FOR decades, we have heard the same familiar phrase: “This budget is for the common man”.
Every year, the budget is announced, the same claim is repeated and a faint sense of hope briefly returns. Yet a simple question keeps returning with uncomfortable persistence that if budget is truly for the common man, why does the life of the common man not change?
In Pakistan, the “common man” has become a powerful phrase in political speeches, yet a fragile reality in everyday life. Every government places him at the centre of its narrative. Every budget invokes him as its justification. But on the ground, he remains where he has always been caught between rising prices, stagnant incomes an increasingly uncertain future. A budget, in its essence, is not merely a financial document. It is a social contract between the state and its citizens. Citizens contribute through taxes; the state returns services, protection opportunity. The question is whether this contract in Pakistan is truly balanced or whether it exists more elegantly on paper than in practice.
Pakistan’s tax structure makes this question even more complex. Salaried individuals contribute their taxes quietly and consistently. Their incomes are taxed at source, leaving little room for avoidance or flexibility. In contrast, large segments of the economy still operate outside fully documented systems, where income is either underreported or not effectively taxed at all. The result is a structural imbalance: those who are easiest to tax end up carrying a disproportionate share of the burden.
It is here that the sense of fairness begins to erode. The ordinary taxpayer sees himself as the most compliant participant in the system, yet often feels he receives the least in return. This is not merely a grievance; it is a structural distortion that gradually weakens trust in the state itself. Each year, budget speeches present ambitious figures, development targets policy priorities. Yet the lived experience of the common citizen rarely aligns with these numbers. His reality is shaped not by fiscal projections but by electricity bills, food prices, school fees, rent medical expenses, all of which continue to rise.
This is not to suggest that the state is absent. Public hospitals function, schools operate, roads are built, transport systems expand. Social protection programmes such as the Benazir Income Support Programme and Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal provides critical relief to millions of vulnerable families. These are not insignificant achievements in a developing country with constrained fiscal space. However, the quality, reach consistency of these services remain uneven, which weakens their overall impact.
And it is precisely this unevenness that undermines trust. When citizens contribute steadily through taxes, directly or indirectly, but experience inconsistent public services in return, a quiet but persistent question emerges: who exactly is the system serving? At its core, the problem is not simply the size of the budget, but its structure and priorities. Short-term relief measures are often treated as policy success, while deeper institutional reforms remain incomplete. Subsidies may provide temporary relief, but they do not alter the underlying economic structure. As a result, the same pressures reappear year after year, only in different forms.
Another structural issue lies in the narrowness of the tax base. The state tends to rely heavily on those who are easiest to tax, salaried individuals, documented businesses indirect consumption-based taxes while large parts of the economy remain insufficiently integrated into the formal system. This creates not only a fiscal imbalance, but also a moral one. It is not only about revenue; it is about perceived fairness.
So what is the way forward? The solution is not simply to raise tax rates, nor is it merely to reduce expenditure. The real challenge is to expand the tax base and reform the system of collection. This requires documentation of economic activity, promotion of digital transactions, integration of fragmented sectors into the formal economy stronger enforcement where evasion is large-scale and persistent. At the same time, the state must demonstrate that public money is not being wasted. Transparency, accountability performance-based governance are no longer optional reforms; they are prerequisites for rebuilding trust. Citizens do not only pay taxes, they also pay trust. And trust, once eroded, is far more difficult to recover than revenue.
Ultimately, taxation is not just an economic mechanism. It is the most tangible expression of the relationship between citizen and state. When that relationship weakens, no budget speech, no matter how well-crafted can restore confidence on its own. We return, then, to the original question. If every year the budget is presented in the name of the common man, why does the life of the common man remain largely unchanged?
Perhaps the answer is not found in the budget itself, but in the system that produces it. We revise numbers every year, but leave structures largely intact. We announce new priorities, but preserve old constraints. Until that changes, budgets will continue to be presented, speeches will continue to be delivered and figures will continue to grow. But the ordinary citizen will continue to ask the same question silently, persistently with increasing disbelief that if this was meant for me, why does it still not feel like it?
—The writer is PhD in Political Science, and visiting faculty at QAU Islamabad.
