Pakistan’s fuel vulnerability is usually discussed as an economic problem. It is that, but it is also a national security problem. Every few years, some external shock reminds the country how exposed it is to imported fuel and how quickly that exposure filters down into inflation, fiscal stress, and everyday hardship.

The latest crisis as a result of the war in Iran is only the newest example. Reuters reports that soaring prices and fears of shortages have already pushed up demand for electric motorbikes, after disruption around the Strait of Hormuz rattled Pakistan’s transport economy. What this episode exposes is how fragile Pakistan’s transport model really is.

Pakistan has built a transport system that leaves both the state and ordinary households hostage to fossil fuels, which is largely imported. The country’s urban development model has been built around the creation of signal free corridors that incentivise private transport. Reuters notes that about 40 percent of Pakistan’s petrol is used by two and three-wheelers in a country where public transport remains inadequate and that, after the latest fuel-price hike, a median household was spending 31 percent of its daily income on a litre of petrol.

THE COST OF TRANSPORT

Transport costs do not rise in the abstract. They rise for workers getting to their jobs, for parents trying to reach schools and clinics, and for households already struggling to absorb inflation. For wealthier groups, a fuel shock is painful, but for poorer groups, it can be destabilising. The World Bank estimates that economic instability and inflation pushed an additional 13 million Pakistanis into poverty over the last few years, raising the poverty rate to 25.3 percent in 2023-24.

Pakistan frames its transport crisis as an affordability problem. It is actually an institutional one — and every fuel shock makes the cost of that confusion clearer

Once households slide backward, recovery is slow. Recent ridership data released in a tweet by the Punjab government points in the same direction. Comparing a paid day with three fare-free days, the government reported a 60 percent increase in ridership, equivalent to roughly 528,000 additional passengers per day.

Read in isolation, that looks like a simple story about fare sensitivity. But in the context of recent fuel-price increases, it reveals that a large number of households are being pushed towards public transport not only by fares, but also by the rising cost of private mobility itself. Put simply, when fuel shocks hit, demand for affordable, collective transport surfaces immediately.

The people showing up on those fare-free days are not a statistical abstraction. They are workers who have been absorbing private transport costs because no reliable alternative existed. They are women for whom a rickshaw fare is not a minor inconvenience but a real constraint on whether a job outside the neighbourhood is worth taking. They are households that have quietly been running a daily calculation — motorcycle fuel versus bus fare versus staying home — and finding all the options expensive. The ridership surge did not create new demand. It revealed demand that was always there, suppressed by cost.

MOBILITY AS INFRASTRUCTURE

Energy security is, therefore, also a national security issue — and transport policy needs to be treated accordingly. A country that cannot move its people affordably without imported fuel is not dealing with a narrow transport problem; it is dealing with structural vulnerability.

Every shock to oil prices or supply chains quickly shows up in inflation, commuting costs, and political pressure. The burden, moreover, is not evenly shared. When transport costs rise, poorer households have far less room to adjust.

The most common objection to public transport in Pakistan is also the laziest one: the country cannot afford it. Pakistan is not too poor for public transport. It is already paying, every day, for its absence — through fuel vulnerability, high household transport costs and cities that keep sprawling without becoming more productive.

The issue is not whether Pakistan can afford public transport, but whether it has built the institutions needed to finance and sustain it properly. Too much of the debate still treats transport as a cost centre rather than as economic infrastructure. A functioning public transport system expands labour markets, lowers the cost of mobility, improves access to jobs and services, and reduces the drag created by congestion and fuel dependence.

Seen that way, it becomes obvious that public transport does much more than shorten commutes.

WRONG DIAGNOSIS, WRONG SOLUTION

Even when Pakistan does invest in transport, the conversation tends to stop at congestion — how to move people faster, how to unclog roads. That framing is too narrow, and it produces the wrong solutions.The real question is accessibility: whether people can reach jobs, schools, clinics and markets in a reliable and affordable way.

A city can keep building roads and still become less efficient, less inclusive and more expensive to live in. Once the issue is framed properly, the benefits of public transport extend far beyond shorter commute times. Good systems widen labour markets, reduce dependence on private vehicles and make it easier for lower-income groups and women to access work and services. The World Bank’s work on Karachi makes this clear: poor mobility restricts women’s access to jobs, while better transport can expand economic participation.

The environmental case is just as strong. Lahore’s 2023 emissions inventory found that transport accounted for 83 percent of the city’s emissions, underscoring how closely mobility and environmental stress are now linked.

Pakistan’s cities are also sprawling outward in ways that make daily life more expensive and public service provision more difficult. Longer trips, weak public transport and low-density growth lock households into motorcycles, rickshaws and other costly private solutions, deepening fuel dependence.

HOW TO PAY FOR PUBLIC TRANSPORT

The harder question, then, is not whether Pakistan can afford public transport. It is whether the country has built the institutions needed to finance and sustain it — and here the record is particularly weak

Too much of the policy conversation still assumes that large transit systems can be sustained through some crude mix of debt, operating subsidies, and farebox revenue. That is not a serious long-run model. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) argues that, with tightening public finances, ‘land value capture’ has become an attractive tool for financing transport infrastructure.

The World Bank has made a similar argument for developing countries, stressing that transport investments raise surrounding land values and that part of that increment can be used to help finance infrastructure.

Public transport does not only benefit the passenger standing at the station. It changes land values, commercial activity, development patterns and the accessibility of entire corridors. If new transport makes nearby land more valuable, improves market access and attracts denser development, some of that value should help pay for the system that created it. That is the principle behind land value capture. Land value capture is no longer a fringe idea; it is now a standard part of the global transport finance conversation.

For Pakistan, the problem is not only a shortage of funds. It is a failure to capture the returns that public transport already generates. Public transport creates benefits that extend far beyond the fare-paying passenger. A financing model that ignores all of that and relies mainly on fares and fiscal transfers is crudely designed from the start.

The issue is not that public transport generates too little value. It is that Pakistan has made too little effort to capture it.

The current disruption around the Strait of Hormuz is a live demonstration of this. While the policy conversation catches up, households are already adjusting — switching to electric motorbikes, reducing trips, absorbing costs the public system should have been designed to spare them.

THE REFORMS PAKISTAN KEEPS AVOIDING

Land value capture only works if the institutions around it are functional. That requires, at a minimum, integrating transport planning with land-use planning, improving land records, enabling denser mixed-use development around major corridors, and building financing models that do not rely so crudely on fares and subsidies alone.

Pakistan does not need more standalone transport projects. It needs a planning model that treats transport, land use and urban development as a single system. It also means recognising that public transport cannot be delivered as a narrow engineering project and then left to survive on fares.

Cities across both developed and developing countries have shown this for years. The OECD and World Bank literature on land value capture is useful not because Pakistan can copy any one model wholesale, but because it makes clear that sustainable public transport depends on institutional coordination. It depends on planners, economists, transport authorities, land managers and political actors working from the same view of what transport is supposed to do.

That is the harder reform agenda, and it is the one Pakistan tends to avoid.

The state is often more comfortable building visible infrastructure than reforming the institutions around it. But that is precisely why the affordability argument is so misleading. The obstacle is not simply money. It is institutional coherence. Public transport becomes financially and politically fragile when it is disconnected from wider urban development, broader economic strategy, and a credible plan for capturing the value it creates.

None of this is to suggest that progress is not being made. Punjab has already launched electric bus services in Lahore, with 27 buses placed on a 21-kilometre route, charging infrastructure set up, digital payment options introduced, and accessibility features built into the service. The route is expected to serve around 17,000 passengers a day. These are useful steps, and they matter.

The Lahore pilot is worth reading carefully precisely because of what it cannot do alone. Seventeen thousand passengers a day on a single 21-kilometre route is a meaningful number — but Lahore is a city of over 13 million people sprawled across an area where a single corridor barely registers. The pilot shows that, when affordable, accessible service is provided, people use it. That is not a trivial finding in a policy environment that has long used low ridership on underserved routes as evidence that Pakistanis simply prefer motorcycles.

What it cannot show on its own is whether the financing model is sustainable, whether the route will be extended, or whether the surrounding land use will be managed in ways that increase ridership and help pay for the system over time. A pilot answers the demand question. It leaves the institutional question entirely open.

THE STRESS TEST

The latest fuel disruption is only the latest reminder that Pakistan’s current transport model is deeply fragile. A country in which millions rely on motorcycles and rickshaws because quality public transport is missing will remain exposed to every jump in oil prices, every exchange-rate shock and every supply disruption in global energy markets.

Public transport shapes far more than commutes. It determines whether lower-income households can absorb a fuel shock or are pushed back into poverty by one. It determines whether women can access work reliably. And it determines whether Pakistan continues to build cities that deepen its dependence on imported energy, or begins to reduce it.

The country cannot afford to keep asking whether it is rich enough for public transport. It needs to ask a harder question: if it is already paying so much for bad mobility, why has it done so little to build the institutions that would allow better mobility to pay for itself?

This article draws on original research on public transport financing, land use and urban development in Pakistan by the writers

Bakhtiar Iqbal is an urban economist and climate strategist. He can be reached at iqbalbakhtiar@gmail.com

Sheheryar Khan focuses on environmental issues and is currently associated with WWF-Pakistan. He can be reached at sheheryarkhan95@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, April 19th, 2026

On most nights, octogenarian Ali Mallah lies down on a boat anchored at the jetty in Kharochhaan, one of the tail-end settlements in the Indus delta in Sindh’s Thatta district. He has his cigarette, the water and memories of his days at Sukhi Bandar.

Ali’s gaze wanders not into the depths of the sea but across its surface, seeking something that he cannot find: a once prosperous harbour that hosted fairs and wrestling matches, bull races and kite-flying competitions. He vividly remembers walking through the markets of Sukhi Bandar — which literally translates to ‘prosperous harbour’ — that has since been swallowed by the Arabian Sea.

GOLD MARKET AND GOURDS

The memory of that harbour town is still etched in the lines of Ali’s face. As he recalls those memories, tears roll down his cheeks and disappear, just as Sukhi Bandar has, into the sea.

“Sukhi Bandar was a major commercial hub,” Ali tells Eos. “There was a thriving gold market in Sukhi Bandar, along with trade in textiles, grain and gourds,” he continues. The area was full of crops, says Ali, including those of rice, pea, chickpea, sesame and barley. “Coconut, date and olive orchards were abundant,” Ali adds.

Once a thriving harbour town, Sukhi Bandar now lies beneath the Arabian Sea. Its disappearance tells a larger story — of a delta starved of freshwater, collapsing ecosystems and communities forced to retreat

Ali doesn’t know exactly how or when Sukhi Bandar was swallowed by the sea. He is unaware of the complex web of upstream dams and shifting climate patterns that starved the delta, resulting not only in the loss of Sukhi Bandar but also the disruption of his livelihood and way of life.

“After the partition of India, I saw this city start to collapse,” says Ali. His view carries weight — Pakistani coins found among the ruins suggest the decline accelerated after Independence, even if its roots go further back.

THE UPSTREAM DECISION

Standing at the Kharochhaan jetty, it is difficult to imagine that what stretches before you — flat, saline, encroaching — was once fed by one of the great river systems of the world. The Indus delta did not surrender to the sea overnight. It was given away, slowly, upstream.

According to the late Tahir Qureshi, an environmentalist associated with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Indus delta actually started shrinking in the 1920s, with the construction of the Sukkur Barrage in 1923. “Before that, 150-million-acre feet of water reached the delta every year,” he told environmental webzine Dialogue Earth in 2019.

The downstream flow of water into the delta has decreased by 80 percent since the 1950s, as a result of irrigation canals, hydropower dams and the effects of climate change on glacial and snow melt, according to a 2018 study by the US-Pakistan Centre for Advanced Studies in Water at the Mehran University of Engineering and Technology in Jamshoro.

“It all happened because freshwater stopped reaching the delta,” says environmentalist Nasir Panhwar.

While sea-level rise plays a role globally, experts argue that, in the Indus delta, reduced freshwater flow has been the dominant factor. “The issue of sea-level rise doesn’t apply here,” Panhwar tells Eos. “The lack of freshwater is why the sea has swallowed up millions of acres of land.”

Ali has watched this happen in real time. “The fish moved further out, then the land started going, then the people,” he says, pausing to light another cigarette. “Now, there is only water where there used to be everything.”

THE MANGROVE FACTOR

There is one partial reprieve in an otherwise bleak picture. Mangrove cover across Sindh and Balochistan has increased by roughly 300 percent in under three decades, according to an IUCN report presented at COP29 — the United Nations Climate Conference — in Baku in November 2024.

But environmentalists caution that planted mangroves cannot fully compensate for the loss of freshwater and sediment that once sustained the delta naturally and kept saline seawater at bay.

Shoukat Soomro runs the Hyderabad-based Hamdam Foundation that works on mangrove plantation in the Thatta-Sujawal-Badin coastal belt. His organisation has planted around 200,000 mangrove saplings along the coastal belt of Thatta, Badin and Sujawal as part of a project with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). “We will plant an additional 100,000 mangroves along the Badin coast in June this year,” he tells Eos.

But Soomro is clear-eyed about the limits of what replanting can achieve. “We can’t restore the former glory of this harbour, but our efforts can secure the future of the currently inhabited islands, including Kharochhaan.”

VILLAGES SUBMERGED

Kharochhaan once comprised about 40 villages, but most have disappeared under rising seawater. According to revenue records reviewed in 2025, in Kharochhaan alone, around 400,000 acres out of 595,091 acres — or 67 percent — are under water.

The situation is similar in nearby areas, including Shah Bunder — with 518,895 acres out of 735,706 acres having been lost. Jati taluka [administrative division] in neighbouring Sujawal district fares no better: 405,000 acres out of 879,373 acres (46 percent of its land, spread across 13 of 133 dehs) now lie beneath seawater.

It has resulted in mass displacement. More than 1.2 million people have been displaced from the overall Indus delta region in the last two decades, according to a study published in March 2025 by the Islamabad-based Jinnah Institute, a think tank led by former climate change minister Sherry Rehman.

Ali does not know the figure of those displaced but he knows many of the faces from his immediate surroundings. “Everyone I grew up with has left,” he says. “Some went to Karachi. Some just went.”

WHAT REMAINS

If you start a boat journey from Kharochhaan Jetty — past the Redho and Baghaan towns in the coastal belt of Thatta district — you’ll see ruins of an island after about three hours. There, broken flags, smashed utensils, graves and crumbling walls mark what remains.

Back at the jetty in Kharochhaan, Ali Mallah finishes his cigarette and lies back on the boat. Above him, the sky is wide and indifferent. Somewhere beneath the water ahead, a market is still standing.

The writer is a researcher focusing on climate change, green economy and energy. He can be contacted at santoraisbc@aol.com

Additional input and editing by Hussain Dada

Published in Dawn, EOS, April 19th, 2026

It was a Sunday. She was 92. The place: Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai. A voice that had enchanted millions for decades fell silent forever.

Four years earlier, on a Sunday at the same hospital, Lata Mangeshkar too had passed away at the age of 92. Now it was the turn of Asha Bhosle, her younger sister. Both left countless admirers mourning the loss.

Born in 1933 in Bombay, Asha’s journey to the top was a rocky one. For a girl who started singing at the age of 10 and was born into the Mangeshkar family, with the towering presence of Lata, life was far from smooth sailing. Asha ran away with her neighbour and personal secretary, Ganpatrao Bhosle, at 16 and became a mother by 17. Her singing career was going nowhere and her decision to marry someone deemed unfit led to strained familial relationships.

Her early years were marked by immense struggles, both personal and professional, and Asha carved her own path with quiet determination. While many of the era’s most sought-after songs went to someone else, she built a career out of every opportunity that came her way. Afraid of merely imitating her didi [sister], she sought her own identity. Few remember that she once sang in the chorus of the iconic ‘Pyar kiya tau darna kya’ in Mughal-i-Azam (1960) — a fleeting moment in a song that became timeless.

But difficult beginnings often lead to defining journeys. As Lata became the first choice for leading composers such as Naushad, Salil Chowdhury, Roshan, C. Ramachandra and Shankar-Jaikishan, Asha had to work even harder to find her own space.

Asha Bhosle, who passed away on April 12 in Mumbai, wasn’t just the singer of an era. With a career spanning over eight decades, and moving seamlessly between film music, pop, sultry cabaret numbers, ghazals, bhajans, folk and qawwali, she was not just a singer of an era. She became a voice across generations

Music composers O.P. Nayyar and S.D. Burman recognised her unique voice and gave her the platform to shine — helping her create a place in music that was entirely hers.

O.P. Nayyar never used Lata’s vocals for his films and instead relied on Asha. From ‘Maang ke saath tumhara’ (Naya Daur, 1957) to ‘Aaiye meherbaan’ (Howrah Bridge, 1958), ‘Isharon isharon mein’ (Kashmir Ki Kali, 1964) to ‘Yeh reshmi zulfoon ka andhera’ (Mere Sanam, 1965), Asha became indispensable to Nayyar’s films until 1974.

With Lata being extremely busy with many composers to cater to, S.D. Burman stopped working with her in 1957, after she reportedly refused to re-record a song. S.D. believed that composers, not singers, shaped careers — and Asha stepped in as his leading female voice. This marked a turning point in her career, with songs such as ‘Chhor do aanchal’ (Paying Guest, 1957), ‘Haal kaisa hai janab ka’ (Chalti Ka Naam Gaari, 1958), ‘Achha ji main haari’ and ‘Nazar laagi raja’ (Kala Pani, 1958) and ‘Sambhalo apna dil’ (Kala Bazaar, 1960). Asha went on to dominate much of the decade — until a new force reshaped the soundscape: R.D. Burman.

It was the era of dance numbers, cabaret and early pop, with Shammi Kapoor’s flamboyance redefining screen energy and even pushing stalwarts such as Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar to the sidelines. The music scene was ready for something fresh — and it came from the son of her mentor S.D. Burman.

Pancham, as R.D. Burman was fondly known, burst on to the scene with Teesri Manzil (1966). Its soundtrack didn’t just succeed — it transformed Hindi film music, capturing the restless, youthful spirit of a generation eager to embrace the possibilities of a newly independent nation. Asha married R.D. Burman in 1980, 20 years after her divorce. He was six years younger than her and the songs they created together are truly immortal.

These include ‘O haseena zulfon wali’ and ‘O mere sona re’ (Teesri Manzil, 1966), ‘Piya tu ab tau aaja’ (Caravan, 1971), ‘Jaan-i-jaan dhoondta phir raha’ (Jawani Deewani, 1972), ‘Keh doon tumhain’ (Deewar, 1975), and ‘Do lafzon ki hai’ (The Great Gambler, 1979). They went on to deliver evergreen classics such as ‘Mera kuchh saaman’ (Ijaazat, 1987), ‘Tum se mil ke’ (Parinda, 1989), ‘Baadal jo barsay’ (Gardish, 1993) and ‘Chhor ke na jana’ (Gang, 2000).

What distinguished Asha was not merely her range, but an instinctive versatility and a willingness to experiment. She moved seamlessly from film music to pop, from sultry cabaret numbers to deeply expressive ghazals, from bhajans [religious hymns]and classical compositions to folk and qawwali— inhabiting each style with equal ease.

Singing in over 20 languages, she transformed her voice into something far greater than merely popular — it became unmistakably universal. Whether it was for Bollywood sirens such as Waheeda Rehman or Helen, Sadhana or Poonam, Asha Parekh or Aruna Irani, Sharmila Tagore or Farah, she possessed a rare ability to express each persona through her voice.

While Lata largely stayed rooted in her established style, Asha chose to lend her voice to every new face that emerged, helping shape entire careers. From Dream Girl Hema Malini — with songs such as ‘Zindagi aik safar hai’ (Andaz, 1971) and ‘O saathi chal’ (Seeta Aur Geeta, 1972) — to the mesmerising Zeenat Aman — through ‘Dumm maaro dumm’ (Hare Rama Hare Krishna, 1971) and ‘Chura liya hai tum ne jo dil ko’ (Yaadon Ki Barat, 1973) — Asha’s voice became inseparable from their screen presence.

From the glamorous Parveen Babi — with ‘Pyaar karnay walay’ (Shaan, 1980) and ‘Jawani janeman’ (Namak Halal, 1982) — to the effervescent Sridevi — in ‘Taki o taki’ (Himmatwala, 1983) and ‘Guru guru aa jao guru’ (Waqt Ki Awaaz, 1988) — she was not merely singing songs but defining cinematic identities.

Even Rekha and Dimple Kapadia owed much of their second innings to Asha. For Rekha, it was the spirited tracks from Khoobsurat (1980)— ‘Sunn sunn sunn didi’ and ‘Inquilab zindabad’ — as well as the haunting ghazals of Umrao Jaan (1981), such as ‘Inn aankhon ki masti’ and ‘Dil cheez kya hai’, that revitalised Rekha’s career after her ‘split’ from superstar Amitabh Bachchan.

Similarly, Dimple Kapadia’s reinvention, following her separation from her superstar husband Rajesh Khanna, carried deeper emotional resonance through Asha’s songs in films such as Manzil Manzil (1984), Aitebaar,Saagar and Lava (1985).

Eight decades is not just a career, it’s a legacy. And Asha built hers note by note. She sang for films, albums and stages across languages, collecting along the way an enviable list of honours: two National Film Awards, multiple BFJA (Bengal Film Journalists Awards) and Maharashtra State Film Awards, and nine Filmfare trophies — including a Lifetime Achievement Award and a record seven wins as Best Female Playback Singer. Her voice even reached global platforms, earning two Grammy nominations.

With the rise of singers such as Alka Yagnik and Kavita Krishnamurthy in the mid-1980s, Lata became more selective, no longer signing everything that came her way. Asha seized the moment, giving singers half her age a serious run for their money. Between 1995 and 2004, she remained unstoppable, delivering hits in iconic films that defined the generation, such as Rangeela, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995), Aar Ya Paar (1997), Taal (1999), Kaho Naa…Pyaar Hai (2000), Lagaan, Pyaar Tu Ne Kya Kiya (2001), Company, Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai (2002) and Bewafaa (2005).

She even ventured into acting with the feature film Mai (2013), marking her on-screen debut alongside a comeback performance by her real-life niece, actress Padmini Kolhapure.

As for the media-created rivalry between the siblings, Asha often took it upon herself to dispel any such notions and set the record straight. They may never have been equal — Lata Mangeshkar remained the towering benchmark, while Asha spent years in her shadow — yet, Asha carved a space entirely her own, through remarkable versatility, moving effortlessly across genres, moods and styles in a way few could match.

And in the end, there was a quiet, poetic symmetry — death treated them alike, as both passed away at the same place, on the same day of the week and at the same age, as if destiny chose to blur the distinctions that life had drawn.

The writer is a vintage cinema enthusiast. He can be reached at suhaybalavi@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, ICON, April 19th, 2026