The bitter standoff over Sindh’s Rs. 180 billion cess on oil movement has done more than spark a fiscal dispute; it has exposed the deep flaws in Pakistan’s development model. What we are witnessing is not just a policy failure but the deliberate construction of a two-tier nation, divided by the very highways meant to unite it.
For decades, Islamabad’s planners have showcased “national connectivity” as the practical embodiment of their slogan, “Pakistan First.” In reality, they built an infrastructure that connects privilege to privilege. The real engines of the economy, the trucks, oil tankers, and drivers who keep Pakistan’s lifeblood moving, still begin their journeys on broken, uneven, and overcrowded roads, long neglected and choked with every kind of vehicle. These are the roads that never find space in government reports or political posters.
The motorways, long hailed by successive governments as symbols of progress, were in practice built more for private cars and passenger comfort than for the freight movement that drives Pakistan’s economy. While commercial passenger buses and a limited number of freight carriers do use these routes, the high tolls and access restrictions make them impractical for heavy vehicle operators. The high tolls on motorways such as the M-1 (Islamabad–Peshawar) and M-2 (Lahore–Islamabad) serve as a discouraging mechanism, effectively keeping heavy transporters away to preserve a smooth ride for those who can afford it.
The result was entirely predictable: with no affordable or suitable motorways available, particularly in Sindh, nearly all freight traffic, including oil, wheat, cement, and raw materials, continued to rely on the old, toll-free highways such as the N-5 (Super Highway). These roads, never meant to carry such heavy loads, have deteriorated rapidly. Maintenance costs have soared, and provincial infrastructure connected to them has crumbled under the weight of the nation’s economic neglect.
So, where, one must ask, is the national interest in building a premium motorway network that the nation’s supply chain cannot afford to use? There is none.
A nation’s strength is not measured by the speed of its SUVs but by the resilience of its trucks, trains, and workers, those who keep its wheels turning
A truly national plan would have begun with a dedicated freight corridor built for cargo, with stronger pavements, efficient gradients, and tolls that made economic sense. The priority should have been connecting Karachi’s ports, the country’s economic heart, to the industrial centres of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and to the underserved markets of Balochistan. Instead, Pakistan built for prestige over purpose. The motorways of the north (Lahore–Islamabad–Peshawar) became symbols of political pride, while the logistical backbone of the south was left to decay.
Sindh’s decision to impose a cess on oil transport is therefore less an act of defiance and more an act of desperation. The province argues that the federal government has abandoned its duty to manage the national supply chain rationally. Since federal policy forces thousands of tankers onto Sindh’s battered roads every day, the province has decided to tax that destruction. The oil industry’s outrage, in that sense, is misplaced; this crisis was not born of Sindh’s tax, but of decades of federal neglect that made such taxation inevitable.
Yet this move also raises important questions. Does the transportation of oil from Karachi to the rest of the country make Sindh the legitimate authority to impose such a levy? If so, would other provinces then be justified in levying similar cesses as these trucks pass through their territories? And if they did, would Pakistan’s national logistics system collapse under competing provincial tolls? Equally, why has the oil industry been singled out, when nearly all of Pakistan’s imports and exports, from machinery to food, pass through Karachi’s ports?
These questions reveal a deeper flaw in Pakistan’s governance: the absence of a coherent federal transport and taxation policy. Instead of creating shared national frameworks, provinces and the centre operate in isolation, each responding to crises born of neglect rather than planning.
The real failure lies in the policy priorities themselves. The most crucial motorway for national integration, the M-6 from Karachi to Sukkur, should have been built first. It is the missing spine of Pakistan’s economic body, connecting the country’s ports to its industrial heartland. Yet, it remains mired in planning and slow execution, a glaring symbol of how national interest has been sacrificed to political convenience. Instead of building where the economy demanded, successive governments built where visibility and votes mattered most.
As a result, Sindh, the province that hosts Pakistan’s only major seaport and bears the burden of the nation’s oil and cargo traffic, continues to operate on crumbling roads. The so-called “national connectivity” network has expanded northward while leaving the southern arteries blocked. Karachi, the entry point of the country’s trade and fuel, remains disconnected from the national highway system in any meaningful way.
This is more than an economic issue. It is a mix of developmental misplanning and moral failure. The motorway system today stands as a symbol of Pakistan’s inequality, a smooth highway for the rich, financed by the taxes of the poor. Each toll plaza is a reminder of how policy has privileged comfort over necessity. The fuel that runs through these roads, the food on city tables, and the raw materials that feed our industries all travel along the broken roads of Sindh and Balochistan, carried by drivers who bear the real cost of our development illusions.
The Rs. 180 billion crisis is, in truth, a reckoning. It is the accumulated bill for decades of building a Pakistan for the few while ignoring the many. It reminds us that a nation’s strength is not measured by the speed of its SUVs but by the resilience of its trucks, trains, and workers, those who keep its wheels turning.
Until Pakistan rebuilds its priorities, choosing inclusion over prestige and efficiency over vanity, we will remain a country on the wrong road: one that moves swiftly towards inequality, while its real economy stands still in the traffic jam of neglect.