This has happened before our very eyes, how can we turn a blind eye to it? The owners of the sugar mills said that there is a surplus of sugar, the country needs foreign exchange, and sugar should be allowed to be sent abroad. The government started thinking that if sugar is allowed to be exported, there will be no shortage, sugar should not become expensive. The Sugar Mills Association assured that nothing like this would happen, and the pressure from the mill owners increased. A high-level meeting was held, the federal government seemed ready. The owners were all big people, and their pressure was on. Punjab Secretary Food Moazzam Sapra and Cane Commissioner Abdul Rauf were furious that if sugar is exported, there will be a difference in the supply and demand of sugar, and sugar will become expensive. The federal government and the Punjab government did not like this opinion and, under the royal order, they removed both the Secretary Food and the Cane Commissioner from their posts and made them special officers. Despite the passage of many months, they are still special officers. These decisions were made before our waking eyes and today the effects of this wrong decision have come before us. At that time, the average price of sugar was Rs 140 per kg. Now the government itself has had to fix this official rate at Rs 163. It is as if every common citizen is having to buy sugar at a cost of Rs 23 per kg. What bigger scandal can there be than this? Due to a wrong decision, the mill owners have earned an estimated Rs 150 billion. It is necessary to expose and punish those responsible for this decision. On the other hand, it is necessary to reinstate those who opposed this wrong decision and are suffering the punishment of a sin they did not commit. It is also necessary to give them civil awards. Last year, the price of sugarcane was not increased for farmers. Earlier, mill owners earned billions of rupees by exporting sugar and now they are warming their pockets by selling expensive sugar. Unfortunately, this turn a blind eye of the mill owners and the government is happening in the name of a free economy and the fluctuations of market forces. This is the worst form of capitalism, which is no longer prevalent anywhere in the world. Now, in the US and the UK, despite a free economy and market economy, capitalists are not allowed to play freely on food and food items. There, the government insists on keeping food prices at a minimum.

This poor and humble journalist is not a revolutionary who believes in overthrowing the capitalist system. Neither does this ignorant journalist believe in Balzac’s saying that “behind every great tyrant lies a crime.” Nor does he believe in Mario Piezo’s dialogue of The Godfather that “the concentration of wealth without a solid reason is necessarily theft.” I, like Imran Khan, Benazir and Nawaz Sharif, believe in the market economy and I also agree that a nation cannot be prosperous unless it creates wealth. But in Pakistan, there is that form of cruel capitalism that was abolished in America in 1920. Today, mill owners and capitalists have formed cartels here, although the purpose of the market economy is for industrialists to compete with each other so that the common people can get cheap things from the market due to this competition. The worst examples of monopoly are here and the state is watching the looting of ordinary citizens with criminal silence. The worst monopolies exist in the sectors of cement, banks, sugar mills and power plants. Instead of competing with each other, all the owners, through mutual consent and consensus, not only determine the quantity of production, but also set the price themselves instead of market forces. This is not a free economy at all, but a cruel capitalist mindset. Governments must break these cartels and monopolies.

First, look at the cartel of banks. Banks around the world provide loans to common people, traders and the needy at cheap rates, but all the banks in Pakistan only give loans to the government at expensive rates and the return of this loan with interest is considered banking. Housing loans are not being given, nor cheap car loans are being provided. Banks have adopted the easiest way by giving loans to governments. By giving cement mills to the private sector, its prices have increased many times because the cement owners themselves sit and decide on production and decide to increase the price themselves. Everyone saw how the power plants were earning illegal money. What kind of business was it to charge full electricity rates without providing electricity? This is the situation of sugarcane owners. While buying sugarcane from farmers, they are given minimum rates, then sugar mills delay these payments for an unprecedented time. In the past, many sugar mills used to delay payments for many years. Now, when sugar is made, the monopolists of sugar mills earn profits in various ways. They must earn profits, but has it ever been thought that sugarcane farmers should also be given a share of the profits? Whatever profit they get, it belongs to the mill owners and whatever loss they get, it belongs to either the farmers or the consumers who buy sugar? What kind of business is this in which the owners make a complete profit and everyone else loses in any case.

Our state’s attitude towards these scandals and ruthless looting is apologetic. The basic principle in a free market economy is that the state has to break cartels and monopolies. Throughout the world, food and fruit prices decrease during the month of Ramadan. In Britain, all non-Muslim stores provide cheap items by offering Ramadan offers. And here, the opposite is true: everything, especially food items, becomes expensive during Ramadan. Is there not a single one of the prayer seekers, Tablighis, Hajis, Islamic brothers and believing traders across the country who would do business with cheap dates during Ramadan? Is there not a single righteous person who would arrange to make gram flour, ghee, bananas and apples cheaper? It is said that each of us is the biggest revolutionary, the most righteous and the most honest, but the prices of Ramadan are defying the truth of our faith!!