Eating less to keep lights on

2026-03-01 - 22:33

Red alert: Households are cutting meals to pay electricity bills. In the past decade, food’s share of household spending has dropped from 43 percent to 37 percent, while utilities have climbed from 15 percent to 25 percent. The plate has shrunk so the meter can run. Life in Pakistan is no longer expensive – it is heavy and getting heavier by the month. Every month, the Pakistani household must lift a growing load: electricity and gas bills, school fees, transport, medical expenses, rent, food inflation–and now taxes on income that barely survive. None of these burdens arrive alone. They arrive together. And they arrive every single month. Households respond the only way they can. They skip meat. They skip medicines. They pull children out of school—some are left with no choice but to push children into work. Lo and behold, households cannot skip electricity bills, gas bills, rent, or transport to work. These are non-negotiable costs. Fixed burdens of life, not discretionary choices. Over the past three years electricity tariffs have quadrupled. Over the past three years gas prices have doubled. Indirect taxes now sit inside every roti. Indirect taxes now sit inside every unit of power. Indirect taxes now sit inside every school notebook. None of these costs create assets. None improve productivity. They simply make life heavier—without making the economy stronger. Then there’s the hidden burden of uncertainty – unpredictable bills, sudden tariff adjustments and medical costs with no warning. Remember, when households cannot predict costs, they cannot plan. And when they cannot plan, they stop investing in children. Question: Who absorbs the shock? Answer: Children. Every economic shock travels downward until it hits the weakest member of the household. That member is almost always a child. Red alert: Protein is cut first, school is interrupted next and then work begins quietly. This is how burdens of life become inter-generational. Remember, when the Pakistani state raises tariffs, Pakistani households are forced to lower childhood. At times we call this ‘resilience’–in reality it is silent liquidation. Pakistani households are liquidating nutrition. Pakistani households are liquidating education. Pakistani households are liquidating health. And Pakistani households are liquidating dignity – just to keep the lights on. How can an economy built on household liquidation grow? The State of Pakistan must urgently focus on ‘household burden reduction’. Three principles must guide state policy. One-energy cannot be a poverty tax. Subsidies must move from producers to consumers. Lifeline tariffs must be real, not symbolic. Two-food should not be a revenue source. The state must end cartel protection in wheat, sugar, and edible oil. Import competition cuts prices faster than speeches. Three-children are not shock absorbers. Universal school meals and protein supplementation are not welfare—they are economic stabilization. Pakistan is facing a crisis of weight. Pakistani households are not failing because they work less. Pakistani households are failing because the burdens have become unbearable. Red alert: When life’s burdens grow faster than income, childhood is the first casualty. The measure of a state is not how much burden it imposes—but how much it removes. These are not natural burdens. These are policy burdens. These are state-imposed weights. History is clear: nations don’t rise by loading more weight on empty plates. —The writer is a journalist and political analyst.