This chapter continues the story of a social contract in Pakistan, having illustrated so far that there is an ethnographic social contract on the ground and that part of this contract is based on the state providing basic rights and services. This is an understanding that is further complemented by citizenship and citizens who are also demanding more of the state. This chapter demonstrates that contrary to popular accounts and media narratives suggesting that the social contract had ‘broken’ in the aftermath of the flooding disaster in 2010 and 2011, fracturing the relationship between the state and its citizens. My evidence from three districts in Pakistan illustrates that the state's disaster response interacted with citizenship demands of people, to push along a more progressive social contract and transform citizenship in the region. In using the social contract as an analytical framework, Pelling states that the indicators of such a transformation would be holding political institutions of power and influence to account ‘to include the marginalised and future generations’ as well (2011, 87).

Pelling and Dill's (2010) work on disasters (2010) describes the ‘transformative political space’ opened in the aftermath of a disaster. They illustrate how a disaster serves as a ‘tipping point’, when the state has been unable to provide basic human security to its citizens, resulting in a contestation of rights and entitlements, and creating a political moment for change. These authors emphasize that literature on the direction of this ‘change’ falls in two camps. One body of work sees disasters as accelerating the pre-disaster processes of change, while another illustrates how ‘disasters can catalyze a “critical juncture”’ resulting in irreversible political change (Pelling and Dill 2010). While this chapter will illustrate how progressive constructions of citizenship were strengthened in the post-disaster moment, it is important to recognise this moment as a critical juncture. A ‘choice point’ in the life of a system or regime, when one option is adopted between two or more options, resulting in the system's/regime's ability to embark on a certain path of development (Capoccia and Kelemen 2007). This juncture can be defined as the political moment in the aftermath of a disaster when the very terms of the relationship between the state and its citizens are being renegotiated, resulting in a reimagining of the social contract.