Sara’s admission letter arrived on a Tuesday in August. She’d been accepted into a BS Software Engineering program at a well-regarded public sector university in Islamabad. Merit-based admission — she’d earned it. Her family in Mianwali was genuinely proud. The fees were Rs. 35,000 per semester. Add hostel, transport, books, and basic living expenses, and … Read more
My friend Usman has been doing freelance graphic design from his bedroom in Rawalpindi for four years. He’s good at it — regular clients, decent reviews on Fiverr, a steady stream of work. The problem is that everything he earns gets immediately consumed by household expenses. There’s nothing left to invest in the business. He … Read more
Hamza graduated with a BA in Commerce from a government college in Multan in 2023. By mid-2025, he’d applied to over 60 jobs, attended 11 interviews, and received exactly zero offers. Not because he’s incompetent. He speaks decent English, understands basic accounting, and has the kind of work ethic that comes from growing up in … Read more
Tariq runs a small general store in a busy neighborhood in Sialkot. He’s been running it for nine years — the same shop his father handed down to him, slightly expanded, slightly modernized, but still running on the same operational logic it always has. Last year, his supplier started requiring larger minimum orders to maintain … Read more
My colleague Rashida has been renting the same two-room house in Lahore’s Sanda area for eleven years. She and her husband moved in right after their wedding, thinking it would be temporary — just until they could save enough to buy their own place. Eleven years later, two kids in school, rent has gone from … Read more
A friend of mine named Bilal has been commuting from his house in the outskirts of Gujranwala to his job at a textile factory for the past three years. Every morning he wakes up at 5:30 AM to catch two different wagons, spending Rs. 80 to Rs. 100 each way — Rs. 6,000 a month … Read more
Last summer was brutal in Punjab. My uncle lives in a small house in Sheikhupura — two bedrooms, a small courtyard, five family members. His electricity bill in July hit Rs. 18,000. For a household where the primary earner makes around Rs. 35,000 a month as a shopkeeper, that’s more than half the monthly income … Read more
My cousin Zara is in her third year of BS Computer Science at a government college in Faisalabad. For the past two years, she’s been doing her assignments on her younger brother’s phone — a mid-range Android with a cracked screen — because there was no laptop at home and buying one wasn’t something the … Read more
Every few months, a version of the same scene plays out across Pakistan. A woman wakes up early, gets her children ready, arranges for someone to watch the younger ones, and travels — sometimes an hour or more — to the nearest HBL Konnect agent or BISP payment center. She stands in a queue. When … Read more
A schoolteacher I know in a small town near Sahiwal told me something that stuck with me for weeks. She said that out of the 34 students in her class, at least 19 of them came from BISP households — meaning their families were registered beneficiaries. But when she asked how many were receiving the … Read more