Along with the other outbursts of emotion among the citizenry, notably in Gujranwala and Lahore, the traders of Sialkot have threatened a civil disobedience movement from Sunday. It must be noted that all that stands between yet more protests and the government are the melting snows, through which the rivers will fill, providing the hydel without which the country is undergoing the present loadshedding. The rage of the citizens, which has found expression in protests, at the current loadshedding, at the onset of spring, makes it seem that the summer, when loadshedding is at its worst, will see the citizenry truly enraged. As the heat inevitably increases, fans, air conditioners and other electricity-powered cooling devices will be turned on, thus causing the demand to go up, and increasing the need for outages. This will cause protests, if the current ones are anything to go by, and with Lahore, Gujranwala and Sialkot already up in arms, the urban areas of Punjab are already adversely affected.
The threat in Sialkot is indicative. Exporters, manufacturers and traders’ bodies have threatened civil disobedience. It must not be forgotten that the power outages mean that civic life as well as industry come to a standstill. Not only does it mean that Pakistani consumers are deprived of goods, but the country also loses export earnings which it uses to pay for the fuel used to generate what little electricity it produces. Since industrial workers are concentrated in cities, their unemployment automatically creates a reserve which can be mobilized against the government. The government itself should hope that the resentment is limited to the ballot box, not expended in violent protests.
The government has only itself to blame for this predicament. If it has been less focused on its own survival as an end in itself, and spent a little time and energy on solving people’s problems, it would have done something about ending or reducing the shortage, not worsening it, as it has done by not countering the propaganda against Kalabagh Dam, whose 3600MW will not only be missed this summer, but also immediately. Power projects are of long gestation, and thus have to be started well in advance to yield results. The government has not started any other power projects which might provide some hope of relief. It must remedy this before the elections, and the best place to start would be to begin the Kalabagh Dam project.