The world is losing patience

What connects a young protester in Nepal, an Indian student who calls himself a 'cockroach', a family priced out of housing in Spain and a civilian seeking shelter in Gaza? Their circumstances differ, but each case raises an uncomfortable question about the institutions meant to protect their future. From the streets of major cities to the battlefields of West Asia and Europe, established systems of power are being challenged, sometimes by citizens, sometimes by rival states, and increasingly by their own contradictions.

Across Brazil, Argentina, Albania, Belgium, Italy and Spain, protests over corruption, austerity, political accountability and declining living standards reveal a widening gap between government promises and public expectations. South Asia offers even starker examples. Sri Lanka's economic collapse drove protesters into the presidential palace in 2022. Bangladesh's student uprising ended Sheikh Hasina's rule in 2024, and Nepal's youth-led demonstrations brought down a government in 2025.

India's 'Cockroach Movement' is a striking variation. It began in May as online satire after the Chief Justice of India likened some unemployed young people to cockroaches, a remark he later clarified. It then grew into street protests over jobs, leaked entrance examinations and political accountability. Its rise shows how institutional arrogance can turn economic frustration into organised political resistance.

Are these Gen Z revolutions, or failures of governance?

Young people did not create the problems they are protesting against. They inherited them. What sets this generation apart is its ability to compare opportunities, expose privilege and mobilise across digital platforms. But social media explains the speed of mobilisation, not the origins of discontent.

The economic explanation is more revealing. The traditional social contract promised that education, hard work and following the rules would lead to upward mobility. That promise is increasingly unreliable. GDP can grow while wages stagnate, housing becomes unaffordable and opportunity stays concentrated among a privileged few. When economic progress fails to translate into personal security, even functioning political institutions struggle to command public confidence.

In The Captive Mind (1953), the Polish poet Czes?aw Mi?osz described Ketman: professing loyalty in public while privately withholding belief. Systems can survive on such outward conformity for a long time, but not indefinitely. When institutions' claims to legitimacy no longer match people's lived experience, private doubt eventually becomes public. Economic hardship may ignite anger, but the perception of hypocrisy gives it political force.

Yet overthrowing a government is easier than rebuilding one. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal remind us that political change does not automatically produce competent institutions, fiscal stability or jobs. The real challenge begins when the protesters leave the streets.

A similar crisis of credibility confronts the international order. Russia's war in Ukraine, the devastation in Gaza, military confrontation involving Iran, Israel and the US, and recurring hostilities involving the Houthis expose the limits of diplomatic restraint. International law remains the declared foundation of global order, yet its inconsistent enforcement raises the question of whether rules constrain power or merely reflect it.

The economic consequences are just as serious. Wars disrupt trade, inflate energy costs, displace populations and divert scarce resources towards military spending. A confrontation in West Asia can raise transport costs in Karachi and food prices across South Asia. An economy need not take part in a war to pay for it.

Technology adds another contradiction. AI and advanced military systems are expanding what states can do without necessarily improving how they govern. A government may possess sophisticated surveillance, predictive algorithms and precision weapons while remaining unable to deliver basic public services or respond meaningfully to its citizens. States can become more powerful technologically even as their societies become more vulnerable economically and politically.

These developments demand something more serious than another debate over whether the world is becoming multipolar. The pressing question is how power should be exercised, constrained and held accountable, both within states and between them.

For Pakistan, the answer is particularly consequential. We should read our neighbours' upheavals as a lesson in economics, not a prediction about politics. According to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2025-26, about 66% of our population is under the age of 30. The Labour Force Survey 2024-25 puts unemployment at 7.1% overall and close to 13% among those aged 15 to 24. Even degree holders face an unemployment rate of nearly 11%. Meanwhile, 762,499 Pakistanis registered for overseas employment in 2025. This is the broken social contract in Pakistani numbers: education no longer guarantees work, and for many, work means leaving. The question is not whether young Pakistanis are patient. It is how long the economy will keep testing that patience. Regional instability, energy dependence, low productivity, fiscal constraints and climate vulnerability already limit our room for manoeuvre. Strategic autonomy cannot rest on diplomatic positioning or military preparedness alone. It requires economic strength, effective institutions and a population with a real stake in the country's future.

Some of these questions will be on the table at Margalla Dialogue 2026, convened by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute on 10-11 November under the theme 'Global Order in Transition: Navigating Strategic Uncertainty'. Its agenda is useful precisely because it refuses to treat geopolitical realignment, West Asia–South Asia connectivity, technological change, national resilience, economic security and international law as separate conversations. Two questions deserve particular attention. Can technology strengthen governance rather than merely increase control? And can economic resilience become the foundation of national security rather than its neglected component?

These are not abstract questions for conference halls. Their answers will decide whether countries respond to uncertainty through confrontation and coercion, or through institutional reform, cooperation and economic opportunity.

The emerging world order will not be judged only by which powers rise or fall. Its more consequential test will be whether it restores credibility to the institutions that govern people's lives and the relations between nations.

The world is not running out of power. It is running out of patience.