Pakistan, Sept. 17 -- There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from doing the same sum every month and getting a worse answer each time. Salary in one column. Rent, school fees, groceries, petrol, electricity in the other. For years now, the second column has been growing faster than the first, and for millions of Pakistani households, the gap between them is no longer a gap; it is a hole they are climbing out of every single month, only to fall back in at the start of the next. This isn't an abstract economic story. It is the story of a father checking the fuel gauge before deciding whether to take the longer, cheaper route to work. It is a mother recalculating the weekly vegetable budget because onions have suddenly become a ...