Adil Najam
Credit: Associated Press.
The famous Lyari Expressway project is now open. Atleast in half. The proposed project called for a 4-lane expressway on either side (2-ln each side) of Lyari river. The South bound corridor is now complete and it was inaugurated today (Feb 11, 2008). It is however, not open for general public yet, which is expected to happen in next few days.

The total length of Lyari Expressway, North and South bound combined, is 32.155 km. Out of this, the 16 km long Southern Corridor was inaugurated today. This Southern Corridor consists of 8 bridges and 2 interchanges located at the Gharibabad Graveyard on Sir Shah Suleman Road and Love Lane Bridge in Garden West.
Adil Najam
Yesterday, while passing through Chicago airport on my way to Tokyo, Japan, I found myself transfixed by a wall full of posters announcing that Chicago is an “Applicant City” for the 2016 Olympics.
The airport was full of them but, frankly, the posters themselves are not remarkable.
They became remarkable for me
because of the thoughts they triggered in my mind regarding Pakistan’s upcoming elections. It is, in fact, remarkable that Chicago and the rest of the world is sure that there will be Olympics held in the year 2016 (8 years or some 3000+ days from today). Not only are people sure that they would be held, people are making serious investments of time, money and effort based on the belief that they would. And, indeed, if I were to bet I would bet that they would.
And, then, there are these elections in Pakistan. Supposedly they are to be held in just a week. 7 days. And yet, it is not fully clear whether they would, in fact, be held on schedule. After all, there have been schedules before, but no elections (remember, we even had a poll on whether they would be held in 2007)!