<p>Pakistan is considered to be the fifth largest young country in the world. Around 63 percent population of the country comprises youth aged between 15 and 33 (UN Population Fund Report 2017). Such a large young population has posed daunting challenges to the social, economic and political sectors of the state. The fast rising youth bulge of Pakistan seems to be a constantly ticking time bomb instead of a demographic dividend, threatening its very own existence. Poor youth engagement in the productive political, educational, economic and socio-cultural activities indicates ineffectiveness of the public and private sectors policies especially at the state level. The current research study is intended to identify the key factors behind the disengaged and distressed youth of Pakistan in the three core areas of education, economy and politics. For this purpose, a systematic literature review was carried out in which national and international labor survey reports, youth development index, national youth program and federal education and economic policies were critically analyzed alongside the relevant research studies, nongovernment organizations’ reports and media coverage for a dynamic overview. Besides, interviews of relevant stakeholders were also conducted to investigate the issue from diverse perspectives. Evidently, youth partnership, empowerment, and engagement in educational, economic and political sectors can be the only way forward to address the increasing challenges of the country.</p><p><br /><strong>Keywords:</strong> demographic dividend, employment, literacy, youth development</p>

This study provides valuable data comprising analysis of existing practices in the sampled media departments of the leading private and public sector universities of Karachi in the context of Wheeler’s conceptual model. The research looked into the aims and objectives, the curriculum, the faculty, and industry linkages of the media programs under study. For this purpose, four universities of Karachi where media programs were being offered were taken for the study. The data were collected through the analyses of the available documents open to the public and interviews of relevant heads of departments besides review of the relevant literature. The data were triangulated and themes were extracted that pointed toward the many areas in media education in Pakistan which require improvements.

Bollywood is recognized as the largest film producing industry in the world. India produced a total of 2961 films including1602 feature films in 2012 alone. Movie tickets in India are among the cheapest in the world. The average ticket price in India is 25 rupees (55 cents) in comparison to the average ticket price in the US in 2010 that costs around $ 7.50 dollars. India accounts for 73% of Asia-Pacific movie admissions. Indian film industry generated total revenues worth around $1.86 billion (93 billion rupees) in 2011 only and it is estimated to rise to the US$2.28 billion (138 billion rupees) by 2014. The industry is mainly supported by the vast cinema-going Indian public. According to an estimate, approximately fourteen million Indians visit cinemas daily to watch a film on regular basis. In 2012 alone, Bollywood sold around 2.6 billion tickets compared to Hollywood’s 1.36 billion tickets. Indian films are gaining increasing popularity around the world, especially in countries with large numbers of emigrants. The aim of this research paper is to present an overview of the historical evolution of Indian Cinema since its inception. This qualitative historical analysis identifies the factors that lead to its phenomenal growth through all these years.

This research aims to examine how sexism and gender discrimination impacts women journalists in Pakistan. The International Federation of Journalists (2018-19) ranks Pakistan as the fourth most dangerous country for journalists. The Coalition for Women in Journalism declares Pakistan as the sixth-worst for female journalists (2019). In 2018, the Global Gender Gap Report highlighted Pakistan as second from bottom, ranking it 148 out of 149 countries. Given these numbers, the country is an ominous space for women in news media. This study collects the data from women journalists working in the three largest cities of Pakistan, that is, Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad. The aim is to investigate the issues faced by female journalists due to discrimination at the workplace including glass ceiling, pay gap, and lack of female leadership. Following the mixed-method approach, around 102 women journalists were surveyed, and 10 were interviewed. Findings indicate the rampant existence of sexism in Pakistani media and its detrimental effects on the growth of a gender-balanced news media industry.

This study aims at examining the possible relationship between increasing violence in Pakistani society and its excessive portrayal in popular Indian movies, ardently watched in Pakistan, during 1970s, 80s, 90s and 2000s. Firstly, five top grossing films selected through popularity charts and youth polls are analyzed from the four decades under study. Then Violence Index, as per adjusted George Gerbner’s Formula, 1976, is calculated to identify and compare the trends in the defined time period. Subsequently, four samples of one month issues of the largest circulated Daily Jang from each decade (1976-2006) were carefully analyzed for crime news as an authentic daily record of social crime scene in the country. Results show that violence has increased both in Pakistani society and Indian movies during the forty years sampled but the increase is curvilinear rather than linear in nature. Only a negligibly weak correlation of + 0.2 is being found between the incidences of silver screen violence and real-life, reported crimes. Though, there seems to be fragile relationship between the two variables, it is observed that the violent crimes rate in Pakistani society fluctuate, following the trends and frequency of portrayal of violence in Indian movies in preceding decade under study.