The Hypocrisy: Celebrating Success, Criminalizing Failure
There is a deeper contradiction here that Pakistan refuses to confront.
When a project succeeds, it becomes national pride.
When a project fails, it becomes corruption—regardless of evidence.
This binary thinking is fatal for innovation ecosystems.
The same societies we admire—Europe, the United States, even neighboring economies—have burned billions on failed experiments in energy, aerospace, nuclear systems, and materials science. Those failures are documented, studied, and built upon.
They are not weaponized to socially lynch scientists.
And yet in Pakistan, a scientist attempting indigenous energy solutions is reduced to “quack,” “fraud,” or worse, depending on which political camp needs ammunition that day.
The Technical Debate They Avoid
There is a legitimate technical debate, but it is not the one being amplified.
The real question is:
Is Thar lignite suitable for economically viable gasification at scale?
Some argue no—surface mining and localized power generation feeding into the national grid is more efficient. That is a valid engineering position.
“Cheapest way to move energy is via wires… build power plants in Thar and transport energy via the grid.”
This is not a contradiction of gasification—it is an alternative optimization pathway.
But instead of presenting this as a strategic choice between competing energy architectures, the discourse reduces it to personality attacks and hindsight judgments.
