Pakistan, Oct. 9 -- The floods have done more than wash away crops. They have exposed the fault lines in Pakistan's economy, a system that survives on borrowed confidence and political expediency. Punjab and Sindh alone lost nearly ten per cent of their cultivated land. Rice paddies, cotton fields, and sugarcane plantations lie flattened. Roads, canals, and irrigation networks are fractured. Markets struggle to reach the villages that feed them.

In this chaos, the human cost is immediate. Farmers face ruined livelihoods, daily wages vanish, and entire supply chains teeter. Relief trickles in slowly. Provincial budgets, already overstretched, strain under the weight of mismanagement and local administrations struggle to coordinate resourc...