Pakistan has survived three states since 1947: the partition state, the truncated state after 1971, and the praetorian state since 1977. The 2025 floods are birthing a fourth: the hunger state. For the first time since independence, the question has shifted from who governs Pakistan to whether Pakistan can govern at all.

The floods ravaging Pakistan mark the third act in a civilizational breakdown. The 2010 deluge killed 2,000 people and destroyed USD 9.7 billion worth of infrastructure, yet no lessons were learnt.

Since no heed was paid to early warning systems, improved flood defenses, or institutional memory, the floods returned just as strong after 12 years. In 2022, one-third of our country was again submerged, affecting 33 million people, plunging the rupee down which lost 22 percent of its value against the dollar within months.

Our response is shock rather than preparedness. Now in 2025, with Punjab’s three major rivers recording simultaneous peaks, even government ministers admit this is “the biggest flood in Punjab’s history.”

This particular catastrophe is different due to two reasons. India, which was somewhat better off during the floods of 2010 and 2022, now faces its worst floods in four decades, with 148,000 to 175,000 hectares of Punjab farmland underwater. This means both countries would be competing for the same shrinking global grain supply, not immediately, but inevitably when the next climate shock arrives.

Secondly, the monsoon floods come in the aftermath of heightened tensions, which has left a far more hostile India manipulating river flows upstream, holding the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance. Thus, for the first time, we are seeing all “Indian” rivers flowing westward.

Two million people have been evacuated in Pakistani Punjab alone, with 4,000 villages submerged. These displaced millions now depend on a distribution system that cannot deliver food from warehouses to relief camps. As per USDA figures, Pakistan had 5 million tons of wheat in storage as of April, though flood waters damaged portions. Still, flood victims face hunger. This is more an issue of immobility than availability. Amid this crisis, wheat prices have spiked 20 percent despite the theoretical surplus, revealing that abundance means nothing without functioning logistics.

Pakistan produced a record........

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