Oil price hike, gas and power shortages and PML-N’s campaign power base
For Punjab, this is the annual season of scarcity. Water level in the limited reservoirs is at its lowest ebb, causing a decrease in hydel production and ensuring that load shedding persists even in winter. Domestically produced gas, whose reserves we have frittered away within decades, is also a major headache, as people turn to heat energy appliances, raising demand. To make matters worse for consumers, the government has chosen this testing time to hike the prices of some petroleum products. Such increases, even nominal, provide an excuse to businesses to jack up prices universally, from transport to tomatoes. It definitely raises the bread-basket higher and creates shortage of commodities through hoarding.
The most annoying part is that this shortage pattern goes on year after year, with nothing to show for it but broken promises and false hopes. And it spawns another dangerous paucity, that of patience in people whose daily life has been turned upside down. The gas shortage is especially depressing, as the process of cooking timely meals for the family is severely disrupted. The government has diverted gas to irate domestic consumers at the expense of industry, but also affecting some power plants leading to a 600 mega watt cut in production. But the gas pressure is still insufficient for domestic needs of five million consumers of Punjab and KP.
This should ring warning bells for the ruling PML-N. It had itself politicised such shortages when in the opposition, making tall promises of ending load shedding in six months, which never materialised, apart from other public theatrics. But its lack of concerted and vigorous energy policies, its indecisive nature, and its warped sense of priorities, made change impossible. Both the PPP and the PTI are exploiting the petrol and high speed diesel hike for gleeful government-bashing, and with the country’s longest election campaign under way, the situation bodes ill for the PML-N in its Punjab fiefdom and stronghold, which is under siege by Imran Khan.