Broken Backs, Broken System

Asem Mustafa Awan

Islamabad: In the waiting shade of a bus stand and roadside shops, porters sit in silence. Their faces are hollow from hunger, their stomachs pressed against their spines, their shoes held together by threadbare hope. It’s not just luggage they carry—it’s the crushing weight of a system that has abandoned them.

These men are the daily wagers of Pakistan’s Sunday markets. They earn a few hundred rupees for lifting, dragging, and waiting. From dawn to dusk, they fight for work in chaotic bazaars—without pensions, without healthcare, without homes.

Their labor fills bellies but empties their own. Yet they, like millions of others, are taxed at every step—on food, fuel, clothing, and medicine. In truth, they pay. They’ve always paid. Just not in the way the rich want to measure.

This week, Pakistan’s Federal Board of Revenue revealed a damning statistic: 95 percent of the population is outside the direct tax net. But this isn’t because they’re avoiding taxes—it’s because they have nothing left to give. The irony is staggering. The poor are taxed indirectly every day, while the rich—who owe billions—get away with paying only millions. The FBR’s own records identify the top one percent as the largest defaulters, yet they remain comfortably untouched, shielded by political power and institutional silence.

Read More: https://thepenpk.com/middle-east-on-fire-as-world-watches-in-silence/

Meanwhile, the World Bank estimates that nearly 45 percent of Pakistan’s population lives below the poverty line. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that more than 60 percent face food insecurity. And UNICEF states that Pakistan’s children suffer some of the worst stunting rates in South Asia, caused by chronic undernourishment. These aren’t numbers—they’re national failures. And every time the state calls for “broadening the tax net,” it turns its attention downward—never upward.

This is not simply a fiscal crisis. It is a crisis of justice. The elite who benefit from every policy loophole, who import luxury and export profits, who sit in gated opulence and air-conditioned offices, remain immune to the burdens they helped create. Yet it’s the man who lifts your basket in the Sunday market, the mother choosing between food and school fees, the child sleeping hungry—who are asked to carry the national load.

Talk of reform always begins with promises of fairness, but ends in more pressure on the already squeezed. Taxation in Pakistan has become a tool of extraction, not equity—a way to mine the survival of the poor while the rich are allowed to negotiate their dues.

Read More: https://thepenpk.com/pakistans-lost-generation/

The image of those Sunday market porters is not just a photograph. It’s a national mirror. It reflects a country where inequality isn’t just tolerated—it’s institutionalized. Where policy is written in boardrooms but paid for in sweat. Where corruption is too big to fail and honesty too small to matter.

If Pakistan is to claw its way out of crisis, it cannot start by squeezing the last rupee out of the empty pockets of the poor. Real reform begins at the top—with political will to confront economic privilege, with courage to recover looted wealth, with integrity that doesn’t bend before the powerful.

Until then, the broken backs of market porters will remain the foundation of a broken system.

The article is the writer’s opinion, it may or may not adhere to the organization’s editorial policy.

Asem Mustafa Awan has extensive reporting experience with leading national and international media organizations. He has also contributed to reference books such as the Alpine Journal and the American Alpine Journal, among other international publications.