Mian Dad has spent much of his life ploughing fields on a tractor. He started as a young boy, helping drive a tractor that tilled land for a local landlord in his village in Tamboo, Nasirabad district, Balochistan.

Now, Mian drives the tractor himself, earns just Rs14,000 per month — a little over a third of the provincial minimum wage of Rs37,000. During peak cultivation season, he tells Eos, the work-day can stretch up to 16 hours — double the standard eight hours.

But Mian isn’t complaining. He now makes “a lot more” than what he earned as a tractor helper. It is still not enough, however, to feed his family, including his 11 children. “We look for odd jobs or work for food during the off-season,” he says. “When that doesn’t work, we have to beg.”

For agricultural workers in Balochistan, a lifetime of labour may still not be enough to escape poverty. Debt, unequal sharecropping arrangements and climate shocks can trap entire families in a vicious cycle of dependence

THE BOTTOM RUNG

Mian’s situation is not unusual in a province where poverty remains widespread. An estimated 47 percent of the population in Balochistan lives in poverty, compared with a national average of 28.9 percent, according to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2025-26.

Poverty is particularly acute in rural districts, where livelihoods depend mostly on agriculture. In a 2025 study by the global not-for-profit Population Council, District Vulnerability Index for Pakistan, 17 Balochistan districts were listed among the 20 most-vulnerable districts in the country. Nasirabad was towards the bottom in both provincial and national lists, ranking 11th most vulnerable out of 31 districts in Balochistan and 13th most vulnerable among the 129 districts assessed nationwide.

Agriculture is the main source of livelihood in Tamboo, Mian’s hometown, which has a population of around 130,000. As elsewhere in Balochistan, agricultural production in Tamboo involves a network of tribal chieftains, landlords, intermediaries known as bothars, farmers, tractor drivers, technicians and sharecroppers.

Workers like Mian Dad occupy the lower rungs of this hierarchy, often putting in long hours to cultivate the land. Locally, they are also referred to as begaar — which refers to a historical practice of forced, unpaid labour that was widely practised during the British era, including in princely states.

In today’s Balochistan, unpaid labour may arise from a lack of alternative employment, obligations linked to debt or, in some cases, pressure arising from tribal and social relationships.

INHERITED DEBT

It can take decades for those starting work as peasants to move up in this hierarchy.

Qadir Naseeb, whose family worked as peasants for generations in the Chattar area of Nasirabad, says his family didn’t have access to clean drinking water. He recently installed a tubewell near his hut. “Before [installing] the tubewell, the women in my family had to filter the water through a cloth to make it drinkable,” he tells Eos.

One of the reasons why upward mobility can take peasants decades, explains local researcher Muhammad Nawaz Khosa, is because they are often caught up in a cycle of debt. “Households often have to rely on interest-based loans to meet everyday expenses as well as the costs associated with cultivating the very land on which they work,” he explains.

In his book Balochistan Ki Nehri Zaraat [Canal-Irrigated Agriculture in Balochistan], Khosa writes that peasants often work as sharecroppers. In such cases, the peasants are responsible for managing production and handling expenses — often financed in the form of loans acquired from the landlord’s bothar.

The eventual harvest is then divided between the landowners and the peasant, with the peasant using his share of the harvest to pay off the loan. If the harvest fails to return a profit, the loss has to be borne by the peasant, leaving him mired in a vicious debt trap.

Such agreements also don’t factor in force majeure — whether it’s a pest attack or floods. In the case of a loss of harvest, the sharecropper has to pay off his debt to the landlord. In some instances, writes Khosa, peasants are also expected to bear the expenses associated with the landlord’s hujra [guest area], a system rooted in longstanding feudal traditions of the region.

This is something that Mian Dad and many others have experienced. Mian had to borrow Rs200,000 following the floods in 2022. The amount equals more than 14 months of his pay. While Mian was repaying the debt, a medical emergency forced him to take on another loan. He says he is now trapped in a cycle of that debt, worried that his future generations will have to work to pay it off.

Parts of Balochistan continue to exhibit forms of bonded labour, particularly within the households and estates of tribal and feudal elites, says Asad Baloch, a researcher who hails from a tribal family. Baloch says this practice has “considerably decreased” in Nasirabad as compared to previous generations. “But yes, remnants of such practices can be found in parts of the province,” he tells Eos.

In rural and remote parts of the province, he explains, the tribal chiefs function not just as cultural leaders, but as economic masters. Impoverished tribesmen often rely on their chiefs for basic survival, protection and mediation.

In some villages, there is a custom where one child from every household has to be in service of the tribal chief. In some cases, individuals work as guards or domestic workers, for minimal wages. Over time, limited economic opportunities and restricted access to education and alternative livelihoods continue to make it difficult for some individuals to pursue other means of earning a living.

RESETTING THE CLOCK

The 2022 floods that pushed Mian Dad into debt were not the first to disrupt the relationship between landlords and agricultural workers in Nasirabad. Dr Abid Mir, a lecturer at Government Degree College, Quetta, says the 2010 floods weakened some landlords’ hold over the families who worked for them.

“Widespread agricultural losses weakened some landlords’ ability to retain regular workers, prompting many peasant families to seek employment elsewhere,” he tells Eos. For some, this opened up the possibility of finding work on their own terms and seeking better education, healthcare and basic amenities for their families.

But the effects of climate-related disasters have been uneven. Families who remained in rural areas continued to face crop losses, declining incomes and mounting debts, Mir explains. For those already struggling to make ends meet, another failed harvest or flood could mean borrowing again simply to survive.

The same disaster that may loosen one family’s dependence on a landlord can deepen another’s debt to one. For agricultural workers such as Mian Dad, recovering from a disaster is not simply a matter of rebuilding a home or returning to the fields. It can mean years of repayment — and the fear that their children will inherit the debt.

The writer is a journalist and researcher.
X: @ImtiazBaluch

Additional input and editing by Hussain Dada.
X: @hydada83

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 18th, 2026

SOUTH Asia may see a vast movement of people as climate change makes parts of the region harder to live in. According to the International Organisation for Migration, as many as 40.5m people could be forced to move by 2050. The warning deserves attention for what such displacement could mean for a region already struggling with poverty, overcrowded cities, unemployment, and competition for resources.

From the sinking coastlines of Bangladesh to the drought-hit districts of Pakistan, climate pressures are threatening millions of livelihoods. But it is not just the communities directly affected that will feel the impact. As farmers abandon unproductive land and families leave disaster-prone areas, towns and cities will have to accommodate growing populations.

Competition for housing, employment, water and public services could make life harder for poorer communities and generate social tensions. Countries with limited resources may struggle to provide for both established residents and newcomers. The danger is particularly acute in South Asia, where weak regional cooperation could hinder a coordinated response. Climate displacement could then become another source of instability unless governments prepare for it together.

The warning raises questions about how Pakistan intends to accommodate people whose homes and livelihoods become impossible to sustain. Our urban centres already struggle with inadequate housing, sanitation, transport, and job opportunities. An influx of climate-displaced families could deepen these problems.

Yet migration need not mean destitution. As the IOM chief has pointed out, moving can itself be a means of adapting to climate change. Pakistan must, therefore, recognise climate mobility as a permanent consideration in development planning. Provincial and local governments need reliable information about communities likely to leave, destinations likely to receive them, and services required to support their transition. Land-use policies, affordable housing, vocational training, and access to schools and healthcare must reflect changing population patterns.

Equally important is protecting the rights of displaced families, who should not lose access to documentation, education or public assistance simply because they have moved. Regional cooperation on forecasting, disaster preparedness and population movements could help countries anticipate shared pressures. The challenge is to ensure that people forced to move by climate change can rebuild their lives.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2026

AS plans for large data centres take shape in Pakistan, the debate has centred on jobs and investment, while a more basic concern has received little attention: water.

Why would a data centre compete for water? Computing generates heat, and evaporating water is one of the most cost-effective ways to remove it. By 2030, the United Nations University projects that data centres globally will use nearly triple the combined electricity usage of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria, with an associated water footprint equal to the basic domestic needs of 1.3 billion people. In Pakistan, the per capita water availability had plummeted from 5,600 cubic metres in 1947 to roughly 930 by 2023.

Some weeks ago, we argued in these pages for bringing compute to where Pakistan’s surplus electricity sits, thereby monetising capacity that consumers already pay for. Water is integral to this equation, and a deeper analysis is warranted, which we aim to provide here.

How data centres keep cool: Data centres are usually cooled through open evaporative systems, which results in most of the water being lost to the atmosphere. However, these systems are comparatively cost-effective and relatively energy-efficient. Other options include closed-loop systems that recirculate water or a coolant through sealed pipes, which can cut freshwater use by up to 70 per cent; and direct-to-chip and immersion cooling, which bring liquid straight to the processor. Additionally, dry cooling uses almost no water but, by Google’s own estimate, about 10pc more energy. So there is a trade-off in cost and energy, but for a country like ours that already pays for idle generation, it is a strategic investment choice.

Running the numbers: A 2016 US Department of Energy study puts average on-site data centre water use at 1.8 litres per kWh. At that rate, a 1 GW campus running continuously would consume about 16 million cubic metres a year, roughly 0.01pc of the 175 billion cubic metres the Indus supplies annually. Sky47’s 8.5MW Karakoram-01 would, based on these estimates, use around 134,000 cubic metres a year. Even accounting for Pakistan’s hotter temperatures, these figures remain marginal. Hence, nationally, data centres are not Pakistan’s water problem.

Thirsty infrastructure is workable when siting follows the water.

However, locally they can be. A 1 GW campus would draw about 10 million gallons a day from a single source, the same volume that Karachi’s new Rs14bn Dumlottee pipeline will add for the Defence and Clifton areas, in a city receiving 550-650 million gallons daily against a demand of around 1,200 million gallons. The burden falls on the nearest communities.

Pakistan has faced this question of siting before with its nuclear power plants. Reactors with cooling towers consume about 2.5 litres per kWh, according to a 2012 review by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory. At 6,755 GWh generated by Karachi’s K-3 unit in 2024, by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission’s count, that’s about 17 million cubic metres a year, or about 12 million gallons a day, more than a 1 GW data centre campus. Pakistan avoided that burden through siting: K-2 and K-3 sit on the coast and cool with seawater, while Chashma draws on the Chashma-Jhelum link canal. Thirsty infrastructure is workable when siting follows the water.

The problem at the foundation: Pakistan’s water crisis lies elsewhere. More than 93pc of its water goes to agriculture, and over 60pc of that is lost in conveyance and application. Four crops (rice, wheat, sugarcane, and cotton) consume over 80pc of water resources yet contribute about 5pc of GDP; Pakistan generates just $1.4 of GDP per cubic metre withdrawn, the eighth-lowest in the world. The parallel with power is striking: consumers pay for electricity that never reaches them, and the country withdraws water that never reaches a crop.

The way forward: Three interventions follow:

1. Immediate: make water a licensing condition, with energy-compute zones mandating closed-loop or dry cooling, public reporting of water use, and siting away from stressed aquifers. Dubai has promoted recycled water in district cooling since 2008, and Qatar has long incentivised non-potable cooling.

2. Short-term: cool with wastewater. Pakistan treats barely 1pc of its collected wastewater. Meanwhile, Chennai’s tertiary treatment plants are designed to recycle a fifth of the city’s sewage for industry, and Amazon, which air-cools its Indian data centres, will use treated sewage in upcoming facilities in Mumbai and Hyderabad. Operators could co-finance similar plants in Karachi and Lahore.

3. Long-term: reform agricultural water use. Punjab’s World Bank-backed irrigation programme improved over 15,000 watercourses while promoting drip irrigation and laser-levelling. Scaling it nationally and shifting acreage from rice and sugarcane towards pulses, vegetables, and sunflower would save water and cut edible oil imports. Saving just 1pc of the Indus water used for irrigation would supply a 1 GW campus for a century.

Weighing both sides: Both sides of this debate hold part of the truth. Critics are right that a poorly sited data centre can strain a community; advocates are right that the sector will not exhaust a country. Pakistan has missed too many economic waves to let a misframed debate cost it this one. The power and water are there to support the data centre industry. What remains is the discipline to manage matters both wisely and efficiently.

The writers are Fulbright scholars.

shahzaibsaqibwarraich@gmail.com

muhammadhassandajana@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2026

HISTORY, it has famously been said, repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce. Today, it is repeating itself in Pakistan as both tragedy and farce. Recent events have deepened some of the country’s overlapping fault lines — enduring features that have shaped its political landscape for decades. Together they have contributed to its chronic instability and impeded its progress.

It has meant the absence of a calm and predictable environment in which to meet the country’s growing challenges. The country seems caught in a time warp with a power elite ensuring it cannot escape its past.

Four fault lines (there are others too) are laid bare by recent political developments: unceasing confrontation between the government and opposition; centre-province conflict resulting in dismissal of elected provincial governments; parliament’s marginal role in the political system; and weak institutions whose evolution is stymied or independence eroded by predatory ruling elites.

The ongoing confrontation between the PML-N-led government and PTI may have novel aspects but it reflects a long-standing fault line in the country’s divisive politics. Government-opposition conflicts have been endemic in Pakistan’s history, with political behaviour driven by the ethic of war rather than competition. Political leaders and parties have viewed opponents as enemies to be eliminated from the political arena in a terminal conflict, not rivals to compete with, much less accommodated. Branding opponents as disloyal to the country is a well-worn, unseemly tradition. This is evident today by the disingenuous narrative peddled by federal ministers that the ousted KP government was aligned with terrorist organisations.

A culture of compromise, tolerance, and restraint never took root leaving ruling and opposition parties perpetually at loggerheads. This, in turn, opened the door to both direct and indirect interventions by the military, which could always count on support from one political party or another to oust governments and expand its power. Divide and rule strategies pursued by the establishment also fuelled political conflict.

Some enduring aspects of the political landscape are holding Pakistan back.

There were rare moments of political consensus as for example when the 1973 Constitution was adopted, Charter of Democracy agreed (but never implemented) between Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif in 2006 and in more recent years, the unanimous passage of the 18th Constitutional Amendment in 2010. Beyond these and some other exceptions, the tradition of intolerance and authoritarian behaviour has persisted.

Opposition parties have rarely accepted the legitimacy of governments while governments refused to recognise opposition as a legitimate activity fundamental to democracy. The underlying reason has usually been disputed elections. Pakistan’s history is replete with losing sides contesting results and alleging ballot fraud, often for good reason. This happened most recently in the 2024 election which, despite its controversial nature, still saw PTI winning a plurality in the national legislature. It was blocked from forming the federal government by an alliance between its opponents and the establishment. Its uncompromising conduct today stems from what it sees as a stolen election and political manoeuvring to keep it out of power.

While linked to government-opposition conflict, the second fault line is distinct: troubled relations and friction between the centre and provinces, which have punctuated the country’s history and weakened federalism. Intolerance of opposition-controlled provincial governments by parties governing at the centre became a common feature from the very inception of Pakistan.

Just seven days after independence, the NWFP government was deposed, setting an unfortunate precedent. Thereafter, every province saw elected governments replaced by governor’s rule at some time or another, undermining the federation and testing the country’s unity. The consequences of intolerance of rivals together with the establishment’s efforts to centralise power and failure to make the federal arrangement work, were writ large in the rise of the Bengali nationalist movement that culminated in the break-up of Pakistan in 1971.

But no lesson was learnt and the fault line endured. Fast forward to the 1990s when the regionalised nature of election outcomes meant that parties forming governments at the federal level were often different from those that constituted provincial governments. This should have urged efforts to establish smooth and cooperative centre-province relations. But that did not happen. The notion that reciprocal obligations between the centre and provinces are more than a constitutional precept and actually have to be fulfilled by both sides still finds few takers.

A third fault line relates to parliament’s weakness and its inability to play its fundamental role of exercising oversight of executive actions and hold governments to account. Successive governments have viewed parliament principally as a means to maintain themselves in power rather than a forum to initiate and debate laws and policy. The preferred mode of legislating has often been through ordinance or using a brute majority to rush through laws without deliberation. This reduced parliament to little more than a rubber stamp.

The most recent examples are the 26th and 27th Constitutional amendments that were steamrolled through parliament in 2024 and 2025 without real debate and without even sharing their texts with members before moving them. There was virtually no debate when the two chambers recently endorsed the imposition of emergency in KP. Few if any governments encouraged parliament to play an active legislative and deliberative role. Instead, they preferred the legislature to be a passive body. This remains the case.

Even ruling parties with handsome majorities failed to recognise parliament’s utility as a forum to ventilate, change and share opinion. Whether this reflects lack of confidence in their backbenchers or poor understanding of how parliament should function, the outcome is marginalisation of the legislature’s role. This denudes the political system of democratic accountability.

The fourth fault line — weak institutions — is no less consequential. It is rooted in a political culture that has privileged personalities over institutions, and in a ruling elite that has little appetite for strong institutions because they impose checks and balances and place limits on power. Nothing illustrates this better than the judiciary. Its independence has been steadily eroded over the years by both civilian and military governments. The recent constitutional amendments have taken this further, making the superior judiciary subservient to the executive.

Political fault lines are not cast in stone. Their persistence doesn’t mean they cannot be overcome especially when their impact on the country is so damaging. But it requires bold, visionary leadership to break from the past.

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2026

EVEN 128 years after his death, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan lives on. Born on Oct 17, 1817, Sir Syed passed away in 1898, but he has been endowed with Hayaat-i-Javed, or the eternal life, it seems. True to its name, Hayaat-i-Javed (1901), Sir Syed’s biography penned by Altaf Husain Hali, too, along with Sir Syed, has lived for over 125 years.

Though Hayaat-i-Javed was received well, both Sir Syed and his biography could not escape scathing remarks from doubters. Shibli No’mani’s sardonic comments, criticising Hayaat-i-Javed, have become almost proverbial and today one can hardly read or review the book without recalling Shibli, who said it was ‘kitaab-ul-manaaqib’ (book of virtues) and ‘mudallal maddahi’ (eulogy supported by reasoning). Despite the criticism, the book is considered a milestone when it comes to biography writing in Urdu and is very much a part of Urdu’s literary canon because of its impact and lasting value.

But in many of the review articles on Hayaat-i-Javed an objective and research-based approach to see its actual intent and real literary value was missing, says Dr Shams Badauni, a veteran Indian scholar. To address this lacuna, he has published a book that collects some rare and contemporaneous reviews on Hayaat-i-Javed, along with some not-so-old ones. But his book is not just another run-of-the-mill job that puts together a few articles, pasted with a limping, half-cooked intro, as is the norm. Rather, Mutal’a-iHayaat-i-Javed Ke Aik Sau Pachchees Saal, or 125 years of the study of Hayaat-i-Javed, is an editing work that can teach a few lessons to the young researchers on how to compile and edit literary works, using the principles of textual criticism. In addition to his research-based annotations, Badauni has written two prefaces and both are research papers unto themselves, sifting through the heaps of the material on Hali, Sir Syed and Hayaat-i-Javed. Dr Badauni thinks Hayaat-i-Javed also serves as an intellectual history of the 19th-century Muslims in the subcontinent, as well as Sir Syed’s life and his achievements. He says its study is in fact a study of the history of evolution of Muslim thought in the subcontinent.

Badauni’s first preface discusses Hayaat-i-Javed in detail, chronicling how and when it was written and published. It describes the earlier attempts at writing Sir Syed’s biography and says his first biography was written by G. F. I. Graham (1840-1928) in English, published in 1885. Qazi Sirajuddin Ahmed (1867-1925), a scholar from Rawalpindi and editor of Chaudhveen Sadi, had finished writing Sir Syed’s first-ever biography in Urdu in 1892, but it remained unpublished. Badauni’s second preface discovers the nature of the association and collaboration between Sir Syed and Hali, something that has hardly been touched by Hali and the readers going through his 900-plus-page book remain unaware of how and when Sir Syed and Hali met for the first time, nor has Hali said anything about what inspired him to join Sir Syed’s historic Aligarh Movement. This preface provides the readers with relevant details, which is quite rare info.

Giving the printing history, Badauni says Hayaat-i-Javed, first published in April 1901, is divided into two parts and the second part is meandering, bloated and repetitive, not as organised as the first one. The first part, having 320 pages, covers biographical details in little over 300 pages. The second part had 558 pages and indices took another 100 pages or so, but indices and a few subheadings were axed from the second edition (1903). The earliest reviews on Hayaat-i-Javed were penned by Moulvi Abdul Haq, Abdul Haleem Sharar, Waheeduddin Saleem, Zakaullah and Sir Abdul Qadir and were positive, Abul Kalam Azad showed a few reservations in his review though. The editor and contributors of Oudh Punch, a humour magazine from Lucknow, were already lampooning Sir Syed and they found new material in the shape of Hayaat-i-Javed to satirise both Hali and Sir Syed. Habibur Rahman Shervani in his article said Sir Syed was not qualified to write tafseer, nor was Hali when reviewing it. What aggrieved Hali was not the negative reviews, but the cold reception from Aligarh, which was, perhaps, intended to avoid further controversies on religious issues that had sparked during Sir Syed’s life.

Shams Badauni dug up all these rare, century-old pieces and included them in the book. He has included some other important articles on Hayaat-i-Javed by distinguished critics as well as some additional writings that help fully understand the book and its scope.

The book, published in September 2026 by Delhi’s Arshiya Publications, has been reprinted by Lahore’s World View Publishers.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2026

Pakistan needs infrastructure. It also has little fiscal space to pay for it. In FY25, federal development expenditure was about Rs1.05 trillion, compared with current expenditure of more than Rs15.8tr. That combination makes public-private partnerships (PPPs) particularly attractive, and potentially dangerous. When government cannot finance a motorway, hospital, water system or other infrastructure project upfront, bringing in private capital delivers the asset, operates it under an arrangement and earns a return.

But financing is not the same as funding. Private capital can finance infrastructure today. It cannot make its cost disappear. Eventually, somebody must pay, users through tariffs and tolls, government through availability payments and subsidies, or taxpayers when guarantees and contingent liabilities materialise.

Pakistan’s experience with independent power producers (IPPs) offers an important warning for its next generation of PPPs. Private investment through take or pay contracts, helped build power plants when public funds were limited. The problem was the allocation of risks and payments. In FY25, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) reported total power purchase costs of about Rs2.94tr. At the same time, the Finance Division reported circular debt of about Rs1.89tr. These burdens sit alongside distribution losses, weak recoveries, theft and tariff pressures. Pakistan learnt an important lesson through this: a bankable project for the investor may still be unaffordable for the government.

Private money can turn into public risk; private investment doesn’t eliminate govt’s financial obligations

Following the 18th Amendment, powers shifted to provinces, but leadership became more complicated. Responsibilities like health, education, and agriculture moved downward, yet federal spending still operate in these areas, creating overlap and confusion over who pays and who leads. Under the PPP law, some projects are classified as ‘Qualified Projects’ because they need special government backing, such as guarantees or subsidies. These projects face stricter review by the Public Private Partnership Authority (P3A). Other projects that don’t require such support can move ahead with lighter oversight. Recently, the government moved P3A’s administrative control from the Planning Division to the Privatisation Division.

None of these arrangements is problematic on its own. The risk comes when fragmented responsibilities make it unclear about who chooses a project, who pays for it, who delivers it, and who carries the risk. Pakistan doesn’t just need more PPP projects; it needs a pathway to decide which ones should qualify as PPPs in the first place.

Just because the private sector is involved in a PPP project doesn’t mean the government stops being accountable

Every major public investment should answer a few basic questions. Is the project genuinely a responsibility of this level of government? Does it generate sufficient economic and social benefits to justify state involvement? Can government afford its commitments over the project’s entire life cycle? Would conventional procurement offer better value? And if PPP delivery is chosen, what guarantees, payments, or liabilities will remain with the public sector?

This distinction matters beyond motorways and power plants. PPPs can support health, education, water, irrigation, housing, logistics and other social and economic infrastructure. Devolution does not mean that provincial governments must necessarily finance, build and operate every service themselves. The government can remain responsible for ensuring a service while allowing the private sector to finance or deliver parts of it. Just because the private sector is involved in a PPP project doesn’t mean the government stops being accountable, and it doesn’t mean the government automatically avoids financial risk.

Policymakers should, therefore, resist two extremes. Fiscal constraints should not stop the government from accepting private investment that can deliver infrastructure more efficiently. But at the same time, those limits should not turn PPPs into a way of shifting today’s spending into tomorrow’s debt.

The question should not be whether Pakistan needs more PPPs. It should be whether the right projects are being delivered through PPPs, whether they provide better lifecycle value than conventional procurement, and whether government understands and can afford the risks it retains.

Pakistan needs private capital. It needs infrastructure even more desperately. But the IPP experience should remind policymakers that mobilising investment is only the beginning of the equation. Moving expenditure off today’s development budget does not move risk off tomorrow’s balance sheet.

The writer is a development and climate finance consultant at Resources Future

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, October 19th, 2026

Once an upscale locality of Rawalpindi under British rule, Bhabara Bazaar recalls the region’s majestic past in the heart of the garrison city.

Centuries may have passed, but the area still has many structures that reflect the splendour of Mughal, Central Asian and Indian architecture.

Walking through the winding lanes of the downtown area, one can find buildings inspired by Mughal architecture. Almost all the old buildings have wooden balconies, or jharokas, a prominent feature of Mughal and Turkish architecture.

These structures tell the stories of wealthy families who lived there before the partition of the Indian subcontinent.

Bhabara Bazaar is a two-kilometre-long residential and commercial locality built by the Bhabra community, belonging to Jainism, in the early 18th century.

The old residential streets of Bhabara Bazaar have winding, narrow lanes, houses with handcrafted wooden doors and corridors leading to enclosed courtyards within their outer walls. These British-era houses usually have two or three storeys, painted ceilings and ceramic tiles. Bhabara Bazaar and its surrounding areas were considered upscale neighbourhoods at the time.

According to the Gazetteer of Rawalpindi District 1893-94, the Bhabras were a small trading community in Rawalpindi that, despite their limited numbers, deserved mention.

Describing the community, the gazetteer stated, “They were willing to do all the work, and are all well-to-do. They only number 800 souls all told, but are divided into nine tribes. Their most remarkable characteristic is their custom of undergoing long voluntary fasts, ranging from 6 to 10 days, during which they are said to eat nothing and only to drink water. They are not eating flesh or drink wine and very careful not to kill animals.”

It further noted, “Bhabaras usually wear red ‘Pagris’ (turban) whatever their age and generally some Jewellery. They were one of the innumerable small Hindu sects of India. They formed a somewhat little colony in Rawalpindi called Bhabara Bazaar. No other Hindu sects deserve separate notice.”

The community not only built houses and shops in the area but also established schools, including a Path Shala of the Jain sect, where religious education was imparted.

Many houses along the main road from Sarafa Bazaar to Teli Mohallah near Murree Road reflected the community’s commercial lifestyle, with shops on the ground floors and residences on the second and third floors.

In the narrow streets of the old locality, Om symbols and the Jain greeting Jai Jinendra can still be seen on many buildings.

Historians say the Bhabras mostly worked as moneylenders and goldsmiths, but they were also involved in grain trading and other businesses. The community’s wealth was reflected in the houses it built, which still evoke memories of its past.

After the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, members of the community migrated to India and settled in Delhi and elsewhere. Their houses were subsequently allotted to Muslim migrants from East Punjab, including Amritsar, Ludhiana and Jalandhar, as well as Kashmiri migrants who arrived later.

As people from different parts of the subcontinent settled in the area and sought livelihood opportunities, they established traditional food businesses in the bazaar. Over the past seven decades, Bhabara Bazaar has developed into a food street serving the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

In 2021, then Rawalpindi commissioner Muhammad Mehmood initiated a project to preserve the historic Bhabara Bazaar.

The plan included the rehabilitation of Sujan Singh Haveli and the development of Bhabara Bazaar Food Street at a total cost of Rs184 million.

However, the project was shelved in 2024. Of the allocated amount, Rs104 million had been earmarked for the rehabilitation of Sujan Singh Haveli and Rs80 million for the food street project.

Under the plan, a one-kilometre stretch of Bhabara Bazaar was to be restored in the style of streets from 1857, while the exteriors of surrounding heritage houses were also to be renovated in the traditional style. All electricity, telephone and other utility cables were to be shifted underground, while the sewerage system was to be upgraded with larger underground pipes.

The main objective of the rehabilitation projects was to make Rawalpindi more attractive to tourists through urban regeneration.

The plan also aimed to attract visitors travelling to Murree through Rawalpindi and create employment opportunities for local residents.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2026

“WE will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own … We have no other choice!” Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had famously remarked as he voiced this nation’s determination to build an indigenous nuclear deterrent programme that had, by the mid-1960s, become an existential necessity.

Some seven years later, Pakistan made it a policy imperative. That one call guaranteed the future security of the republic. Decades later, working through sheer grit and determination, Pakistan showed the world that it was more than capable of looking after itself. We stand at a very similar juncture today.

The ongoing arms race in AI threatens to upend the global economic and security order, and the turning point is likely to arrive well before we will be prepared to confront it. That is, unless we once again take control of our destiny and start shaping it with our own hands today.

A large part of our annual $4.6bn in IT exports is freelancing work, call centres, and entry-level coding, which modern AI directly imperils. At the rate at which the technology is progressing, it will rapidly render many of those services and products either low-value or useless. There is also the question of what we, as an economy, must pay in terms of compute bills if our companies continue to license AI usage from foreign corporations.

As dependence on AI grows, the bill could reach hundreds of millions of dollars by the end of the decade. At most critical risk is our defence infrastructure, where drones, electronic warfare, and high-end sensors already run on AI technology, and are only going to grow more dependent on it to maintain their efficacy. The national leadership must, therefore, make haste. In the 1970s, Pakistan was able to offer expat talent a compelling reason to return. Similar arrangements need to be made once again.

Talented computer scientists and experts from around the world must be called home, given a deadline, generous budgets, and autonomy. The systems and data centres can be placed close to where power is cheap and stable, while the research can take place where our universities are. A realistic target would be to host open-weight models at home, have researchers and technologists fine-tune them on Pakistani data and languages, run all government and defence needs within the country, and own the data pipelines as well. This would make Pakistan sovereign enough in AI without requiring a frontier-level lab or the 100-billion-dollar budgets that they need. We can build on our ambitions once the basics are in place. The Chagai test took more than two decades; the clock on AI runs much faster than that. Pakistan cannot afford to delay this project. The downside risks are too great.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2026

• From $1.3 billion in FY24-25, bilateral trade has fallen to a little over $350 million in FY25-26
• Traders call for balancing security and commerce needs

PESHAWAR: The sprawling terminal at Torkham, built at the cost of several billion rupees, wears a deserted look as a protracted conflict continues to overshadow trade ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Islamabad remains adamant that there can be no engagement with Kabul without tangible action against terrorists operating from its soil, but the relationship remains in suspended animation due to the intransigence of the Taliban regime.

Industries in Pakistan, especially transport and pharmaceuticals, have been facing heavy losses since the border closed on Oct 12, 2025, following deadly clashes between the two countries.

Besides Torkham, other border crossings, including Kharlachi, Ghulam Khan and Angoor Adda in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Chaman in Balochistan, have also remained closed for all kinds of trade.

Figures released in July showed that Afghan Transit Trade, which stood at nearly 89,000 containers valued at $5 billion before the return of the Taliban, had plunged to just 11,592 containers worth $367 million in the outgoing fiscal year.

According to data on bilateral trade, released by the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) earlier this year, Pak-Afghan trade witnessed a drop of 74pc in the last fiscal, from one year prior. Figures show that bilateral trade fell from $1.3bn in 2024-25 to $358m in 2025-26.

A 95pc decline was recorded in bilateral trade in 2026-27 compared with the previous year, according to the TDAP figures released in August.

Pakistani exports to Afghanistan include pharmaceutical products, cement, plastics, rice, fruits and vegetables among others, while major imports include onions, tomatoes, seeds, grapes, dried apricots, apples, coal, and unwrought lead.

Junaid Altaf, a former president of the Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI), said the business community of Khyber Pakht­unkhwa endured increasingly difficult economic challenges due to the prolonged closure of the Pak-Afghan border.

“For a province already facing structural economic disadvantages, the closure has not merely disrupted a trade route, it has further weakened the economic opportunities on which its businesses, workers and border communities depend,” he deplored.

Mr Altaf said that unlike Karachi and Lahore, Peshawar and the rest of KP faced higher logistics costs for many manufacturing and trading activities.

“Being far from seaports and major international shipping gateways adds to the cost of importing raw materials, transporting them to factories, manufacturing finished products and subsequently distributing those products across Pakistan or exporting them to international markets.”

Against this backdrop, the Pakistan-Afghanistan trade corridor has historically represented a major economic opportunity for KP, he said, highlighting the potential of KP to become a stronger pharmaceutical production and export centre.

The pharmaceutical sector accounted for approximately $130m in exports to Afghanistan in FY23-24, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. This figure illustrates that the loss of access to the Afghan market is a significant commercial setback with implications for production, investment and employment.

Saying that the KP business community deserved a clear and sustainable way forward, Mr Altaf suggested that the objective should not be trade at any cost, nor should it be indefinite economic isolation.

“It should be secure borders, regulated trade, competitive industry and shared prosperity,” he opined.

Malik Sohni, president of the All Pakistan Agricultural Produce Traders Federation, said that Afghanistan was a huge market for Pakistani potatoes. Up to 50 trucks carrying potatoes used to cross into Afghanistan daily, while 25 trucks of green vegetables also passed daily, he said, adding that the border closure badly hit the potato market, reducing crop cultivation by almost half.

“Potato prices will go up in the coming months as demand will rise against limited supply,” Mr Sohni feared.

He claimed that he faced a loss of Rs180m when potato prices crashed after the sudden flare in hostilities. He added that the border closure also affected Pakistani exports to Central Asia.

Besides exports and imports, a large number of people from across KP, particularly in Khyber, have been associated with the transport business and they have fallen on hard times as well. Azeemullah, a transporter, said that due to the prolonged border closure, he had to sell three of his five trucks.

“The transport sector of KP is nearly ruined,” he lamented, adding that div­erting these trucks to other parts of the country was not economically viable.

However, Fuad Ishaq, a Peshawar-based businessman and former president of the SCCI, held different views.

“I am of the view that we cannot compromise our security for just $800m in trade a year.”

He said Afghanistan had a 45m population, roughly the same as KP, and the items normally exported there could be directed somewhere else. He claimed that cutting off ties with Afghanistan also reduced the burden on hospitals and schools in Pakistan, which he described as a positive development.

“We should have trade, but security comes first,” Mr Ishaq stressed.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2026