ONE step forward and two steps back. This seems to have become the hallmark of the government. It had called upon citizens to observe austerity and conserve electricity and petrol. Just weeks after a feeble enforcement of notified timings regarding retail shops and markets, the conservation measures have been reverted.

Such measures are followed across Europe, North America and several other countries, including Malaysia, because these are logical steps to optimise daylight usage. But the government, under pressure from retailers, has rolled back the step even though the crisis that had triggered its initiation is far from over. The pressure exerted by the retailers in itself is an absurdity because they themselves happen to be amongst the privileged elite class that does not pay due taxes.

Austerity can only be achieved if it starts at the top. Extravagance at tax-payers’ expense has continued. It is time to shed archaic legacies of the colonial past. These have no place in a sovereign, independent state that has been facing a persistent financial crisis because the administrative expenses of the state far exceed the revenues collected.

It is an utter failure of state parapher-nalia that exists to collect public taxes, but enjoys all the privileges that its peers in the developed West cannot even dream of.

Malik Tariq Ali
Lahore

Published in Dawn, May 20th, 2026