The Pakistani government announced at midnight on Thursday that petrol prices would rise to 458.40 rupees per litre and high-speed diesel to 520.35 rupees per litre, effective immediately. [1] The increase — 136 rupees for petrol and 184 rupees for diesel — represents a 42.7% and 54.9% jump respectively. It was the second steep hike in two weeks, and it arrived as most of the country slept.

The numbers require context that the numbers alone cannot provide. On February 27, before the war, petrol in Pakistan was 321 rupees per litre. Diesel was 335 rupees. [2] In thirty-five days, petrol has risen by 137 rupees and diesel by 185. A Pakistani motorbike rider filling a 12-litre tank now pays 5,500 rupees — approximately $19 at the current exchange rate — where five weeks ago the same fill cost 3,850 rupees. The difference, 1,650 rupees, is not an abstraction. It is two days' wages for a day labourer in Punjab.

Pakistan imports approximately 85% of its crude oil. [3] It has no strategic petroleum reserve of consequence. Its refining capacity is limited, ageing, and dependent on imported crude that must transit either the Strait of Hormuz — which is effectively closed — or arrive via the long route around the Cape of Good Hope, adding weeks and cost to every tanker. The country is a price-taker in a market where the price is set by a war it had no part in starting and no capacity to end.

The irony is particular. Pakistan was, until last week, one of the mediators. Islamabad hosted preliminary talks. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's government relayed messages between Washington and Tehran. Pakistani diplomats facilitated what was briefly the most promising communication channel of the war. Then the FT published a quote from Trump about Pakistan's oil dependence, the mediation collapsed, and Pakistan was left with neither diplomatic leverage nor affordable fuel. [3]

The Fox News liveblog reported the price hike alongside other second-order effects of the war — the Australian diesel shortage, the South African fuel shock, the Bangladeshi austerity measures. [1] The pattern is now unmistakable: countries that had no voice in the decision to go to war are absorbing the war's cost at their kitchen tables.

Diesel at 520 rupees per litre will ripple through the Pakistani economy within days. Diesel powers the trucks that move wheat from Punjab to Karachi. It powers the tractors that are preparing fields for the kharif planting season. It powers the generators that keep factories running through the chronic electricity shortages that are Pakistan's permanent condition. When diesel rises 55%, everything it touches rises with it — bread, transport, fertiliser, construction materials, and the patience of 240 million people who have seen their purchasing power evaporate in five weeks.

The midnight announcement contained no apology and no explanation beyond the phrase "in light of the international oil market situation." The international oil market situation is a war. The war is 3,000 kilometres away. The petrol pump is at the end of every street.

-- PRIYA SHARMA, Delhi