Access to Power: Electricity and the

Infrastructural State in Pakistan Ijlal

Naqvi
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/access-to-power-electricity-and-the-infrastructural-sta
te-in-pakistan-ijlal-naqvi/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Pakistan A Slave State Roedad Khan

https://ebookmass.com/product/pakistan-a-slave-state-roedad-khan/

The Islamic State in Khorasan: Afghanistan, Pakistan

and the New Central Jihad Antonio Giustozzi

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-islamic-state-in-khorasan-
afghanistan-pakistan-and-the-new-central-jihad-antonio-giustozzi/

Gambling with Violence: State Outsourcing of War in

Pakistan and India Yelena Biberman

https://ebookmass.com/product/gambling-with-violence-state-
outsourcing-of-war-in-pakistan-and-india-yelena-biberman/

Revenge, Politics and Blasphemy in Pakistan Adeel

Hussain

https://ebookmass.com/product/revenge-politics-and-blasphemy-in-
pakistan-adeel-hussain/
Advances in Electric Power and Energy: Static State
Estimation Mohamed E. El-Hawary

https://ebookmass.com/product/advances-in-electric-power-and-
energy-static-state-estimation-mohamed-e-el-hawary/

In a Bad State: Responding to State and Local Budget

Crises David Schleicher

https://ebookmass.com/product/in-a-bad-state-responding-to-state-
and-local-budget-crises-david-schleicher/

Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in

Contemporary China Lynette H. Ong

https://ebookmass.com/product/outsourcing-repression-everyday-
state-power-in-contemporary-china-lynette-h-ong/

Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in

Contemporary China Lynette H. Ong

https://ebookmass.com/product/outsourcing-repression-everyday-
state-power-in-contemporary-china-lynette-h-ong-2/

ELECTROCULTURE FOR BEGINNERS: 2 BOOKS IN 1 - Unlock the

Secret Power of Electricity to Maximize your
Agriculture, have a Faster Plant Growth, and Improve
Your Crop Health Errol Ramos
https://ebookmass.com/product/electroculture-for-
beginners-2-books-in-1-unlock-the-secret-power-of-electricity-to-
maximize-your-agriculture-have-a-faster-plant-growth-and-improve-
Access to Power
 MODERN SOUTH ASIA

Ashutosh Varshney, Series Editor

Pradeep Chhibber, Associate Series Editor
Editorial Board
Kaushik Basu (Cornell)
Sarah Besky (Cornell)
Jennifer Bussell (Berkeley)
Veena Das ( Johns Hopkins)
Patrick Heller (Brown)
Niraja Gopal Jayal ( Jawaharlal Nehru University)
Devesh Kapur ( Johns Hopkins)
Atul Kohli (Princeton)
Pratap Bhanu Mehta (Ashoka University)
Shandana Khan Mohmand (University of Sussex)
Ashley Tellis (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)
Steven Wilkinson (Yale)
e Other One Percent
Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur, and Nirvikar Singh
Social Justice through Inclusion
Francesca R. Jensenius
Dispossession without Development
Michael Levien
e Man Who Remade India
Vinay Sitapati
Business and Politics in India
Edited by Christophe Ja relot, Atul Kohli, and Kanta Murali
Clients and Constituents
Jennifer Bussell
Gambling with Violence
Yelena Biberman
Mobilizing the Marginalized
Amit Ahuja
e Absent Dialogue
Anit Mukherjee
When Nehru Looked East
Francine Frankel
Capable Women, Incapable States
Poulami Roychowdhury
Farewell to Arms
Rumela Sen
Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism
Karen Barkey, Sudipta Kaviraj, and Vatsal Naresh
Cultivating Democracy
Mukulika Banerjee
Patching Development
Rajesh Veeraraghavan
e Di cult Politics of Peace
Christopher Clary
Access to Power
Ijlal Naqvi
 Access to Power
Electricity and the Infrastructural State in Pakistan

I JL AL NAQVI
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmi ed, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permi ed
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Naqvi, Ijlal, author.
Title: Access to power : electricity and the infrastructural state in
Pakistan / Ijlal Naqvi.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2022] |
Series: Modern South Asia series | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identi ers: LCCN 2022018790 (print) | LCCN 2022018791 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197540954 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197540978 (epub) |
ISBN 9780197540961 | ISBN 9780197540985
Subjects: LCSH: Electric industries Pakistan. | Electric power Pakistan. |
Power resources Pakistan. | Infrastructure (Economics) Pakistan.
Classi cation: LCC HD9685. P182 N36 2022 (print) | LCC HD9685 .P182 (ebook) |
DDC 333.79095491 dc23/eng/20220610
LC record available at h ps://lccn.loc.gov/2022018790
LC ebook record available at h ps://lccn.loc.gov/2022018791

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197540954.001.0001

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii

1. Introduction 1

PART I: THE NATIONAL LEVEL OF ANALYSIS

2. e Interprovincial Unevenness of the Infrastructural State 25

3. Pathologies of Development Practice 57

PART II: THE CIT Y LEVEL OF ANALYSIS

4. e Administration of Losses 81

5. Negotiating Formality in Islamabad’s Katchi Abadis 100

PART III: THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL OF ANALYSIS

6. Governance as an Emergent Compromise 121

7. Money, Violence, and Connections: e Culture of Power 133

8. Conclusion 151

Notes 163
References 175
Index 187

v
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I couldn’t have wri en this book alone. Charlie Kurzman shepherded me

through my dissertation eldwork and the di cult process of writing up
without returning to the University of North Carolina (UNC). Charlie’s gener-
osity of spirit and mind is such that I can’t imagine a be er adviser. Andy Perrin,
Margarita Mooney, and John Stephens took a leap of faith on a project that was
li le more than a hunting license in its early stages. Ayesha Jalal’s razor-​sharp
insights on Pakistan and continued enthusiasm for the project always provided a
boost. Needless to say, all errors remain my responsibility alone.
e eldwork I did in Islamabad lies at the heart of this book. Employees
of the Islamabad Electric Supply Company (IESCO) and the Lahore Electric
Supply Company (LESCO) taught me how their system works, sharing their
time and wisdom and tea with humor and an open spirit a​ ll with no reward to
themselves. I am especially grateful to the sta of the subdivisions who tolerated
my repeated intrusions into their working lives as well as the katchi abadi
residents of Islamabad who helped me try to see things from their perspective.
I am grateful to all who shared their time and views with me.
In Pakistan, I was very lucky to stumble into a professional community
with extensive experience in the Pakistani power sector when I joined the
Energy Policy Program, a United States Agency for International Development
(USAID)–​funded consulting e ort that supported the Ministry of Water and
Power in its governance reform program. I learned a great deal from Mian
Shahid Ahmed, Charley Moseley, Salahuddin Rifai, Manzoor Shaikh, Michael
Gembol, Mary Webster, Shahid Sa ar, and others. Munir Ahmed’s camaraderie
and support in navigating the madness of the ministry and USAID’s contractor
politics was essential to keeping a sense of perspective and humor. Munir was
an early reader of my dissertation whose feedback I relied on. More broadly, my
colleagues had a depth of power sector knowledge which they generously shared

vii
viii

with me. Saleem Arif and Ashfaq Mahmood o ered crucial support and guid-
ance based on their tremendous experience and knowledge.
Singapore Management University (SMU) has been my intellectual home for
the past ten years, and sometimes a sad one. Too many friends and colleagues
departed the School of Social Sciences (SOSS), but many more have joined, and
I am happy to see this environment changing into one that is more supportive
for junior scholars. Chandran Kukathas has led this transformation, and I am
grateful to him for his faith in my work. Christine Henderson and Chandran
have jointly set the tone by opening their home to myself and colleagues with
generosity and joie de vivre. e academic writing group at SOSS has been a
wonderfully supportive peer-​learning environment. I’m particularly thankful to
Nick Harrigan, Serena Wee, Jake Ricks, and Gao Yang for their inputs to this
book (and other projects), but most especially for their friendship. Ulas Ince and
Hiro Saito gave constructive comments to unpolished dra s. Rebecca Maniates
at the SMU library solved my problems with handling citations across multiple
formats in unwieldy les. I also need to thank the students of my development
class who learned more about electricity in Pakistan than they perhaps wanted
to! e SMU School of Social Sciences and the Lee Kong Chian Fellowship both
provided funding for this book. Part of the research for Chapter 4 was supported
by the Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1 grant
C242/​MSS13S004.
Parts of this book have been published in the Journal of Development Studies,
Current Sociology, and Urban Studies. Developing these sections for publication
was an essential step toward improving the argument in those chapters, and also
in developing the overall framework of the book. I thank the editors and the
anonymous referees for their comments. I also bene ted from the collective ef-
fort entailed in the Current Sociology publication, which was guided by Diane
Davis and Julie-​Anne Boudreau.
In no particular order, I have many debts of gratitude to acknowledge for
people and institutions who have helped me develop this work (directly or in-
directly). Aasim Sajjad Akhtar helped me get started on serious eldwork in
Islamabad. Tariq Rahman at Quaid-​e-​Azam University’s National Institute for
Pakistan Studies generously provided me with a temporary academic home
away from UNC. I bene ted from a seminar at Oxford organized by Indrajit Roy.
I thank Miguel Loureiro and Shandana Mohmand Khan for hosting me for a
talk at the Institute of Development Studies. Majed Akhtar very kindly arranged
for me to give a talk at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where
Ed Simpson and Liz Cha erjee provided insightful comments. Audiences at
Northwestern and Brown turned up for online talks and gave comments that
helped me re ne the argument. Kamran Asdar Ali, Shahnaz Rouse, and I y
Abraham have all o ered sage advice and warm support at di erent times.
 ix

Federico Rossi provided theoretical sophistication and friendship in large doses.

Seth Schindler brought me to Manchester’s Global Development Institute for a
workshop on the Belt and Road Initiative, which helped me see the signi cance
of Sahiwal for my argument. Subadevan has been an extraordinarily capable re-
search assistant over several years and is now well on his way toward developing
his own scholarly agenda. Ate Poorthuis and Anirudh Govind helped me im-
mensely with the models and charts in Chapter 4. Anirudh also contributed to
almost every gure in the book, giving each a li le more style and purpose than
they might otherwise have had. Syed Zahoor Hassan opened doors at LESCO
for me at just the right time. Waqas bin Najib has been an invaluable interlocutor.
Ejaz Haider tried to mitigate the damage I was doing in translation and translit-
eration. I am grateful to Libby Beri for casting a professional editor’s eye on the
entire book in her role as development editor. e book’s cover is based on a
photo taken by the very talented Omer Rana.
I owe a great deal to the salty sharks for keeping me current with developments
in Pakistan and allowing me to learn from their incisive commentaries. I hope
this is re ected in the quality of this work, and if not, I will certainly hear about it!
e two weeks in 2015 that I spent at Brown’s Watson Institute for the pro-
gram on Governance and Development in the Global South have had a very
broad in uence on this project. Nitsan Chorev, Andy Schrank, Prerna Singh,
and Michael Kennedy, among others, helped me see a larger intellectual land-
scape. On an unrelated but equally important note, I also learned at Brown that
Latin Americans are simply more ready to have fun than anyone else! Patrick
Heller gave valuable feedback on the development of the book at the proposal
stage. He and Ashutosh Varshney opened the door for me at OUP’s Modern
South Asia series.
I have more reason than most to thank my editor at OUP, Dave McBride,
as well as the anonymous reviewers. e reviewers understood this book and
captured its strengths in be er ways than I have o en managed. eir generous
praise and constructive critiques were a delight to receive and have given me
a chance to improve the book. ere are few joys in academic life be er than
having your work read, critiqued with care and skill, and returned with encour-
agement. My thanks to Dave for shepherding this process through in a timely
manner, not least in securing the vital second review the week that SMU was to
decide on my tenure case. He and the delegates who endorsed the manuscript
have my sincere gratitude.
In Ma hew and Tom I have two friends as loyal and true as one could wish
for. ey, and the FC crew, have also forced me to stay much healther than I oth-
erwise would have done. To help me nish on time, Tom and Kate even threw
me a party to celebrate the completion of my book manuscript!
x

So is the best kid a dad could ask for; enough said. Leylac saw this book
develop through many iterations of dissertation chapters, articles, and talks. We
traveled a long way together. ank you.
My wonderful siblings are a testament to all the love that is possible in a big
family. We live so far apart, but they have always managed to be there for me.
I can’t wait to join them and all of the 37-​D gang at our next raucous celebration.
is book is dedicated to my parents, whose love, encouragement, and sup-
port have been such a powerful constant in my life.
 1

Introduction

Pakistan would desperately like to produce enough electricity, but it usually

doesn’t. is is the rare issue on which government and private sector can unite,
and it is the cause of su ering for rich and poor alike across the entirety of the
country. For most of the last two decades, urban residents in Pakistan may have
been without power for 8 hours on any given day, and rural residents for 12 or
more. Electricity shortages are one of the many poor governance outcomes
characteristic of the South Asian state. Standard development thinking points
to a lack or absence of institutions in comparison with an idealized and distant
other country, such as Denmark, with governance reform programs formulated
accordingly. e orientation toward what Pakistan is not takes us away from how
it actually functions and to whose bene t. Electricity governance reinforces re-
lations of power between provinces and the federal center, contributes to the
marginalization of subordinate groups in the city, and orients citizens toward a
patronage-​based relationship with the state through encounters with street-​level
bureaucrats.1
Pakistan’s power sector’s woes are less mystery than tragedy,2 but to conclude
simply that a weak state produces poor governance outcomes misses the manner
in which these arrangements are important for reproducing existing relations
of domination and are resistant to change. e question this book addresses,
therefore, isn’t just about why Pakistan doesn’t produce enough power. ere is
no lack of political will to address the power sector’s challenges, and the sector
has received relentless a ention from bilateral donors and multilateral develop-
ment institutions over many years ​yet reforms have failed and Pakistanis still
su er. Why?
is book seeks to unpack our understanding of how states in the Global
South, with their complex colonial histories and regional tensions, actually work.
e argument builds on the literatures on good governance and class-​centric
analyses of power relations while remaining focused on solving real-​world
problems. An adequate electricity supply is a necessity for all states. In addition,

AccesstoPower.IjlalNaqvi,OxfordUniversityPress.©OxfordUniversityPress2022.
DOI:10.1093/​oso/​9780197540954.003.0001
2

the challenges of state-​formation entailed therein, including constructing the

infrastructure and extracting the related stream of payments, are general tasks
with broad relevance to other infrastructures and public goods across the Global
South. In many senses, Pakistan’s electricity problems are neither unique nor
even surprising given that public service failures are commonplace in the Global
South. is book moves beyond the diagnosis of a lack of Weberian state ca-
pacity and looks instead at the relationships of power and processes of govern-
ance that produce these poor outcomes and why they are resistant to change.
e Pakistani power sector is bedeviled by operational and nancial troubles.
e rolling blackouts known as loadshedding have become a regular feature of
daily life in Pakistan with huge consequences. Loadshedding disrupts business
and deters investment,3 and it is estimated to reduce economic growth in
Pakistan by 2%.4 e federal government’s subsidy to power consumers for the
three scal years between 2008 and 2011 exceeded one trillion rupees ($117
billion) and added 10% to the total national debt; this subsidy was greater than
the entire public sector development budget over that same period (Ministry
of Finance, 2011). Since then, residential electricity subsidies were found to
be 0.8% of GDP in 2015, a comparable amount to total public health spending
(World Bank, 2017, p. 1). Unpaid electricity bills contribute to the crippling ac-
cumulation of debts owed from one government entity to another ​known as
circular debt ​which both arise from and contribute to this budgetary stress.
e scale and importance of the electricity crisis have escaped nobody’s at-
tention. In his 2008 inaugural address to the National Assembly, Prime Minister
Yousaf Raza Gillani promised to address the electricity shortage.5 However,
loadshedding worsened during his tenure, and the government’s promise to end
the shortages in 2009 brought them ridicule both when the plan was announced
and when the government failed to meet it. e Pakistan Muslim League-​Nawaz
(PML-​N) government of 2013–​2018 was commi ed to ending loadshedding
as its signature policy initiative and campaign issue.6 Although the PML-​N gov-
ernment did add more capacity, cash ow problems coinciding with a change of
government meant that any respite from loadshedding was temporary. e issue
received international a ention as well: addressing the electricity shortages was
also near the top of the United States Agency for International Development’s
plan for spending $7.5 billion in aid to Pakistan under the Kerry-​Lugar-​Berman
Act. Unfortunately, the governance reforms and capacity additions pursued
under United States Agency for International Development (USAID) also
had limited success. More recently, the China–​Pakistan Economic Corridor
(CPEC) was launched with $37 billion worth of energy projects intended to
address Pakistan’s power sector woes by replacing expensive power with cheaper
alternatives.7 National policy concerns are regularly in the headlines, but the
personal experience of loadshedding is more directly disruptive to everyday life.
 Int roduc tion 3

e idea for this research project started in the summer of 2005 when I was
part of a disgruntled mob of middle-​and upper-​class Pakistani men that had
gathered in front of the local o ce of the electrical utility in a residential neigh-
borhood in Lahore. We had been without power for most of the night, and in the
hundred-​plus-​degree heat many people could not sleep or be comfortable when
deprived of fans and air conditioners. e assembled group had come to the of-
ce to nd out why their power was out and when it might be restored. My father
had made me come down to the o ce. I had resisted w ​ hat was the point? ​but
I nally relented. I was familiar with Pakistanis maneuvering their way through
government bureaucracies armed with introductions and references from some
important third party (sifarish), and perhaps even supplementing these requests
with a payment (rishwat). But until that night, when I rst encountered ordinary
Pakistanis demanding that their state provide them with a service they needed
and wanted, I had never seen such a vociferous expression of demands on the
state that hinted at citizenship rights.
Armed with li le more than their frustration, these otherwise-​ stolid
burghers fumed in the heat but got no satisfaction from the employees of the
electrical utility who were on duty that night. Eventually, one person who had
go en into the o ce (the majority of us stayed outside) informed the rest of
the crowd that the phone line had been deliberately disconnected so that the
employees on duty would no longer have to listen to our complaints. People
started to make bold claims about what they would do to resolve the situation.
One man claimed that he would march to the house of the utility’s chief execu-
tive, to which another responded, “I’ll follow you, lead the way.” A er someone
suggested going to the house of the nazim of Lahore, a group of about 30 people
gathered to walk or drive the quarter-​mile to his house.8 I le for home, having
no con dence that the nazim would achieve anything if anyone was even able
to contact him.
Several hours later that morning the electricity came back on, without any
indication of why it had gone or why it returned when it did. Over the years
I lived in Islamabad from 2008 to 2011, I was to become very familiar with this
characteristic lack of transparency and accountability as I researched the power
sector across government departments, city neighborhoods, and the o ces
of the Islamabad Electric Supply Company (IESCO). e eventual choice of
appealing to the nazim was probably in uenced by his proximity. e nazim
has absolutely no authority over the electrical utility, and ​if he were to do
anything ​it would be to call someone at the utility and request that they ad-
dress the problem. Petitioning an elected representative to help in redressing a
grievance is a staple of democracy, but the appeal to the nazim also re ects a
patron–​client mode of supplicating a notable member of society to put pressure
on state o cials.
4

National, City, and Individual Levels of Analysis

e book uses a three-​part narrative structure to explore how the relationships
around electricity carry di erent meanings and sustain distinct debates at di erent
levels of analysis: national, city, and individual. At each level, I treat the uneven-
ness of electricity governance as a product of state-​building and an integral part
of the system of rule rather than an absence or erosion of governance. Meanwhile,
the material properties of electricity require the entire nation to be synchronized
in its production and consumption of electrical power.9 At the national level, the
federal government must balance the rival claims and contributions of each prov-
ince, wherein ethnic di erences and the legacy of past disputes become entangled
with political economy. At the city level, squa er se lements seek legal access to
electricity as an acknowledgment of their occupancy, while industrialists and the
middle class are increasingly aggravated by the poor quality of service. At the indi-
vidual level, people encounter street-​level bureaucrats with whom they negotiate
using a blend of personalistic appeals, bribery, and threats of violence or inter-
vention by in uential individuals. e bureaucrats themselves carefully shade the
moral valences of the shortcuts they take against the constraints of sustaining an
underfunded system that pays them poorly.
Each level of analysis has its own dynamics and is typically the domain of
di erent academic disciplines. By kni ing these levels together through the the-
oretical framework of the “infrastructural state” (which will be advanced in this
Introduction), we are able to see why it is so di cult to reform the governance
of Pakistan’s electricity sector. e di erent disciplinary approaches typically
speak past each other, but deploying them together helps to show how Pakistan’s
power sector troubles manifest at di erent levels of analysis in interrelated ways.
National policy concerns emerge from the consequences of dynamic processes
at multiple levels. From above, policy decisions are driven by a commitment to
a unitary vision of national identity governed through a strong federal center.
From below, the rules of street-​level bureaucracies are embedded in practices of
patronage and rents, culture, and interpersonal connections. In the absence of an
established interdisciplinary approach to knit these di erent levels of analysis to-
gether, the most in uential school of thought for addressing governance reform
has come from economics.10

Critique of the Dominant Governance Paradigm

e message that governance reform requires a ention to more than the
formal rules of governance is now well entrenched in development thinking.
 Int roduc tion 5

Governance reforms that concentrated on formal rules and excluded the in-
formal realities of country context have been a failure. Despite spending in
excess of US$10 billion per year, aid from countries in the Organization for
Economic Co-​operation and Development (OECD) that targets governance as
a set of formal rules has had “limited impact” (Institute of Development Studies,
2010). However, the dominant theorization of governance for development
is drawn from new institutionalist economics, which i​n practice, at least ​
largely restricts itself to formal rules. ere are historical and sociological strains
of new institutionalism that are much more a uned to how institutions develop
and evolve (Hall & Taylor, 1996), but these are nowhere near as in uential in
development thinking.
e seminal statement of new institutionalism in economics is Douglass
North’s (1990, p. 3) formulation that “Institutions are the rules of the game in a
society or, more formally, are the humanly devised constraints that shape human
interaction.” ese rules can be formal ​codi ed by human beings ​or in-
formal, “such as conventions and codes of behavior.” at the new institutionalist
economics framework includes informal rules is a major step beyond neo-
classical economics, in which treatment of the Global South relied on “social
arrangements that economists usually take for granted, but which are conspic-
uous by their absence in poor countries” (Rodrik, 2007, p. 153). Northian in-
formal institutions are conceptually clu ered in that they contain everything
from panchayats (village councils) in South Asia to the Protestant ethic.11 e
critiques of new institutionalist economics come from too many sources to be
able to cover them all. Mushtaq Khan’s (2018) political se lements approach
draws a ention to the social context from which institutions emerge as a key
point in understanding their relative e ectiveness (or lack thereof). In turn,
political se lements analysis can be critiqued for being insu ciently a entive
to the role of ideas in bringing together elite cohesion. Moreover, the develop-
mental outcomes of political se lements are mediated by a meso-​level eld spe-
ci c to the policy domain in question (Kelsall & vom Hau, 2020). Relatedly,
the developmental state literature examines the evolution of industrial policy
through the back and forth between state actors and key industries.12 Two re-
cent examples from political science point to the broad de ciencies in new
institutionalist economics using the cases of road building in Indonesia and in
the economic rise of China. Jamie Davidson (2015) proposes a political soci-
ology of infrastructure development in which he uses a study of toll roads in
Indonesia to speak to shortcomings in new institutionalist economics. e three
main de ciencies are a neglect of close ties between state and business, the im-
portance of regulations and ordinances other than parliamentary legislation,
and the local power struggles revealed in contests over eminent domain. Ang
Yuen Yuen (2016) argues that China’s development involved a coevolution of
6

institutions and markets from a starting point of weak institutions. Ang contrasts
her dynamic view of institutional development to Acemoglu and Robinson
(2012), whose explanation of why nations fail focuses on the absence of strong
institutions due to some unspeci ed historical conditions.13 Power and politics
are all too o en absent from new institutional economics (Bates, 1997), and the
emphasis on formal institutions ​rather than power or politics ​invites fur-
ther tweaks to institutional design when the subsequent reforms don’t pan out
as expected (Radaelli, Dente, & Dossi, 2012). Indeterminacy in causal claims
and an emphasis on top-​down interventions concentrating on formal rules are
signi cant limitations of governance reform based on the new institutionalist
economics. Where my work can build on these literatures is to trace state policy
down to the everyday state, in its citizen-​facing rather than industrially oriented
stance, and to explore the unevenness of state capacity across its territory.
Many sociologists and political scientists engage with state capacity as an
alternative framing to the literature on good governance and institutions. In a
recent programmatic statement, Centeno et al. (2017) de ne state capacity as
“the organizational and bureaucratic ability to implement governing projects.”
Arguing that state capacity is based on “a constellation of organizational quali-
ties” whose interactions are complex, they consider the “pursuit of parsimonious
theories and linear methods unproductive” (pp. 26–​27). Unpacking the state to
examine state capacity also lends itself to problem-​solving sociology (Prasad,
2021), in which the analyst seeks to solve rather than just critique problems, and
to bridge the distance between victims of social problems and those who cause
(and bene t) from them.
e theoretical framework for this book focuses on state capacity with an
eye toward problem-​solving as well as critique. e framework is based on three
elements that I draw from existing literatures. e rst element is to approach
the state as a set of nested elds. e second element is to study the state by
tracing the material connections across society and territory that constitute the
electrical power network. e third element is to approach the unevenness of
state capacity as a result of deliberate action, rather than a lack or absence of the
state. Building on these three elements, I call the theoretical framework of this
book “the infrastructural state.”
Using the three elements of the infrastructural state framework and a meth-
odological blend of ethnography, statistics, and comparative political economy,
this book uses Pakistan’s chronic shortages of electricity as an entry point for
making more general claims about the state in Pakistan:

1) Pakistan’s inability to meet its power supply requirements is nested within

dynamics of governance and power relations that cannot simply be reduced
to a lack of Weberian state capacity;
 Int roduc tion 7

2) Pakistan is neither a weak nor a failed state, but state capacity in Pakistan is
chronically uneven and marked by profound inequalities;
3) Moreover, the unevenness of the Pakistani state works in speci c ways to
suit and bene t regions and groups that hold power, and the resulting “in-
equality by design” is the product of many layers of conscious strategic
decision-​making;
4) e everyday state is bound up in the personal and the informal rather than
departing from the Weberian ideal. ese informalities pervade relationships
at all levels of governance, making governance ​understood as an emergent
compromise ​especially resistant to top-​down interventions privileging
formal institutions.

eoretical Framework of the Infrastructural State

e State as a Set of Nested Fields
e rst element is to approach the state as a set of nested elds, where each eld
is an arena of con ict over the distribution of valued resources i​ n this case elec-
trical power. An institutions-​based approach privileges codi ed rules, whereas a
eld-​based approach is above all else relational ​and thus about power ​and
informed more by culture and habit than strategic decision-​making. Moreover,
conceptualizing the state as a set of nested elds allows us to establish how
national-​level issues emerge organically from the underlying behaviors of in-
terest at the city and individual levels.
Fields are arenas of struggle in which actors with varying capacities vie for
advantage. Actors in a eld share an understanding of what is at stake and
how the positions of di erent actors are related (i.e., their relative power),
and they understand the rules of the game that shape the permissible and fea-
sible modes of behavior. e eld is a well-​established sociological concept
most strongly associated with Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu, 1999), but that has
been interpreted by other leading theorists more recently as well (Fligstein
& McAdam, 2012; J. L. Martin, 2003).14 is book draws from each of these
theorists but extends them into domains less traveled rather than seeking to
speci cally intervene in the theorization of elds themselves. For example, the
approach to individual action taken here is more in line with a Bourdieusian
eld rather than the strategic action elds of Fligstein and McAdam, in that
I conceive of action as more tacit and practically informed than shaped by
conscious strategizing (Swartz, 2014). Regardless, the empirical material this
book engages with does not have the kind of episodes of strategic contention
in which elds are reshaped that would lend themselves toward the strategic
action elds approach.
8

Within this broad theoretical approach, one aspect in which I do follow

Fligstein and McAdam (2012) is in the formulation of treating states as a dense
network of elds. e di erent levels of the Pakistani electrical power sector
are vertically nested elds. Each has its own players and dynamics, but the city
and local elds are dependent on the national eld in that crucial decisions of
policy ​such as the content of governance reforms a​ re decided at the national
level and implemented (ideally) at all levels. At the same time, the consequences
of lower-​level contests over electricity lter upward to shape the emergent
properties of the system. Each level has di ering pa erns of coordination and
regulation as well as di erent ways in which power is brought to bear.
Emergence is the idea that systemic characteristics arise organically from the
interaction of a system’s parts. Emergent properties (which belong to the system,
not the individuals) cannot be determined in advance. It is a central concept in
sociology because we are studying not just aggregations of individuals but also
the organizations and institutions that arise out of social life.15 e dynamism
with which people and their social environments adapt to each other is a key
part of what makes social life so di cult to model or predict.
Emergence is one example of the type of nonlinear system dynamics asso-
ciated with complexity science that are becoming more established in social
sciences and speci cally in development studies.16 rough a complexity lens,
human societies are nonlinear systems with multiple, independent actors who
coevolve with their environment. Referencing complex adaptive systems in
the context of development is useful because complexity science has become
associated with policy approaches that are themselves decentralized, dynamic,
and adaptive, in contrast to the Washington Consensus suite of policies, which
align be er with a focus on formal institutions and top-​down prescriptions.17
Chapter 3 will discuss complexity and its application to policy in some more de-
tail, but at this stage it is important to contrast the approach being taken in this
book to the dominant paradigm of development thinking.
A eld-​based approach is quite di erent from an institutions-​based approach
because of the emphasis on relationality and power. e conceptual apparatus
of the eld entails more work for the analyst, but that e ort brings a ention to
questions of relative power and position, as well as the many informal ways that
these dynamics play out. e approach of treating the state as a set of nested
elds can also be contrasted to the development and policy literature that
focuses on con gurations of classes and political parties as well as anthropolog-
ical approaches, which o en look for “the universe in a grain of sand” and gener-
alize from one case or locality to the larger whole.
My approach of conceptualizing the state as a set of nested elds is also aligned
with Neil Brenner’s (2004, p. 8) approach to “the scale question.” Each nested
eld re ects a di erent scale, allowing for the integration of distinct vantage
 Int roduc tion 9

points across them, with a ention to how the relationships of social processes
across these scales in uence each other. However, Brenner’s more geographical
approach ​strongly in uenced by Henri Lefebvre’s work on state and space (see,
e.g., 2009) ​also underscores the need for a ention to the hierarchy of scales
and their spatiality, meaning that these spaces are ordered within vertical and
hierarchical relations of domination that reproduce themselves through the so-
cial processes of governance. e second element describes how this book uses
the material infrastructure of electricity in Pakistan as its entry point for tracing
the connections within and across scales, and the third element of studying the
infrastructural state discusses this spatial unevenness in more detail.

Material Infrastructure as a Point of Entry for

Studying the State
e second element of this book’s theoretical framework is the use of the ma-
terial infrastructure of electricity as an entry point for studying the state. By
following the infrastructure of electricity from national issues down to the
behaviors of real people, we dive deeply into the challenges of state-​making in
the Global South and build an understanding of governance grounded in its
material manifestations rather than its paper representations. An institutions
approach to governance struggles to penetrate below the national level. Taking
the approach of a comparison among provinces or states does o er sub-​national
insights, but tracing the material infrastructure reveals a direct connection be-
tween national-​level policy and the home or rm, as well as the interrelatedness
and integration of sub-​national regions into an uneven, unequal whole.
e link between infrastructure and the state is well established. Henri
Lefebvre points repeatedly to the centrality of infrastructure to the establish-
ment of state or political space:

With its technostructure controlling energy questions, the state gradu-

ally becomes the master of them, not only because it controls the units
of production, but because it partitions space under the double surveil-
lance of its technicians and police. e production of energy is closely
tied to the production of political space, i.e. state space. (Lefebvre,
2009, pp. 237–​238)

Infrastructure in general, but especially energy, is a mechanism for the state’s

control of both territory and population, and in the ongoing social processes
around access to that infrastructure the state further sets out the terms for this
dimension of citizenship. In a historical study of road building in 17th-​and
10

18th-​century Britain, Jo Guldi (2012, p. 3) examines “the politics of an infra-

structure state” arising around con icts to do with changes to infrastructure (and
access to it). As Guldi identi es, infrastructure is both expensive and necessary
for a people to ourish in the modern world, and thus the construction of infra-
structure begets con ict over inclusion in its bene ts: “only a government that
re ects [the people’s] interests equally can design a form of infrastructure that
serves them all” (p. 23). Guldi positions the British state squarely at the heart
of these new developments and highlights the state making that accompanied
British road building, ranging from the establishment of the legal principle
of eminent domain to acquire lands for public use, to the various nancing
arrangements put in place by parliament to pay for infrastructure. State-​building
of this kind is more typically associated with the preparation for ​and the con-
duct of ​armed con ict rather than infrastructure (Brewer, 1989; Tilly, 1985).
Historians of technology and students of science and technology studies
(STS) will be familiar with electrical power systems due to omas Hughes’
(1983) Networks of Power,18 which observes that “power systems are cultural
artifacts”:

Electrical power systems embody the physical, intellectual, and sym-

bolic resources of the society that construct them. . . . In a sense, elec-
trical power systems, like so much other technology, are both causes
and e ects of social change. (Hughes, 1983, p. 2)

Hughes illustrates this point through examples such as the development of the
rst electrical power distribution company by omas Edison and General
Electric. Edison didn’t just invent an improved light bulb; he implemented a
system for generating and distributing electricity for lighting. Central to his con-
cern was the commercial viability of such a system that depended on beating
the cost of natural gas. It was an “inseparably technical and economic” problem
(p. 29). Edison chose downtown New York City for the density of consumers
and for the possibility of in uencing nanciers. It was no accident that the rst
consumer connection was to the o ces of the nancial services rm Drexel,
Morgan & Co at 23 Wall Street. As Hughes so elegantly demonstrated, the
distribution and administration of electrical power is never solely a technical
ma er but, rather, a tussle between the in uence of the social and political on
the technical ​and vice versa.
e infrastructure of electrical power has an irreducible materiality that
is distinct from other infrastructures such as those for rail or water. Electrical
power operates at a speed that “does not so much ow . . . as ash, annihilating
the space between the consumption and production in both the immediacy
and the constancy of its usage” (Needham, 2014, p. 17). Due to this speed, the
 Int roduc tion 11

social and territorial distances spanned by the electricity network are easily
ignored. Railroads also connect people and goods over space, but they enable
the transportation of individuals at a speed and in a style that expose them to
each other and their surroundings.19 Water infrastructures also share a resource
across distances, but unlike electricity, water cannot readily be generated, only
tapped from existing sources such as rivers and aquifers.20 While electricity can
be generated, it cannot stored for delayed release in a manner that is e cient or
viable at scale with current ba ery technologies.
Electrical power generation and consumption have to be synchronized, not
only in their timing, but also in the operation of the grid across the entirety of
the territory they serve. An excess of supply or demand will result in a cascading
failure across the entire grid. us, the generation and consumption of electricity
has to be coordinated across the territory that the grid serves. For Pakistani elec-
trical power, this paramount goal of maintaining the operation of the grid is
manifested in the National Power Control Center in Islamabad, where a large
digital display shows the frequency at which the grid is currently operating. is
frequency should be kept at 50 Hz, although in practice the frequency routinely
dips lower (with 49.5 Hz representing a lower bound beyond which catastrophic
failures are possible). ese material qualities of electricity, distinct from those
of other infrastructures, sustain meanings and social relations as well.
Infrastructures operate at multiple levels simultaneously (Larkin, 2013),
sustaining a “poetics and politics” in addition to their technical operations
(which are never solely technical). Electrical power is an avatar of moderniza-
tion. In practical terms, it is an essential component of contemporary life that
is as integral to the steel mill as it is to the convenience of a modern washing
machine. e experience of electri cation in the Global North was not a sin-
gular modernizing monolith. Alongside Benjamin Franklin’s scienti c experi-
mentation with electricity, there were many exuberant, irrational, and intimate
experiences of electricity as the modern sublime (Delbourgo, 2006). Decisions
such as adopting a DC or AC current and a system of pricing are contingent
historical decisions in uenced by societal factors (Yakubovich, Granove er, &
McGuire, 2005). e spread of electric power shaped and was shaped by so-
cial transformation in early 20th century America (Nye, 1990). Far from being
purely technical decisions, the rollout of the electrical grid and its distribution
networks were cultural artifacts shaped by their social context (Hughes, 1983).
Even in the context of electri cation, the expression of modernization that was
built into the infrastructure and its associated policies was always shaped by
context and culture. e changes wrought by the forces of modernization were
never predetermined in their outcomes but always contingent on circumstance.
As modernizing states seek to build out and operate their electrical grid, the
ability to do so e ectively is a valuable indicator of state capacity.
12

A state’s capacity to act over its territory is known as its “infrastructural

power” (following Michael Mann, 1986). Mann illustrated the concept with ref-
erence to the Red Queen’s pursuit of Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
Ordering her soldiers to cut o Alice’s head indicates despotic power, a form of
tyranny, whereas it would re ect infrastructural power if the soldiers actually
pursued and implemented the order while out of the Queen’s sight. More pre-
cisely, Mann de ned infrastructural power as the “the capacity of the state to
actually penetrate civil society, and to implement logistically political decisions
through the realm” (Mann, 1984, p. 189). In other words, can the state actually
do what it says it will? Since infrastructural power is multifaceted, Mann a​ nd
scholars a er him ​identi es multiple dimensions of infrastructural power
such as the state’s control of space and society, its legitimacy, and its territorial
reach.21 A multidimensional approach to infrastructural power is helpful in that
it encourages us to think beyond bureaucratic capacity or state autonomy, but
it shares with O’Donnell’s (1993) approach to sub-​national state capacity the
implication that the state is present and functional in some areas while absent or
dysfunctional in others.22
States of the Global South o en have an uneven state capacity across their
territory. Adnan Naseemullah (2016) describes state capacity in India as being
su used by contestation and con ict. Due to the unavoidable limits to state
capacity (which are especially pertinent in postcolonial states of the Global
South), unevenness is produced, as states must always choose how and where
to deploy their limited resources. Hence, Naseemullah sees the state itself as an
arena, rather than the neutral agent of its political leadership. Similarly, for the
case of Pakistan, I will argue that that this unevenness is not simply an absence
or a lack of state capacity, but a product of ongoing processes of state formation
and contestation.
Somewhat counterintuitively, Mann’s infrastructural power doesn’t ex-
plicitly engage with infrastructure itself, although other scholars often
use infrastructure-​based indicators as a way to measure the concept (e.g.,
Herbst, 2000). Mann’s emphasis (per the definition above) is the state’s
capacity to penetrate the society logistically. Chandra Mukerji’s (2009)
study of the building of the Canal du Midi in 17th-​century France offers
us a linkage between infrastructure projects and infrastructural power,
through the logistics entailed in project construction as an act of state for-
mation that can succeed on multiple levels. Indeed, the canal project was
sold to Louis XIV and his court, who sought to establish a new Rome for
the King’s greater glory. Despite this focus on the Sun King himself, and the
punishments meted out to the canal’s champions w ​ ho were chastised for
seeking to valorize their own roles in its construction t​ he canal served to
establish an impersonal logistical rule in service of a stewardship of the land.
 Int roduc tion 13

Impersonal rule was “born at an intersection of social, moral and material

worlds” (p. 206). Mukerji’s historical account points to how the logistics of
the canal’s construction furthered the state’s infrastructural power, as imper-
sonal rule began to supplant patronage relations and the all-​encompassing
sovereignty of the French king. The analogous processes in the Pakistani
electrical power sector, however, have not built an equivalent degree of in-
frastructural power.
My approach to studying the state through how its accoutrements have been
built out was in uenced by James Ferguson’s (1990) Anti-​Politics Machine.
Ferguson saw the state in Foucauldian terms, as the “kno ing and congealing”
of power through bureaucratic practices rather than the “name of an actor”
(p. 273).23 Importantly, where others saw failure in a development project that
was intended to improve land management productivity, Ferguson saw an ex-
ercise in state-​building that established the in uence of the central government
of Lesotho more forcefully in a region that had a history of resistance. In similar
vein, I study the expansion and development of the Pakistani power sector as
an exercise in state-​building. Further, rather than accepting the usual verdict of
failure and ine ciency, I seek to examine exactly how the state that has been
built out in no small part through the electricity infrastructure actually works,
and to whose bene t.

Pakistan “Works,” but for Whom?

e third element is that Pakistan “works,” despite the frequent descriptions of
it as a failing or fragile state, although this is not to say that it works well or in
the interest of ordinary people. By saying that Pakistan “works,” I am drawing
on Chabal and Daloz’s (1999) analysis of how “Africa works,” wherein disorder
is a political instrument that reinforces patrimonial relations in postcolonial
societies. Similarly, the governance of electricity in Pakistan serves existing re-
lations of power and patronage. Building on Catherine Boone’s Property and
Political Order in A ica (Boone, 2014), I argue that the inequality and uneven-
ness of electricity governance in Pakistan is by design. is is not to say that it
follows a master plan, but that it is the result of a series of conscious decisions
concerning who gets what, when, and where.
Recent books on Pakistan have moved away from harping on state fragility or
failure to recognize that there is a logic to its continued survival.24 is sense in
which the phrase “Pakistan works” is deployed can be extended and deepened
with reference to Africanist academic literature because Pakistan clearly doesn’t
work equally well for all its citizens, nor across all its territory. Lieven (2012),
for example, is somewhat guilty of giving too much credit to the army’s response
14

to Baloch militancy without recognizing the degree to which the army denies
Baloch voices while cementing in place a power structure where the Pakistani
army itself sits at the apex.25
In A ica Works, Patrick Chabal and Jean-​Francois Daloz (1999) argue that
the state in sub-​Saharan Africa serves as a vehicle for patrimonial exercises of
power. “Big men” use “disorder as a political instrument” in the conduct of
what Jean-​Francois Bayart calls the “politics of the belly,” where “weak states
and weak civil societies enable the domination of machines which function
on the basis of the logics of factionalism, patronage and regionalism” (Bayart,
1993, p. 60). According to Bayart, the postcolonial African state is one that has
been indigenously refashioned and thus re ects local a itudes toward power.
Achille Mbembe (2000, p. 45) sees the foundations of the authoritarian post-
colonial state in a “trinity of violence, transfers and allocations” through which
the state manages inequality. Re ecting on the insights of this Africanist liter-
ature invites a careful consideration of who the Pakistani state’s own disorder
most bene ts.
By looking within Pakistan to see who the state works for ​and who it doesn’t
work for as well w ​ e are able to move beyond a methodological nationalism that
takes the nation-​state as an ontologically given unit of analysis. e dominant
approach to governance ​exempli ed in the World Bank’s World Governance
Indicators (World Governance Indicators, 2017) ​uses a single gure to rep-
resent a country’s score on various sub-​indicators, despite the fact that great
disparities exist within countries. For example, Erin-​Metz McDonnell (2017)
examines how pockets of excellence emerge at the interstices of Ghanaian gov-
ernment institutions; national-​level indicators are not able to capture the possi-
bility of sub-​national excellence. In Eastern Europe, Marina Zaloznaya (2017)
nds variation in bureaucratic corruption among health and education facilities
in Byelorussia and Ukraine. With a focus on sub-​national variation, Zeloznaya’s
ndings can usefully inform reform programs that are tailored to both regions
and organizations.26
A seminal statement on uneven stateness is Guillermo O’Donnell’s (1993)
framework for looking at uneven democratization in Latin America, which maps
areas in blue, green, or brown to denote a decreasing degree of stateness. Richard
Snyder (2001) usefully extends O’Donnell’s work to set out an approach for
sub-​national comparisons. However, the emphasis in this book’s analysis is
not on sub-​national comparisons but on the way in which the parts t into the
whole. As both O’Donnell and Snyder observe, there is a danger in sub-​national
comparisons of overlooking the relationship of the subunit to its surroundings,
as these can be an important component of national politics.
e spatial unevenness of the state is a key theme for Lefebvre, who argues
that it serves “the reproduction of the relations of domination”:
 Int roduc tion 15

Places are arranged unequally in relation to the centers, which are them-
selves unequal ​from commercial centers to administrative centers.
State action exacerbates this situation: spaces form extreme hierarchies,
from the centers of domination to the peripheries that are impoverished
but still all the more strongly controlled. (Lefebvre, 2009, pp. 243–​244,
italics in original)

e unevenness of state space stems from and is part of the reproduction of a

hierarchized and unequal set of relations, with the city at its core. As alluded to
in the discussion of the state as a set of nested elds, this unevenness and ine-
quality is both horizontal, in terms of the core and periphery of a territory, and
vertical in terms of relationships across scales (Brenner, 2004, p. 10).
Catherine Boone develops the concept of “inequality by design” through a
study of land institutions in sub-​Saharan Africa (Boone, 2014). Boone’s starting
point is that the built state is an outcome that calls for explanation; state infra-
structural power is “the product of negotiation and con ict between central and
local actors” (Boone, 2012, p. 627). e center has options in terms of pu ing
e ort and resources toward the integration of territories and may strategically
choose to do so, or to e ectively abandon certain state functions, as part of a
strategy of staying in power and ruling e ectively. e resultant inequality is
to be expected. e plurality of possible relationships makes the hinterlands
governable and imposes a political order. Because the state produced this un-
evenness in order to govern through it, the resulting inequality is “by design.”
Boone’s work builds on Mahmood Mamdani’s (1996) framing of a postcolonial
“bifurcated citizenship” wherein local political arenas are dislocated from a na-
tional citizenship regime that is chie y urban. A core di erence, though, is in
stressing that the unevenness speaks to the political contest over the state’s incor-
poration of these territories and is strategically chosen (or negotiated) as part of
a larger regime. Boone contrasts the practices of customary tenure and statutory
tenure to “see political logics encoded in existing land regimes, and how rulers
may use land rules strategically to gather and maintain power” (Boone, 2014,
p. 16). e focus of this book instead takes us to the institutions governing elec-
tricity generation and distribution, particularly the extent to which consumers
pay for the electricity they consume as a proxy for their degree of incorporation
into the national state.

Methodology
Every ethnographer has to gain access to the se ing they choose to study. In
many senses, Islamabad was not only my eld site but where I actually lived.
16

I had also lived there before, from 2001 to 2002, am a citizen of Pakistan,
and had both immediate and extended family members living in Islamabad,
Rawalpindi, and Lahore during the period of my own residence in Islamabad
from 2008 to 2011. is claim to authenticity of residence, however, meant
li le in terms of gaining access to my target organizations. Finding, ge ing to
speak to, and observing my respondents involved regular reprisals of this pro-
cess of gaining access. Ge ing “in” was not accomplished at a single stroke, nor
the result of any dramatic events, but always a ma er of degree and subject to
ebbs and ows.
My approach to gaining access was based on securing introductions to my
eld sites and a non-​threatening presentation of myself as a student. I faced the
challenge of recruiting respondents by identifying areas I wanted to access and
using the networks of my existing contacts to gain access to them. Once I had
established some relevant contacts, I used their networks to introduce me to
new eld sites and to recruit new respondents. By and large, this strategy was
successful.
e most di cult entrée was at the subdivision level at IESCO. rough a
former colleague from my work in the federal government in 2001–​2002, I met
a serving power sector o cial in Lahore. is senior o cial found my project
interesting and agreed to support me by introducing me at IESCO headquarters,
from where I was referred to an executive engineer (a mid-​level manager, abbre-
viated XEN). e XEN was chosen as an appropriate person for me to talk to
by IESCO leadership, who described him as a good and competent o cer. e
XEN, in turn, introduced me to the subdivision o cer (SDO), Farid sahib,27
in whose o ce I did much of my eld research. is initial introductions to a
speci c division and then subdivision were made for me by IESCO leadership.
My expectation that I had been led to sites that made IESCO look good was
borne out in the eldwork and distribution company data. However, rather than
a shortcoming, this site selection helped me meet my objective of studying the
best service delivery environment. Even then, the service area of a subdivision
(some 25,000 households) or division (o en six or 10 subdivisions) has ample
variation to explore in terms of the urban social fabric.
e primary challenge in gaining cooperation from my respondents was to
show that I was not a threat. Being a student helped in this regard, as I could posi-
tion myself in terms of conducting a study without a pro t motive or corruption-​
exposing agenda. e digital voice recorder that I had intended to use in my
interviews was completely unwelcome, and I only used it in one interview ​that
of a retired federal secretary in his own home. I did, however, keep my notepad
out and visibly take notes during and a er conversations as a reminder of the
informed consent my respondents provided verbally. Without a wri en record
of their participation, there is nothing concrete to link quotes and actions to
 Int roduc tion 17

particular individuals, thus protecting the anonymity of my respondents. No

IESCO employee or location has been identi ed in this work, as was promised
to my respondents. Farid sahib, the subdivision o cer who headed the o ce
where I did much of my eldwork, actually wanted to be identi ed along with
his location, but I felt unable to honor that request because the anonymity of
too many other individuals (who did not so consent) would be compromised
by doing so.
Much later in my eldwork I realized that my respondents’ networks had
certain characteristics. At one stage, several of my respondents turned out to
be members of the tablighi-​jamaat, a nonviolent proselytizing movement. At
another, I had a sequence of shi’a respondents who were particularly helpful
to me ​perhaps because I have a recognizably shi’a last name. Tapping these
networks was unintentional, though it does echo what I observed in terms of
the pathways and connections used by Pakistanis to navigate the state (see
Chapter 7). Otherwise, I tried to be as indiscriminate as possible and meet with
whoever would talk to me.
I supplement the place-​based ethnography at the heart of this book with sta-
tistical analysis of the distribution company serving Lahore (LESCO). Although
it was always my intention to include this methodological approach in the pro-
ject, the data was not made available to me until years a er my eldwork had
concluded. e statistical analysis o ers a synoptic perspective across a larger
geographic area than my ethnographic work could address. While the ethno-
graphic work was fundamental in terms of revealing the processes that inform
the dynamics of electricity governance, the statistics at both the city and na-
tional level help expand the argument regarding the unevenness of state capacity
that is central to the book’s argument.
Both Islamabad and Lahore represent something of the best-​case sce-
nario when considering governance in Pakistan. Islamabad, the federal cap-
ital, is a planned city, home to the o ces of the federal government and their
many employees. Farid sahib’s subdivision is even a “model subdivision” with
reduced sta (33% less) and increased wages (33% more). Islamabad is the most
formal and best-​administered se ing one can nd in Pakistan. One well-​worn
joke describes Islamabad as being located only 20 minutes from Pakistan. As
for Lahore, Punjabi chauvinists proclaim that if you haven’t seen Lahore you
haven’t been born (Jinnay Lahore naeeN vekhya o jammya naeeN). Lahore is the
cultural, political, and economic heart of Pakistan’s largest province. While one
would never mistake Lahore’s thrumming energy for Islamabad’s orderly sub-
urban calm, they are both loci of power, well populated by Pakistani elites accus-
tomed to making things work in their favor. ese are the places where the state
is present and ​ostensibly ​works, or at least where Pakistanis expect it to be
present and work.
18

Outline of the Book

is Introduction establishes the overarching theoretical framework for the
book. It conceptualizes the governance of the Pakistani power sector as a series
of nested and interdependent elds of strategic action at the national, city, and in-
dividual levels. is theorization is a sociological take on governance challenges
that are typically considered at distinct levels of analysis. By combining the
di erent levels of analysis, I reveal how Pakistan’s national problems of power
sector governance emerge from sub-​national and even local-​level dynamics.
Part I (Chapters 2 and 3) focuses on the national level. Chapter 2 is primarily
concerned with the unevenness of electricity governance across the territory of
the Pakistani state. I explore how this unevenness has been produced over time
by studying government plans and some speci c power generation projects that
illustrate the way that provincial (and thus identity) politics play a role. e un-
evenness of electricity governance is most visible in the varied performance of
the distribution companies, and in their (in)ability to collect payment for the
electricity they deliver. ere is an interprovincial political economy of power
based on generating and consuming electrical power, and the policies that bal-
ance power generation and payment for power consumption across the country
are central to maintaining the delicate balance in this fractious federation’s po-
litical order.
Chapter 3 focuses on questions of governance reform as a component of the
development agenda, incorporating both the national perspective and the role
of international development actors such as bilateral aid agencies (e.g., USAID)
and multilateral donors (the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank
in particular). Development actors are regularly aware of the shortcomings of
governance interventions before, during, and a er development assistance is
introduced, yet those programs continue and are even revisited. Why? I examine
the Pakistani experience with power sector reforms to illustrate how the donor-​
led reform agenda had readily apparent shortcomings. A new wave of develop-
ment thinking a empts to respond to such failures by drawing on complexity
theory and moving toward more local, iterative, and experimental approaches.
However, the awareness of problems with reforms is not su cient to avoid them;
there is a higher order of obstacles inherent in the structure of development as-
sistance that limit the potential for governance reforms to reshape the workings
of the state at the city or individual level.
Part II (Chapters 4 and 5) addresses the unevenness of urban citizenship in
South Asia by connecting the individual experience to the neighborhood and
city they live in. Chapter 4 looks at di erent levels of electricity governance
in Lahore through a quantitative analysis of consumption and loss data at the
 Int roduc tion 19

feeder level (each feeder serves some 2,000 households). rough a statistical
analysis using hierarchical linear modeling, I argue that more variation in losses
is explained at the feeder level than at the subdivision level, thus reinforcing
the view that local power relations ma er more than administrative rules in
in uencing state capacity.
Chapter 5 examines a common challenge in the rapidly growing cities of
South Asia ​the quest of squa er se lement (katchi abadi) residents to for-
malize and document their claim on urban citizenship. e experience of katchi
abadi residents in Islamabad who succeed in formalizing their claims for indi-
vidual electricity meters has an unexpected outcome. I draw on ethnographic
eldwork to show how some katchi abadi residents struggle to navigate the
process of making formal claims on the state for individual electricity meters,
thereby exposing themselves to new forms of predation. ese formal claims are
individual, as opposed to the communal negotiations that are conducted by a
commi ee on behalf of all residents sharing a communal meter. e experience
of the katchi abadi’s bourgeois neighbors also shows that making formal claims
on the state is as negotiated and contested as the process of making informal
claims. Rich and poor alike describe a pervasive expectation of predation that
allows them to put li le credence in formality.
Part III (Chapters 6 and 7) is concerned with the individual level of anal-
ysis and particularly the citizen’s encounter with the local state. Both chapters
draw heavily on semi-​structured interviews and ethnographic observations
at the o ces of IESCO to present how this government bureaucracy actually
works under real-​life constraints. e extent and manner to which institutions
of governance are embedded in local relations of domination are crucial to un-
derstanding both the unevenness of the state’s capacity and the serial failure of
reform programs, as discussed in parts I and II. In Chapter 6, I show how “the
rules of the game” are only partly constituted by codi ed rules, which is com-
pletely contrary to the conceptualization of governance underlying the reform
programs described in Chapter 3. Codi ed rules exist, and they certainly ma er,
but access to them is wrapped in layers of social negotiations and contestations.
Rather, governance is a compromise between formality and informality, with
street-​level bureaucrats exercising a great degree of exibility and discretion in
service of the organization’s goals and the public good. However, the social and
organizational constraints on the discretion of bureaucrats o en fall short of
preventing an abuse of o ce.
In Chapter 7, the focus remains on the individual level but shi s more directly
toward patronage and power. At the heart of the relationship between citizen
and state lies an encounter between electricity consumer and street-​level bu-
reaucrat that is usually conducted face to face. e parameters of this encounter
are shaped by power in the form of money and personal connections, with an
20

underlying (and usually hidden) threat of violence. In the nal vigne e in this
chapter, the con ict between the protagonists reveals an overt collision between
abstract and more immediate claims to power. e bureaucrat tries to draw legit-
imate authority from the rules, and the English in which they are expressed, but
is quickly forced to submit to local power dynamics.
Chapter 8 concludes with a summary of the argument that governance of the
Pakistani electrical power sector is shaped by lower-​level dynamics. I synthesize
the insights at the national, city, and individual levels from parts I, II, and III,
respectively, and draw out the linkages between the di erent levels that are so
important to in uencing the overall system. I then summarize the book’s con-
tribution to the sociology of development and its implications outside Pakistan.
I also take a more forward-​looking view toward some policy approaches in
Pakistan that can build on this book’s argument by encouraging local adaption
and bureaucratic entrepreneurship in a framework of permissible variation and
administrative oversight. e last part of the Conclusion addresses the massive
Chinese energy investments in Pakistan as part of the China–​Pakistan Economic
Corridor and their potential to solve Pakistan’s electricity sector problems.
 PA RT I

THE NATIONAL LEVEL

OF ANALYSIS

e chapters in this section approach the question of Pakistan’s perennial power

problems at the national scale, exploring the unevenness of the interprovincial
political economy of power, and how successive generations of power plans have
instituted this inequality by design. Further, structures of international devel-
opment assistance hinder the planning process from addressing these political
compromises, as the a empt to achieve a Weberian dream state through the ma-
nipulation of formal institutions is repeatedly compromised. e dynamics that
link cash ows from distribution to payments for power generation capture lie at
the heart of these challenges.
e national level of analysis is closest to the perspective of policymakers,
which is why the book starts from here and later moves down to the city and
individual levels of analysis to show how macro challenges have their roots in
behaviors from below. Even so, by approaching the national level as a eld the
book takes an explicitly political perspective that foregrounds power and the
compromises made by parties in relative positions of centrality. Both chapters
look to the kind of compromises that characterize electricity governance, but in
acknowledgment of the political work that is done through such compromises
rather than only seeing them as a lack or de cit in comparison with technocratic
ideals.
e two chapters in this section engage with the history of the power sector to
show how the recurrent crises of the power sector have deep roots. e cost and
cash ow demands of producing electricity are heavily in uenced by the pres-
ence and relative weightage of imported fuels in the overall fuel mix, which is
itself tied to the political accessibility of domestic fuel sources. Adding su cient
22 •

capacity at a ordable prices has been a persistent challenge. High losses are
an established feature of the system, and generally resistant to change. ese
challenges can easily reinforce each other and have done so at regular periods in
the past. Unfortunately, while many of these interlinked challenges in the power
sector are more tragedy than mystery, the proposed solutions tend to follow es-
tablished technocratic paradigms that haven’t solved the problem. Moreover,
international development assistance is constrained by the nature of its organi-
zational practices: projects with limited time frames and scope, hiring of interna-
tional experts without local knowledge or connections, accountability to foreign
governments wary of misspent taxpayer money, and adherence to terms of refer-
ence wri en prior to the project’s commencement and typically on the basis of
decontextualized expertise.
e ideas for electricity governance reform proposed through international
governance assistance favor Washington Consensus principles (market-based
competition, eliminating subsidies) while overlooking the important political
relationships entailed in the existing policy and institutional frameworks. e
chief dynamic at the national level is the core–periphery contest between the fed-
eral center and Punjab against the smaller provinces. However, the same policy
instruments that go some way to keeping the interprovincial peace also create
budgetary risks by seeding the circular debt that burdens the federal center.

Historical Background
Electrical power in Pakistan prior to 1958 was within the purview of private re-
gional utilities without any national integration or planning. e era of national
planning begins in 1955 with the First Five-Year Plan but truly kicks o with the
founding of the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) in 1958.
rough WAPDA, the Government of Pakistan constructed three large dams
(Mangla in 1967, Warsak in 1960, and Tarbela in 1974) and integrated the pre-
viously distinct islands of generation and distribution through a national trans-
mission backbone. WAPDA coexisted with private utilities until 1972, when
the government of Zul qar Ali Bhu o’s Pakistan People’s Party nationalized
the private power utilities as part of its program to eliminate the “exploitation”
and “evil” it considered inherent in the capitalist system (Pakistan People’s
Party 1970). e intent to reintroduce private capital to the power sector was
indicated under the military regime of General Zia ul Haq (1977–1988), al-
though it was not until the mid-1990s that private participation in the power
sector returned in force with private power producers contracting to sell power
to the national transmission and distribution companies. WAPDA’s power gen-
eration, transmission, and distribution functions were separated into distinct
 The National L evel o f A nalys i s 23

entities with the aim of eventually privatizing many of them. A regulatory body,
the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEP•), was established
in 1997 to oversee the sector in its new form. Pakistan’s then-largest thermal
generation plan at Kot Addu was privatized in 1996, and Karachi’s vertically
integrated utility (with its own generation capability) was privatized in 2005.
e current state of the power sector is a hybrid of private and public sector
components. Transmission is entirely in the public sector. All distribution with
the exception of Karachi is in the public sector. ere are both private and public
power generation companies.
 2

e Interprovincial Unevenness
of the Infrastructural State

Loadshedding and power outages are a national issue in Pakistan, but one
whose genesis is more complex than there simply being an inadequate quantity
of power to meet the nation’s demand. e argument presented in this chapter
identi es loadshedding and circular debt as directly resulting from strategic
choices that are integral to Pakistan’s infrastructural state. e grid that has been
built out ​and the ordering of citizen–​state relations entailed therein ​re ects
Pakistan’s strategic choices regarding the relationship of the provinces to the
federal center and citizens to their state. And, as much as national authorities
(political, administrative, military) might want di erent outcomes, a large part
of the reason why loadshedding and circular debt persisted through so many
years is that national authorities are unwilling to revisit these underlying stra-
tegic choices. China–​Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) investments have
expanded power supply su ciently to largely eliminate loadshedding ​subject
to the caveat that cash ow requirements must be met, which is frequently not
the case ​but this does not re ect any change in the state’s strategic priorities,
nor does it re ect increased state capacity.
us, our understanding of Pakistan’s bouts with crippling loadshedding and
circular debt must be both historically and socio-​spatially informed. It must
be historically informed because where we are is the direct result of past state-​
making practices in the power sector. Our understanding must also be socio-​
spatially informed because there is substantial sub-​national variation in terms
of the state’s capacity across the country. What the state can do is shaped by its
established practices, and that capacity to act is inconsistent across its territory.
Nonetheless, this unevenness across the territory is part of a coherent whole, an
infrastructural state, in which the inequalities t together in the rough bargain
binding together this sometimes fractious federation.

AccesstoPower.IjlalNaqvi,OxfordUniversityPress.©OxfordUniversityPress2022.
DOI:10.1093/​oso/​9780197540954.003.0002
26 T h e N a ti o n a l L e v e l o f A n a l y si s

Thi s c ha pt er ex a mi n es h o w l oa ds h e d di n g a n d circ ul ar d e bt i n Pa kist a n

e m er g e fr o m strat e gi c c h oi c es at t h e nati o nal l e v el of a nal ysis. Th e st arti n g p oi nt
f or t his ar g u m e nt is i n t h e nati o nal p o w er s ect or c as h fl o ws t hat li n k g e n era-
ti o n a n d distri b uti o n i n a p er p et u al (al b eit fl u ct u ati n g a n d crisis- pr o n e) c ycl e.
Dis a g gr e gati n g t h es e c as h fl o ws r e v eals a pr of o u n dl y i nfrastr u ct ural st at e. N o n-
P u nja bi el ectri cit y c o ns u m pti o n is b ot h s u bsi diz e d a n d t h e sit e of hi g h er l oss es,
b ut p o w er g e n erati o n f aciliti es hav e als o b e e n b uilt o ut i n a ma n n er t hat r e fl ects
t h e u n e v e n i n c or p orati o n of t h e n o n-P u nja bi pr o vi n c es i nt o t h e st at e. Th e gra n d
bar gai n t hat miti gat es c o n fli ct i n t h e i nt er pr o vi n ci al p oliti c al ec o n o m y of t h e
p o w er s ect or is o n e t hat pr es er v es t h e i d e ol o gi c al c o m mit m e nts of a u nit ar y
st at e at t h e ex p e ns e of ex c essi v e b ur d e ns o n t h e f e d eral ex c h e q u er. Cr u ci all y, t h e
ex pa nsi o n of p o w er s u p pl y u n d er C P E C d o es n ot r e fl ect st at e c a pacit y t o mar -
s hal d o m esti c r es o urc es or e nf orc e pa y m e nts. W hil e t h e c or e iss u es i n Pa kist a n’s
el ectri c al p o w er s ect or hav e b e e n cl earl y arti c ul at e d i n pl a n ni n g d o c u m e nts f or
d ec a d es, t h e ma n y nati o nal a n d i nt er nati o nal pl a ns t o a d dr ess t h e p o w er s ect or’s
w o es hav e r e p eat e dl y c o m e u p s h ort.

The Cas h Fl o ws at t he Heart of Pa kista n’s Nati o nal

Electricit y C halle nges
Th e cr u ci al r el ati o ns hi ps t hat s ha p e t h e nati o nal- l ev el iss u es of el ectri cit y pr o -
visi o n ar e ill ustrat e d i n Fi g ur e 2. 1, a n d t h es e r el ati o ns hi ps li n k el ectri cit y g e n -
erati o n, tra ns missi o n, a n d distri b uti o n t o t h e c as h fl o ws t hat s ust ai n t h e s yst e m.
Th e f o u n d ati o ns of c hr o ni c u n d ers u p pl y a n d l oa ds h e d di n g c a n b e s e e n i n t his
di a gra m. Th e f u el mi x (i.e., w hi c h f u el s o urc es ar e us e d a n d i n w hat pr o p orti o n)

T N S MI S SI O N
( N T D C)

E L E C T RI CI T Y

GE NE TI O N DI S T RI B U TI O N
(I P Ps, G E N C O S ) ( DI S C Os )

C AS H F L O W
( N T D C / C P P A)
Ex c ess
B u d g et ar y S u p p ort
C o m m er ci al L oss es
PPA
( Rs. & $ )

Fig ure 2. 1 C as h Fl o ws of Nati o nal El ectri cit y S u p pl y

 Inter p rov incial Uneve nne s s 27

in generation is the key driver of cost, but also of exposure to international fuel
markets, their volatility, and pressures to make payments in a timely manner.
ese costs must be recovered through distribution, which requires ge ing
consumers to pay their bills in full and on time. Some degree of losses is factored
into pricing, but if the distribution company1 (or DISCO) su ers losses above
this level, then there will be a shortfall in cash ow. Strictly speaking, fuel costs
are also factored into the costs of production, but j​ust like excess commer-
cial losses ​higher prices for fuel put a burden on the central government.
Increasing fuel costs are passed through to the government by the independent
power producers (IPPs) due to the terms of their power purchasing agreements
(PPAs). Similarly, any foreign exchange uctuations are also passed through
by IPPs.
In practice, revenues from electricity distribution are less than the costs of
generation, and the central government must ensure that power producers
and fuel suppliers are paid in order to provide adequate supply. e budg-
etary support from the central government to cover subsidies and excess losses
is mitigated through reducing supply, that is, loadshedding. By reducing the
quantum of electricity supplied through loadshedding, the government reduces
its nancial exposure. is is of course an incredibly damaging policy response
because the knock-​on e ect in terms of economic and human harm is substan-
tial, but raising electricity prices for consumers would have its own human,
political, and economic costs, while the preferred option of reforms that ad-
dress the systemic weaknesses of governance have proven to be beyond the
capacity of successive governments. If commitments for subsidies are unpaid,
or losses exceed targets by too much, the pinch must eventually be felt some-
where. To the extent that the system is also exposed to international oil markets
for securing fuel supplies, the need to ensure adequate and timely cash ows
becomes more pressing due to the reduced tolerance of market operators for
any delay in payment (as compared with domestic contracts, which are so er
constraints). Pakistan’s fuel mix and capacity to extract timely and complete
payments are thus tightly linked to the adequate provision of electricity in the
country. Increasing prices and cu ing subsidies ​much favored prescriptions
of the IMF a​ re one possible response, but these options would have political
repercussions.2
e cash ow diagram in Figure 2.1 also serves as a map to the structure of
this chapter’s argument. Starting with losses, the chapter moves to a discus-
sion of subsidies and then power generation capacity, with a ention to selected
examples of power generation projects to illustrate the tensions of state making
present in Pakistan’s electrical power sector. Within each section I engage with
historical and socio-​spatial dimensions of state making to show that the uneven
state capacity visible at the national level re ects inequality by design.
28 •

Electricity Losses as an Indicator of State Capacity

Using transmission and distribution losses as a proxy indicator for state capacity
reveals a lot about the unevenness of state capacity at the sub-​national level in
Pakistan.3 at we can use losses in this manner follows from an understanding
of state capacity as a ma er of the state’s ability to penetrate society and imple-
ment projects across its territory. Given that electricity losses measure the ex-
tent to which consumers are billed for the electricity supplied to them, varying
degrees of losses indicate the extent to which a territory is incorporated into the
state as part of a larger regime of inequality by design. Figure 2.2 below has two
panels that show losses by distribution company, with bold lines indicating pro-
vincial boundaries. Moving clockwise from the northwest, the four provinces
are Khyber Pukhtunkhwa (KPK), Punjab, Sindh, and Baluchistan. e panel on
the le is shaded according to transmission and distribution losses, and it shows
that losses are lowest in the Punjab. Punjab is the richest and most industrialized
province and has historically been the dominant province in domestic poli-
tics. DISCO losses range from 38% in the Sukkur Electric Power Company
(SEPCO) service area of interior Sindh to under 10% in the Islamabad Electric
Supply Company (IESCO), serving northern Punjab and the Islamabad Capital
Territory.
ere is also great variation within each of these distribution companies.
Even within IESCO, which has the best overall statistics, and even within the
Islamabad circle, which serves the capital region itself and has the best perfor-
mance within the Islamabad distribution company, 23 out of 234 11-​kV feeders
had system losses of over 50%.4 Chapter 4 examines the losses of one distribu-
tion company ​the Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO), serving the
Lahore area of central Punjab i​ n more detail, and explores the extent to which
high-​and low-​loss feeders can even coexist within the same subdivision.
Total commercial losses (the right panel of Figure 2.2) are the product of
transmission and distribution losses multiplied by the proportion of bills that are
actually paid. Commercial losses give a be er view of the cash ow implications
of the distribution company’s operations, but the data is not available historically
for Pakistan, nor are they as widely reported or used by analysts. e commer-
cial losses panel reveals the same broad pa ern where Punjabi consumers pay
their bills to a greater extent than the rest of the country. However, Balochistan
and interior Sindh are particularly noticeable for the extent to which the elec-
tricity supplied is simply not paid for at rates of 75% and 64%, respectively. e
budgetary consequences at the national level are muted because per capita con-
sumption is so much lower in those regions, but the inability of distribution
companies to bill for their supply, and to collect on the bills that are distributed,
DISCOLosses(2018)

GILGITBALTISTAN GILGITBALTISTAN
PESCO
PESCO
34.8
43

IESCO AJK IESCO AJK

TESCO 9.41 10
TESCO GEPCO
21.7 GEPCO
43 13
FESCO 10.7 FESCO
11.03 LESCO 11 LESCO
14.1 18

MEPCO MEPCO
15.5 14

QESCO QESCO
23.1 SEPCO SEPCO
75
38.29 64
LENGEND
0.00–10.00
10.00–20.00
HESCO HESCO 20.00–30.00
27.1 43 30.00–40.00
K-ELECTRIC K-ELECTRIC 40.00–50.00
23.7 31 50.00–75.00

T&DLosses CombinedCommercialT&DLosses

Figure 2.2 Losses by Distribution Company, 2018

30 •

is a striking marker of the limitations of formal governance in these peripheral

state spaces.
Broadly speaking, those same areas where losses are highest tend to be those
regions where electricity generation is situated. While some regions pay for
electricity consumption, others provide for its generation, and there is a rough
balance to be found across them in terms of their contributions. Nonetheless,
the state’s presence and capacity in these di erent regions are not equivalent: in
the electricity-​generating regions the state utilizes natural resources to produce
electricity that the wealthier and more industrial regions consume, yet it is the
electricity-​consuming regions that also implicitly pay for electricity consumption
in the high-​loss regions. is grand bargain is re ected in two key policies: the
Common Generation Pool, whereby all provinces share their power generation,
and the Universal Standard Tari , whereby consumers throughout the country
pay the same prices. is commitment to a single price for electricity gives rise
to the Tari Di erential Subsidy, whose gargantuan size is a threat to national
nances. e interprovincial political economy of power informs other such in-
stitutional bargains that re ect the di erential state capacity across the country
and the interests of the provinces. While this unevenness of state capacity
is of huge concern in present-​day electricity policy, this unevenness has been
produced by past generations of electricity policy. It is easier to see this historical
production of uneven state capacity in the discussion of constructing di erent
types of power generation facilities that accumulate in the stock of the nation’s
built infrastructure, whereas transmission and distribution losses are a part of
a repeating cyclical ow that sustains the operation of this built infrastructure.
From the governance reform perspective evident in the plans discussed in this
chapter and the next, losses are a aw to be eliminated and a perfect example of
governance conceptualized as a lack, that is, the distribution company’s inability
to enforce payment discipline on electricity consumers. Instead, the conception
of losses proposed here is one of “inequality by design,” in which losses represent
the strategic choices taken by the federal center to accommodate the realities of
Pakistani state making. us, the high degree of losses in parts of the country
can be understood in the context of interprovincial relations as part of the bal-
ance of power relations. One might even push this analysis further in terms of
representing governance through the lens of electricity: high losses persist in
interior Sindh and Baluchistan because these frontier and unse led regions (ter-
minology evident in state documents dating back to the colonial era) are not
deemed amenable to se lement. e federal center chooses not to expend the
necessary e ort ​military, economic, ideological ​to subdue and integrate re-
sistance in these regions. For contrast, one can consider the enormous e orts
seen in the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), such as with
the suppression of militancy in Waziristan during the Pakistani army’s operation
 Inter p rov incial Uneve nne s s 31

zarb-​e-​azb in 2014–​2016 and the constitutional integration of FATA into KPK.

e task is daunting, as demonstrated by the multiple and continuing Baluch
insurgencies. Nor is it perhaps deemed worthwhile in the calculus of the federal
center to expend such e ort, given Baluchistan’s small population and relative
poverty,5 and its peripherality to the idea of Pakistan. Hence, the continuation
of the colonial model of cantonments and co-​opting local notables continues.
e bene ts to the federal center of the common generation pool require some
limited integration of these peripheries, and the cost is the budgetary burden
of prices that don’t meet operating costs (not with current levels of state ca-
pacity with billing and payments) and the heavy subsidies that o set electricity
costs of wealthy landlords. While versions of this argument are well traveled for
Baluchistan, later chapters explore the unevenness of state capacity even within
the core areas of Pakistan.

Electricity Losses: A Stubborn Problem

High transmission and distribution losses have plagued the Pakistani power
sector since its earliest days. Figure 2.36 shows these losses since 1960.
Average system losses peak at 35.7% in 1977. National losses exceeded 30%
in the years 1969 and 1973–​1980. Losses were below 20% in 1960 and returned
below that level in 2014. e prevalence of high system losses across the country
and over time has resulted in annual losses averaging 25% from 1960 to 2018,
which means that, on average, consumers were not billed for a quarter of all elec-
tricity supplied.

50

40

30
Losses(%)

20

10

1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020
Year

Figure 2.3 Percent Transmission and Distribution Losses, 1960–​2018

32 •

e pa ern of losses in Figure 2.3 doesn’t immediately accord with the con-
ventional discussion of state strength in Pakistan, which sees the decline of the
central administrative services starting with the PPP under Zul qar Ali Bhu o,
and largely continuing unabated since then.7 It may be the case that expansion
into new service areas and the number of new connections during the 1970s was
a driver for losses. Another possibility is that the earlier strength of the state (if
that view is accepted) was itself uneven and did not actually entail much insti-
tutional power outside the major urban areas and the Punjab, so that expansion
into new areas added consumers who were less likely to be amenable to state
control. Unfortunately, neither materials in the Water and Power Development
Authority (WAPDA) House library in Lahore nor elsewhere had much to say
on electricity governance in earlier periods, nor are they a feature of the ve-​
year plans.
e rst mention of high transmission and distribution losses as a serious
problem comes in the Fourth Five Year Plan ​issued in 1970 ​which states
that “During the ird Plan, the service was marred by loadshedding and ab-
normally high system losses” (425). e concerns about the and system losses
are prompted by the observation that “De cits appeared for the rst time in the
revenue accounts of WAPDA” (422). is newfound concern notwithstanding,
losses remained higher than their 1970 levels (27.8%) until 1984.
None of the plans since 1970 that discuss the problem of high system losses
engage with the causes of losses and o er more than a cursory glance at how to
address the problem. e plans refer to comba ing losses through “concerted
action” involving an “independent inspection squad” (Fourth Plan), or a “major
e ort” (Seventh Plan), though the outcome by 1993 was judged to be “pathetic”
(Eighth Plan). Planning documents have spent much more time addressing
concerns on the generation side rather than the transmission side, with fuel costs
and capacity being the focus of much a ention. Coherent plans to address losses
are conspicuous by their absence, perhaps in tacit recognition that addressing
electricity the is a very local governance issue and thus not amenable to central
planning.8
Although the recorded levels of losses are already high, industry observers
fear that they might understate actual losses. e technical audit of the Islamabad
distribution company conducted by the United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) in 2010–​2011 concluded that the o cial gure of
9.8% losses for FY 2009–​2010 was “inconsistent with the ndings of both of
IESCO and [USAID] loss analysis,” suggesting that a higher rate of 13.7% was
more accurate (MWP-​ USAID Power Distribution Improvement Program,
2011, p. 39). In India, “more realistic estimates” increased the recorded losses
9

of Area Electricity Boards (Kale, 2004, pp. 470–​471), and a similar situation
is almost de nitely the case in Pakistan, where “overbilling” is an established
 Inter p rov incial Uneve nne s s 33

phenomenon. In 2012, LESCO’s own audit department investigated accounts

of overbilling and found that in ated bills were being issued to reduce recorded
line losses. O cials at all levels were found to be complicit.10
All these losses must be paid for, and that burden falls invariably on the
Government of Pakistan due to the sovereign guarantees that undergird the
power purchasing agreements (PPAs) with IPPs. When losses exceed National
Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEP•) targets for any given distribu-
tion company (DISCO), there is no other place for that obligation other than
the federal government. Higher losses in any given DISCO mean that the
tari di erential subsidy will increase. ese are the relationships illustrated in
Figure 2.1, and they are described in more detail in the next section.

e Burden of Electricity Subsidies

e tari di erential subsidy is by far the biggest type of subsidy in the pricing
of electricity.11 e term “tari ” is used in policy discussions for the price of
electricity to consumers. e di erential involved is the di erence between
what the regulator, NEP•, determines that the DISCO should charge, and
what the Government of Pakistan noti es as the o cial tari (i.e., what the
consumer pays). In 2010, blending all categories and weighting by consump-
tion, the NEP• average tari was Rs. 10.17 per kWh, while the Government
of Pakistan’s average noti ed tari was Rs. 7.12 per kWh.12 is gap of 3.05 per
kWh is the loss per unit sale of electricity that must be covered by the federal
government. In FY 2007–​2008 the tari di erential subsidy was Rs. 87 billion,
in 2008–​2009 it was Rs. 133 billion, in 2009–​2010 it was Rs. 226 billion, and
in FY 2010–​2011 it was estimated at Rs. 145 billion (FODP, 2010). To appre-
ciate the scale of the subsidy, the 2010 gure is close to 10% of total government
revenues.13 In 2014–​2015 the subsidy was Rs. 144 billion, approximately 0.8%
of GDP, which is comparable in size to total public health expenditures (World
Bank, 2017). In 2019–​2020 the tari di erential subsidy was Rs. 162 billion
(Government of Pakistan, 2020, p. 15).
All DISCO consumers are charged the same prices a​ uniform national tari
noti ed by the government ​even though NEP• determines a di erent tari
for each DISCO. NEP•’s process is intended to re ect the cost of service for
each DISCO, though it is not based on a true cost of service study but an assess-
ment of the revenue each DISCO requires to run its operations. NEP•’s goal
is that the DISCO’s consumer revenues balance the cost of purchasing power.
e determination that DISCOs need di erent levels of revenue per con-
sumer can in part be justi ed by the di erent social and physical characteristics
of the territories served by each DISCO as described in below.
34 •

Line losses tend to increase with the area of service and decrease with
customer density. Losses also decrease with a greater proportion of indus-
trial and bulk consumers, as these are the easiest to monitor.14 DISCO man-
agement even refers to these as “zero loss” consumers. The distribution
companies with the best performance in terms of line losses are Gujranwala
Electric Power Company (GEPCO), Faisalabad Electric Supply Company
(FESCO), and IESCO. These have relatively small service areas with a
higher density of consumers and more industrial and bulk consumers. The
worst-​performing distribution companies are Hyderabad Electric Supply
Company (HESCO) and Peshawar Electric Supply Company (PESCO),
which have very large service areas, dispersed consumers, and fewer indus-
trial connections. This basic analysis applies broadly but not to all cases.
Multan Electric Supply Company (MEPCO) has a larger service area than
PESCO, lower consumer density, and a lower proportion of unit sales to
industrial and bulk consumers, but line losses of only 19% against 37%
for PESCO.

Table 2.1 Distribution Company Pro les

DISCO Customers Area of Industrial Line Recovery Commercial TDS
per KM of Service & Bulk Losses (2015) Operations, per
11 kV Line (km2) Consumers (2015) Losses × Unit
(2010) (2010) (% of unit Recovery in Rs.
sales) (2015) (2012)
(2015)

IESCO 101 23,160 42% 9.41% 99.8% 90.4% 1.02

LESCO 147 19,064 41% 14.1% 95.9% 82.4% 1.78
FESCO 89 36,122 37% 11.0% 100.1% 89.1% 2.59
GEPCO 131 17,207 31% 10.7% 97.0% 86.6% 2.91
PESCO 89 74,521 29% 34.8% 88.0% 57.4% 5.09
HESCO 36 126,758 26% 27.1% 78.2% 57% 4.30
MEPCO 72 105,505 23% 15.5% 102.3% 86.5% 3.27
SEPCO 30 56,300 23% 38.3% 57.8% 35.7% 4.65
QESCO 17 334,616 5% 23.1% 32.6% 25.1% 4.48
TESCO 60 27,220 4% 21.7% 73% 57.2%

Sources: DISCO Performance Pro le 2009–​2010, prepared by the Power Distribution

Improvement Program of USAID, NEP• 2015 State of the Industry Report,
Fatima and Nasim (2013).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 II
THE PEARLS OF IRIATAI

"Iriatai," my uncle began, "is an atoll in the Paumotus—a narrow ring of

land nowhere more than a few yards high, surrounding a lagoon ten or
twelve miles across. The island has a curious history, for its people were the
last to remain savages among all the eighty islands of the group. It is a lonely
place, far out to the eastward where trading-schooners seldom pass, and long
after the missionaries had civilized the other atolls, Iriatai remained
unknown—no white man had landed on its beaches, or laid eyes on the wild
people whose village was screened by the dense bush along the shore.

"In those days there was a famous Catholic school on Mangareva in the
Gambier group, and one year, at Christmas time, a brig set sail from Tahiti
for the South, with a cargo of trade, and half a dozen children of wealthy
half-caste families, sent to be educated by the Church. A week after the
brig's departure, a gale came roaring down out of the northwest—a storm so
fierce and long-continued that old men speak of it to this day. On Tahiti there
was great anxiety for the vessel's safety, and no one was surprised when
many months later a schooner came north from Mangareva, with word that
the brig had never arrived. It was an old story,—another ship lost somewhere
in the lonely spaces of the South Pacific,—but there was one woman on
Tahiti who refused to believe that the vessel was lost. She was a rich widow
whose only child, a flaxen-haired girl of eight, was missing with the others,
and she offered great rewards to anyone who could bring her news of the
ship.

"One day a trading skipper came to her with a clew. On his last trip
through the Paumotus he had been blown far out of his course, and while
hove-to in a heavy sea, he had raised an island only vaguely marked on the
charts. He ran in to take shelter in the lee, and as they stood off and on, close
to the leeward reef, the lookout had reported people ashore. Taking up his
glass, the captain made out a crowd of savages standing on the beach. They
brandished spears and were dressed in girdles of pandanus leaf, but two or
three of them wore about their shoulders pieces of cloth which the skipper
took to be of European make. He was an old-timer in the islands, and he was
certain that no trader had ever visited the place.
 "The widow lost no time in fitting up an expedition at her own expense.
The skipper who had seen the savages on Iriatai was given command; the
old man is living in Papeete to-day—I had the yarn from him. He picked up
half a dozen Rangiroa boys and armed them with rifles in case of trouble,
though they were instructed not to shoot unless attacked.

"After a fortnight of beating about, they raised the palms of Iriatai, sailed
in through the pass, dropped anchor a stone's throw off the village, and went
ashore. There were canoes hauled up on the beach, fishing tackle lay about
as it had been dropped in haste, and the thatched huts seemed to have been
inhabited within an hour past, but saving a dog or two and a few half-wild
pigs, no living creature was in sight. The captain heard a shout from one of
his men who was exploring the far end of the village, and the others
hastened to the place where the Christian boy was pointing with horror to the
ground. There, close to the temple of the islanders,—a long platform of rude
coral blocks,—was the umu tagata: the oven in which human bodies were
roasted whole. The bones of men, clean-picked by the cannibals of Iriatai,
were scattered on all sides, and hundreds of Chilian silver dollars—current
throughout the Pacific in those days—were arranged in neat patterns about
the cooking-place. A few yards off, mounted on sharpened stakes along the
coral wall, a row of heads was drying in the sun, and one of them—a small
head from which hung wisps of long flaxen hair—made the whole story
clear. The widow's daughter had been found.

"The skipper was sickened—if he had caught the people then, he told me,
he would have slaughtered them like sheep. Calling to his men, he set off
recklessly through the bush, resolved to shoot down the savages at sight.
Hour after hour the searchers struggled through the dense green bush,
scratched by thorns, streaming with perspiration, stumbling over the sharp
coral underfoot. It was a hot still day, and the jungle was lifeless and
strangely quiet. No leaf stirred, no bird sang, and the drooping fronds of
palms hung motionless overhead. Nothing moved anywhere saving the small
white sea-birds which circled eerily, high above the tree-tops. The
oppression of the bush cooled the skipper's anger and lowered the spirits of
the searching-party; no word had been spoken for half an hour when they sat
down in silence to rest, close to a pile of jagged coral blocks. Leaning
against a tree-trunk, with his rifle between his knees, the captain was in the
act of filling a pipe when one of the men touched his arm, signing him to
make no sound. To one side of them, in the bleached mass of coral, there
was a faint scratching noise, and presently, as they watched, a brown hand
and arm appeared for an instant in a crevice of the rocks.

"'That is their hiding-place,' the native breathed into the skipper's ear; 'I
have heard my own people speak of such caverns, where they took refuge in
the old wars.'

"The captain thought for a moment before he spoke. 'Go alone to the
mouth of the cave,' he whispered to the boy beside him; 'our rifles will
protect you. See if you can talk to the savages. and if they understand you,
try to persuade one or two of the men to come out.'

"The native rose and stole away, and soon they heard his voice calling
softly in the Paumotan tongue. He seemed to be in conversation with the
people underground. When he returned there was an odd smile on his lips. 'It
is strange,' he said, 'those people speak a tongue such as our old men use.
They are like beasts or cruel children, killing because they know no better, or
are afraid. I do not believe that they are evil men. There is no entrance to the
cave—only a little hole in the rock, through which a man may thrust his
hand and arm. The place is sacred in these people's eyes and on the ground
close to the hole there is an offering of food. They feared it might betray
their hiding-place; the man we saw was trying to reach it from within. There
is another way out, they said, knowing that I could never find the place. To
reach it, they swim beneath the water of the lagoon. We cannot get in from
above; all our strength would not suffice to move the rocks. They are afraid
to come out, but perhaps I might persuade them if I could show gifts such as
they have never seen.'

"The captain collected a few bright trifles among his men: a mirror or
two, a gaudy bandanna handkerchief, a clasp knife with a glittering blade.
The native returned to parley with the savages, and while he was gone the
skipper gave instructions to his men—they were to scatter a little and lie
hidden; if the wild people found courage to leave their cave, and they were
not too many, they were to be seized and bound at once.

"An hour passed. Then, without the warning crackle of a twig, two
savages stepped from the bush and came toward the native who awaited
them, holding out gifts and speaking encouragingly. They were naked save
for light girdles of grass, and their shocks of hair were tied in high knots
upon their heads. The captain whistled, and a moment later the two men of
Iriatai lay triced and helpless on the ground.

"The schooner sailed for Tahiti the same night, carrying the prisoners,
whose evidence—the story, freely told, of how the wrecked brig had been
plundered before she broke up, and how every soul aboard had been
massacred—was placed before the French authorities. A few months later a
man-of-war was sent to Iriatai, with one of the prisoners as interpreter, and
the people of the island were carried off to Tahiti to be civilized. In the end,
the chief was executed in reprisal for the island's crime, and his people were
taken away to distant atolls of the group.

"Only one of them, so far as I know, ever returned to Iriatai—Turia, the

chief's daughter, a girl of eleven or twelve when she was carried off aboard
the man-of-war. Her beauty and intelligence attracted the notice of a half-
caste Tahitian, who adopted her and gave her an education at the Sisters'
School. At seventeen she married the Baron von Tesmar—an Austrian
nobleman, a man of wealth and taste, brought up among the capitals of the
Old World. He was well known in all the outlandish ports of the Pacific; for
reasons of his own, of which he never spoke, he had chosen to shut the door
on the past. He traveled on his own yacht with a Kanaka crew, and during a
visit to Tahiti he ran across Turia, the girl from Iriatai. A month later she
sailed away with him, with a marriage certificate, all legal and shipshape,
stowed away in her camphorwood box. I suppose she must have been the
Baroness von Tesmar—By Jove, a funny world!

"The natives have a quality I like: each one of them loves his own island
in a way that we can scarcely understand. Turia was no exception, but unlike
the rest of her people, she ended her days on Iriatai. A short time after he
married her the Baron became interested in pearl-culture and—at her
suggestion, no doubt—they settled on the island where her savage
forefathers had lived and died.

"To give you an understanding of the story from now on, I must tell you
one or two things about pearl-shell, which furnishes the mother-of-pearl
used all over the world for buttons and ornaments and the handles of knives.
In the Paumotus where I trade, the pearl-oysters are of a kind called 'black-
lipped,' valuable as mother-of-pearl but rather barren so far as real pearls are
concerned. Out to the west, about Celebes and in the Sulu Sea, there is
another variety, richer in pearls and far more valuable as shell, called 'gold-
lipped,' because the edges of the shell are golden-tinted. Von Tesmar was a
man of some scientific attainments, and he suspected, far ahead of his time,
that the growth of a pearl in the oyster was caused by a parasite, which it
might be possible to transmit by artificial means. In order to carry out his
experiments, he had his schooner fitted with a kind of well, through which
the sea water was allowed to circulate, and brought shipments of live oysters
from distant parts, to be transplanted in Iriatai Lagoon. He may have had an
idea that the gold-lipped oysters, in this new environment, would prove more
susceptible to infection—to the little-known parasite believed to cause the
pearl.

"The Baron's career, his studies of the pearl, and his new settlement on
Iriatai were all ended by the hurricane of 1881. The island had been one of
the finest of the Paumotus, with dense groves of coconuts and a deep soil on
the higher spots, but when I first landed there, in ninety-six, it was a waste of
sand and tumbled coral-blocks, clean-swept from end to end by breaching
seas. On an islet, far down the lagoon, a small clump of palms remained—
the only living things, save Turia and her child, to survive the fury of the sea.

"The settlement was at the weather end, and when the seas began to
breach across into the lagoon, von Tesmar's schooner was anchored fifty
yards offshore. Both cables snapped and she disappeared in an instant among
the driving clouds downwind. She must have piled up at the leeward end, or
perhaps she was carried clean over into the open sea beyond. At any rate, no
man of her crew was ever seen again. The people of the settlement—a dozen
natives with their wives, brought by von Tesmar to labor in the oyster-beds
—had no time to chop off the tops of the palms in which they took refuge. A
pair of old palms, eighty feet high, flexible and tough as whalebone, stood
close beside the house. High up on the bole of one, the Baron tied himself,
and Turia swarmed up the other, her three-year-old boy lashed to her back.

"It is useless to try to describe a South Sea hurricane. One after another,
the houses were carried away. Each frothing comber seemed to rush over the
land more fiercely than the last; the wind came in gusts that bent the palms
like reeds. With a sound audible above the uproar of the hurricane, a palm-
bole snapped, and its top, with two human beings clinging among the fronds,
sped off to vanish in the wrack. Turia's was the last to withstand the wind;
she watched the others go,—men, women, and babies at their mothers'
breasts,—and finally a faint, splitting report close by told her that von
Tesmar's palm had given way. Next moment her own refuge went, and still
clinging to the upper bole, she was sailing above the torn white surface of
the lagoon. How she survived the impact, disentangled herself from the
wreckage, and lived through miles of angry water is a thing that I have never
understood. When she struggled ashore on the islet which was the only land
above the sea, her child was still alive. No one but a Paumotan could have
done it, and no woman of any other race could have lived and supported her
child—as Turia did for many weeks—on coconuts and the fish she was able
to catch with her bare hands. In the end, the lookout of a passing schooner
saw her signal-smoke."

My uncle's cigar had gone out and he rose for a moment to scratch a
match against the fireplace. The lamp was turned low; the glowing logs on
the andirons sent waves of light flickering among the shadows of the room.
My father stood up to stretch his legs. Standing with hands clasped behind
his back, he gazed quizzically at his brother, seated in the deep old leather
chair.

"That's a good story of yours, as far as it goes," he observed; "but what

has all this to do with you, or with the fact that you can spend only one day
with us?"

"No wonder you're growing impatient," said Uncle Harry, with a smile;
"it must seem an interminable yarn, but it's all linked together, as you will
see. I came into it about ten years ago, when I took a lease on Iriatai. It was
just after my last visit here. A friend suggested that I have a look at the
island with a view to planting coconuts—they thrive wonderfully in the coral
of the atolls. I had heard half-legendary accounts of von Tesmar and his
pearls, but such experiments are not taken seriously in the islands, where so
many cranks have tried this scheme or that, and failed. The lagoon had never
been a place for shell.
 "I met Turia when I landed there. Von Tesmar had left her a little money
in the Papeete bank, and after a year of civilization, she had been
overpowered by the homing instinct of her race. Her husband had relatives
in German Samoa—the directors of a great Apia trading-house—and she
took her child to them before she set out to end her days on Iriatai. Then she
chartered a small schooner and sailed away with a couple of poor native
families and a stock of provisions and seed-coconuts. I found her happy in a
lonely sort of life, settled in a one-room cottage, surrounded by groves of
fine twelve-year-old palms. The place was furnished with a bed, an
accordion, and a chest of camphorwood; a portrait of von Tesmar, in the
uniform of an officer of dragoons, hung on the wall. There must have been a
human side of this man's character, for his widow remembered him with a
devotion hard to match.

"She was the only claimant to rights in the island, and I had no difficulty
in gaining her consent. Within a year I obtained from the French
Government a long lease on Iriatai and now there are sixty thousand young
palms on the island, some of them already beginning to bear. Another
hurricane? We can't afford to think of that—they strike an island not more
than once in every hundred years. During the visits when I carried labor and
supplies to Iriatai, Turia used to spin me yarns about the hurricane. She was
an interesting woman, as those of the pure old blood are apt to be. When I
knew her she was straight and handsome still—no darker than a woman of
southern Spain. Sometimes she showed me letters from her boy, growing up
in far-off Samoa with his relatives. I did not meet him till after she was dead.

"I needed a rest last year, and as I didn't have time for a run up to see you
all, I decided to take a vacation among the islands—a short cruise through
the Tongan and Samoan groups. One night in Apia, the German port, I had
been dining at the consulate, and as I walked along the moonlit beach to
where my boat's crew awaited me, I was stopped by a young half-caste,
dressed in soiled white duck. He spoke English, and he looked so miserable,
so poor and ill that it needed a thicker skin than mine to pass him without a
word. His body was no more than skin and bones, and when he turned in the
moonlight, I saw the wreck of what had been a handsome face, ravaged by
quick tropical tuberculosis. He spoke in abrupt sentences, gasping for breath
and stopping at intervals to cough.
 "'You English?' he asked. 'No? American, eh? I speak German, French—
not much English. That Tara your schooner? They tell me you go Tahiti to-
morrow. Give me passage, eh? I cook—wash dishes—cabin boy—anything!
I want go Tahiti too much!'

"He turned away from me and leaned over with a hand to his chest,
coughing frightfully; when the paroxysm had passed he stood gasping and
unable to speak. It was impossible not to be sorry for the poor devil.

"'I'll let you know to-morrow,' I told him. 'I'm sailing at sundown. Come
to the beach at four or five o'clock.'

"Next morning, strolling with the American consul, I pointed out the half-
caste, asleep in the shade of a beached canoe. 'Oh, that fellow,' said the
consul; 'Yes, I know him; von Tesmar's his name. Doesn't look much like a
nobleman, does he? As a matter of fact, he's a baron of the Austrian Empire
—when he's drunk enough he'll show you the papers to prove it! Odd story.
His father married a Paumotu woman years ago and was lost in a hurricane,
back in the eighties. The mother brought her child out here—old Madame
Lichtenstein, of the Hamburg Concession, was the youngster's aunt. The old
lady was good to him, sent him to the Protestant school and finally shipped
him off to Europe with plenty of money to spend. But the cold winters were
too much for his native blood, I guess; t.b. got him after the second year, and
as happens so often in the islands, consumption led to drink. Then one day
he turned up here, a yellow skeleton with a craving for alcohol. The
Germans took pity on him and pensioned him off for a time, but he was
sinking rather low, and finally they cut off the money and ceased to
recognize him at all. One can't really blame them much!'

"I didn't say anything, but I was interested, I'll admit. So this was Turia's
son—the child of the hurricane on Iriatai! He had traveled a long road since
those days; but I suspected that the end was near. Why should he want to go
to the eastern islands? The old instinct of his mother's blood, perhaps, calling
the wanderer home at last to die.

"I gave him a passage, at any rate. He was willing enough, but it was
absurd to talk of working his way—when we'd been out three days I knew
that his eyes would never see another landfall. I put him in a berth in the
spare stateroom. He'd picked up his English on the beach, but in French
you'd have been surprised to hear the fellow talk. With the interest one
cannot help feeling in a dying man, I spent a good deal of time yarning with
him, and finally told him that I had heard something of his story and had
known Turia on Iriatai. He was in a steady low fever by this time, and our
talks seemed to excite him; he asked endless questions about his mother and
her life—the island—the lagoon.

"One night, when I was at the wheel, the cabin boy came on deck,
rubbing the sleep from his eyes, to say that von Tesmar wanted to see me at
once. There was something of great importance to tell me, it seemed. We
were in the middle of the wide, lonely reach of sea that stretches from Rose
Island to the Leeward group. The moon had risen about eleven o'clock; there
was not a cloud in the sky, and a steady breeze blew warm and fair from the
northwest. I had taken the wheel at moonrise and I hated to go below, but the
half-caste's message seemed so urgent that I called the man on watch to take
my place.

"I found von Tesmar gasping in his berth. He had gotten up to undo a
bundle he carried with him, wrapped in a piece of native cloth, and when I
pulled the curtain aside, he held out to me a tattered sheet of cheap ruled
notepaper.

"'For you,' he whispered breathlessly, in the French he had picked up

during an edifying year in Paris. 'Ah, mon ami, this is the end—now I must
die, and a glass of your excellent rum would help me to die gracefully. Merci
bien—you are kindness personified! I wonder why: there is so little, in your
eyes, that I can do. Yes, this is the end. I cannot complain—I have had my
fun and paid for some of it, at least. Never again shall I watch the faces
passing my table on the boulevard, nor sit with the brown people in a bush-
clearing far from the church, while the drums throb and the sleek young girls
twist and flutter their hands in the torchlight. No doubt you are thinking that
I am a drôle de type, and so I am, by training and by birth—half savage, half
boulevardier. But the time is short and I weary you with idle reflections;
allons, to business! You can read the native Tahitian, eh? It is difficult for
one who knows only the Samoan dialect. I had hoped to keep that paper to
myself; the doctors say that men with my malady are always optimists. But
you have treated me as one white man treats another—keep it, read it, and do
as you please. Perhaps it is worth another glass of rum, n'est-ce pas?
Another rum for Monsieur le Baron! They called me that in Paris, at the
Grand Hotel—Ha, ha! Noble on both sides, bon Dieu!—my mother a
cannibal Princess—Monsieur le Baron von Tesmar, Prince of Iriatai! How's
that for a title, hein?'

"At five o'clock, when the moonlight paled before the first flush of dawn,
he turned his face away from me and died. I blew out the light and went on
deck to give orders for his burial. Then, when I had my coffee, I lay down in
my berth and unfolded the paper he had given me. It proved a quaint
document—a letter in the native language from Turia to her son, written a
few days before her death. Here it is—it is worth translating for your benefit:
—

This from your dear mother, who loves you and prays that God's blessing may bring you
prosperity and health. Amen. I am ill, and though the woman who tends me has made
medicine, I think that I shall soon die. Do not weep for me—I shall be happy to be again
with your father, whom I have always loved. Now pay attention, for there is a thing that I
must tell you. Your father was a wise man, and his work was to bring pearl oysters from
foreign seas to this lagoon. After the hurricane, when I swam so far with you clinging to my
back, I believed for many years that the oysters must all be dead, but that was not true. In
the far end of the lagoon, where no one goes to-day, I have found where the strange shells
with edges like gold lie on the coral in thousands, not more than fifteen fathoms deep. Many
times I have gone alone in my canoe to dive for them, and I have found fine pearls, great
and small. These are true words. The white man called Seroni, who brings people to plant
coconuts on Iriatai, is a good man and my friend, but I have said nothing of the pearls to
him. They were your father's work, and you will want them, since you live in the white
man's land. The oysters are on coral bottom, midway between the islet and the reef. Beware
of a great brown shark when you come here to dive; he comes sometimes to that end of the
lagoon, and twice he has nearly had me when I was intent upon my work. I think he is the
old god of my people, worshiped when I was a child. Farewell, my dear son—I shall not see
you again.

On Iriatai, from Turia, to her son, Arno von Tesmar

"Somehow, as I read this letter, I was convinced that what the woman
said was true. There are nearly a hundred square miles in Iriatai Lagoon, and
though my men did a good deal of fishing, a shell-patch of the largest size
might have escaped their notice for years. No one in the Eastern Pacific had
ever succeeded in acclimatizing the gold-lipped shell, but that did not prove
that it could not be done. If Turia's words were true, von Tesmar's eagerness
to reach the group was justified. It might prove a rare chance, and I resolved
to investigate at once.

"Fatu, my big mate, is a man that I can always trust. He is a first-class

diver, and when the Tara was anchored at Iriatai, I told him the story and
explained that he must hold his tongue. We took a big canoe and made camp
on the islet at the far end of the lagoon. Even with Turia's directions, it took
us four days to find the shell, but when Fatu began to bring up the gold-
lipped oysters in both hands, I saw that the dead half-caste had paid his
passage a thousandfold.

"My man reported the bottom covered with shell for acres on either side
—a little fortune in mother-of-pearl alone. And pearls—By Jove, I could
scarcely drag Fatu away!

"I didn't dare to linger—there was danger of causing talk. It would need a
dozen or fifteen divers to work the patch properly; the news would travel
like a whirlwind, and I hadn't the shadow of a claim on the shell. The open
lagoons—I must explain—with passes through which a vessel can enter
from the sea are Government property, and during the legal season any
native may dive and keep what he obtains. Unless I did some careful
planning, half the schooners in the South Pacific would soon be anchored at
Iriatai. Well, I headed for Tahiti and did my thinking on the way. The
Governor of French Oceania is a friend of mine. When we reached Papeete
my plans were made and I put the matter up to his common-sense: By pure
chance, in one of the atolls under his administration I had discovered a
brand-new patch of shell. (I said nothing, of course, about von Tesmar, or the
fact that the shell was golden-lipped.) If properly preserved and worked, this
patch might in the future prove a valuable asset to the Government. As
things were, I could not legally profit by my discovery—any Kanaka diver
had as much right as I to exploit the new lagoon. If I held my tongue, a
hundred years might pass before another man stumbled on the place. In view
of all this, therefore, wouldn't it be fair to give me one season's exclusive
rights, in return for adding a new pearl-lagoon to the five or six already
under French control?

"It struck me as a fair thing to ask, and I had little difficulty with the
Governor. Within a month the papers were delivered to me all signed and
sealed: a year's rights to the shell and pearls of Iriatai. I had always wanted
an engine for the Tara and now I felt that I could afford one. In the
Paumotus, with reefs and five-knot currents and frequent calms, a motor is
better than a dozen insurance policies. Now the engine's installed and I am
heading back without a day to waste. It will take time to find the men, to
build canoes, and get the diving under way."

As he finished his story, my uncle rose and began to pace back and forth
before the fireplace. My father lay in his chair, smoking and making no
comment; I fancy that the glimpse of an adventurous life on the other side of
the world had set his thoughts to wandering. Though it was long past
midnight, I was wide awake.

All at once my uncle stopped beside his brother's chair and stood looking
down at him, with a half-apologetic smile.

"See here, Ben," he said, "I want you to let Charlie come along. A few
months out of school will do no harm and I'll give you my word to have him
back in the fall. I've come to the age when a man feels the need of
youngsters, and yours are all I have. There'll be plenty of work—I need
someone I can really trust. He'll have his share in what we get, of course,
and he'll earn it—I'll see to that. Be a good fellow, and let him come!"

My father looked up and sighed before he spoke. "Ah, Harry," he

remarked, "you're a lucky man! All your life you've been a rainbow-chaser
and now you seem to have caught up with one at last. It's hard not to envy
you when I hear a story like the one you've told! I didn't realize what a dull
old stay-at-home I had become. As for the boy, I'm tempted to let him go;
but you're asking a good deal! You live in a rough part of the world, if the
stories one hears are true. There must be men down there who would make it
hot for you if the news of your pearl-lagoon leaked out. Even in California
we used to hear of the exploits of Bully Hayes."

My uncle smiled and shook his head.

"Those days are past," he said. "Pease and Hayes are dead, and they've
left no successors in the Eastern Pacific. So far as I know, there's only one
scoundrel of that type left in Polynesia and he operates far out to the west:
'Thursday Island Schmidt'—ever hear of him? I don't know him myself, and
I'm not hankering to make his acquaintance until this job is done. But he's
never been east of Samoa, and even old Thursday Island would hesitate to
tackle a barefaced hold-up nowadays. Warships and the wireless have ended
all that. Let the boy come—I'd be the last man to drag him into any scrapes."

"He can go, then," said my father, rising from his chair. "I only wish I'd
had such a chance when I was a youngster. But you'll have to talk his mother
around—I wash my hands of that! We'll leave that for tomorrow, eh? Come,
you must be tired; we'd better turn in, all three of us."

And so the matter was left, while I wandered in a daze to my room and
lay down to spend a night made sleepless by mingled anxiety and happiness.

III
ABOARD THE TARA

It must have taken a deal of talking to win my mother's consent, but

Uncle Harry proved equal to the task. When we had breakfasted he sat with
her for an hour in the courtyard, and afterward, when I saw her alone, she
kissed me and told me that I was to go.

We had guests that day—old friends who had known my uncle when he
was a boy. I sat at dinner with the others, but all I can remember of the meal
is that Uncle Harry praised my ducks. I was still dazed at my good fortune:
my dreams of adventure and of distant wanderings were to come true at last!
A cruise on the Tara in the South Seas—a quest for pearls in a tropical
lagoon—a part in the sequel of my uncle's tale—indeed, the prospect was
enough to intoxicate any boy of fifteen. Iriatai! There was magic in the word
alone, and I repeated it under my breath while the older people about me
spoke of commonplace things.

The sun was low over the Pacific when we said good-bye. The others
accompanied us to the beach: my father and mother, Marion, and our guests;
and in a little group of people from the Santa Brigida I saw old Juana
sobbing, with a shawl pulled over her head. The two sailors rolled the
whaleboat into the wash of the sea; after the final handclasps, Uncle Harry
and I took our places in the stern. The ocean was calmer than on the day
before. Ivi and Ofai watched their time, ran the boat out in a lull, leaped in to
seize their oars, and pulled seaward through the gentle surf. The mate of the
Tara had seen us with his glasses and the schooner was headed toward the
land. Presently we came alongside, scrambled over the rail, and helped the
sailors haul the boat on deck. My uncle shouted a command; the sheets were
slacked away, and the Tara bore off to the southwest.

I turned for a last look at the watchers on the beach, already so far distant
that they were no more than a patch of color against the dunes. There was a
lump in my throat—it was the first time that I had been away from home.

"I hate to leave," remarked Uncle Harry, who was standing at my side,
"but we're off now; in the morning we'll be out of sight of land. Come below
and have a look at your quarters. I think you'll like the Tara; she's my only
child!"

The Tara, as I have said, was schooner-rigged—a vessel of a hundred

tons, fast, comfortable, and designed to ride out any sea. A glance convinced
me of her owner's love. The sides were snowy with fresh paint; the decks of
white pine were holystoned till they gleamed spotless against their seams of
pitch; the masts and spars were newly varnished, and no spot of mildew
stained the sails. On the after deck a shallow cockpit contained the wheel
and binnacle. Forward of the cockpit, the companionway led down to the
saloon, where a pair of curtained doors gave on staterooms to starboard and
to port. The woodwork was of bright mahogany. On either side of the saloon
there was a leather-upholstered lounge, and half a dozen chairs were screwed
fast to the floor about a handsome dining-table. Forward of the saloon was
the engine-room, shut off by a bulkhead from the main hold where
burlapped bales and packing-cases were piled high between decks. The
galley was on deck, and the forecastle was placed far up in the bows,
furnished with a deal-table and berths made of piping on which lengths of
heavy canvas had been stretched.

My uncle's was the larger of the two staterooms. It was fitted with a
washstand and a single berth; a few framed photographs hung on the walls, a
large porthole gave a view of the sea outside, and a steel safe was built into
one corner of the room. The cabin opposite was assigned to me—it was here
that the half-caste son of von Tesmar had breathed his last.

"You're not afraid of ghosts, eh?" my uncle asked me with a smile. "The
poor devil died in that very bunk, but he's never troubled us since, and if he
did appear, he'd be harmless enough. Come—I want you to know my boys;
excepting the cook I shipped in 'Frisco, I've known them all for years."

They were Kanakas—brown Polynesians of the islands, akin to the

Hawaiian people and to the Maoris of far-away New Zealand. Ivi and Ofai I
already knew. Fatu, the mate, was a huge silent fellow with a smile in his
quick dark eyes—a nobly proportioned giant. The engineer, Pahuri, was an
elderly Rarotongan with a passion for fishing: a small man, gray, wrinkled,
and talkative. He had followed the sea since boyhood and had visited many
parts of the world on whaling vessels and on merchant ships. His heart was
kind, but he possessed a biting tongue and his travels had made him cynical.
Then came Rairi, the half-caste cook my uncle had found stranded in San
Francisco after a voyage before the mast. He was a shade lighter than the
others, with a handsome, sullen face: a tall man and powerfully built, though
dwarfed in the presence of the mate. Rairi spoke a little English, picked up
along the waterfront, and had a pleasant manner when he wished to make
himself agreeable, but at other times his features were of a forbidding cast.
He cooked, and cooked well, in his box of a galley, set on the forward deck
above the hold. Outside of his duties he had little to do with the men, as if
his strain of white blood caused him to hold aloof. Last of all came Marama
the cabin boy, who served our meals, polished brasses, and made himself
useful whenever there was an odd job on hand. He was a brown lad of my
own age, though larger and much stronger than I, and I liked him from the
moment we met. He was a cheerful worker, his black eyes were bright with
humor and intelligence, and he never lost his temper when a lurch of the
deck threw a potful of hot coffee over his feet. His father, Uncle Harry told
me, was a chief on Raiatea.

"We're heading straight for Raiatea," said my uncle as we sat at dinner

that night. "I want you to stop there while I run across to unload my cargo at
Tahiti. It's a fine island and the chief of Faatemu is a great friend of mine.
You can put up at his house; I'll leave young Marama to keep you company.
He knows a bit of English—that will help you at first. By the way, you'll
need to pick up the native as fast as you can; the man who can't speak with
them is handicapped. It's easy to learn; why not work at it during our passage
South? I'll help you and so will any of the men; it always pleases them to
find one of us interested in their language. Try memorizing a few words a
day at the start, then the simple phrases will come to you, and before you
know it, you'll be yarning with the crew.

"The quieter we keep this business the less trouble we'll have, and for that
reason I'm going to pick up my men on Raiatea. There's a Paumotan colony
on the island—we'll have no trouble in getting all the divers we need. They
work two in a canoe, and we'll want fifteen canoes to be on the safe side.
They'll have to be built specially; I want you to stay in Faatemu to see that
they are ready when I return. It's a great place for fishing and pig-hunting—
you'll have a lot of fun!"

When dinner was over we sat on deck for a time, while my uncle smoked
one of his slender black cigars. The sails were furled, for the wind had died
away an hour after sunset. An oily swell was running from the west and the
pulsing of the Tara's engine drove us steadily away from land. By the dim
light of the binnacle I could see that Ofai, at the wheel, was shivering.
Finally he called to Ivi, and the other came aft with a thick woollen jacket on
his arm. Uncle Harry tossed the stump of his cigar overboard; I heard it hiss
for an instant as it struck the sea.

"Come," he said; "let's turn in before we're both frozen. My blood's too
thin for these chilly winters of yours!"
 Next day we left the zone of coastwise calms and ran into the northeast
trade. The engine was stopped and the Tara headed southward with all sails
set, running almost free. It is a brave wind, the trade, and it blew strong and
fair, making the whitecaps dance on the dark blue swells, and driving us
southward day after day till we were within a few degrees of the Line. Each
day, at noon, my uncle fetched his sextant on deck to observe the sun, and I
watched him afterward, bending over the chart in his stateroom, marking off
our position with dividers and scale. Finally, with a very sharp pencil, he
made a tiny cross, and I knew that this mark on the great blank spaces of the
mid-Pacific was where the schooner had been at twelve o'clock.

Sometimes the wind fell away at sunset and the engine chugged steadily
throughout the night; once, when the trade blew day and night without
abating, the Tara reeled off two hundred knots from noon to noon.

The weather grew warmer day by day. Shoes, stockings, and warm
clothing were stowed away, and the men went about their work in
waistcloths, with brown chests bare. One morning Uncle Harry called me
into the trade-room at the after end of the hold, and handed me half a dozen
pareus—strips of cotton print, dyed in barbaric patterns of scarlet and white,
a yard wide and two yards long.

"If I were you," he said, "I'd put away my trousers from now on—shirts
too, if you're not afraid of the sun. My friends call me a savage, but aboard
my own schooner I dress as I please. The natives invented the pareu, and it's
the most sensible dress for this part of the world. It's cooler than pyjamas at
night, and in the morning you have merely to hitch a fresh one around your
waist and you're dressed for the day. Let me show you the trick of putting it
on." He wrapped the cloth about my waist, tucked in the ends and made a
tight roll at the top. "There," he remarked with a smile, "that's quick
dressing, eh?"

From that day we went barefoot and bare-chested as the sailors did, and I
was soon burned to a uniform deep ruddy brown, only a shade paler than the
native crew.

We were in the tropics now. The ocean was of a vivid blue that I had
never seen. Shoals of flying fish rose before the Tara's cutwater to skim off
above the waves, and sometimes the water about us was alive with the
predatory fish which rove the open sea. One afternoon Marama showed me
how to catch my first albicore in native fashion.

We were standing by the rail, on the after deck. Suddenly, close to the
schooner's side, a dozen great steel-blue fish flashed into the air, leaping like
porpoises. "Albicore!" exclaimed my companion, as he darted away toward
the forecastle. A moment later he was back, brandishing a twelve-foot pole
of heavy bamboo. To the small end of it he made fast a length of strong
cotton line, terminating in a lure of mother-of-pearl tinted in iridescent
shades of yellow and green and fitted with a barbless hook of brass. The
shell was cut and polished to resemble a six-inch flying-fish, with a tuft of
white horsehair projecting on either side to represent the wings.

The albicore were still leaping and flashing alongside, now darting ahead,
now circling to follow in our wake. Marama tossed his lure overboard and
allowed it to skitter on the waves, holding the butt of the rod strongly with
both hands. There was a flash of blue in the sea; the lure disappeared; the
line snapped taut; the bamboo bent with the struggles of a powerful fish. A
yell burst from my companion's lips. He braced himself to heave with all his
strength, and a thirty-pound albicore, vibrant and flashing in the sunlight,
broke from the water, sailed over the rail, and thudded to the deck.

"Quick!" shouted Marama. "You try! I kill this one—take him forward—
Seroni no like blood on deck."

My own blood was up and the hint was enough. In an instant the lure was
overboard and I was doing my best with unskilled hands to make it skitter as
the native boy had done. The fish had circled and were following astern; I
could see the spray of their leaping in the schooner's wake. Then, as I gazed
into the clear water, I saw a single monstrous albicore rushing at my hook.
His jaws gaped wide—there was a mighty wrench; I found myself doubled
over the rail, clinging to the rod with all my strength and shouting for help.
Marama had turned to come aft and his quick eye took in the situation at a
glance. He bounded to the forecastle and came running along the deck,
holding aloft a long, four-pointed spear. "Tapea maitai!" he shouted—"Don't
let go!" At that moment, Seroni himself—for that was my uncle's native
name—appeared on deck. He seized the spear from Marama's hand and
sprang to the rail. I was beginning to learn that Uncle Harry prided himself
on excelling the natives in their own pursuits. His arm shot out in a swift
dexterous thrust which transfixed the wallowing fish, so heavy that we could
not lift it till a noose had been thrown over its tail.

That night, for the first time in my life, I tasted the characteristic dish of
Polynesia: raw fillets of fish, soaked in vinegar and served as an appetizer.

The trade wind held for sixteen days, and when it died away at last we
were only four hundred miles north of the Line. Then the Tara's sails were
furled and for three days and three nights the engine drove us southward
over a sea ruffled by light airs from the west. I shall never forget those
equatorial nights, when all the others, saving the steersman and myself, were
asleep on deck—the steady pulsing of the Tara's motor; the calm sea,
heaving gently as a sleeper's breast; the Southern Cross, low down among
the blazing constellations. Each day at dawn the air cooled and freshened;
presently the sky to the east began to pale, the little clouds on the horizon
grew luminous with rosy light, and the sun appeared above the rim of the
sea, a disk of dazzling brightness, glaring like burnished brass. The sunsets,
on evenings when masses of cloud were piled along the western sky, were
still more beautiful. Long after the sun had sunk beyond the slope of the
world the clouds were tinted with opal and rose, and pierced by lofty shafts
of golden light.

We crossed the Line and met the southeast trade, blowing from the far-off
Chilean coast. Then the sheets were close-hauled and the Tara began to beat
southward, pitching and bucking into the head sea. Marama brought racks to
hold the dishes on our table; we moved about the deck in short runs,
grasping at the rail or a convenient stay; and for the first time I felt a
landsman's seasick qualms. The constant tossing made all hands irritable,
and brought on the trouble between Pahuri and the cook.

I heard from Marama how the affair began. Fatu and the engineer ate
their meals forward with the men, old friends and natives like themselves,
with whom there was no occasion to enforce strict discipline. Pahuri, the
little Rarotongan engineer, was the oldest man and the recognized story-
teller of the crew. He had seen many strange parts of the world, and no
doubt, like other story-tellers I have known, he was quite ready to describe
other places he had never seen. No matter how often the story had been told,
nor how obviously embellished by a resourceful imagination, the men
always listened eagerly when Pahuri began his tale. Rairi, the half-caste
cook, was the only skeptic of the lot, and his comment on the engineer's
accounts of Sydney and Wellington and Singapore, coupled with his own
white blood and pretense of superiority, caused daily friction between the
two. There was soup on the day of the trouble, scalding-hot soup, carried to
the forecastle by Rairi's own hands, and a plate of it, poured down the
engineer's neck when the Tara gave a sudden violent lurch, brought Pahuri
raging to his feet. Rairi was Paumotan on the native side; to a man of his
kind no epithet could have been more offensive than the engineer's angry:
"Uri Paumotu!—Paumotan dog!" But the mate's presence tied his hands and
he retired sullenly to the galley, trembling with rage. The sequel came late
that night.

Pahuri had been working on his engine and he came on deck, a little after
midnight, for a breath of air. He was leaning on the rail by the shrouds when
strong hands seized his throat and he heard a fierce whisper in his ear:—

"Ah!—Pig of a Rarotongan!"

Pahuri was a wiry little man and he struggled frantically in the other's
grasp, for he realized at once that the cook intended to strangle him into
silence and heave him overboard. He twisted his body about, gripped the
shrouds like a monkey, doubled up his knees and drove both heels into
Rairi's stomach. The cook relaxed his hands for a moment with a grunt of
pain, and Pahuri managed to give a stifled shout. But the half-caste's fingers
tightened once more, and the engineer felt his senses leaving him. His hands
fell from the shrouds to which he had clung, his body was lifted to the height
of the rail, and he thought numbly that the end was near. Then, suddenly as
he had been seized, he was dropped to the deck, where he lay gasping for a
time before he realized what had occurred.

The giant mate was standing over him, gazing down with an expression
of concern. There was a waning moon, and by its light Pahuri saw that Fatu
held the cook with one huge outstretched hand, the thumb and fingers sunk
in the half-caste's corded neck. He held him easily as one lifts a puppy by the
scruff.