A national honour is not supposed to be a gift basket. It is not a retirement present, a political courtesy, a reward for friendship, or a token of appreciation handed out because someone’s name happened to reach the right desk. An honour is a nation’s most solemn way of saying: this person did something exceptional, and we want generations to remember it. That is why Pakistan’s civil awards matter and why their growing abundance should concern us.

On August 14, 2026, Pakistan announced 355 civil awards. Three hundred and fifty-five people, in one national honours list, were presented as recipients of distinction. The previous year, 263 awards were announced. The scale itself should make us pause. When hundreds receive the nation’s highest forms of recognition every year, the fundamental question is unavoidable: what remains exceptional about an honour that has become so common?

There is nothing wrong with honouring people from different walks of life. Quite the opposite. A country should celebrate its teachers, scientists, doctors, soldiers, police officers, artists, journalists, athletes, philanthropists and social workers. But it should honour the exceptional among them, not simply the representative among them.

Give the highest recognition to the teacher who spent thirty years in a remote, flood-prone village and transformed generations of children. Honour the scientist whose research solved a problem Pakistan had struggled with for decades, or........

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