Guardians of Mind in the digital deluge

Federal Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal announced that the government will place the National Flood Protection Plan IV before the Council of Common Interests for approval. The price tag is now Rs 700 billion. The same plan was approved by the CCI in 2017 at roughly half that amount. The minister was candid: the previous governments failed to implement it, and the 2022 floods forced a revision. Nearly a decade and a half after the plan was first conceived after the 2010 floods that devastated the country, we are back where we started, except the bill has grown by Rs 360 billion. But there is a problem with the numbers, and it is not a small one. In November 2025, Secretary Water Resources Syed Ali Murtaza testified before the Senate Standing Committee on Water Resources that NFPP-IV comprised 375 schemes with a total cost of Rs 824.493 billion. The provincial component alone stood at Rs 746.961 billion, while the federal share was only Rs 77.533 billion. He told the committee that provinces had refused to contribute their shares, escalating the matter to the CCI. Eight months later, the same plan is being presented at Rs 700 billion with a 50-50 federal-provincial split. The total has been trimmed by roughly Rs 124 billion despite inflation and rising cost of construction, and the provinces’ burden has been halved. A plan that shrinks by fifteen percent despite the increased costs and flips its cost-sharing formula in eight months is not rigorously costed. It is still being negotiated politically, not finalized technically. After the 2022 floods, international donors pledged $11 billion for reconstruction and flood protection. Three years later, Pakistan had utilized less than $3 billion. Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb admitted that Pakistan failed to prepare a single credible, bankable project to access the funds. The money sat in files while the people sat in mud and water. It is one thing to lack funds. It is quite another to hold the funds and lack the institutional capacity to spend them. So when the government now asks for Rs 700 billion, the question is not whether we need the plan. We do. The question is whether we have earned the right to spend it, or are simply paying compound interest on a decade of negligence. In 2017, When the CCI approved the National Flood Protection Plan in 2017, the Punjab Assembly had already passed the Flood Plain Regulation Act of 2016. That Act designated flood plains, mandated annual surveys, prohibited all construction without written permission, and criminalized unauthorized building. Section 20 gave it overriding effect over all other laws. It was a good, careful law. And for ten years, we ignored it. Then came the 2022 floods, killing more than 1,700 and displacing 33 million. The 2023 Punjab Irrigation Act, strengthened the framework further. . Then came the Infrastructure Audit Programme of January 2026, promising to inspect and certify every embankment before the rains. The NDMA had warned in November 2025 that the 2026 monsoon would bring 22 to 26 percent above-normal rainfall. In May, Chairman Lt Gen Inam Haider Malik was briefed the Emergency Response Committee. The warnings were not classified. They were reported in media across the country. And still, on July 31, as the Sawan rains continue and Bhadoon approaches, we are told that a Rs 700 billion plan is about to be placed before the CCI. The human cost of this incompetence is measured in lives, not spreadsheets. Between June 26 and July 25, 2026, NDMA recorded 97 deaths and 297 injuries in rain-related incidents. House and roof collapses were the leading cause, with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reporting the highest toll, followed by Punjab. The authority evacuated 3,841 people. These are not abstract figures. They are preventable losses and deaths in a country that had years to prepare. Meanwhile, last year’s federal budget slashed water sector allocations by 27 percent, from Rs 184.6 billion to Rs 133.4 billion for the water sector. Even the flagship Diamer-Basha Dam saw reduced priority. The message is clear: politically visible projects win funding; invisible embankments lose it. We are also building vulnerability into the landscape faster than we are building protection. The hundred-arch bridge near Shahdara was designed a century ago to let Ravi floodwater pass freely. In September 2025, the M5 motorway near Jalalpur Pirwala collapsed after the Sutlej River breached its banks, blocking natural channels with inadequate culverts. Modern infrastructure is failing where century-old engineering succeeded because hydrology is no longer part of the design brief. Every stakeholder knows what needs to be done. District officials know where encroachments choke flood channels. Engineers know where embankments need reinforcement. Satellite imagery can map floodplains with precision. Yet these tools are shelved while development authorities continue to approve new roads, schools and BHUs for permanent dwellings that should not have been there to begin with.  New high profile housing schemes are regularized in natural river basins. The National Water Policy, approved by the CCI in April 2018, promised real-time telemetry by the end of 2021 and a National Water Council chaired by the Prime Minister to meet annually. Seven years later, the Council has convened only once, in October 2018. The telemetry system is five years past its deadline. The unfinished cost of ongoing water schemes stands at approximately Rs 1.27 trillion. What would it take to believe this time will be different? Not more money. We have enough money to drown in. What we lack is accountability that lives on the riverbank. The Infrastructure Audit of 2026 must be opened to the public, if it was ever done. The names of every certifying officer who signed off on an embankment must be known, and if a structure fails, the officer must stand beside it and explain. And if not, we need to ask why not? The early warning system must learn to speak to the village, not the province. Alerts must name villages and localaties, expected water levels, and designated evacuation routes. They

For decades, Pakistan has been living with extreme heat. Every summer, temperatures rise above 50°C in parts of Sindh and Balochistan, and cities across Punjab and southern Pakistan face prolonged heatwaves that make daily life a struggle for survival. Agricultural workers, construction labourers, sanitation staff and traffic police continue working under the blazing sun, often without adequate rest, shade, drinking water or legal protection. Heat has long been an occupational hazard in Pakistan, but, unfortunately, it has rarely received the policy attention it deserves. Now, Europe is confronting an extreme heat that Pakistan has experienced for years recorded above 50°C. The recent heatwave across Europe has pushed temperatures above 40°C in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and several other countries. Heat warnings have become routine, hospitals have reported sharp increases in heatstroke cases, schools have closed, transport systems have been disrupted, and governments have activated emergency response plans. The crisis has revealed that no country, regardless of its wealth or technological advancement, is immune to the accelerating consequences of climate change. The difference is that Europe’s heat emergency is still treated as an exceptional event, whereas in Pakistan extreme heat has become almost routine. Every year, millions face dangerous temperatures with little expectation of institutional support. When temperatures exceed 50°C in Jacobabad, Dadu, Sibi and surrounding districts, headlines fade within days even though the suffering continues for months. Pakistan has already paid a heavy price for climate inaction. The 2015 Karachi heatwave claimed well over a thousand lives within a few days, overwhelming hospitals and exposing serious weaknesses in disaster preparedness. Later investigations identified prolonged power outages, water shortages and the absence of coordinated emergency planning as major contributors to the tragedy. The disaster should have transformed national preparedness for future heatwaves. Instead, progress has been uneven and largely confined to a few urban centres. The devastating floods of 2022 offered another painful lesson. Although Pakistan contributes less than one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, it suffered one of the worst climate disasters in its history, affecting more than 33 million people, destroying homes, schools, hospitals and agricultural land, and causing economic losses worth billions of dollars. The catastrophe exposed Pakistan’s vulnerability to climate extremes, ranging from floods to droughts and heatwaves. A long-term climate adaptation has failed to keep pace with rapidly increasing climate risks. Yes, climate change is not an environmental issue. It is a public health crisis, to be very clear, it is an economic challenge and a labour rights issue. Thousands of outdoor workers continue to perform physically demanding jobs during the hottest hours of the day without mandatory heat safety standards. Lost productivity, rising healthcare costs, declining crop yields, and growing pressure on electricity and water systems are becoming defining features of Pakistan’s summers. Europe’s current experience should be seen as a lesson that climate friendly cannot be built only after disasters occur. Infrastructure must be redesigned for rising temperatures, cities need more trees and green spaces instead of endless concrete, early warning systems must reach vulnerable communities, and labour laws should guarantee rest breaks, access to drinking water and protection for outdoor workers during extreme heat. Schools, hospitals and public buildings should also be adapted to withstand prolonged periods of extreme temperatures. For developed countries, the heatwave exposes the limits of relying solely on emissions reduction without making sufficient investments in climate adaptation. For Pakistan, it is another warning against repeating the cycle of learning lessons only after each catastrophe. The country’s climate history from Karachi’s deadly heatwave to the unprecedented floods of 2022 offers painful experiences of the cost of delayed action. The climate crisis no longer belongs to the future or to any single region. It is unfolding across continents, exposing both rich and poor nations to unprecedented risks. Europe is now discovering what Pakistan has known for years: extreme heat is not merely uncomfortable. It is deadly, economically destructive and socially unequal. The real question is no longer whether another climate disaster will arrive, but whether governments will finally learn from the ones that have already occurred.

Every few months, someone declares that people no longer need literature. The argument usually sounds convincing enough. We live in a world of instant news, endless social media, podcasts, and artificial intelligence. Information arrives faster than ever before. Why spend days with a novel when an opinion can be delivered in mere seconds? Yet the strange thing is that the more information we have, the more relevant literature seems to become. Hand someone a novel written a century ago, and they might discover their own world reflected in its pages, including many of the same fears and uncertainties they face today. That is more than a coincidence. It is literature doing exactly what it has always done, peering beyond the moment in which it was written. Literature offers more than a compelling story and reminds us why it continues to resonate till date. Many admire literature for its alluring language and craft. Others value it for the evolutionary nature and futuristic tendencies. That’s the side this leans toward. Literature stays with us because it explains the world we’re still trying to make sense of. Every generation believes its experiences are unique. Pandemics feel unprecedented, propaganda seems like a modern invention and the world today evolves at a pace that feels unlike anything before it. Yet long before any of this dominated the headlines, writers had already imagined it, warned about it, or lived through versions of it themselves. Literature does not simply reflect its own era. It reaches far beyond it, exploring aspects of human nature that continue to surface despite changing circumstances. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, thousands of readers picked up a novel from 1947 and discovered echoes of the present. Albert Camus’s The Plague, set in the Algerian city of Oran, seemed to describe their own lives with strange precision; the empty streets, the panic-buying, the denial before the lockdowns, and that eerie numbness that emerged as the crisis dragged on. Camus never saw a pandemic like this coming. What he understood, decades before any of us lived through one, was how people respond when disruption takes hold. George Orwell did something similar, except his warning arrived even earlier. Nineteen Eighty-Four gave us words we now use so casually and forget they came from fiction: surveillance, doublethink, thoughtcrime. Orwell imagined a state where truth could be manipulated and every move was watched. Decades later, in a world run by data and constant tracking, his descriptions still feel eerily familiar. Pakistani writers were making this same point long before it became the world’s concern. Saadat Hasan Manto’s Toba Tek Singh imagined a man stranded between two countries decades before the world started talking about refugees and border crises. Qurratulain Hyder’s Aag Ka Darya traced the same cycle of displacement and rebuilding that we’re still watching today, whether in Gaza, Ukraine, or Afghanistan, revealing how human beings survive conflict no matter which war or which century it happens to be. What makes literature so accurate over time is not mysticism. Writers were not fortune-tellers. They were keen observers of human nature. They sensed that while the world keeps reinventing itself, people rarely do. A writer who understands these instincts deeply enough, produces literature that seems to anticipate futures it was never meant to witness. That same power demands caution. Literature can expose hidden truths just as easily as it can be used as a tool of persuasion. Throughout history, poems, novels, and stories have been used to shape how people think, feel, and behave. Rudyard Kipling’s The White Man’s Burden is a reminder of how easily powerful narratives can turn domination into duty. It shows how persuasive language can make unequal power structures appear virtuous and troubling ideas sound noble. The same dynamic persists today, whenever power seeks a more palatable language to conceal itself. The Soviet Union promoted an entire genre known as socialist realism, where literature was not expected to explore human complexity but to glorify the state and inspire loyalty. Even something as ordinary as a school curriculum works the same way. The books chosen for students are never just neutral stories. They are early lessons that shape young minds, teaching them which histories to trust and which values to hold onto. This is the quiet, manipulative side of literature that doesn’t need to announce itself, yet still decides how an entire generation views the world. Literature deserves more than passive consumption. The same stories that broaden our understanding can also be used to influence and persuade. That makes reading critically, asking who wrote something and why, not just an academic skill, but a way of navigating a world built on narratives. What keeps literature alive is not tradition, nostalgia, or academic praise. It is the moment of recognition it still delivers. When a writer long gone can describe anxieties, conflicts, and dilemmas that feel unmistakably current, how many of our modern concerns are merely old questions in new disguises?

The fifth part of this series examined how Pakistan’s strategic location, domestic privileges and recurring external assistance have produced a rent-based political economy. The state has repeatedly obtained temporary relief without undertaking the constitutional and productive transformation required for genuine economic independence. Professor Ehtisham Ahmad’s proposed monograph, Can Pakistan evolve from a dependent “buffer state”? (shared with many including me), raises the right question at the right time. Unlike conventional reports that treat Pakistan merely as an under-taxed developing economy, he recognises the historical relationship between strategic rents, external dependency, fiscal weakness and recurring recourse to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other lenders. His central concern deserves serious engagement rather than routine approval or dismissal. This part is humble attempt to analyse his proposed monograph. Ehtisham Ahmad argues that Pakistan’s geographic position has periodically enabled it to obtain external assistance as a frontline or buffer state. During the Cold War, the Afghan conflict and the post-9/11 period, strategic usefulness generated substantial inflows. When geopolitical support receded, the IMF and multilateral institutions frequently stepped in to fill the breach. His published study, ‘Political Economy of Tax and Digital Transformations in Pakistan’, similarly connects Pakistan’s stop-go aid experience with its failure to undertake sustainable domestic resource mobilisation.  This is an important advance over revenue-only analysis. Pakistan’s persistent dependence cannot be explained simply by weak tax administration, low compliance or insufficient technical capacity. External rents have reduced the immediate pressure to negotiate a durable fiscal settlement with citizens. They have also strengthened institutions positioned to manage Pakistan’s strategic relationship with external powers. Ehtisham Ahmad is equally persuasive in identifying serious defects in Pakistan’s tax structure. He correctly criticises the conversion of value added tax (VAT) into a production excise, the proliferation of exemptions, the destruction of the invoice chain, cascading, excessive withholding taxation, nuisance levies and the absence of an arms-length administration. His insistence that taxation must be linked with growth, investment, distribution and political economy is entirely justified. His criticism of digitalisation without comprehensive change management is also timely. Computerising defective procedures cannot cure the institutional incentives that produced them. Linking identity numbers, tax registrations, invoices and financial information may improve enforcement, but technology cannot decide whether the law will be applied equally. These insights substantially overlap with the argument developed in this series. The difficulty arises at the next stage. Ehtisham begins with a powerful political-economy diagnosis but gradually returns to a largely public-finance remedy. Pakistan is first presented as a security-dependent buffer state; its continuing weakness is then explained mainly through the Government of India Act 1935, fragmented tax assignments, a split VAT, inadequate provincial own-source revenue and incomplete digital transformation. The analytical journey moves from geopolitics to tax architecture too quickly. Pakistan is not dependent merely because it has a badly designed VAT or an inefficient division of taxing powers. Its tax system has itself been shaped by the distribution of political, institutional and strategic power. Exemptions, withholding taxes, petroleum levies, blocked refunds and arbitrary concessions are not accidental departures from an otherwise neutral system. They reflect bargains through which burdens and benefits are distributed. Fiscal design matters greatly. It cannot by itself explain why successive governments have preserved arrangements that are demonstrably damaging to growth, documentation and equity. Ehtisham assigns considerable importance to the Government of India Act 1935. The Act undoubtedly institutionalised a colonial distribution of legislative and fiscal authority. It divided functions between the centre and provinces while reserving decisive powers for the Governor-General and provincial governors. Its legislative lists influenced the constitutional development of both India and Pakistan.  Colonial inheritance, however, cannot become a substitute for analysing postcolonial responsibility. Pakistan adopted constitutions in 1956, 1962 and 1973. It experienced repeated military interventions, the dismemberment of the country in 1971, presidential centralisation, uneven National Finance Commission Awards, extensive constitutional amendments and decades of external security alliances. Each period involved decisions made by domestic actors possessing agency, interests and power. The present Constitution of 1973 is not pari materia to “1972 Constitution”. The Interim Constitution operated in 1972, whereas the permanent constitutional settlement reached on April 10, 1973. The 1973 became operative from August 14, 1973. This is more than a matter of nomenclature. Pakistan’s fiscal federalism must be examined through the constitutional bargain consciously adopted after the catastrophe of 1971. The Constitution (Eighteenth Amendment) Act, 2010 also cannot be treated simply as Pakistan “doubling down” on the colonial arrangements of 1935. It was a democratic response to prolonged centralisation and an attempt to restore parliamentary federalism, provincial autonomy and the original character of the 1973 Constitution. Problems created by the division of sales tax on goods and services are real. Businesses should not be subjected to multiple registrations, conflicting interpretations, fragmented audits and unnecessary compliance costs.  A common base, harmonised definitions, integrated information, a clearing mechanism and coordinated administration are all necessary. Coordination need not mean re-centralisation. Pakistan’s federation cannot be redesigned solely for the convenience of tax administrators. Fiscal arrangements must also preserve provincial autonomy, democratic accountability and the lessons of constitutional history. A technically elegant centralised system may produce serious political and constitutional costs if imposed without consent. Ehtisham’s historical thesis requires similar caution. He suggests that the British deliberately sought to create a weak and dependent buffer state along the Indus to preserve strategic influence in the continuing “Great Game”. This is a significant hypothesis, deserving investigation through archival evidence. It should not be presented as settled history without fuller documentation. The official Cabinet Mission statement of May 16, 1946 expressly declined to recommend the transfer of power to two completely separate sovereign states. It proposed a Union dealing with foreign affairs, defence and communications, while residuary powers would remain with the provinces and provinces could form groups.  The document may be interpreted in different ways, but its stated scheme was for a united, highly decentralised India rather than the immediate creation of a separate buffer state.  Claims that the NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) referendum was secured through ballot stuffing, that

Elections are currently being held in Pakistani-administered Kashmir (POK), and their results have already become controversial at the very first stage. Gilgit-Baltistan, which is essentially also part of Kashmir, held elections recently. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) won there, while the Istehkam-e-Pakistan Party also received some seats, and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) won fewer seats. Despite this, the PML-N accepted the results and fully cooperated in the formation of the government. In the first phase of elections in Mirpur, however, the PML-N won nine seats, while Bilawal’s PPP secured four. Despite winning four seats, the PPP immediately began raising allegations of rigging. Even more painful is the fact that these elections have been marked by bloodshed. During clashes surrounding the long march of the banned Awami Action Party, one Rangers personnel was killed and five police officers were confirmed injured. The Awami Action Committee, meanwhile, claims that its protesters came under firing, resulting in the deaths of 14 of its workers. The number of people killed or injured from the Awami Action Committee has not been officially confirmed. However, if government personnel have been killed and injured, it is reasonable to assume that protesters also suffered casualties. The question now is what should be made of the rigging allegations being levelled by the PPP and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. If one side refuses to accept the election results and uses such harsh language against the other side, could the situation not deteriorate further? From a strategic perspective, it would have been better to hold the entire election on a single day. The total number of voters is not so large that the process needed to be stretched out in this manner. The second phase is scheduled for August 2, followed by the third phase on August 10, as if this were a battlefield. Bilawal should also think beyond repeatedly raising the issue of rigging. At present, his own party is in power in Kashmir. The deputy commissioners, assistant commissioners and other officials were appointed by the ruling party. So who has greater opportunities to influence elections—the ruling party or the opposition? Nawaz Sharif and Maryam Nawaz conducted an effective election campaign during the final days. However, the writer believes it was not befitting of a three-time elected Pakistani prime minister to say words to the effect of: “I will ask my brother Shehbaz Sharif to make me the prime minister of Kashmir, and I will solve all its problems.” Instead, he should have said that whichever member from their party is elected to the assembly, he and his party would fully cooperate with that representative in resolving the problems of the people of Kashmir. Maryam Nawaz also sent air-conditioned buses for the people of Kashmir, but they were stopped on the instructions of the Election Commission. Nevertheless, the message reached the people of Kashmir that the PML-N was in a position to do something to address their deprivation. This thinking could help the PML-N achieve further success in the next two phases as well. But the real decisions, after all, remain in the hands of those who possess the power and influence. In our country, writing and speaking the truth has become extremely difficult. There is immense pressure not only from powerful circles but also from violent and extremist mindsets. Their proxies can be found roaming freely in the streets. In normal states, something that would be considered ordinary or insignificant was used as a pretext to shut down the country’s largest media organisation, Geo, for two weeks. This alone gives an idea of the pressure facing the Jang newspaper and the national media. For this reason, the writer says he tries to avoid writing about national and domestic affairs and mostly focuses on international issues. Even there, however, he has to be careful not to write anything critical of China, Iran or certain other countries. Likewise, he says he cannot write anything supportive of India, Israel or certain other countries that might highlight a positive aspect or truth about them. This, he says, is the pressure he faces every moment. When it comes to Indian-administered Kashmir, we can freely write and speak about alleged government abuses without facing difficulty or objection. We can exaggerate as much as we want and add as much colour as we like. The violent militants there are portrayed as victims under all circumstances. But when it comes to our own Kashmir, we are expected to portray the movement for public rights as anti-state, Indian-sponsored and terrorist, regardless of how strongly its members insist that they are simply demanding rights for ordinary people. The organisation is not even named after any military or jihadist group. It is called the Jammu and Kashmir Joint Action Committee. It consists of local Kashmiri traders, transporters, workers, students and lawyers. These are ordinary citizens of the region. They demand rights for ordinary Kashmiris. They speak against rising inflation and call for reductions in the prices of wheat and flour. They oppose excessive privileges for the elite, misuse of public resources and corruption. They also demand an end to what they consider unjust taxes. Despite this, the organisation has not only been banned, but its workers have allegedly been arrested and subjected to violence in ways that are deeply disturbing. While witnessing all this, writers like us sometimes adopt deliberate ignorance and tell the members of the Awami Action Committee: “You make allegations against our sacred institutions. How could they possibly commit excesses against you?” We are told that these institutions are the reason this small part of Kashmir remains with us. We are also told that they have kept the Kashmir issue alive so that the entire region can eventually be recovered. Therefore, according to this argument, their praise and appreciation are justified. If, according to protesters, 30 or 35 people have so far been killed and around 300 injured during demonstrations, then we are also told to consider how many of our security personnel have