Crisis Worsens.

Experts and countless food departments across the country had given out warnings of an impending wheat crisis back in 2020; more alarm bells were rung after the floods ruined at least 50 percent of the crop and rendered the land useless. International conflicts such as the one in Ukraine were expected to cause hardships in the country considering that we used to import a majority of our wheat from Ukraine. And despite all this cautioning, there was little done to build up reserves and utilise them carefully so that complete deprivation would not ensue.

But the wheat crisis has reached such a point that a man was trampled to death in a stampede towards a government truck selling wheat at state-approved rates. Three other girls were injured in the process, alluding to the extreme deprivation that the public has been subjected to recently. Most provinces have issued notices stating that they are running short on supply, especially Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan and Sindh. We are in the middle of an inter-provincial tussle in which blame is being thrown out for either not cultivating enough wheat, dispersing it, or reducing quotas. The federal government has also been criticised for failing to arrange imports from alternative sources in the meantime.

However, the wheat crisis runs deeper than just miscalculation and a failure to coordinate. The political differences between the centre and Punjab have also created hurdles as each blames the other for mishandling the entire issue. At the...

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