Who Benefits From Pakistan’s Freedom?

Asem Mustafa Awan

Islamabad: In the seventy-eight years since Pakistan’s inception, the dream of a nation founded on equality and justice has drifted far from the lives of those who most needed it.

Nearly half the population lives below the poverty line, and millions more remain invisible to the state — undocumented, uncounted, and unprotected.

For them, the idea of citizenship is not a passport to rights and dignity but an unreachable privilege, tangled in bureaucracy and burdened by the cost of survival.

For the poor, securing an identity card can mean an entire day lost in a government queue, a day without wages and a day of hunger for their families. In households where several mouths need feeding, the decision to forgo work for paperwork is no choice at all. Those without papers remain locked out of healthcare, education, and even the most basic welfare schemes, perpetuating a cycle of deprivation that began not with their birth, but with the state’s inattention.

The roots of this neglect stretch back decades.

Successive governments have built motorways before primary health units, inaugurated prestige projects while rural schools collapsed for lack of teachers, and poured billions into concrete while villages still rely on contaminated hand pumps.

Policy has consistently favored the visible over the vital chasing international headlines instead of addressing the slow-burning crises that corrode society from within.

The result is a social divide so deep it now shapes the national psyche. The poor are told they belong to a country that was created for them, yet they live as strangers in it — their existence acknowledged only during elections, floods, or pandemics.

The promise of independence has been replaced with a daily struggle for survival in a system where dignity is a luxury.

The absence of documentation doesn’t just deny services; it strips people of identity. Without papers, a person is not a worker but “informal labor,” not a resident but a “squatter,” not a citizen but a statistic that never gets counted. They become ghosts in their own country alive in the flesh, but absent on paper.

This invisibility has consequences beyond economics. It shapes how people see themselves and their place in the social order. Generations grow up believing that the state is not a guarantor of rights but an obstacle to them. This alienation weakens social cohesion and fuels resentment, eroding trust in institutions until governance becomes a game for the few, not a responsibility to the many.

Poverty’s impact is not only material but psychological. The stress of constant scarcity dulls hope, limits ambition, and narrows horizons.

A father who works from dawn until nightfall, only to return with barely enough to feed his children, is unlikely to believe in the transformative power of education.

A mother who must choose between buying medicine or a meal will have little faith in a state that offers neither. Over time, the collective fatigue of the poor becomes a national condition — a quiet despair that drains the will to demand change.

The social fabric frays further when the poor are seen not as fellow citizens but as burdens. Without official recognition, they are excluded from the national narrative, invisible in development plans, and voiceless in public debate. Yet they are the ones who build the cities, harvest the crops, drive the buses, stitch the clothes, and guard the homes of the better-off. The country runs on their labor, even as its benefits pass them by.

Pakistan’s unfinished journey since 1947 is not only about incomplete infrastructure or unfulfilled economic targets; it is about a failure to anchor development in the dignity of all its citizens.

The gap between the privileged and the poor is not accidental it is the direct result of decades of policy that treats human development as secondary to state spectacle.

To change course requires more than charity drives and temporary subsidies. It demands a political will to dismantle the barriers that keep millions undocumented, to invest in universal access to education and healthcare, and to prioritize human welfare over ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

It means recognizing that progress is not measured in kilometers of road, but in the security a citizen feels when they know their rights are recognized and protected.

The poor do not need pity; they need a system that works for them. They do not need to be “uplifted” by promises; they need to be included by design.

The dream of Pakistan will remain hollow until the state sees its invisible millions not as shadows on the margins but as central to its identity and future.

True independence will not come from celebrating anniversaries with parades and speeches, but from dismantling the structures that keep half the population trapped in a life without choices. For those who live without documents, without services, and often without hope, the inheritance of 1947 has yet to arrive. Until it does, Pakistan remains a nation in name but not in practice for the millions it has left behind.

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.

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