{"id":53208,"date":"2023-03-07T20:14:51","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T11:14:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2023\/mar\/07\/pakistanis-leaving-country-inflation-job-losses-crisis"},"modified":"2023-03-07T20:14:51","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T11:14:51","slug":"pakistanis-are-leaving-our-country-in-droves-due-to-inflation-and-job-losses-who-can-blame-them-moni-mohsin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=53208","title":{"rendered":"Pakistanis are leaving our country in droves due to inflation and job losses \u2013 who can blame them? | Moni Mohsin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After decades on the edge, Pakistan is now fully in crisis. And a general election later this year is unlikely to bring change<\/p>\n<p>Last month, Anthony Soshil went to renew his passport in Lahore at a normally sleepy bureaucratic office. He had a contact there and expected to be ushered straight to the counter. Instead, he was flung into a melee of thousands of desperate people. Fights were breaking out everywhere. Police were summoned to quell the crowds. Quickly overwhelmed, the police called the army.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, more than <a href=\"https:\/\/dailytimes.com.pk\/1058262\/800000-professionals-left-pakistan-in-2022\/\">800,000 Pakistanis<\/a> left the country in search of better economic prospects abroad. With rocketing inflation and the rupee <a href=\"https:\/\/economictimes.indiatimes.com\/news\/international\/world-news\/pakistani-rupee-sinks-to-all-time-low-against-us-dollar\/articleshow\/93169992.cms?from=mdr\">devaluing by 30%<\/a> during 2022, millions of urban middle-class people have been pushed to the brink of poverty. Cataclysmic floods have ravaged the rural poor. With only enough foreign reserves to pay for less than a month of imports, the state is on its knees.<\/p>\n<p>Moni Mohsin is a Pakistani writer based in London and the author of The End of Innocence<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2023\/mar\/07\/pakistanis-leaving-country-inflation-job-losses-crisis\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After decades on the edge, Pakistan is now fully in crisis. And a general election later this year is unlikely to bring changeLast month, Anthony Soshil went to renew his passport in Lahore at a normally sleepy bureaucratic office. He had a contact the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3622,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[60,61,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pakistan","category-south-and-central-asia","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3622"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53208"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53209,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53208\/revisions\/53209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}