In Pakistan, governments come and go, but the fate of the people remains unchanged. Faces change, parties change, but the story of the masses never does. New rulers arrive with fresh promises and louder slogans, yet the outcome is always heavier debt, inflated electricity bills, costly gas, unaffordable fuel, and empty markets. The years from 2022 to 2025 stand as another grim chapter of this unbroken cycle.
During these years, billions were squeezed from the public through tariffs on electricity, gas, and fuel. This wealth could have built schools, funded hospitals, or eased debt. Instead, it vanished into the pockets of political favorites, bureaucratic circles, and well-connected contractors. PML-N safeguarded its loyalists, PPP deepened its roots in Sindh, PTI’s allies took their cut, and the nexus of corruption only tightened its grip.
“Billions poured into media campaigns could have given citizens cheaper gas and electricity — but the elite preferred ads over relief.”
Even the so-called caretaker government of Mohsin Naqvi did not hesitate. Billions were showered on the media in the form of state-funded advertising. Channels that cry daily about inflation and poverty ran endless streams of glossy commercials. For the people, these campaigns meant nothing — but for the media barons, it was a golden harvest. Imagine if even a fraction of that money had gone to reducing gas and electricity bills.
The energy sector remained a curse. Independent Power Producers devoured billions every month under capacity payment contracts, whether electricity was consumed or not. People’s bills kept swelling with surcharges and fuel adjustments, while no government dared to renegotiate the terms. LNG deals followed the same pattern: inflated prices, delayed cargoes, and hidden commissions. And every time, the people were left to pay the price at petrol pumps and utility counters.
“The people are relentlessly squeezed, while the crocodiles of power feast in silence.”
Development too became another excuse for plunder. In Kohistan and beyond, scandals exposed how contracts were turned into cash machines for the few. NAB and the courts made noise, but the system remained untouched. Contractors, politicians, and bureaucrats only built stronger chains of corruption, leaving the public with nothing but hollow promises on paper.
Nor were institutions entirely free of blame. Certain individuals — during service or after retirement — secured fortunes through housing schemes, land allocations, and corporate stakes. These were not projects of public good but designs of private enrichment. Transparency was never the motive; profit always was.
The result of all this is clear: Pakistan’s people have been relentlessly squeezed. Politicians make promises, bureaucrats guard their empires, contractors bleed the treasury, and the media grows fat on state advertising. Trapped in the middle is the ordinary citizen — the laborer whose wage dies under inflation, the child turned away from school for unpaid fees, the mother begging for medicine outside a hospital.
“Pakistan risks becoming not a land of hope, but a graveyard of debts, bills, and broken lives.”
How long will this injustice last? How long will the crocodiles feast while the people cry in silence? Unless real accountability comes, unless this corrupt system is torn apart, Pakistan will remain not a land of hope but a graveyard of debts, bills, and broken lives. The time has come for people to rise, to question, and to demand — because silence is the last shield of the corrupt.
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