🔲 Public Inquiry Series | Episode 18
Topic: How Can Pakistan’s Electricity System Be Fixed
(Electricity Theft and the Kunda Culture Part 2)
🔺 When institutions withhold facts, the responsibility to uncover the truth rests with the public.
Research & Writing: Syed Shayan
In legal terms, electricity theft refers to any deliberate interference with a meter or supply line that prevents accurate recording of consumption or leads to underreporting. This includes direct hooking from the main line without a meter, tampering with meters by slowing electronic circuits or using shunts, and altering wiring, such as neutral manipulation, to bypass the meter entirely.
In Pakistan, electricity theft has evolved into a complex blend of social behaviour and ideological defiance. An honest citizen who pays bills regularly is often labelled naïve, while those who bypass the system are sometimes viewed as clever or even successful.
This is where a deeper psychological crisis begins to take shape, embedding the problem into the social fabric.
This dynamic can be understood through four primary forms of electricity theft, each driven by its own logic and justification.
1. Direct Hooking (Kunda System) The most visible and widespread method, where electricity is drawn directly from the main line without passing through a meter. Since no usage is recorded, the entire cost is ultimately shifted onto the system and, by extension, onto paying consumers.
2. The Middle Class Paradox Those who cannot openly engage in direct theft often turn to subtle forms of meter tampering. The underlying mindset is simple: “I do not want to appear dishonest, but I also do not want to be disadvantaged.” This leads to quiet but systematic manipulation.
3. Informal Coordination Between Officials and Industry This is the most organised and consequential form of electricity theft. Here, consumers are not acting alone; they are enabled by individuals within the system. Large industrial users may bypass meters, operate dual connections, or consume unregistered loads, while manipulation of readings, billing adjustments, and record alterations help conceal the activity. The scale can reach into millions, yet often remains undetected due to systemic complicity.
4. Electricity as a Tool of Influence (Power Play) In many rural and semi urban areas, electricity theft is not merely economic, it is symbolic. Illegal connections become a visible marker of power and influence. Those who operate without fear of enforcement are often perceived as local authority figures. This fosters a culture in which accountability fades and non payment becomes normalised.
These four patterns illustrate how electricity theft manifests across different segments of society. The kunda user calls it necessity, the middle class calls it adjustment, industrial actors treat it as strategy, and the powerful regard it as influence. Different expressions, but the same underlying rationale. Each participant constructs a justification, and it is this collective self justification that allows the problem to persist and deepen.
Current analysis suggests that the root cause of electricity theft in Pakistan is not simply high tariffs, but a breakdown in trust between the state and its citizens. When the social contract weakens, individuals begin to detach themselves from the system’s rules and obligations.
When an ordinary citizen sees that, beyond paying for actual consumption, they must also bear heavy taxes and additional charges, while already privileged groups such as judges, military officials, and senior bureaucrats benefit from free or subsidised electricity, a fundamental question arises: is the system truly fair?
If equality before the law is to be meaningful, should similar standards not apply across professions, including teachers, doctors, engineers, scientists, IT professionals, and chartered accountants?
This condition aligns with what the French sociologist Émile Durkheim described as anomie, a state in which social norms weaken and the distinction between right and wrong becomes blurred. When the state fails to uphold justice, laws lose their practical authority, and society begins to construct its own informal rules. Electricity theft, in many ways, is a direct outcome of this erosion.
(To be continued in the next episode)
