South Asia Investor Review

"Indians live like cockroaches and die like cockroaches", argued Jayant Bhandari in an  X post  in April this year. "They vote for bottom of the barrel cockroaches as rulers, who rightly treat them as cockroaches", he added, faulting the people of India for this state of affairs. More recently, Indian Supreme Court Chief Justice Surya Kant said during a hearing that certain unemployed youth were "like cockroaches" who enter professions with fake degrees or become social media and RTI activists attacking the system.  Abhijeet Dipke, a 30-year-old Indian graduate of the public relations program at Boston University, picked up on it. He posted on X on May 16: “What if all cockroaches came together?” Dipke created a political party, named it Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), a parody of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), and established a  website  that quickly gained tens of millions of followers, according to the  New York Times .  Cockroach Janata Part...

President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif have met today in Beijing to reaffirm the "unbreakable" bond between their two "iron brother" countries on the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the China-Pakistan diplomatic ties. "No matter how the international landscape may evolve, China will always place priority on the development of China-Pakistan relations in its diplomacy with neighboring countries," he said. Over 7 decades of friendship witnessed Pakistan help bring about the US-China rapprochement that has enabled the Asian giant to grow from international isolation to what President Donald Trump recently declared part of "G2", the exclusive group of two real superpowers in the world today. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's three-day visit to China has seen the signing of multiple agreements to further strengthened strategic and economic relations between two Asian neighbors. These deals are aimed at developing Pakistan...

A Pakistan-American franchisee has joined a Qatari-backed investor group's bid to buy out the US-based Papa John's Pizza restaurants chain. Nadeem Bajwa started his part-time job in 1991 as a pizza delivery driver for Papa John's while attending college in Indiana. He has since risen to become the largest franchisee with nearly 300 restaurants across the United States. Bajwa's backing could help Irth, which is also backed by Brookfield Asset Management, in its $47 a share pursuit of the pizza chain. Papa John's has been reviewing Irth's offer, though sources told Reuters there is no guarantee a deal gets done. Papa John's Largest Franchisee Nadeem Bajwa Bajwa’s journey wasn’t easy. In his early twenties, he was the first in his family to move to the United States, where he encountered many challenges upon arrival. “Coming to the U.S., actually, that was my first flight [ever.] I’d never flown before,” Bajwa told CNBC News . “Just getting into the plane, it w...

In a television speech to the nation, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged his people to make sacrifices by spending less on fuel, fertilizer, and travel. He also asked them not to buy gold for a year. “To save foreign exchange, we must accept the challenge of patriotism,” he said. It appears that India's problems do not just stem from the effects of the US-Iran war; India's problems started well before that. Flight of foreign capital has put the Indian currency under tremendous pressure, with the Indian rupee falling nearly 10% in recent months. Many analysts believe that the Indian IT services exports could fall significantly as the artificial intelligence (AI) models begin to replace the IT workers. It could create a balance of payments crisis that could force India to seek the IMF bailout in the not too distant future.  Already, the Indian economy has slipped to the sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP , dropping from previous projections that had it at fourth. Indian ...

Pakistan has recently launched 5G wireless service in multiple cities and closed financing on the 306 kilometer 6-lane Sukkur-Hyderabad M6 motorway. In addition, Pakistan is seeing significant increase in the utilization of its Gwadar and Karachi ports after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz due to the US-Iran war. This will help open the trade routes from Pakistan to Central Asia via Iran, bypassing unstable Afghanistan. It has the potential to eventually make Pakistan a major transshipment hub for the region extending to the land-locked Central Asian Republics. Another major news is the Asian Development Bank financing of cross-border connectivity of the power grid and digital networks. These developments are expected to substantially enhance economic activity in the country, in spite of the short-term negative impact of the energy crisis, particularly in oil and gas imports.  5G Launch: Wireless carriers Jazz and Zong have launched 5G services across Pakistan in March 2026. ...

On the morning of April 13, 2026, a surgeon named Cain, stopped my heart at a San Francisco hospital to graft two bypass veins to restore full blood supply to my heart. It's a procedure called CABG (coronary artery bypass graft pronounced like the vegetable), that seems to have become fairly routine in modern times. Dr. Brian Scott Cain was assisted by Dr. Danielle Holland, a cardiovascular anesthesiologist. Prior to the procedure, Dr. Cain told me he had done nearly 4,000 such operations in his 20 years as a cardiovascular surgeon. In terms of risk, he said, there was a 1% chance of death and 2% chance of stroke during surgery. But the upside after successful surgery is a significant improvement in quality of life.  In a Chair on 4th Day in Hospital, With Chest Scar Clearly Visible By the time I woke up in an intensive care unit (ICU) a few hours later, I was told it all went smoothly.There were no surprises. Dr. Cain informed me that my heart is in good shape. I was kept in the I...