Seventy-eight years after independence, this lesson is our compass: survival is not enough; we must turn survival into strategy. Hope in Pakistan cannot be naïve. It has to be earned in numbers, not just in narratives.
The numbers first, because we have tried slogans before. Our public finances drifted towards the rocks long before 2025. Debt neared 80 per cent of GDP in 2018–19, and interest payments alone consumed an extraordinary share of revenue, leaving crumbs for schools, clinics and infrastructure.
Unsustainable is not a metaphor; it is arithmetic. By June 2023, reserves were under $4 billion, with $15 billion to $20 billion a year in external repayments and inflation at 38 per cent. That was the edge, not ‘macro volatility’. Demography also has a significant downside. The working-age share is still below 60 per cent, and 36 per cent of the country is 15 or younger. That means fewer savers, more dependents and thinner capital formation. Demographics are not destiny; they are a bill that is payable in classrooms, clinics and jobs.
Since mid-2023, stabilisation has created breathing room. Reserves climbed above $12 billion, the rupee steadied, and inflation fell below 3.0 per cent by January 2025. This is oxygen. Use it. The IMF’s 37-month EFF agreed in September 2024 maps a path to narrow the deficit by about 3.0 per cent of GDP over three years and to roll over about $14 billion in annual public external repayments with official creditors. That is sensible, but only if we trade speed for staying power. Front-loaded targets breed cynicism. Broadening the base builds credibility.
So what do we do, actually?
First, tax the real economy, not just the compliant minority. When only one in a hundred files an income-tax return and large sectors like retail, real estate and parts of agriculture treat taxation as optional, we are not a poor state; we are a permissive one. Expanding the base by about three percentage points of GDP is achievable if we stop treating the informal economy as a culture rather than a policy failure. Provinces need incentives, not alibis. Devolve responsibility with teeth.
Second, flip the development script: girls first, megawatts next. Family planning, girls’ secondary completion and primary health are the cheapest, surest ways to lift savings and growth. They are also the only route to cashing our demographic check. If we want more investment without drowning in interest, we must invest where returns outpace coupons, in classrooms and clinics before prestige concrete.
Third, rebuild the power sector and privatise what the state cannot fix. Loss-making SOEs and circular debt are not national symbols; they are budgetary sinkholes that crowd out hope. Stop funding entropy. Sell or restructure with discipline, protect consumers transparently and route concessional financing toward reliability and resilience, especially climate-smart infrastructure. That is how rupees saved on interest become megawatts, jobs, and export capacity.
Fourth, discipline the currency with competitiveness, not denial. For decades, we borrowed to overvalue the rupee and cheapen imports. Every time oil spiked or markets shut, we paid in devaluation and dignity. Let the exchange rate speak truth; let exporters, not importers, lead our self-respect.
Fifth, coordinate the world to buy us time, not excuses. With official creditors holding about 85 per cent of our external debt, coordinated rollovers and new concessional lines are possible if we show work. Multilaterals and bilaterals will lean in when we lean first on transparency, on tax and on spending quality. That is the bargain worth striking.
Why push this hard? Because the upside is visible. Goldman Sachs projects that, with the right policies and institutions, Pakistan’s scale in population, location and market could place it among the world’s largest economies by 2075. Not ‘will’. Could. Conditional tense, binding terms. But economics alone will not carry us. Nations are built with a moral grammar. On this Independence Day, we either relearn it or keep reliving the same crisis.
Jinnah gave us the template: equal citizenship, Islamic democracy, justice and fair play, without theocracy. “Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic State”, he broadcast; our democracy would embody Islam’s essential principles of equality, justice, and tolerance for all, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. That is not a Western import; that is our founding brief.
So let us talk plainly about our own failures too. We have confused identity with tribe: Punjabi, Sindhi, Urdu-speaker, Pakhtun, Baloch – labels that explain where our grandparents lived, not what our children deserve. We have tolerated illiteracy as if it were fate. We have flirted with extremism as if it were piety. We have blurred civilian and military roles until accountability ducked out the back door. That is not destiny; that is choice.
Our answer cannot be nostalgia. It must be a new social contract under one flag, one purpose, and one ethic: compassion as policy, tolerance as practice, merit as habit. The state protects belief by protecting believers of every kind. The mosque inspires by example, not edict. The classroom lifts the poor before any subsidy does. That is Jinnah’s promise rendered in policy, not platitude. And to those who say ‘we tried and failed’, remember May. A larger adversary bet on our fracture. Instead, it met our resolve. Power is not just inventories; it is the price you are willing and able to pay to hold your line. We held it. Now hold the line at home, on taxes, on law and on dignity.
Seventy-eight years in, the choice is stark. Remain a nation that can repel a strike but not a spiral, or become a nation that turns every crisis into compounding capacity. I choose the latter, even if it means picking fights with our bad habits.
This 78th year, hang the flag, but also remember to file the return. Teach a daughter. Fund a clinic. Deregulate a market. Privatise a loss. Price a tariff. Respect a voter. Defend a Hindu, a Christian, a Parsi, a Shia, a Sunni – because a Pakistani first. That is how survival becomes strategy and strategy becomes destiny.
The window is open. The world will meet us halfway when we walk our half. The future is conditional. Let us write the conditions and sign with action.
The writer is a lawyer, pursuing a Master of Laws from Boston University. He can be reached at: Khuzairbu.edu