LIKE most Pakistanis Mohammad Hussain complains bitterly about
the paltry few hours of electricity available each day during
the sweltering summer. Life for the 43-year-old labourer,
already pretty miserable in the Lahore slum where he lives, is
more unbearable without a fan to cool him at night or a pump to
guarantee water.  Like many of his countrymen, he has never paid
a rupee towards the cost of the dribble of electricity used by
his wife and five children, who all live in a one-bedroom flat.
Their building is illegally connected to the city’s power grid
by a metal hook attached to a nearby electricity line.  Every
now and then officials from the Lahore Electric Supply Company
(LESCO) launch a “crackdown”. Officials phone ahead, giving
everyone ample opportunity to remove their hooks. They then go
door-to-door collecting bribes, organised on a careful tariff
basis. Households with just a fan pay $5. For slightly beefier
“air coolers” the fee is $10 and for the lucky few who can
afford air conditioning the