The Real Price of Biryani

Inflation, Corruption, and Abandonment in Tharparkar

nasiraijaz May 22, 2025

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In Tharparkar, inflation isn’t a debate—it’s desperation. A pot of biryani costing Rs30, 000 reflects a deeper crisis of poverty, corruption, and abandonment by those meant to serve the people

Ali Ousat

I just twisted the dialogue from a famous Hindi movie into “Aik daig biryani ki qeemat tum kiya jano sahab” (What would you know about the price of a whole pot of biryani, sir!). I always considered inflation a Karachi problem, inferred due to the endless drawing-room debates and teary-eyed social media posts. But a recent trip to Tharparkar overturned that assumption. In the deserts of Sindh, inflation is not just a topic of conversation, it is the brutal reality of daily life; it is the empty stomach of a child; it is the helplessness of a female dumper driver — who was abruptly terminated from the Thar coal project — to buy rice to feed her family.

This was the situation I witnessed in Tharparkar in April, which I visited along with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). They had set up rights camps in Chachro, Islamkot, and Nagarparkar.

The journey from Karachi in the back of an air-conditioned car was quite smooth. As we crossed Steel Town, the faces along the highway began to change, their bodies thin, their skin sunburnt, their clothes torn. These broken dreams were riding on motorcycles, donkey carts, and old public vans. This was the real Pakistan.

The real story, however, isn’t just about the inflation. It’s about the thick, muddy, and deep-rooted corruption which has infected every strata in Tharparkar. This is not the kind of corruption that you watch on television or read about in the newspaper. This is the type that wears a familiar face. It speaks your language. It shakes your hand while selling you out.

In Karachi, people may complain about inflation, but then go and buy bottled water. In Tharparkar, water itself is a privilege, and inflation is a question of survival

While the HRCP interviewed female dumper drivers who had been kicked out of their jobs at the local Engro power plant without prior notice, the Sindh government brought in a group of journalists from Karachi for a PR tour of the same plant. These journalists planted trees and posed for photos even as one of the female drivers who was kicked out of the same plant showed HRCP’s Pushpa Kumari a rotting wound she had suffered inside a private room. She didn’t want to be seen; she had already been erased. The plant gave her no experience letter for her work, no severance and no dignity.

The state, which was planting forests around a coal plant to greenwash it, couldn’t spare a piece of paper for a mother trying to prove she ever worked at the plant.

Even the HRCP camps, meant to amplify the voices of the downtrodden, were not immune from the corruption plaguing Tharparkar. The HRCP was charged exorbitantly high prices for renting out the press club hall, which did not even have working mics and hot tap water. Local contractors, fully aware that the camps were meant to serve the community, had jacked up rates to provide. What should have cost Rs8, 000 was inflated to Rs30, 000.

Dr. Sagar Kumar, who works at the Islamkot Hospital, told me: “I was ashamed to hear what they were charging you. Thiswas meant for the people. But they see outsiders and they see opportunity.”

This loot was not done by aliens or outsiders, but by neighbors. In Tharparkar, corruption doesn’t always come from the top. It’s a network, a culture, a slow rot that starts from within.

Professor Sohail Sangi, often referred to as ‘Baba-e-Thar’, put it bluntly: “The government has corrupted community leaders, journalists, and opinion-makers. They no longer speak for the people.”

But let’s go a step further. It’s not the “government” in the abstract that is responsible for this; it’s the individuals, the civil servants, local journalists, and village elders who’ve chosen silence and loyalty to contracts and power over their people.

When journalism becomes a business deal

One can always expect large corporations to exploit people’s misery as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. However, when local journalists begin to beg for NGO money or barter their integrity for their survival, then truth becomes a casualty. Some of these reporters aren’t corrupt by nature; rather, they have been broken by a system that punishes honesty and rewards obedience.

Qazi Khizar of HRCP-Sindh said it best, “They (local journalists) are not inherently corrupt. But they’ve been shaped—bent by the very forces they were meant to resist.”

And that’s the real corruption. These journalists are financially abandoned by the organizations they are supposed to represent. When journalists become brand ambassadors for coal plants, when a story turns into a sponsorship, and the truth is sold for a press trip and a photo-op, you can hardly expect them to raise their voices on what ails their society.

Forgotten faces

This isn’t just about power plants and broken microphones. It’s about the women who carried rocks in dumpers but were tossed away like trash when they got sick. It’s about children who don’t understand the word “inflation” but go to sleep hungry anyway.

It’s about the towering shadows of Karachi’s ever-rising skyline hiding its slums, and Tharparkar’s dunes hiding its despair.

In Karachi, people may complain about inflation, but then go and buy bottled water. In Tharparkar, water itself is a privilege, and inflation is a question of survival. This contrast must hit you in the face.

Responsibility or performance?

Civil society, rights groups, leftist organizations, NGOs, political parties, and journalists — we often pat ourselves on the back after organizing a workshop or a human rights camp. Then we pack up, write lengthy reports, and return to our cities.

Meanwhile, the people stay behind. Still unemployed. Still unheard.

This work must go deeper than a day-long seminar. Sit with the people. Eat with them. Feel their dust on your skin. Wipe their tears with your hands. Share their rage.

A friend once said, “Karachi looks so beautiful from the 22nd floor of the Habib Bank Plaza.”

It does. But step down. Walk through a katchi abadi (slum). Or better yet, walk through the Islamkot Bazaar.

Only then will you understand the real cost of a pot of biryani.

The daig of alloo-channay ki biryani (potato and chickpeas biryani) cost Rs30, 000. That is not just a price tag; that is a punch in the gut because it barely fed 50 people (Rs600 per person).