Elite suction machine

It was an arduous task ploughing through the unending and at places questionable list of names selected for the national awards this year. Absent from this list was the name of the person who deserved this award the most – Espen Barth Eide, the Norwegian Foreign Minister. He taught us how to disembark from a commercial flight (and not a Gulfstream), walk down the passenger boarding bridge, carry our own luggage and not have an entourage of a dozen friends and family members. This event happened at about the same time when two government officials were being royally chauffeured in a four-horse-drawn buggy, escorted by seven minions – four mounted on horseback, two holding an umbrella and one serving as a hanger-on. Perhaps history will remember this as one of the most decadent and disgusting visuals of coloniality.

Whether it is a victory in war, a diplomatic triumph, a pact with another country, a national day or simply receiving a foreign dignitary, restraint quickly gives way to vicious extravagance, wastefulness and frenzy. Ceremonies and medals proliferate, banners and hoardings multiply and billboards and buntings mushroom. Simplicity, modesty, austerity, dignity and humility are tossed overboard. The gates of the dwindling state treasury are flung wide open, and the taxpayers' money is brutally squandered – for media campaigns, immodest personal publicity and unabashed self-projection.

The ruling elite of Pakistan has invented a rare and rapacious machinery that relentlessly pulverises the poor and sucks out every morsel from their meagre existence. Called the 'Elite Suction Machine' (ESM), it must not be mistaken for the real suction machines that remain idly parked as show pieces in our sewerage departments: machines whose dormancy sends 100 sanitation workers to their deaths in raw sewage gutters every year. On the contrary, the ESM is at work 24/7, constantly inventing fresh opportunities to plunder resources from the poor and diverting them to the already privileged.

Operating at the two ends of the food chain, the ESM sucks from the poorest and feeds to the richest. In 2025, the salaries of the Chairman Senate and the Speaker National Assembly were quietly raised from Rs205,000 to Rs1,950,000 per month – an increase of 850%. In the same unfortunate year, workers' minimum wage was raised by a miserable 8.1% (from Rs37,000 to Rs40,000) in the provinces while the Federal Government ruthlessly kept the minimum wage frozen at Rs37,000.

Yet another infamous achievement of ESM is the creation of one of the world's most skewed ratios between the minimum wage of workers and the salaries received by the chief executives of public sector organisations. Based on the 2025 minimum wage of Rs40,000, the ratio between the salary of a worker and that of the SBP Governor is 1:100. Likewise, this ratio is 1:70 for the Chief Justice and 1:50 for the Chairman Senate. This of course does not include the numerous unspoken benefits bestowed upon this self-entitled class – not to mention the Rs90 million luxury vehicle purchased to massage the Chairman Senate's ego.

ESM's additional features include built-in processes to hide the corruption and misappropriations routinely practised by its members. To prevent disclosure of information relating to these shady activities, the National Asse¬mbly paid an astonishing amount of Rs35 million to private lawyers to suppress information requested under the Right to Information laws. Ironically, even the suppression expenses were extracted from the taxpayers.

For how long can a society endure such a grotesque disparity between a ruling elite gliding majestically in luxury vehicles and exclusive Gulfstreams, while the poor sink deeper into filthy, disease-ridden sewage gutters? Would such a ship, sooner rather than later, not sink under the burden of its own sinful stewards? The ESM ought to be completely dismantled by withdrawing all perks, facilities, hefty salaries and luxury vehicles of the ruling elite and redirecting the resources towards better wages and pensions for the poor.