The countrywide public outcry continues to display peoples’ dissatisfaction demanding remedial of the pressing concerns of the community, particularly the skyrocketing electricity bills and the relentless inflation gripping the nation. All segments of society, including businessmen, traders, Academia, trade unions, and civil society joined the masses in their ongoing demonstrations against price hikes, cruel tariff rates and massive taxation on unjustifiable accounts that had been slapped by the government on the public through recent electricity bills.
The prevailing situation presents a grim picture of the country’s political and economic future because the brawl created by the rulers over the past decades has now reached an irreversible stage. No ready-made solution to the problem is currently available to the leaders to silence people and move the country for this time. The purblind leadership which mostly consists of blue-eyed and puppet personalities failed to conceive any applicable solution to the current fiasco and still awaits the response of the global lender regarding approval of their begging request, which is apparently the sole recipe to prevailing quandary.
No alternative plan of the caretaker rulers for providing relief to the public in the face of backbreaking energy bills has surfaced so far, despite the initial claim of planning to scrape extraordinary incentives of the elite class that constitutes almost $17.4 billion or 6% of the country economy and unfairly offered by the past rulers to the corporate sector, feudals, military as well as to military-run businesses and parliamentarians. Those privileged sections of society managed the exemption of taxes, unlimited access to national resources and capital together with reserved quota/ laxity in rules for job opportunities, in civil superior service, the commission in the military as well and the civil service for their wards and hereafter. Such biased governance not only created economic havoc in the country but formed a pool of talentless judges, generals and bureaucrats from privileged factions at the top administrative positions causing serious political, governance and legal issues in the country.
Currently, the government of Aristocrats have levied thirteen different types of taxes on the public through electricity bills, which amounts to financial terrorism, and has no example in any other country in the world. The powerful elite has an exemption from taxes or uses free-of-cost electricity while an extensive tax burden and unjust tariff have been slapped on impoverished individuals making their financial struggles even more burdensome.
Realistically, the upheaval is the self-creation of Pakistani rulers and lingering on because of deliberate negligence and discrimination of the past and present administrators who upheld communal, sectoral or institutional interests over wellbeing and comfort of the common public that squeezed the land for the poor without affecting the upper classes in the country. In the current situations, taking further loans from internal sources or abroad is not a long term solution to persistent economic challenges, because those crutches do not offer a logical solution to the chronic ailment which needs stringent reforms and a complete overhauling of the system so this nation starts moving on its own feet on a permanent basis. The prevailing economic crisis, social inequality, political polarization coupled with unprecedented price hike and inflated utility bills gave birth to utmost public outrage and serious grievances against the system. The situation is rapidly heading toward lawlessness and anarchy that could be exploited by the anti-State elements and the country’s enemies to their advantage. It is high time that incumbent rulers must correct their course by addressing the mistakes made by their predecessors until it gets too late and this country experiences violent public revolution like several other nations in the world.
