Daily Times Editorials 24th August 2026

Another Victim

Hina Javed had been married for nine months when an emergency call sent her brother racing to an Askari Apartments flat in Rawalpindi. At 7:23 pm, he found his sister dead in the washroom. Police say a wire was fastened around her neck and tied to the shower rod, and the initial postmortem recorded a strangulation mark, an injury below her right lip and bleeding. A Rawalpindi magistrate has placed her husband and domestic servant in three days of police custody. Meanwhile, the Punjab Forensic Science Agency must still determine the final cause of death. It goes without saying that the investigation must establish responsibility.

These details will live with Hina’s family long after the story leaves the headlines. A bathroom. A shower rod. A brother arriving too late. The men in custody are entitled to a fair investigation. Still, Hina is entitled to one whose evidence is not allowed to fray beneath family pressure, money or influence.

For too many women in our society, the place where they are least safe is the place to which they are told to return. “Ghar ki baat” is an old phrase that turns terror inside a home into a matter for elders to settle. Sahil’s six-month record this year found that 54 per cent of reported gender-based violence occurred in victims’ own homes. There is a universe of suffering outside those figures. Pakistan has no dedicated national survey on violence against women. Its latest demographic survey found that 34 per cent of ever-married women had suffered spousal physical, sexual or emotional violence, while 56 per cent of women who had experienced physical or sexual violence had never sought help or told anyone. Silence is not consent. Often, it is the price of dependence, children, family honour, financial fear and the knowledge that a complaint may still lead nowhere.Booking Historical Guided Tours

Punjab’s own numbers show the cruelty of that last calculation. In 2024, police said 59,798 domestic-violence complaints had reached the Virtual Women Police Station after its launch. Only 3,365 became FIRs. Six per cent. Consider what that means in a frightened woman’s life.

Rawalpindi was among the districts that later failed to provide Right-to-Information data on violence against women. It is easier to mourn a woman after death than to count the women asking for protection before it.

Pakistan has learnt women’s names in this dreadful way before. Noor Mukadam. Sarah Inam. Noor was tortured and beheaded in an F-7 residence. In June, the Supreme Court dismissed Zahir Jaffer’s review petition and maintained his death sentence. Sarah was killed at an Islamabad farmhouse, and her husband was sentenced to death at trial in 2023. Their families carried their daughters’ names through police stations, courtrooms and years of public scrutiny. Hina’s family has just begun that journey.

Once evidence identifies the guilty, a court must make an example of them through a conviction that survives appeal and a sentence that no private arrangement can erase. *

Harnessing Technology

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s meeting on agricultural reform on Saturday dealt with wheat demand, cultivated area and projections for the coming crop. He approved changes at the National Agricultural Research Centre, asked for the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council to meet international standards, directed certified companies to ensure quality seed, and ordered a national system for estimating crop production. That last decision reaches beyond a bureaucratic exercise. Pakistan has too often tried to manage harvests after they have ripened, entered godowns or unsettled the market.

The wheat episode of 2024 explains why. Pakistan imported roughly 3.4 million tonnes of wheat to cover an anticipated shortfall. Government figures later put the 2024-25 harvest at a record 31.4 million tonnes, as a result of which farm-gate prices weakened, and growers were left carrying costs already incurred on fertiliser, diesel, credit and labour. A farmer chooses seed and acreage months before a food department fixes procurement or a ministry considers imports. Crop estimates therefore carry a direct bearing on the price offered at the mandi.

The FY26 figures offer little comfort. Agriculture grew 2.89 per cent, yet crop growth stood at 1.44 per cent. Wheat output reached 29.61 million tonnes after the area under cultivation increased 4.4 per cent to 9.48 million hectares, leaving yield per hectare effectively flat. The country has added land to wheat without securing the productivity gains that research, seed quality and extension services are meant to deliver.Downloading Interactive Geographic Maps

Water makes the failure more expensive. Surface-water availability in FY26 stood at 11.1 per cent below average system use. Domestic edible-oil production meets around one-tenth of national demand, while the annual import bill is projected near $6 billion. Research priorities cannot continue to be dictated by procurement habits and entrenched crop lobbies when water is scarce, and foreign exchange is under pressure. Oilseeds, pulses, fodder, climate-resilient cotton and livestock genetics deserve the same policy seriousness accorded to wheat.

The latest agricultural census counted 11.7 million farm households, with the average holding down to 5.1 acres from 6.6 acres in 2010. On a farm of that size, poor seed, a pest outbreak or a missed irrigation turn can consume the margin for an entire season. The federal researcher, provincial extension officer and crop reporter need to work from the same figures and the same agricultural calendar. Devolution has made coordination harder. However, it has also made coordination indispensable.

A joint Chinese-Pakistani assessment of PARC and NARC identified outdated laboratories, chronic underinvestment, weak commercialisation and the loss of trained researchers. Chinese collaboration and overseas training can add capacity, provided the work reaches farms before the harvest is priced. By the next crop cycle, PARC should be able to show which varieties have moved beyond research stations, where they were planted and what they earned growers. Late crop reports and seed varieties confined to paper would mean Islamabad rearranged institutions while the farm stayed where it was. *