WITH the social media platform X choked and new disclosures being made in the Islamabad High Court about the level of Big Brother’s intrusive interest in our everyday lives, conversations and messages, it is clear that the all-powerful state is becoming increasingly unsure of itself.

Meanwhile, public discontent is only to be expected: the budget has dashed hopes that hitherto untaxed assets and income, said to run into trillions of rupees, would be brought into the tax net; instead, a greater burden is being put on small earners, whether salaried or self-employed.

The hybrid set-up, whose legitimacy has a question mark hanging over it, could have won credibility and widespread support had it gone after the mountains of cash in agriculture and real estate and slashed subsidies to the well-heeled. Regrettably, it has yet to display courage and a vision.

The half-hearted budgetary measures, which exempted many wealthy real estate owners — the ones who make the most of the state’s largesse by selling cheaply acquired land in the ‘open market’ for many, many times the purchase price — was a sham. Even the tax levied on real estate transactions is no more than a perfunctory gesture.

Do the various tools at the disposal of the state have the capacity to keep the lid firmly on the steam that is building up?

The burden of taxes on the already unfairly taxed salaried class and the backbreaking rise in utility bills, coupled with the increases or extensions in general sales tax, will........

© Dawn