THE last six years or so have been hard for the low- to middle-income segments of the population because of the fast escalating cost of living and shrinking real income. But the last year — 2013 — was the most difficult of all. Most families seem to have even lost the dim hope of maintaining their existing ‘standard of living’ in 2014. Many have already used up their life savings in the last few years as they struggled to cope with rising energy, food, healthcare and education prices. The prices of essentials, according to a report carried by this newspaper on its business pages on Wednesday, shot up significantly during the second half of last year to December as the government implemented a harsh economic and financial reforms programme that has again spared the wealthy. This year too doesn’t promise any relief from the rising price of living for the vast majority of the people. Little wonder then that the prime minister’s directive in December to hold the oil prices at the previous month’s level hasn’t impressed many.

It is normal for governments and economists across the globe to compute the impact of inflation on the people through different kinds of indices — consumer price index, wholesale price index, or sensitive price index — that provide an average of the rise in the prices of essential items on various groups of consumers. These indices tell only a small part of the story. No index can tell how many families stopped sending their children to school after a 50pc increase in the electricity prices. Nor has any index the power to predict how many men, women and children will be forced to sleep on empty stomachs when vegetable prices quadruple overnight. Haven’t we seen our friends and relatives avoid consulting a doctor because it could mean cutting back on some other ‘more important’ expense? Policymakers are yet to order a census to calculate the number of people pushed into abject poverty because of the persistently soaring prices and job losses. There is little chance of improvement in the life of common Pakistanis unless the government starts aligning its economic and financial policies to their needs.