Development policy researcher and practitioner | @LSE_ID and @MGSHSS_LUMS Alum | @CheveningFCO Scholar | #MUFC
Joined May 2010
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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
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
"I thought I was good at heading and attacking the ball in the box, until I met Casemiro!"
Harry Maguire says Casemiro has the best heading technique he's seen 🙌
Kabeer Dawani retweeted
White towels are a legacy of British era, when there were few roads, fewer cars and no ACs. Officer toured on horses and towels were an integral part of hygiene routine.
British left, horses were sent away, but towels stayed!
It’s not just towels, the size of tables and colour of ink are also defined by hierarchy.
When I was working at Joint Secretary level with the Vice President of India, I had to fight a stiff battle of sorts to order a smaller table that would fit better in my office. The system would not approve of a smaller table!
Regarding the colour of ink to be used for noting and signature, Sh. Arun Shourie has written a hilarious, if not ridiculous, memoir as minister.
In 1999, two officers in the Ministry of Steel made notings on files using red and green ink.
This raised a furore as they were junior officers. The seniors were scandalised and an enquiry was initiated.
India’s bureaucracy spent 13 months debating which colour ink officers could use on files.
The enquiry was routed through several ministries and departments:
Ministry of Steel wrote to Dept of Administrative Reforms
It referred to Directorate of Printing (ink experts)
Printing referred to Dept of Personnel & Training (DoPT)
DoPT threw the ball back: “it’s your Manual, you decide”
National Archives was consulted for longevity of ink colours
Ministry of Defence consulted for Army ink hierarchy
Conclusion after 13 months: juniors wrote in blue-black or blue ink, because that has the longest life of impression. In British era, the files had to travel to Britain, so juniors would write in ink that would stay for the longest.
The top brass would sign in green and red.
Ruling:
Two new paras were added to the manual of office procedure:
Para 32(9) says that only officers of Joint Secretary level and above may use red or green ink, and that too only in rare cases. Para 68(5), on the other hand, does not limit the use of these colours to any particular rank (as modern ball pen ink have no issues of shelf life for any colour!)
The white towel on the officer’s chair. The red telephone on the desk. The peon standing at the door. The green ink reserved for the senior sahib.
These are not accidents of history. They are architecture, the physical grammar of a bureaucratic culture that worships hierarchy.
Walk into any government office in India, towels are a common sight on the chairs of bureaucrats. A ubiquitous symbol of power.
Such is the importance of the towel that a few years ago in Uttar Pradesh, lawmakers filed complaints, aggrieved at not being offered chairs draped in white towels during visits to government offices, while pointing out that officers were "sitting on tall, betowelled chairs." The matter was serious enough that the state's parliamentary affairs department had to issue a formal directive to officials, reminding them of the existing hierarchy. The government ordered that MPs, MLAs and MLCs be given towel-adorned chairs "of the same height and decor" at meetings across the state.
In the Uttar Pradesh secretariat in Lucknow, around 1,000 towels are changed twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays😀
