beco…
Kabeer Dawani retweeted
Pakistanis are eating less and they are eating worse because they can no longer afford as much food. Data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) shows that over the past six years people across the urban and rural divide are consuming less food across all categories.
That means families are cutting back on the size of their rotis, the number of times meat is cooked in a month, how much milk is being given to their children, and even how many cups of tea they are drinking in a day.
The social indicators are staggering. The percentage of households categorised as “moderate to severely food insecure” in Pakistan has gone from 15.92 percent in 2019 to 24.35 percent in 2025. Severe food insecurity has also gone from 2.37% of households to 5.04% of households in the past six years. That means more than a quarter of Pakistani households face some form of hunger and malnutrition.
None of this is because we don’t have enough food. Pakistan grows its own wheat and rice. We are some of the largest producers of poultry, eggs, and milk and we even have a modest but growing meat export sector. The problem is affordability.
profit.pakistantoday.com.pk/…
Kabeer Dawani retweeted
I think the solution is to make islamabad into two provinces.
Islamabad represents our Sir Humphreys at their best.
No shortage of financial, material or human resources, manageable city size, planned city (sort of anyway), high proportion of professionals & middle class (basically governable people).
Now imagine what can we expect of a governance system that can’t maintain a decent public hospital in the capital?
Kabeer Dawani retweeted
Our sister Hina Javed was brutally murdered by her husband and in-laws two days ago. The father in law is still roaming around and has not been put under arrest.
@MaryamNSharif please help bring the criminals to justice.
#JusticeforHinaJaved
Kabeer Dawani retweeted
Increasingly, I see agreements btw 2 local companies relating to purely Pakistani projects but w. foreign arbitration clauses. They say it allows quicker & more trustworthy dispute resolution & is easier to enforce.
Can be no clearer sign of no-confidence in our judicial system.
Another damaging report on judicial implosion in Pakistan, no company is ready to enter in agreement unless Pak side agrees on foreign jurisdiction, this is alarming and will end any hope of economic recovery… tribune.com.pk/story/2618299…
Kabeer Dawani retweeted
Pakistani society is resistant to change. Whatever progress that happened is limited to a few big cities xitter.cf/bilalgilani/status/207…
Kabeer Dawani retweeted
Now that the California billionaire tax is officially on the ballot this November, voters deserve logical arguments.
This guest essay in today’s New York Times, by two economists from the Hoover Institution, is based on a shocking logical mistake. 🧵
Kabeer Dawani retweeted
The Blackstone Group is the largest private owner of rent-stabilized apartments in New York City, not small mom and pop landlords.
Valued at $137 billion (not including the $1.3 trillion in assets they control), Blackstone is headed by Stephen A. Schwarzman, whose total yearly compensation exceeds $1 billion.
The idea of the "mom and pop" landlord being priced out of business because of a rent freeze is a myth. Small independent landlords (owning 10 or fewer units) make up only 1.2% of the ownership of rent-stabilized units. Meanwhile large corporations own 87% of those units, with mega corporations like Blackstone Group (owning 1000 or more units) controlling 56% of the market.
Mega corporations like Blackstone are pushing the myth of the small independent landlord to hide the fact that they and other mega corporations control the vast majority of NYC rentals.
And honestly, fuck them.
Kabeer Dawani retweeted
Cape Verde centre back Roberto 'Pico' Lopes has spent his entire career in Ireland, ignored a LinkedIn message from Cape Verde FA asking him to play for them because it was in Portuguese. A year later, they sent it in English. He accepted. An all-time great World Cup story.
Kabeer Dawani retweeted
It is beyond unacceptable that the man in charge of world football cannot even kick a ball 😂 What the fucking hell is this?!!
Kabeer Dawani retweeted
Costco spots a recession before economists do.
When members shift from beef to chicken, then to canned tuna, something in the economy is bending.
You don't need a model. You need a checkout counter and millions of members with long memories.
A retailer with no advertising budget. Four thousand products on the shelf. A hot dog priced the same as it was when Reagan was president.
Costco shouldn't be the most powerful brand in retail. But it is.
The rule is almost annoyingly simple: cap markups at 14%. Most stores are at 20% or higher. Every dollar of efficiency gets handed back to the customer as a lower price.
That's the flywheel. Lower prices bring more members. More members bring better supplier deals. Better deals bring lower prices. Run it for forty years and nobody can catch you.
Ninety percent of members renew. Every year. For decades. You don't get loyalty like that from coupons. You get it from making people feel, every single visit, like they got away with something.
Strip away the warehouses and the hot dogs and what's left is a simple decision: the customer eats first. Almost nobody has the discipline to actually do it.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The report cited was issued in 2023, not 2026.
x.com/i/status/20536…
Kabeer Dawani retweeted
A six-minute VAR delay with 25 replays to decide which of the multiple set-piece wrestling manoeuvres was clearly and obviously worthy of punishment. A fittingly decisive moment for the 2025-26 Premier League season.
Kabeer Dawani retweeted
Sad life you lead if you are poor in Pakistan. Pakistan is so anti-poor. If you belong to the elite you have no fears. Disgraceful that the prime minister has come to the aid of his own class. This, despite the govt justifying the demolition of a Katchi Abadi just a few weeks ago because, it said, the construction was illegal. Wouldn't be surprised if member or two of the @CMShehbaz Cabinet own properties here. Govt of the rich, for the rich, by the rich.
🚨🚨
This is the difference in this country between 240 million Pakistanis and a bunch of elite cartel, PM @CMShehbaz immediately listen cries of the elite and made committee to review the constitution one matter but he never bothered to make any committee on thousands of families living in slums and under privileged housing (few meters away from his PM office, around Bari Imam) of #Islamabad and effected by CDA, ruthlessly demolishing their homes!
dawn.com/news/1996669