Go indigenous

The KESC issue while not quite resolved has been taken up by President Zardari and Altaf Husain from London. Both of them realised that the problem had ballooned into a full-fledged crisis and the middle classes were being hurt. The intolerable heat was driving them onto the streets, and in the darkness the students were suffering from the absence of light by which to study. As Karachi is the heartland of the MQM, every night in the darkness put more pressure on the coalition.

The rioting was sporadic, but could have exploded at any time. The vote bank was being eroded, with no end in sight. The situation in the Punjab was no better, and was being made worse by the 31 percent price hike lurking in the near future. With a little nudge from London, and then Zardari, the price hike was put on hold, while the production of the IPPs and the units of Port Qasim were put into emergency mode. The realisation in both London and Islamabad together, that the flour and petrol shortages were bad enough, but the power shortage was bringing a palpable drop in the popularity of the government, and no amount of sloganeering would work its magic, certainly not in the dark.