By Engineer Arshad H Abbasi
In 2006, Pakistan quietly entered one of the most serious crises in its economic history. It wasn’t caused by war, invasion, or natural disaster. No tanks were rolling across borders or cities brought to ruin by bombs. Instead, it was an invisible storm—unfolding across spreadsheets, utility bills, and financial ledgers. They called it Circular Debt.
This debt, a growing web of unpaid energy bills, mounting subsidies, and inefficiencies across the power and gas sectors, began draining the lifeblood from the country’s energy system. It moved silently through the institutions—NEPRA, CPPA, NTDC, WAPDA—crippling operations, stalling investments, and ultimately threatening national sovereignty. By 2021, it had surged past Rs 2.28 trillion.
This was the battle I—Engineer Arshad H. Abbasi—was reluctantly pulled into once again.
Despite my worsening financial condition and limited resources, my old friends, Imtiaz Gul (CEO of CRSS) and Engineer Jabbar, kept urging me to step forward. They knew my history in public service and my lifelong commitment to Pakistan’s energy sector. They also knew that I believed in solving problems through evidence, logic, and hard work—not slogans or politics.
At their insistence, I wrote a letter to the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) on October 3, 2021, urging direct intervention. We believed that no civil institution had the authority or will to fix the circular debt crisis. And to our surprise, the letter didn’t vanish into a void.
A few days later, I was invited to present my solutions to a technical team working under the guidance of GHQ. Engineer Jabbar later joined me, bearing the cost of his own travel, not once but several times. We held numerous sessions in Rawalpindi—usually near the Pearl Continental Hotel—and we presented a comprehensive, data-driven plan to address the circular debt problem. The seriousness of the military team gave us some hope, and for a while, the financial burden we were shouldering seemed worth it.
Then, six months into the process, I was told that the Prime Minister’s Secretariat would now take the lead on implementation. I was directed to meet senior officials for the next steps. Among them were two names I knew well: Hussain Asghar and Tariq Hameed Butt.
Familiar Faces, Fading Hope
Hussain Asghar, then Deputy Chairman of NAB, had a long history in law enforcement. Known for being personally honest and punctual, he had held posts as IG in Gilgit-Baltistan and Director FIA. But despite his reputation for integrity, I had long believed—and still believe—that his commitment to real reform was weak. He was not the kind of officer who would challenge a broken system or take bold steps to solve the energy crisis.
Sitting beside him was someone I had known since my university days: Tariq Hameed Butt. We had briefly played football together at Engineering University Lahore, although my stamina only allowed me ten or fifteen minutes on the field. Still, I remembered him clearly, especially because of a peculiar nickname the players had given him: “Salaa Sb”. When I asked about it, I was told that his brother-in-law was none other than Nawaz Sharif, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan. This strange title stuck with me for decades. I don’t exact relation so far .
Tariq Butt had since risen through the ranks and was now a Grade-21 officer, serving as Director PM. In 2014, while he was working as an additional director at FIA, he had asked me to share a report I had written on KESC’s role in circular debt. He had promised action with the help of Hussain Asghar. I never heard back. Eleven years later, nothing had changed.
If both had acted professionally back then, Pakistan would have seen real progress.
The “Ear” Theory
What happened next was beyond disappointing—it was surreal.
In one of our meetings, Mr. Tariq Butt revealed something he claimed was the result of fifteen years of research. It wasn’t a new power generation model or a policy on subsidy reform. It wasn’t even a serious technical proposal. Instead, he unveiled an idea so absurd it felt like satire: ear geometry profiling.
According to his theory, the shapes of human ears could indicate a person’s likelihood of being corrupt. By building a database of ear images from officials in NEPRA, WAPDA, CPPA, K-Electric, the Ministry of Energy, and other institutions, he claimed, Pakistan could identify corrupt individuals and remove them from positions of influence. He believed this biometric profiling would allow agencies like NAB, FIA, and IB to target and prosecute bad actors—leading, magically, to the elimination of circular debt.
I sat there in stunned silence.
I had spent months—years—preparing technically sound, data-backed reforms. I had sacrificed my time, my money, and my health. And now, the fate of Pakistan’s energy sector was being redirected toward a bizarre, unscientific distraction.
Still, we gave him the benefit of the doubt. We reviewed the theory, requested documentation, and suggested it be reviewed independently. But nothing ever came of it. No pilot study, no peer review, no budget, and no action. The proposal vanished into bureaucratic oblivion—along with the genuine reform agenda we had worked so hard to create.
The Real Cost
The real tragedy wasn’t just that the “ear theory” was flawed. It was that it replaced credible solutions. While officials like Mr. Butt promoted pseudoscience, the circular debt continued to grow. The power grid weakened. The gas sector suffered. And the average Pakistani paid the price.
I, too, paid a price. I spent months commuting, often at my own expense. I sacrificed weekends, responded to every technical query, and patiently waited for officials to act. And in the end, nothing changed. No one reimbursed me. No one even apologized. The same faces that had promised reform a decade earlier were now spinning fantasies.
A National Tragedy
This is not a fictional tale. It is a real case study in how governance can fail a nation—not because solutions don’t exist, but because those in power choose not to implement them.
Pakistan’s circular debt crisis could have been mitigated. The tools were there: policy reform, financial restructuring, accountability, and technical clarity. Instead, the country got auricular profiling—an idea that belongs nowhere near serious policymaking.
This story is tragic for Pakistanis. It is embarrassing for the institutions involved. And it is a warning to the rest of the world: even the most brilliant technical plan means nothing if there is no courage to act.
As of today, the circular debt continues to rise. The energy sector remains unstable. And those who tried to fix the system through logic and data—engineers like me—are left with nothing but lost time, unpaid costs, and the memory of a reform that never was. And so, with the weight of years spent wrestling shadows, I offer a final reflection—an engineer’s lament etched in data, diagnostics, and disappointment.
Even the Pentagon’s might or the CIA’s craft could not dismantle Pakistan’s circular debt, so long as the very architecture designed to manage energy remains tethered to a decaying human ecosystem—outdated minds, self-serving gatekeepers, and systems allergic to precision. OGRA, NEPRA, CPPA, and every limb of the energy network operate not as dynamic engines of reform, but as monuments to paralysis.
Unless these institutions are surgically rebuilt—code by code, neuron by neuron—into true artificial intelligence systems, immune to political patronage and bureaucratic fatigue, then every rupee injected, every reform attempted, and every promise made shall echo into the void. My prediction is not mere pessimism—it is a mathematical certainty built on every failed meeting, every shelved proposal, and every laughable experiment passed off as “innovation.”
Let it be known: Pakistan’s Army could raise the crescent flag in New Delhi ten times over, and yet still it would fail to conquer this silent beast—circular debt—while the current leadership of our energy institutions remains in place. For this enemy is not across a border. It sits behind desks. It wears suits. It nods solemnly. And it does nothing.
This is not defeatism. It is a eulogy—for time lost, for reforms smothered, and for a nation whose light dims not from lack of brilliance, but from the shadows of its protectors. The question remains: Who will pay for the truth that was ignored, for the plans that were buried, and for the country that continues to suffer? The answer, like the debt, remains unresolved.