Why educated Pakistanis are voting with their feet

Novelist Mohsin Hamid was taken aback by the fact that his co-passengers on a recent connecting flight from Istanbul to Bologna, a city in northern Italy, included about 30 people from Lahore, predominantly young men going to Europe apparently as labourers. The author of acclaimed novels like The Reluctant Fund­amentalist and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia used this little anecdote to drive home his point about the rising number of Pakistanis from both ends of the education spectrum moving overseas to find work. Talking to Dr Ali Khan, dean of the Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, in a podcast organised by the Consortium for Development Policy Research, Mr Hamid said the latest wave of emigration is fuelled by an “incredible level of inflation” and uncertainty on the political and economic fronts.