WHILE the price of petroleum products has been raised, the Punjab government has caved in over the sugar price. This has merely added, not created, the woes of the ordinary citizen, who will also have to face IMF-mandated hikes in the prices of gas and electricity this month. The government has carried out a massive hike in petroleum product prices citing rise in oil prices internationally. This exposes the fallacy in the price hike across the board: the wages that Pakistani wage earners earn are not at the level where the wageearners, when consumers, can afford to pay the multiple increased fuel, gas, electricity and staple-food prices. It is no help to Pakistan that, at precisely this juncture, India has decided to violate the Indus Basin Waters Treaty by diverting Indus waters away from Pakistan, and thus causing huge loss to the coming wheat crop. It is not that Pakistan has not already experienced huge difficulties with wheat, which is the main national staple. However, the announcement by the Punjab Food Minister that it would no longer be selling sugar at Rs 40 per kg, was actually an announcement that it would no longer be honouring the Supreme Court decision fixing the price. While sugar mills may have been satisfied by the Punjab Food Minister's statement that the sugar mills would be left to fix the price according to the open market, it meant that consumers of this staple would be subjected to the depredations of the millers, who seem to have used their presence on both Treasury and Opposition benches in the assemblies to bring the affair to a conclusion satisfactory to them. While those responsible for fixing fuel prices may have been obliged to fix them in accordance with international prices, they do not seem to have taken into consideration the fact that the Pakistani consumer does not receive the wages that would allow him to pay for these, as does the consumer in the developed countries, no matter the industry he works in. Apart from food and fuel, energy is also a problem. Though consumers have not been forbidden from consuming, prices are so prohibitive that they are being made to run away. The government must abandon such policies, and move from protecting the profits of special interests to protecting the interests of the ordinary consumer. If that involves telling the IMF where to get off, then so be it. But come what may, the government is supposed to work for the ordinary consumer, at present beleaguered by the prices of staples and other essentials, and it is more than time that it do its job.