How To Ruin A Nation And Drive Millions Into Poverty Legally: The Warning Hidden In Pakistan’s Power Grid |
This is the dead land, where bureaucrats and decision-makers want no more than one page, which has already collapsed, as Interior Minister Naqvi rightly said. This is cactus land. Here the dry grass sings in the wind, brittle and sharp, while a nation's immense potential lies withered under the cold weight of official silence.
The World Bank says Pakistan holds about 48 % of people living below three dollars a day across the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Islamabad calls this bookkeeping, rightly: a share is not a rate. Pakistan's, around 20 %, is below Afghanistan's, where roughly one in two is extremely poor. Yet bookkeeping cannot explain why Pakistan's rate rose 6.4 %age points in six years, or why this region alone has not regained pre-pandemic poverty levels. The pandemic, record inflation and 2022 floods are real but insufficient. The pandemic hit Brazil, India, the United States and Europe harder, and Europe suffered terrible 2021 floods; output recovered and poverty followed. Pakistan has a mechanism, running monthly whether the monsoon comes or fails, written into contracts.
After 2013, starved of power, Pakistan was promised that new plants, many coal and many financed under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, would launch an economic take-off. The lights returned, with terms: dollar-indexed payment, state-guaranteed returns, fixed charges due whether or not a unit was used. The plants ran at a third of capacity. In 2016 its own Power Division projected a surplus by 2018 even if demand grew six % a year; contracts proceeded. Capacity payments near Rs384 billion in 2015 reached Rs1,807 billion in the year to June 2025, and Rs6,405 billion across 2020 to 2025. In dollars the rise is roughly 1.7 times, but a dollar-indexed bill in a falling currency feeds on its own damage: each slide enlarges payments, widening the deficit that weakens the rupee.
Industrial power costs about 12.5 US cents a unit,........