Caretaker Finance Minister Shamshad Akhtar has indicated, while talking to the media after giving testimony to a Senate committee, that the government not afford the consumer any relief in the massive bills that have provoked huge protests throughout the country, with bills being burnt and suicides being committed. Dr Shamshad said that the agreements with the IMF allowed for no subsidy. She thus confirmed that the primary target of the caretakers was to ensure that the IMF’s conditions were met. The loading of the electricity bills with taxes, and the idea of giving installments on the bills, were thus rejected, and the plan for relief to the consumer had been forwarded to the IMF for approval. The scenario thus meant that the two days of meetings were not meant to provide relief, so much as to provide the government a breathing-space in which the protests would die down.
However, while some consumers have paid their bills somehow or the other, some have not. When the bills come in next month, those people will be hit with arrears on top of their new bill. As can be easily guessed, they will be on the verge of facing disconnections. When disconnections start taking place, the kind of public protests that may erupt will make the current protests seem like nothing. As winters are shortened by the effects of climate change, it is likely that the heat will not be over at the time of these disconnections, making them all the more unbearable. There may well be an increase in crime, as householders, not necessarily the most scrupulous, seek means, fair or foul, to make the next payment.
This increases the pressure for elections to be held within the 90-day time limit. Mass public protests are not particularly well-handed by caretakers. It might seem unfair for the new elected government to be plunged into the middle of street protests, but that is what elected governments do. Back in 1971, the PPP took over when half the country had seceded after the massive surrender at Dhaka, with a constitution still to be written and an economic programme to be implemented. The country’s problems have not reached the point of no return, but they do seem to have gone out of the hands of the caretakers.
