Burning bills

“Riots were triggered off by soaring prices, by malpractices, or by hunger. But these grievances operated within a popular consensus as to what were legitimate and what were illegitimate practices...” E.P. Thompson’s influential 1971 piece on food price and scarcity riots documented a deeper sense of norms and obligations found within 18th-century English society. It laid out what ordinary people thought the responsibility of different actors, including the sovereign (or the state), is supposed to be. The argument was that protest and rioting is not just because of hunger and deprivation, but also because there is a violation of a moral responsibility on the part of higher powers. He called this the “moral economy of the poor”. Recent protests against exorbitantly high electricity bills in Pakistan can be understood from the same perspective. They are a function of the mass impoverishment being caused by relentless food inflation, rising electricity tariffs, and stagnant incomes; and a product of total frustration at the state for violating its basic obligations towards citizens.