Opinion

By Ali Dar Every few weeks, Artificial Intelligence seems to produce another headline. A new model. A larger investment. A faster processor. A company valued in the hundreds of billions. The conversation has become almost entirely centered on the race to build more powerful machines.   I follow these developments with genuine interest. But I often find myself wondering whether we are all looking in the wrong direction. History has a curious habit of reminding us that the inventors of transformative technologies are not always the ones who transform society. James Watt improved the steam engine. It was factories that transformed economies. The internet was built by engineers. It was entrepreneurs, educators, governments and ordinary citizens who changed the way we lived because of it. Technology begins the story. Institutions decide how the story ends. That distinction has occupied my thoughts for some time. Perhaps because I spend more time thinking about government than algorithms. Perhaps because the questions that matter most are no longer technological. They are institutional. People often speak about bureaucracy as though it were an outdated mistake waiting to be dismantled. I see it differently. Modern government was designed for the world in which it existed. Information travelled slowly. Documents moved from one office to another because there was no practical alternative. Decisions climbed through layers of administration because knowledge itself moved through those same layers. Those systems were not inefficient by accident. They were remarkably effective for their time. They created order, consistency and accountability. They allowed governments to function at a scale that had previously been impossible. The challenge today is not that bureaucracy failed. The challenge is that the world around it has changed more quickly than bureaucracy itself. For the first time in history, governments are not struggling because they lack information. They are struggling because they have too much of it. A district administration receives more information in a single week than previous generations of public servants might have encountered in an entire year. Hospitals generate enormous volumes of clinical data. Schools continuously measure educational outcomes. Agriculture increasingly depends upon satellite imagery, weather intelligence and real-time market information. The constraint is no longer access. It is interpretation. That, I believe, changes everything. Artificial Intelligence is often described as a technological revolution. I am beginning to think it is something else. It is an institutional revolution. It’s greatest contribution may not be writing reports or generating images. It’s greatest contribution may be helping institutions distinguish what is important from what is merely available. That is a subtle difference. It is also an enormously important one. Governments have spent the past two decades becoming digital. That was necessary. Files became electronic. Services moved online. Citizens could access information without standing in long queues. These were meaningful achievements. Yet digitisation should never be confused with transformation. Replacing paper with screens does not automatically produce better judgement. A digital government stores information more efficiently. An intelligent government learns from it. There is a profound difference between the two. One preserves knowledge. The other improves decisions. This is why I believe the next chapter of public administration will not be defined by technology alone. It will be defined by institutional learning. Can governments recognise emerging problems before they become crises? Can public services adapt more quickly to changing circumstances? Can policymakers spend less time searching for information and more time exercising judgement? These are leadership questions. Technology merely provides new tools with which to answer them. Around the world, different countries are beginning to explore these possibilities in different ways. Estonia has shown what becomes possible when digital infrastructure is treated as a public utility rather than a technical project. Singapore continues to demonstrate that institutional discipline remains one of the greatest competitive advantages any nation can possess. Neither model should be copied uncritically. Every society carries its own history, institutions and public expectations. Punjab will do the same. Our objective should never be to imitate another government’s technology. It should be to strengthen our own capacity to govern. That is the thinking behind The Office of AI. Contrary to popular perception, its purpose is not simply to introduce Artificial Intelligence into government. Technology, on its own, has never transformed institutions. People do. Leadership does. Culture does. The real ambition is more demanding than digital transformation. It is to cultivate public institutions that learn continuously, coordinate more effectively and ultimately deliver better outcomes for citizens. That is a much harder challenge. It is also a far more worthwhile one. I suspect history will remember this period rather differently from the way we describe it today. It may not be remembered as the moment machines became intelligent. It may be remembered as the moment governments were compelled to become more thoughtful. Perhaps that is the real revolution. Not smarter software but smarter institutions. And if that proves to be true, the defining governments of this century will not be those that purchased the most advanced technology. They will be the ones that developed the wisdom to use it well. About the Author Ali Dar is a software engineer by education, business leader and Advisor to the Chief Minister of Punjab on Artificial Intelligence and Special Initiatives. He writes on the future of governance, Artificial Intelligence, digital transformation and public policy.

Federal Minister for Petroleum Ali Pervaiz Malik has made an unusually candid assessment of Pakistan’s energy sector. Speaking at the Energy Conference 2026, he conceded that inconsistent policies discourage exploration, petroleum has been subjected to “exorbitant taxation”, domestic refineries remain in a dilapidated condition, gas-sector liquidity is impaired, circular debt remains a central concern, and structural reform requires competition, unbundling and private participation. These admissions deserve attention because they come from inside the government. They also raise an unavoidable question: if the government understands the structural weaknesses so clearly, why does its own fiscal and administrative policy continue to aggravate them? The minister’s strongest observation was that the Petroleum Division cannot remain the instrument upon which excessive taxation and financial interventions are loaded merely to meet budgetary requirements. The diagnosis is correct; the choice of victim is not. A government division does not bear taxation. Consumers, farmers, transporters, manufacturers and exporters do. Pakistan collected a record Rs. 1.567 trillion through petroleum levy during the fiscal year (FY) 2025-26, exceeding the budgeted target by about Rs. 99 billion. Petroleum products are nominally exempt from general sales tax, but motorists should not confuse exemption with relief. The levy, customs duty and the new climate support levy together impose an enormous burden at the pump.  An analysis of notified prices and consumption estimated that these petroleum charges generated around Rs. 166 billion in July 2026 alone—equivalent to roughly one-fifth of that month’s collection of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). On petrol, government imposts exceeded Rs. 100 per litre during parts of August. [Ministry of Finance fiscal operations; OGRA notified prices] This is not energy policy. It is fiscal opportunism. Petroleum levy is especially attractive to Islamabad because, unlike federal taxes included in the divisible pool, its proceeds are retained by the federal government. Replacing sales tax with levy does not broaden the tax base or improve its progressivity [Bankruptcy of ideas—VII: The Petroleum (Levy) State, June 18, Minute Mirror, 2026].  It merely enables the federation to collect revenue without sharing it under the National Finance Commission mechanism. Provinces lose their constitutional share while the entire economy absorbs higher transport, agricultural and production costs. The levy is also excessively regressive. A litre consumed by a motorcyclist, rickshaw driver or small farmer attracts the same fixed charge as one consumed by the owner of a luxury vehicle. Diesel taxation travels through freight into the price of flour, vegetables, medicines and construction materials. The poorest household may not own a vehicle, but it still pays petroleum levy indirectly on almost everything it buys. The minister should have said plainly that Pakistan’s narrow and inequitable tax system is being sustained by taxing mobility and production. Powerful retailers, speculative real-estate interests, large landowners and beneficiaries of untaxed or lightly taxed wealth remain inadequately documented. The salaried class, formal businesses and petroleum consumers are repeatedly squeezed because they are visible and collection is easy. The minister also called for consistent and predictable policies to attract investment in high-risk onshore and offshore exploration. No serious investor can disagree. Exploration requires large sunk expenditure, long lead times and the possibility of complete failure. Pakistan cannot invite investors with one policy, reinterpret its terms through another notification, delay payments, restrict remittances and then wonder why exploration interest remains weak. The Pakistan Economic Survey 2025-26 acknowledges constrained domestic petroleum production, continued import dependence, suboptimal refinery utilisation and the effect of international instability on the import bill. These are not new discoveries. Governments have been promising energy security, refinery upgrading and accelerated exploration for decades. The institutional cycle remains familiar: announce a policy, delay agreements, accumulate liabilities, offer concessions, change fiscal terms and launch another policy. Offshore exploration is important, but it must not become another slogan. A dry well is a commercial risk; unstable contracts, delayed decisions and politicised administration are sovereign risks created by the state. Pakistan cannot remove geological uncertainty, but it can remove bureaucratic caprice. That requires published contractual frameworks, credible dispute resolution, transparent bidding, assured repatriation rules and protection against retrospective fiscal changes. The minister’s claim that the flow of circular debt has been maintained near zero without increasing consumer prices also needs closer examination. Circular debt is not eliminated merely because its current flow is temporarily contained. Arrears can be shifted through subsidies, delayed payments, financing arrangements, tariff adjustments, accounting recognition or government guarantees. The stock remains a claim on citizens even when it disappears from a ministry’s preferred flow indicator. Gas-sector circular debt reflects delayed tariff adjustments, expensive imported LNG, diversion of gas between consumer categories, distribution losses, theft, weak recoveries, unpaid subsidies and government-directed supplies without timely budgetary compensation. It impairs the liquidity of exploration and production companies, which then lack funds for new exploration. The state taxes petroleum to repair its budget while withholding or delaying money owed within the energy chain. This is fiscal cannibalism: one part of the sector is consumed to keep another functioning. The condition of local refineries provides another indictment. The minister rightly asked why they remain “dilapidated” and have not become deep-conversion facilities. Old hydro skimming refineries produce an output mix increasingly misaligned with domestic demand, including excess furnace oil and insufficient quantities of cleaner, higher-value fuels. Modernisation requires billions of dollars, technological planning and certainty over tariffs, duties, pricing and product specifications. Refineries, however, have enjoyed various forms of protection and deemed-duty support in the past. Any new incentive must be conditional. Public support cannot become a permanent reward for postponing investment.  Each refinery agreement should disclose the investment commitment, financing plan, completion milestones, product-quality improvements, environmental obligations and consequences of default. Consumers should not finance refinery upgrades through protected margins without enforceable delivery. The proposed unbundling of the gas sector—separating infrastructure from commodity trading—can improve transparency. An independent network operator, regulated access charges and genuine third-party access could allow producers and large consumers to contract without forcing every transaction through an opaque state monopoly. But changing organisational boxes will not cure political pricing, excessive losses, poor

There are many ways to confuse a nation. You can give contradictory statements, hold three press conferences saying three different things, or announce that everything is perfectly normal while the entire country is wondering why nothing looks normal. Or, if you are particularly creative, you can take a Supreme Court order directing a prisoner to one hospital and take him to another. Welcome to Pakistan, where even a hospital transfer can become a constitutional thriller. The Supreme Court ordered that Imran Khan, the incarcerated former prime minister, be shifted from Adiala Jail to Shifa International Hospital for medical examination and treatment. The order was specific about the medical arrangements, including a multidisciplinary medical board and the involvement of his personal physician and his sister, Dr Uzma. The Court also emphasised the State’s obligation to safeguard the life, health, dignity and security of a person in custody and directed compliance with its order in letter and spirit. One might reasonably assume that the next scene would be rather straightforward. The ambulance would arrive, the prisoner would leave the jail, the ambulance would reach Shifa, doctors would examine the patient, the court order would be fulfilled, and the nation would go home. But this is Pakistan. Here, apparently, even an ambulance needs constitutional interpretation. Instead of Shifa International, Imran Khan was taken to PIMS. The government says the change was made because of security considerations and insists that he was examined by specialists, including doctors associated with Shifa. After a brief medical examination, he was returned to Adiala Jail. And suddenly the nation was presented with a fascinating new concept in constitutional law: the destination may be different, but apparently the spirit is the same. Imagine ordering a prisoner to be taken to Lahore and the authorities taking him to Peshawar, then announcing, “Don’t worry. Both cities have hospitals.” This is not disobedience, apparently. This is administrative creativity. The Supreme Court says Shifa. The government says PIMS. The nation says, “Excuse me, did we miss a constitutional amendment?” The government’s explanation is security. Of course, security is a serious matter. Nobody sensible would argue otherwise. A former prime minister with millions of supporters cannot simply be moved around without adequate security arrangements. But there is a small constitutional inconvenience here: the Supreme Court itself had already directed the government to make adequate security arrangements for Khan’s stay at Shifa. So the obvious question is, if security was the problem, why was the solution not presented to the very court that had issued the order? Why not go back and say, “Your Lordships, we have a security problem. Kindly permit PIMS instead.” That would have been boring. And boring, apparently, is not Pakistan’s preferred method of governance. Instead, the country got a plot twist. The government challenged the Supreme Court’s direction, while its review petition reportedly faced procedural objections. Then Khan was taken to PIMS instead of the hospital specifically named in the Court’s order. It is almost as if the Constitution was handed a boarding pass for Shifa and somehow ended up at PIMS. Perhaps the poor Constitution missed its flight. Then came the most remarkable part. The government said Imran Khan was medically fit after the examination and returned him to jail. Wonderful. A man whose health concerns had prompted the Supreme Court to intervene was taken for a medical examination, declared fit and returned to prison within hours. What a remarkably efficient healthcare system Pakistan has suddenly discovered. You enter as a prisoner, you are examined by specialists, you are declared fit, and you leave. No waiting room, no follow-up appointment, no parking problem , just straight back to jail. If only the rest of Pakistan’s healthcare system worked at this speed. Of course, satire aside, the matter is not funny. That is precisely why it is funny. Because beneath the absurdity lies a very serious constitutional question. The Supreme Court did not merely say, “Take Imran Khan somewhere and let a doctor look at him.” It laid down specific arrangements concerning the hospital, the medical board, the involvement of his personal physician and his sister, and the treatment of a person in state custody. The Court recognised that imprisonment does not extinguish a prisoner’s entitlement to humane treatment and necessary medical care. So when a government changes the practical implementation of a specific judicial direction, the public is entitled to ask whether this is compliance or reinterpretation. And there is a very thin line between the two. A government that disagrees with a judicial order has legal remedies. It can appeal. It can seek review. It can request modification. It can explain security concerns. What it should not casually establish is a new constitutional principle, “Yes, Your Lordships, we received your order. We have made some adjustments.” Because once that principle becomes normal, it will not remain confined to Imran Khan. Today it is a former prime minister. Tomorrow it could be an opposition leader. The day after tomorrow, it could be an ordinary citizen. And then someone will discover that the court ordered one thing, but the administration considered another thing more convenient. That is where the real danger begins. The issue, therefore, is bigger than Imran Khan. It is bigger than PTI. It is even bigger than the government of the day. It concerns whether judicial orders are binding instructions or merely suggestions sent to the executive branch for consideration. Because if a court says “Shifa” and the executive says “PIMS,” the citizen naturally wonders, who actually decides? The judges? The administration? The security establishment? Or whoever has the microphone that afternoon? There is another uncomfortable question. Does Imran Khan’s life matter to the state? The official answer is obviously yes. The government says he is receiving medical care, has been examined repeatedly and is being treated according to the rules applicable to prisoners. It has rejected allegations of medical neglect and mistreatment, then why Imran khan stated many times to his sister Dr Uzma Khan

After creating man, Allah Almighty included within his nature an administrative structure for the family, whereby he might continue the journey of life according to the needs of his age. With the passage of time this structure was obliged to expand; the family pressed onward and at length arrived at the threshold of the state. In the present family order, while the grandfather yet lives he is acknowledged head of the house, and his permission and consent enter into all the greater affairs thereof. Yet for the practical running of that household he has delegated certain responsibilities and powers to the members of his family, so that each person may be answerable for the work committed to his charge. When this same structure enlarged its scope to the management of the state, successive arrangements were fashioned in the light of varied experience, and the state began to be administered accordingly. In view of the requirements of the present hour further amendments were introduced, and thus the Pakistan Defence Forces Amendment Bill of 2026 was approved by Parliament, that all the affairs of the state might be conducted professionally under their proper jurisdictions. The Act gives effect to certain provisions of the earlier Twenty-Seventh Constitutional Amendment. It establishes a Defence Forces Headquarters under the Chief of Defence Forces—an office held concurrently by the Chief of Army Staff—as the central headquarters of the armed forces. The Chief of Defence Forces is constituted the principal military adviser to the Prime Minister upon questions of national security, defence and the armed forces; he exercises operational command and control of those forces while remaining responsible to the federal government; and he is vested with authority for multi-domain integration, operational cohesion, joint and tri-service coordination, organisation, training, administration, combat readiness and kindred functions. Broad personnel powers are likewise conferred upon him; he may retire, release, accept or reject resignation, discharge, retain in service, or relax the limits of age and length of service for personnel subject to the laws of the armed forces, excluding only those appointed under Article 243, namely the service chiefs themselves. Amendments to the National Command Authority substitute the former office of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee with that of the Chief of Defence Forces. The measures are given retrospective effect from November 27, 2025. These provisions stand partially in line with a global tendency toward unified joint command and a single senior military counsellor. Many countries have created equivalent positions—Chief of Defence Staff, Chief of the Defence Force, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the like—in order to improve jointness, diminish service silos and furnish single-point military advice, lessons drawn from the demands of modern multi-domain warfare. In the United States the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the highest-ranking officer and principal military adviser to the President, the National Security Council and the Secretary of Defence. By the Goldwater-Nichols reforms and the provisions of Title 10 he possesses no operational command authority over the armed forces or over the other Joint Chiefs; the chain of command runs from the President through the Secretary of Defence to the combatant commanders. His function is deliberately advisory, concerned with counsel, planning, joint doctrine and the transmission of communications, so that civilian control and a measure of service autonomy in operations may be preserved. In India the Chief of Defence Staff serves as principal military adviser to the Defence Minister on tri-service matters, permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, head of the Department of Military Affairs and military adviser to the Nuclear Command Authority. He is charged with promoting jointness in operations, logistics, training, the prioritisation of procurement and the development of theatre commands. Explicitly, however, he does not exercise operational military command over the service chiefs, who retain command of their respective services; he is described as first among equals. The office was created to enhance integration without subordinating the services in the conduct of operations. In the United Kingdom the Chief of the Defence Staff is the professional head of the Armed Forces and principal military adviser to the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Defence. Historically the role centred upon advice and strategy; reforms of recent years have strengthened it so that the Chief commands the service chiefs and heads a Military Strategic Headquarters charged with force design, war planning and the development of an integrated force. Even so, the office continues to operate under strong ministerial and civilian direction through the Defence Council. Canada, Australia and similar Commonwealth models typically invest the Chief of the Defence Staff or Chief of the Defence Force with command authority over the forces, subject to direction from the government or the minister and ultimate civilian or Crown control. Emphasis is laid upon unified command for both operations and administration, exercised under parliamentary oversight. The global pattern, therefore, moves toward a senior joint office for better integration and counsel. Pakistan’s law shares the goals of jointness, a central headquarters, multi-domain coordination and a principal advisory role, and is in that respect consistent with prevailing trends. Yet the Pakistani model differs in significant particulars. The concurrent dual role, whereby the Chief of Defence Forces is held by the serving Army Chief, is uncommon; most systems either appoint a separate officer, often rotated among the services, or keep the joint head distinct from day-to-day single-service command. This arrangement produces a clearer Army-centred apex than the more balanced or purely advisory models of the United States, India or the earlier British practice. Moreover, the combination of direct operational command and control of all services with sweeping personnel powers—extending to retirement, discharge, retention and the alteration of service limits across the forces, save only the top service chiefs—exceeds the strictly advisory character of the American and Indian systems. It approaches the stronger command-oriented models found in parts of the Commonwealth and in the recent British reforms, yet remains unusually comprehensive in matters of personnel under a single officer. In

Every August, right on schedule, my phone starts buzzing. Friends send me lists. WhatsApp group start heated debates. Neighbours stop me at the corner shop. Someone always has an opinion about who made it onto Pakistan’s civil awards list this year, and someone always has an even louder opinion about who got left off. I have seen this happen so many times now that I could almost set my watch by it. The list comes out, the arguments start, and by the time the dust settles, nobody remembers what the fuss was even about. The award list carries the names which we like the most, and unfortunately, it carries those names, which do not like. I want to tell you something I have come to believe after watching this cycle play out year after year. This debate we keep having, about who deserved a medal and who did not, is about as useful as arguing over which cloud looks more like a rabbit. It never ends, and it never really goes anywhere either. People pick their favourites, defend them like family, and forget the whole point of what an award is supposed to mean in the first place. Here is the real point, plain and simple. An award is not a popularity contest. It is not a reward for showing up. It is meant for something extraordinary. Something exceptional. A person who did work so far above the ordinary that the state felt it had to stand up and say thank you in front of everybody. Now here is where the story gets interesting, and honestly, a little strange. An economist named Zehra Farooq sat down and did something most of us never bother to do. She pulled together every single civil award given out over nine years, all 2,209 of them, and looked at the pattern. What she found should stop us all in our tracks. Back in 2018, only 73 people received awards. By 2026, that number had climbed to 372. That is five times as many people being called extraordinary in less than a decade. Think about what that actually means. If we are handing out that many more awards for exceptional service, it should follow that we have more and more exceptional people walking among us. Teachers going beyond the call. Officers solving problems nobody else could touch. Scientists, engineers, public servants, all rising to meet the moment. That is what a growing list of honourees is supposed to tell us. But here is the part that keeps me up at night. If we truly have this many extraordinary minds working for the good of the country, why does the country not feel more extraordinary? Why do our institutions still creak and groan the way they always have? Why does public service still feel, for so many ordinary citizens, like an uphill climb rather than a smooth road paved by all this supposed excellence? Something does not add up. Either the definition of extraordinary has quietly loosened over the years, or the excellence being honoured is not translating into the everyday experience of the people it is meant to serve. Farooq’s numbers also show something else worth sitting with. Women still make up only around ten to sixteen percent of recipients, a share that has barely moved in nine years, and their share shrinks even further at the highest levels of honour. So the next time the list comes out and the arguments start flying, I hope we can steer the conversation somewhere more useful. Instead of fighting over names, let us ask why the growth in awards has not translated into a more exemplary, more ideal society. That is the debate worth having. That is the one that might actually change something.

The intellectual discourse initiated by Sufi philosophers was inclusive of all religions and negated mullahism. Baba Farid is said to have been persecuted by Pakpattan’s qazi and the ruler of the city for listening to music and dancing in the mosque. Guru Nanak condemned the ritualism of mullahs and the pundits—Our distorted intellectual discourse, Dawn, September 9, 2011  Our discussion of Waris Shah ended with Erich Fromm’s distinction between having and being. Heer’s family sought to have honour, status, alliances and authority over a daughter; Heer and Ranjha sought a relationship grounded in recognition rather than possession. Their tragedy arose because a possessive social order could not tolerate human beings who refused to behave as property. To take that argument further, we must now travel backwards nearly five centuries before Waris Shah, to the beginnings of the surviving Punjabi poetic tradition and to Baba Farid (Hazrat Fariduddin Ganjshaka). Najm Hosain Syed places Farid at the opening of that tradition. What distinguishes his dohras, Najm writes, is an “austerity of tone”. Their setting is not an imaginary spiritual landscape but the “daily experience of common man”: fields, bread, dust, ageing bodies, hunger, labour and death. That austerity is precisely why Farid speaks so forcefully to an age obsessed with accumulation. Fromm, writing in To Have or To Be?, contrasted two orientations towards existence. The having mode seeks security through possession, accumulation and control; the being mode locates fulfilment in living, loving, sharing and becoming. Farid inhabited an entirely different intellectual and spiritual universe, and it would be anachronistic to turn him into a medieval Fromm. The convergence lies elsewhere. Both question the assumption that what we possess tells us what we are. Farid begins with the most democratic substance imaginable: dust. Dust Shahmukhi Roman Punjabi Literary English translation فریدہ خاکُ ن نندیئ خاکو جیڈُ ن کوئِ جیودیاں پیراں تلے مویاں اپرِ ہوئِ Farida khaak na nindiye, khaako jed na koi Jeevandeyan pairan talle, moyan upar hoi Farid, do not despise the dust; nothing stands above it. In life it lies beneath our feet; in death it lies above us.   The surviving Shahmukhi text preserves the couplet in this form. Few lines dismantle hierarchy more economically. The earth beneath the rich man’s shoe and the poor labourer’s bare foot is the same earth that eventually covers both. Rank, office, lineage, property and beauty exist for a moment between two encounters with dust. Farid is not preaching passivity before injustice. His image destroys the metaphysical arrogance on which inequality depends. Human beings may create distinctions of caste, wealth and status, but mortality refuses to recognise them. The person who imagines himself elevated above another discovers that both occupy the same final ground. This is Farid’s first challenge to the mode of having. We spend our lives converting temporary control into imagined permanence: my land, my wealth, my title, my family name, my influence. Dust reveals the grammatical error. We possess these things temporarily; they do not belong to the essential self. Farid’s poetry becomes even more striking when it turns from mortality to material inequality. Flour for Some, Not Even Salt for Others Shahmukhi Roman Punjabi Literary English translation فریدہ اکناّ آٹا اگلا اکناّ ناہی لونُ اگے گئے سننجاپسنِ چوٹاں کھا سی کؤنُ Farida ikna aata agla, ikna nahi loon Agge gaye sanjhaapsan, chotan khaasi kaun Farid, some have flour in abundance; others do not even have salt. Beyond this life it will become known who must answer for the blows. The text occurs among the saloks attributed to Farid. This is not abstract mysticism. It is an observation about distribution. One household possesses abundance; another lacks even the simplest accompaniment to bread. Farid does not construct an economic theory from the disparity, but neither does he treat it as morally neutral. The second line introduces accountability. Unequal possession cannot be separated from the question of how human beings acquired, used and withheld what passed through their hands. This is an important corrective to a frequent misuse of spirituality. Poverty should never be romanticised simply because a saint practiced austerity. There is a profound difference between voluntary simplicity and involuntary deprivation. Farid could choose restraint as spiritual discipline; the person without salt may have no choice at all. His famous imagery of coarse bread makes the distinction clearer: فریدہ روٹی میری کاٹھ کی، لاونُ میری بھکھ His bread is hard and hunger itself becomes its relish. In the following couplet, he advises eating simple food and drinking cool water without tormenting oneself by staring enviously at another person’s richer meal. The ethical target is excess desire, not nourishment. A society in which some cannot meet basic needs while others define themselves through conspicuous consumption cannot use Farid to sanctify deprivation. His poetry asks the possessor to examine himself before asking the deprived to accept their condition. Here the relationship with Fromm becomes especially productive. The having mode is not merely ownership of useful things. Human life requires food, shelter, tools and security. The pathology begins when possession becomes identity—when having more means believing oneself to be more. Farid’s answer is sabar: steadfastness, restraint, patience and sufficiency. His surviving corpus repeatedly returns to simplicity, humility and control of appetite. In contemporary political economy, however, restraint cannot be demanded only from those who possess least. An ethic worthy of Farid must speak first to those with the greatest capacity to accumulate, consume and command. His social imagination reaches its deepest point when personal suffering becomes recognition of universal suffering. The Fire in Every House Shahmukhi Roman Punjabi Literary English translation فریدہ میں جانیا دکھ مجھ کوُ دکھ سبائے جگِ اُچے چڑھِ کے دیکھیا تاں گھرِ گھرِ ایہا اگِ Farida main jaania dukh mujh ko, dukh sabhaai jag Uchche charh ke dekhia, taan ghar ghar eha ag Farid, I thought suffering belonged to me alone; I climbed higher and saw the same fire burning in every home. The couplet is preserved in the Farid saloks, and one modern scholarly discussion sees precisely this capacity to absorb the suffering of

Pakistan is about to privatise three of its distribution companies — FESCO, GEPCO and IESCO — and call it reform. It is not reform. It is triage, dressed up by three institutions that have run out of the credibility to call it anything else. The government picked these three not because they are the future of Pakistan’s grid, but because they are the only ones healthy enough to survive being sold. Their transmission and distribution losses sit around 9–10 percent, low by Pakistani standards, and their books are clean enough to attract a buyer. That is not a privatisation strategy. That is a garage sale of the family’s least broken furniture while the roof still leaks — supervised by the very carpenters who let the roof rot. And look who is showing up to bid. Expressions of interest have come from a handful of Pakistani business houses — conglomerates looking for a new asset class. Not one of them has run a national distribution network at scale, with the theft, the political interference, and the feeder-level rot that defines an ex-WAPDA DISCO. We have seen this film before. It was called K-Electric. At the time of its 2005 privatisation, KE was drawing a subsidy of roughly Rs 8 billion. Two decades later, it needed a Rs163 billion tariff differential subsidy in the FY2026–27 federal budget just to keep its consumers’ bills from reflecting its own inefficiency. Twenty-fold growth in the subsidy bill is not what privatisation was sold as. If that is what “successful” privatisation looks like, Pakistan should be terrified of doing it two, or eleven, more times. The rot is institutional, and it has three addresses. NEPRA has spent years rubber-stamping tariff hikes, capitulating to circular debt, and failing to enforce performance standards on the DISCOs it already regulates — a ceremonial regulator that confuses notifying a tariff with governing a sector. CPPA-G, sitting at the centre of the power purchase and settlement system, has presided over a circular debt mountain that keeps climbing regardless of who is nominally in charge, and has never been made to answer for it. And the Ministry of Power itself has spent a decade approving capacity contracts, rejecting cheaper foreign offers, and rotating leadership through the same small circle of appointees who preside over one crisis and then the next. None of these three institutions has the standing left to supervise a privatisation of this scale. Handing FESCO, GEPCO and IESCO to private buyers while NEPRA still writes the tariff rules, CPPA-G still runs settlement, and the Ministry still calls the shots is not privatisation — it is a death sentence dressed in a share-purchase agreement, executed slowly, one quarterly tariff adjustment at a time, on the very consumers this reform claims to protect. A regulator that could not discipline a state-owned utility is not going to discipline a private one with dollar-indexed tariff protections and lawyers on retainer. Investors bidding for FESCO, GEPCO and IESCO are already demanding exactly that: payment guarantees in US dollars, contractual protection against future renegotiation, and freedom to slash staff. Pakistan is not privatising its grid. It is handing three of its most valuable state assets to whoever negotiates the toughest exit clause, under a regulator, a market operator, and a ministry with no track record of holding anyone to account. There was a better road, and Pakistan turned it down. In 2016, Chinese Smart Grid firms — brought to the table personally (Engineer Arshad H Abbasi) in that effort — offered to bring smart grid technology into Pakistan’s distribution network, the same technology that helped State Grid Corporation of China push national transmission and distribution losses down to roughly the mid-single digits in recent years. The proposal on the table was a shared-risk model: China would modernise the DISCOs into smart grids over a decade, splitting recovered losses fifty-fifty with the state. It would have cost Pakistan almost nothing upfront and aligned China’s incentives directly with reducing theft and technical loss — the two diseases actually killing Pakistan’s grid. The Ministry of Power and the Planning Commission rejected it. A parallel 2015 pitch to interconnect Pakistan’s grid with China’s has sat on the drawing board for over a decade. Meanwhile Pakistan built its way into the LNG and imported-coal trap that now drives the very capacity payments crushing consumers and taxpayers alike — a trap Chinese engineers, who have spent thirty years wiring one of the largest and most loss-efficient grids on earth, would likely have steered Pakistan away from. Compare the region. India already exports power to Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh and is deepening links with Sri Lanka and Myanmar. Bhutan alone hosts roughly 3,156 MW of Indian-financed hydropower capacity across five major projects — a model of a regional power partner investing in generation rather than merely trading finished electricity. Pakistan, by contrast, cannot even get its own national grid properly connected into Gilgit-Baltistan or Gwadar, a port city that still runs short of reliable power despite sitting at the centre of a multi-billion-dollar Chinese economic corridor. China already has more than 5,000 MW of committed CPEC power capacity inside Pakistan, selected and negotiated by the Planning Commission, and a demonstrated willingness to build hydropower in difficult terrain. It is time to stop pretending Pakistan can manage this alone. Invite China to finance and build the hydropower across GB, AJK and KPK the way India financed Bhutan, and let Pakistan’s surplus eventually be wheeled toward Afghanistan, toward India, even toward China itself — which still needs to retire coal capacity and would gladly take clean power off a friend’s grid. Because that is what China has been, in a relationship most Pakistanis do not need convincing about: a friend when the ledger was empty, a builder when nobody else would build, a partner sweeter than honey and, on the balance sheet of sixty years of cooperation, standing taller than Everest over every other option on the table. NEPRA and CPPA-G have failed

Connecting Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) to the National Grid—and guaranteeing a dedicated clean hydro quota—is not merely an infrastructural goal; it is an ecological imperative and the definitive key to realizing the region’s full potential. High in the Karakoram and Himalayan ranges, where soaring glaciers feed the roaring Indus River, sits Gilgit-Baltistan—a land defined by its breathtaking landscapes, strategic geopolitical footprint, and an excruciating policy failure. Though this high-mountain region acts as the primary water tower of Pakistan, generating the very lifeblood that sustains the nation’s agricultural heartland and downstream hydroelectric dams, its own citizens spend their lives in perpetual darkness. For nearly eight decades since independence, the people of Gilgit-Baltistan have endured a chronic, soul-crushing energy crisis. In the harsh high-altitude winters, when temperatures plunge far below freezing and regional run-of-the-river hydel plants freeze solid or lose flow, power outages stretch to an agonizing twenty-two hours a day. Entire cities like Skardu and Gilgit grind to an absolute halt. Modern medical facilities run on expensive, precarious diesel generators, students study by the dim flicker of kerosene lamps, and families are forced to strip fragile mountain ecosystems of firewood simply to survive the winter. This domestic isolation becomes outright tragic when set against the backdrop of broader South Asian regional integration. Today, cross-border grid interconnections are becoming standard practice across the subcontinent. India has built high-voltage transmission lines linking its power architecture with Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar, while making major technical strides to link Sri Lanka across the Palk Strait. Under frameworks like the “One Sun, One World, One Grid” initiative, neighboring nations seamlessly buy, sell, and route cross-border electricity to balance seasonal surpluses and deficits. Bhutan finances its national development by wheeling clean hydro power directly into the Indian market. Nepal trades its monsoon hydro surpluses across borders to avoid spilling water, pulling power back when river flows decline. Even nations separated by deep political, geographic, and sovereign boundaries manage to run copper and steel across international borders so their citizens do not sit in the dark. Yet, after 79 years of shared history, Pakistan presents an embarrassing anomaly. The state has built a national power grid that spans thousands of miles from the Arabian Sea to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and downcountry Pakistan often wrestles with systemic generation capacity surpluses, yet it has failed to link its own sovereign territory of Gilgit-Baltistan to the National Grid. Gilgit-Baltistan remains an island—an off-grid enclave stranded inside its own country, cut off from the main transmission backbone. While foreign nations in South Asia trade thousands of megawatts in real time across sovereign borders, Pakistan’s own northern frontier cannot draw a single kilowatt from the national thermal and solar reserves down south during the freezing winter months. This policy neglect is even more absurd considering that mere miles from where local populations freeze, one of the greatest engineering feats in South Asian history is taking shape. The Diamer Basha Dam Project, currently under construction near Chilas on the River Indus, boasts an astounding installed generation capacity of 4,500 megawatts and an expected annual output of over eighteen billion units of clean, renewable energy. The dam will transform Pakistan’s national economy, but it raises a fundamental moral and legal question: will it transform the lives of the people living in its shadow, or will the power simply pass over their heads to serve distant urban centers while local towns remain dark? To correct a structural imbalance that has persisted since 1947, the Federal Government of Pakistan and the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) must formally dedicate a guaranteed quota of 500 megawatts of power from the Diamer Basha Dam directly to Gilgit-Baltistan. This allocation is not an act of federal charity; it is a pragmatic, economically transformative, and ethically mandatory policy that aligns local resource rights with national progress. To understand why a 500-megawatt direct allocation is essential, one must look at the region’s fragile, isolated micro-hydel infrastructure. Historically, Gilgit-Baltistan has relied on small-scale localized plants built on seasonal mountain streams. While these plants function adequately during the summer melt, they are acutely vulnerable to climate shifts and freeze cycles. When winter arrives and glacial run-offs plummet, local power generation drops by over eighty percent. Because the region is not connected to the main transmission grid, it cannot import balancing power, leaving the local economy frozen. Despite possessing immense potential as an international hub for eco-tourism, organic agriculture, high-altitude software hubs, and gemstone processing, serious industrial investors routinely stay away due to acute energy insecurity. The cost of doing business is artificially inflated by reliance on imported fossil fuels, creating a cycle of underdevelopment that forces educated, talented youth to migrate to major cities downcountry in search of basic livelihoods. Allocating 500 megawatts out of Diamer Basha’s 4,500-megawatt capacity represents just eleven percent of the dam’s total output. For the national power sector, absorbing this slight allocation is negligible. For Gilgit-Baltistan, however, this capacity is transformative. It represents complete regional energy self-sufficiency, year-round grid stability, and surplus capacity to fuel industrial growth for generations. To execute this vision cleanly and equitably, a structured cost-sharing implementation model must be established between the federal center and the region. The federal government and WAPDA must formally ring-fence a 500-megawatt generation quota from the powerhouse specifically for the region at concessional local tariffs. In return, the regional government of Gilgit-Baltistan must take complete ownership of downstream execution. The regional government must build high-voltage transmission lines connecting the powerhouse at Chilas to major regional load centers like Gilgit, Skardu, Hunza, and Ghizer, while overhauling local grid stations and distribution lines. By dividing responsibility—federal generation matched by regional distribution—both parties build a long-overdue partnership rooted in shared accountability. An allocation of this scale does far more than illuminate living rooms; it fundamentally reshapes the socio-economic trajectory of the entire northern frontier. With a dependable baseload, Gilgit-Baltistan can transition from a subsistence economy to a value-added manufacturing and processing hub. Local mineral wealth—including high-grade marble, granite, and precious gemstones—can be processed

(When the water rises, who shows up and who is left waiting?) ‎I live in Sabzazar, a neighborhood in Lahore, Pakistan, but part of my heart is always sitting along the banks of the Moxahala Creek back home in Southeast Ohio. When the water rises in Muskingum County or the Punjab plains, who shows up, and who is left waiting? I live in Sabzazar, a neighborhood in Lahore, Pakistan, but part of my heart is always sitting along the banks of the Moxahala Creek back home in Southeast Ohio. ‎ ‎My mother and brother still live right near South Zanesville, just a stone’s throw from Crooksville. When heavy rains hit Perry and Muskingum counties, I don’t need to be there to know what it looks like. I can picture the heavy, chocolate-brown water backing up into the low spots, the damp chill that settles into a basement, the fears of what if the waters reach a house trailer, and that specific, exhausting smell of river mud that takes weeks to scrub out of porch boards and carpet. The worries of if the home has structural damage.. Halfway across the world in Pakistan, the landscape couldn’t look more different. But when monsoon season swells the rivers across the Punjab, the view from the ground is hauntingly identical. ‎ ‎Standing in a flooded doorway feels the same whether you are in Ohio or Lahore. The quiet shock is the same. The ruin of things you worked years to buy is the same. And the very first instinct is to grab your coat, shovel, a chainsaw and a pair of boots and go check on the elderly woman next door.. Start hauling wet furniture, debris to the curb and giving comfort, food and basics to those in need is entirely universal. Watching both worlds at once makes you look at governance differently. It strips away abstract political jargon and leaves you asking one fundamental question: When a community is hit with a crisis, does its system build capable people who can act, or does it leave them sitting on their hands, waiting for permission to survive? ‎ ‎What a Small Ohio Village Taught Me About Governance ‎ ‎Growing up around South Zanesville and Crooksville, you learn pretty early that small-town life relies on a very specific kind of quiet, distributed agency. ‎Crooksville isn’t a rich town. It’s a hard-working Appalachian village of under 1,500 people. But when the creek overflows, nobody sits around waiting for a press conference out of Washington, D.C., or a mandate from the state capital in Columbus. ‎ ‎The response moves in waves because the connections are already wired: ‎On the local levels we see neighbor checks on neighbor. The volunteer fire department turns on the sirens, pulls out the high-water gear, and starts the door to door knocks. At the County level we have the Perry County 911 dispatch and Emergency Management Agency (EMA) start tracking water levels and routing equipment where it’s needed most. At the State level, If the county gets overwhelmed, pre set legal triggers immediately call in the Ohio EMA or the National Guard. ‎ ‎Government here doesn’t replace the community’s instinct to help itself; it validates it, organizes it, and backs it up with real resources. The system trusts the people on the ground to know their own roads. Here in Pakistan, the human spirit is just as generous, if not more so. The impulse toward hospitality, neighborly charity, and mutual support runs incredibly deep. When disaster strikes, ordinary citizens open their wallets and their homes without a second thought. It’s just what they do… ‎ ‎And Pakistan’s has one of the world’s top class military engineering, a massive national disaster agency (the NDMA), and incredible private charities. The raw capacity is immense. Yet, too often, there is a however a very heartbreaking disconnect between that high-level power and the family standing in ankle deep water in a local neighborhood. An ordinary citizen here once described the country to me using a metaphor I’ve never forgotten: a child that was never allowed to stand on its own feet. An infant isn’t helpless because it lacks potential. It’s helpless because it hasn’t been given the space to build muscle, fall over, adjust its balance, and try again. If an authority figure picks the child up every single time it tries to pull itself up, the child never learns to walk—not from a lack of ability, but because the environment denied it the chance to build strength. ‎ ‎That is how systemic learned dependency takes root: Central authorities assume total control, bypassing local municipal councils. Neighborhoods are given no real budget or authority to fix their own drainage or organize local response teams. And when a flood comes, citizens have no choice but to wait for distant, top-down relief. The authorities look at the waiting crowd and say, “See? The people can’t manage without us.” ‎We witness power centralized even further, deepening the exact helplessness it claims to fix. Over generations, people adapt to the system they are given. If a system rewards waiting for a political patron, people learn to wait for patrons. If it rewards local initiative, communities build habits of self-reliance. It is very easy to blame culture or public apathy for civic passivity, but that misses the point entirely. Culture simply reflects the structural incentives people are given to survive and adapt. It is nature vs nurture and we have a break down when these two things fail to promote a cohesiveness and inclusion of what is a community and what that actually means. ‎ ‎Across the globe, the relationship between state control and citizen participation varies wildly, proving that central authority does not have to mean public powerlessness. In China, a deeply centralized state framework actively structures and expects local neighborhood committees and civil volunteer groups to manage community-level crises. Across much of Europe, comprehensive state safety nets exist alongside highly empowered municipal councils and professionalized local volunteer forces.

By Tahseen Ullah  For millions of Pakistanis, migration is a journey of hope and opportunity. Its success depends not simply on departure, but on informed decisions, relevant skills, ethical recruitment and proper preparation. Labour migration is a continuum—from reliable information and guidance, authentic career planning through skills development, documentation, overseas employment, work-visa processing, registration and Pre departure orientation at Protectorate of Emigrants, worker protection, and return and reintegration. For Pakistan, strengthening every stage of this cycle is essential to making labour mobility safe, regular, skills-oriented and rights-based. A well-managed migration system can protect workers, reduce exploitation and irregular migration, enhance employability, and transform migration from a response to unemployment into a strategic investment in human capital, economic resilience and sustainable national growth. The journey begins with one critical step: making an informed decision about whether, where and how to migrate Planning for Informed Migration: Skills, Choices and Readiness The migration journey begins with access to reliable information and informed decisions about overseas labour markets, occupations, wages, destinations, costs, legal pathways and potential risks. Once the decision to migrate is made, preparation should focus on employability and readiness through relevant technical skills, recognised certifications, language proficiency, digital literacy, financial awareness, and knowledge of employment contracts and workers’ rights. Aligning skills and qualifications with the evolving demands of destination-country labour markets can help prospective migrants pursue safe, regular and sustainable employment opportunities. Recruitment, Work Visa and Pre-Departure: Safe Pathways Recruitment is a critical stage of the migration cycle and a key point of vulnerability. Pakistani workers can access overseas employment through licensed Overseas Employment Promoters, the Overseas Employment Corporation, or direct employment. Verified employers, transparent contracts, fair recruitment costs and accessible grievance mechanisms help prevent fraud and exploitation. The process also includes obtaining the required work visa through the relevant diplomatic mission, completing emigration clearance and registration for protection, and attending Pre-Departure Orientation at the Protectorate of Emigrants (PoE) offices, equipping migrants with essential knowledge of their rights, responsibilities, workplace safety and available support services. Post-Arrival: Protection and Productivity The migration journey continues after arrival. Migrants may face contract violations, wage disputes, unsafe working conditions, language barriers, discrimination or limited access to support. Effective labour protection, employer compliance, consular assistance and accessible referral mechanisms are essential. Well-protected migrants are more likely to remain productive and successfully integrate into the workplace. Return and Sustainable Reintegration: Turning Experience into Opportunity Return marks an important transition in the migration cycle, particularly for workers completing their contracts and returning to Pakistan. A planned return and reintegration strategy can help returnees make productive use of their savings, skills, experience and professional networks. Access to psychosocial, legal, financial and employment support, along with skills recognition, entrepreneurship opportunities and further training, can facilitate sustainable reintegration. With the right support, returnees can turn their overseas experience into productive livelihoods and contribute to local economic development. Challenges and Opportunities Pakistan’s migration system faces persistent challenges, including information gaps, fraudulent recruitment, irregular migration, high recruitment costs, low skills levels, limited recognition of qualifications, inadequate protection and weak reintegration mechanisms. Fragmented coordination across institutions can further reduce the effectiveness of the migration process. At the same time, significant opportunities exist. Pakistan’s young population, expanding skills base and growing international demand for workers in healthcare, construction, engineering, IT, caregiving, manufacturing and green sectors provide a strong foundation for expanding regular labour mobility. The opportunity is to move from a labour-export model to a human-capital and talent-mobility model—through demand-driven skills development, international certification, language training, ethical recruitment, stronger bilateral labour mobility agreements and effective protection across the migration cycle. The Way Forward Pakistan’s National Emigration and Welfare Policy 2026 provide a framework for managing migration through a whole-of-cycle approach, covering safe and regular migration, skills development, worker protection, welfare, and return and reintegration. Its success will depend on effective implementation through clear short-, medium- and long-term strategies, strong institutional coordination and measurable outcomes. Relevant organisations, including Migrant Resource Centres, can complement these efforts through awareness-raising, guidance and information on legal pathways, referrals, Pre departure orientation, reintegration of returnees to helping migrants make informed decisions and avoid fraud, exploitation and irregular migration. Going forward, the priority should be to translate policy commitments into practical outcomes for migrants and their families. This requires sustained institutional coordination, responsive services and a system that remains connected to changing labour-market needs and the realities faced by workers throughout the migration journey. If managed effectively, migration can go beyond providing overseas employment and remittances to become a pathway for skills transfer, productive return and improved economic opportunities—contributing to a more resilient and prosperous Pakistan. Tahseen Ullah is a development and migration sector practitioner specializing in labour mobility, migration governance, education and child protection. He can be reached at tahseenanthro@gmail.com  LinkedIn: Tahseen Ullah