Ms. Neelofar Asghar has been recommended for the award of Ph. D degree in political science after successful public defence of her thesis in a ceremony held at the Video Conferencing Hall University of Peshawar.
The topic of her research was,”Unequal development in a Peripheral Capitalist State: A Case Study of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan, 1947-77.
The scholar found out in her research that unequal development was the logical corollary of capitalist growth creating contradictions of development. She added rapid accumulation of capital requires centralization of capital and concentration of forces of production in core metropolises which generates the dualism of development in the core and underdevelopment in the periphery.
Poverty in the periphery is neither the poverty of its natural resources nor the poverty of its human resources, it is the enigma of capitalist growth, she said.
The colonial legacy of instituting four different set of administrative procedures for FATA, FR, PATA and the settled districts implies cumbersome governance. This policy entails constitutional domain only for the settled districts whereas the major area of KP lurks outside the national and provincial legislation and legal ambit consequently they are outside the realm of politico-socio-economic development.
This crisis of legitimacy impacts the KP as well as the federation of Pakistan critically,
she concluded.
Former Vice Chancellor University of Peshawar and Director Area Study Centre Prof. Dr. Azmat Hayat Khan was her Ph. D supervisor while Prof. Dr. Abdul Qayyum served as her external examiner. The ceremony was attended by Chairman Department of Political Science Prof. Dr. A-Z Hilali, faculty members and good number of students.
Source: The Frontier Post
