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ہماری دعا میں اثر ہی کہاں تھا

ہماری دُعا میں اثر ہی کہاں تھا
بھلا بے وفا وہ بشر ہی کہاں تھا

میں گھر کیوں نہیں جاتا سب پوچھتے ہیں
کہوں اب میں کیا میرا گھر ہی کہاں تھا

تجھے مانگنے کے سوا دشمنِ جاں
گرا اپنا سجدے میں سر ہی کہاں تھا

جو آباد تھا کس قدر اُس کے دم سے
بغیر اُس کے ویسا نگر ہی کہاں تھا

زمانے کی حدت سے مجھ کو بچاتا
رہِ عشق میں وہ شجر ہی کہاں تھا

The Making of Benazir Income Support Program

The Benazir Income Support Program (BISP), introduced in 2008-09, is a unique cash support scheme for economically stressed families. Its uniqueness arises from several facets. The cash transfers are provided only to women aged over 18 years and have been ever married. It is unconditional and aimed at supplementing income as opposed to alleviating poverty. It was politically neutral, given that the facility to identify potential beneficiaries was extended to all parliamentarians, irrespective of party affiliation. A set of filters, applied electronically, ensured objectivity in beneficiary selection. Disbursement mechanism was automated to ensure minimal leakage. This paper outlines the process of the preparatory work that went into designing BISP – the conceptual debates, the beneficiary identification and disbursement procedures, etc. – involving a combination of high quality research with political decision making. It also addresses the debates surrounding BISP, cites independent empirical studies that show that the parliamentarian-based beneficiary selection mechanism was efficient and equitable and did indeed cover the deserving, and also responds to the variety of criticisms. ______

Maintaining Multiple Identities: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of South Asian Immigrant Fiction

Maintaining Multiple Identities: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of South Asian Immigrant Fiction South Asian immigrants on being in a foreign land, including Britain and the USA, have to make many adjustments in their lifestyles to live a less frictional and more resourceful life. Yet they cannot completely delink themselves from their original culture in which they or their parents are brought up. This results in their developing complex and multiple identities which draw force partially from their origin as well as their host culture. Fiction writings, particularly by Diaspora writers, bring out these conflicts/issues more clearly than any other means as authors masquerade behind the veils of their respective protagonists whom they give their languages, origins, ethnicities, biographical similarities, particularly identity dilemmas and crises. This study aims to investigate how immigrants of various South Asian origins and generations develop, maintain and/or negotiate the multiple aspects of their identities when they live in an entirely different host culture. With this aim in mind, the lives of characters in selected works of South Asian Immigrant Fiction have been analyzed using Bakhtin's framework of Novelistic Discourse for detecting the identity issues confronted by the immigrants as it particularly focuses on the dialogical relationship between the author and his/her characters, their languages and worldviews in the novelistic discourse. The works chosen centre around the issues of maintenance and negotiation of identities of various characters in the South Asian Immigrant Fiction in English. The ideology and identity of the authors is traced through their language use and portrayal of characters. Bakhtin's framework is aided by Sociolinguistic tools as well as Literary Close Reading, Discourse Analysis and Social Anthropology. The study reveals that the necessity of developing multiple, contradictory and compromised identities are not without their windfalls and pitfalls though; it is helpful in immigrants' assimilation and naturalization in the host culture, yet at the cost of losing a great part of their original culture, language and heritage. Grown up in their native countries, the first generation parents are able to maintain multiple identities pretty successfully by posing a 'fake' identity. In contrast, the subsequent generations (in their developmental stages) have to face many peculiar dilemmas which often result in distancing/breaking off from their parents. The biggest challenge that poses the latter is striking a balance between individualism and family unity, personal freedom and family life, adjustment in the mainstream and expectations of home and, liberty and social conservatism.
Asian Research Index Whatsapp Chanel
Asian Research Index Whatsapp Chanel

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