AS the Trump regime plays the world’s self-appointed policeman, killing and abducting world leaders and destroying countries, the people of Pakistan face another enemy — one that continues to harass and destroy lives and livelihoods each day. As a nation constantly hopping from one IMF programme to another, it is no surprise that Pakistanis face abject poverty as their worst enemy.
Such is the poverty in Pakistan that charitable food distribution has now become a national spectacle, with the misery of the poor becoming fodder for television reporting. With a bleak job market and ever-rising inflation thanks lately to international misadventures in the Middle East, most Pakistanis find themselves living a life of despair. As per the World Inequality Report 2026, Pakistan’s top 10 per cent earners take home 42pc of the total income as opposed to the forgotten 50pc left to squabble amongst themselves to divide up 19pc. If these figures are correct, Pakistan may well be witnessing a new version of the ‘two-nation theory’, where division is not rooted in religion or identity but in wealth.
On one side exists a Pakistan of privilege, which lives inside gated housing societies with uninterrupted electricity and private security. This Pakistan dines in expensive restaurants, travels abroad for holidays and often debates the state of the economy from the comfort of insulated drawing rooms. Its children attend elite schools and universities, often preparing for a future far beyond Pakistan’s borders. On the other side exists a Pakistan of poverty. This Pakistan counts every rupee before stepping into a grocery store. It waits in long lines for flour at subsidised rates. It borrows money from relatives and neighbours to simply keep the household running for another week. For millions of families, financial stability is a fading memory.
The unfortunate part is that this divide did not emerge overnight but has been assiduously cultivated over the decades through political expediency, economic mismanagement and an entrenched system that rewards connections over competence. Instead of building an economy that expands opportunity, Pakistan has gradually drifted towards an economy where wealth circulates within narrow circles while millions remain trapped in a cycle of insecurity.
There is a Pakistan of privilege and a Pakistan of poverty.
The consequences of such inequality are fatal. Poverty has a way of eroding dignity. It forces parents into impossible decisions — to choose between education and groceries, medicine and electricity. For most of Pakistan, survival is a full-time job and not many seem to be succeeding at it.
Meanwhile, the other Pakistan continues to flourish in comfort. In its enclaves of prosperity, advertised on social media for the world to see, streets remain secure, impunity can be bought and education used to fortify economic disparity. Prosperity is not a crime. The crime is committed when prosperity becomes a product of widespread deprivation, which in turn spawns a widening economic divide, the most troubling aspect of which is how it has been normalised. Poverty is increasingly treated as an unfortunate but inevitable feature of society rather than as the failure of a policy in need of remedy.
Education illustrates this disparity with painful clarity. Elite institutions produce graduates primed for the global stage, just as public schools struggle with overcrowded classrooms, archaic syllabi and untrained and underpaid teachers. The result is an educational system that amplifies privilege instead of challenging it. Each year, millions of young Pakistanis enter the workforce hoping to build better lives. Yet the economy has failed to generate opportunities at the scale required. As a result of this situation, most of our youth are left navigating a landscape of underemployment, informal work or migration abroad in search of basic necessities.
There is a profound irony in this situation. Pakistan was founded on the promise of dignity and collective advancement. The original two-nation theory represented the aspirations of a marginalised community to secure its political and economic rights within its homeland. Yet today, millions within that homeland feel marginalised by the very economic structures meant to support them. That is why the metaphor of a new ‘two-nation theory’ resonates so powerfully today.
The question Pakistan must ask itself is whether it can afford two nations under one country. For Pakistan to achieve the lofty ambitions of its founder, it will have to move beyond words and implement reforms which strips its elite of their comfort. To thrive as one nation, Pakistan must ensure that it becomes a land of equal opportunity and not two nations divided by sustenance.
The writer is a lawyer.
Published in Dawn, March 26th, 2026
