ScratchPad

Private procurement is often overlooked, treated as a routine matter of contracts and invoices, yet in truth it is one of the most decisive forces shaping the fortunes of private business. The way a company chooses its suppliers, negotiates its terms and manages its relationships determines not only its costs but also its reputation and resilience. For too long many firms have clung to the narrow logic of lowest cost purchasing, assuming that the cheapest option is the most rational. The evidence shows otherwise. Short term savings often unravel into long term losses when poor quality, unreliable delivery and broken trust consume more than was saved at the start. What is needed is a shift towards pragmatic progressive procurement, a philosophy that blends commercial realism with a broader sense of responsibility. This approach does not ask businesses to abandon profit. It asks them to recognise that profit is best secured when suppliers are treated as partners rather than disposable ve...

Agricultural income taxation in Pakistan has long lingered in the shadows of fiscal policy. Agriculture contributes nearly one fifth of the national GDP and sustains millions of livelihoods, yet its contribution to direct taxation is negligible. The salaried classes, urban entrepreneurs and industrialists bear the weight of taxation, while the landed aristocracy, heirs to colonial privilege, remain largely exempt. This inequity corrodes the legitimacy of the state and perpetuates a feudal order inimical to modernity. The legal architecture is unambiguous. Agricultural income is exempt from federal taxation under Section 41 of the Income Tax Ordinance and provinces alone possess the competence to legislate and enforce such levies. Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan have enacted Agricultural Income Tax Acts, but these statutes are skeletal, riddled with exemptions and enforced with a languor that borders on abdication. Provincial boards of revenue, heirs to colonial land r...

In an age defined by noise and haste, where the loudest voices often drown out the most thoughtful ones, I have chosen a quieter path. My writings, published on ScratchPad between 2019 and 2025, were never intended as declarations. They were blueprints. Today, they stand as evidence of influence, both within Pakistan and beyond its borders. On 8-May-2024, I published a piece titled "To Avoid Procurement Splintering" in which I examined the dangers of fragmented supplier relationships and proposed the establishment of structured procurement cells. Just over a year later, on 18-Jul-2025, the Pakistan Public Procurement Regulatory Authority ratified sweeping reforms. These included third-party evaluations, grievance redressal committees, and mandatory procurement units. The overlap between my proposals and the final policy is not coincidental. It is causal. Earlier, on 16-Feb-2025, I released "Procurement Means More Profit" challenging the notion that procurement is me...

In the ever-shifting sands of Pakistan’s economic landscape, where the rupee’s value seems to ebb with each passing season and inflation gnaws at the marrow of middle-class existence, the notion of inflation-adjusted income taxation is not merely a technicality. It is a moral reckoning long overdue. The current tax regime, rigid and unyielding, fails to account for the erosion of purchasing power that has become the hallmark of daily life. As prices of essentials soar and the cost-of-living spirals beyond the reach of ordinary citizens, the state’s insistence on taxing nominal income without regard to its real value amounts to a quiet injustice. Consider the salaried professional in Lahore or Rawalpindi, whose monthly earnings have remained ostensibly unchanged over the past year. Yet, the price of wheat, electricity and even the humble cup of chai has surged. This individual, though no richer in real terms, finds himself nudged into a higher tax bracket. His contribution to the excheq...

I’m planning to return to pure coding for now, stepping away from AI-driven assistants like Cursor, Windsurf, and their peers. These tools often spit out convoluted solutions for trivial features, turning ten-minute jobs into hours of debugging. When you ask the AI to fix its own mistakes, hallucinations multiply, and you end up deeper in the weeds. Today’s AI coding assistants are temperamental and far from reliable. Before leaning on an AI, you must first understand the problem you’re solving and how you would solve it manually. Mainstream paid LLMs can generate solid code, if you steer them correctly, but they don’t innately grasp your unique vision. They excel at one-off, well-trod tasks (like scaffolding a basic to-do list) because countless examples exist in their training data. Custom ideas? They’ll guess at best and miss the mark at worst. Instead of chasing one-shot demos, invest a few days in structured planning: First, write a problem-statement document (Markdown or plain te...

Procurement professionals today operate within increasingly complex environments where decisions must be made promptly, often with limited information and significant financial implications. In such settings, heuristic methods, simple experience-based rules for judgement, play a vital role in enabling timely and pragmatic decision-making. Although these cognitive shortcuts offer operational advantages, they can also lead to inconsistent outcomes if applied without analytical validation. This article explores key heuristics applicable to procurement and sourcing activities. It draws from foundational behavioural research, journal literature and recent technological developments, including artificial intelligence, to provide a measured overview of how heuristics influence professional judgement and how their limitations may be addressed through structured approaches and intelligent systems. Common Heuristics in Procurement Practice Heuristics simplify decision-making by reducing complexi...

War and armaments production constitute one of the largest and most lucrative industries worldwide, encompassing innumerable nations, corporations and supply chains. From the manufacture of advanced weaponry to the organisation of army supplies, conflicts engender vast economic activity—frequently at the expense of human lives and infrastructure. A single multimillion-dollar aeroplane may be felled by a low-cost missile, illustrating the starkly disproportionate economics of modern warfare.  A brief scrutiny of history reveals that war has persistently served as a profitable enterprise, affording various parties the chance to profit from destruction. The current hostilities in Gaza, the longstanding tensions between India and Pakistan, and the fraught relations involving Iran, Israel, the United States and its allies have already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and wrought widespread ruin. How War Fuels Commerce and Economic Activity Arms and Ammunition Trade – Demand...