My one year old lost my car keys last week. It was a total fiasco as there is no key maker around and the gated community I live and work in has been exercising strict control on checking out since the COVID breakout. After having looked for the lost keys in every nook and cranny of the house, two days short of the total country-wide lockdown, I decided to get special administrative permission to leave the Cantt premises for a visit to a key maker in the nearest city of Hyderabad. There were no towing trucks around so I had to hotwire my car to drive it there. All it took was a jumper wire from the battery to the coil to switch on the electrical system and a push to get the engine running but as soon as I made the first turn, the steering column jammed. How come I overlooked such obvious eventuality as the steering lock while driving without an ignition key!

As I saw my plan hit the wall and prepared to give up, my street-smart driver rose to the occasion by salvaging my wife’s hairclip from the dashboard, wedging an unrelated key between its legs and driving it into the ignition switch. Once the engine started, he conveniently took out his key leaving the hairclip behind. Now that the switch was at ‘On’ position, the steering was free to move. Khan’s knack for mechanics and his smart improvisation had left me thoroughly impressed. Off I drove to Hyderabad hoping the engine doesn’t stall on the 50 km journey.

A colleague had advised to visit Haider Chowk for the key maker but the last stretch of Thandi Sarak was so badly choked that I decided to make a detour via Sadar Rd around the Civil Court and back to Haider Chowk. As I took Sadar Link Rd and crossed the Civil Court, I was suddenly intercepted by these young, zealous and persuasive auto mechanics who sensed, with the unique intuition that perhaps comes natural to a wage-earner, that I needed help with my car, and surrounded it, claiming to be the jacks of all trades. Had it not been for the midday heat, my rapidly deteriorating fast and a severe pre-lockdown, pre-Eid traffic jam, I might have driven on but when they showed me a tantalizing parking space which was unthinkable to find on Haider Chowk by any stretch of imagination, I let my guard down, defected on my original plan and tucked my car in.

It was a street of automotive show parts. As I got off the car and took my aviators off, the bright Hyderabad sun pierced through my closed eyes. I quickly scrambled for the shade of a stalwart neem tree nearby under which young shabbily dressed mechanics with oily hair and dirty nails sat lazily on parked motorcycles, gossiping merrily. I have long since stopped revolting at the sight of such ungroomed humans. All it takes to get your manicured nails dirty is one swipe under the car hood: A typical car mechanic spends 8 hours a day in there. Passing a judgment on the ‘cleanliness’ of such a person is unfair and insensitive at best. What revolts me now are our artificial preferences synthesized by multimillion dollar advertisement campaigns of giant multinationals. Anyway, back to automotive show parts.

Show parts, by definition, are non-essentials for a car and are meant to upgrade its look mostly, therefore, to sell them to middle-class potential customers requires extraordinary sales pitch; and there was admittedly no dearth of that on the street. If you have a bad AC or you just happen to drive with windows open, this sales pitch is hurled at you from the windows by heads which have already snuggled inside your slowing car. These persuasive, articulate heads escort you to the parking and by the time you come to a stop, they have already negotiated their prices and are waiting to begin. I had only intended to get my keys made but by the time I got off my car, I had greenlit five different guys to work on making me the new keys, fixing the automatic door lock system (which, in retrospect, didn’t need fixing), replacing my wiper blades, doing the paint job on front and rear bumpers and polishing the car body.

I left the car on their disposal and being low on cash, took a stroll to the nearest HBL ATM located at Haider Chowk. Several people lined up before it in the unforgiving sun carrying their CNICs in polythene bags. While I knew the commerce was at its peak before the lockdown, this was not just an ordinary crowd you saw outside an ATM in Pakistan. First, it consisted of women only. Second, there existed such an epic solidarity among them that when a person came out of the ATM booth nodding and smiling, the entire queue congratulated her enthusiastically and when she came out shaking her head and grieving, she was consoled with the same sincerity. I was intrigued and asked the security guard what was happening. He said that all those women were the candidates of Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) under which Rs. 12000 were being distributed to deserving households all across Pakistan. I had read about the program earlier in Dr Ishrat Hussain’s book, Governing the Ungovernable, as one of the few exemplary state-run initiatives but was seeing it in action for the first time.

As I began to interview the women nearby, I realized that the ‘nod’ meant the money was disbursed while the ‘shake’ meant the withdrawal request was declined. The women mostly belonged to illiterate, poverty stricken rural families, spoke only Sindhi, and were largely unaware of the process except for the hearsay. While I was talking to those women, I noticed an old, decrepit woman stumbling down the stairs of the ATM booth. I rushed to her and inquired if she had got her money. She despondently muttered a response in a language very alien to me. I requested a young girl standing beside to help with the translation; she eagerly obliged. It turned out the woman had had herself registered via one of the program centers and was told to collect payments on the eleventh day. When she turned up on the due date, there was nothing for her to collect! I took her by the arm back to the same ATM for another attempt. After the biometric verification, the ATM simply displayed, “Thank you for using HBL”. The young Sindhi translator girl, who had also followed us keenly inside, articulated the question, “Does it not recognize our fingerprints or have we not been allocated the money yet?”

To be honest, I was blown away by her smartness. It was apparently a simple question asked rather innocently but it had indicated a gaping lapse (or an area of improvement) in one of the most appreciated national programs. The ATMs (or distribution centers) should address this question, instead of an insensitive and inappropriate “Thank you”, in the culminating message. Considering that a large number of women were in their 60s, it was totally possible that their fingerprints had dimmed out so there had to be an alternate hassle-free way for them to verify their identities and claim the money.

Upon my return, I couldn’t stop thinking how much scope there is to guide the masses about such government programs. Our people are not equipped to handle technology – they don’t even have access to mobile phones. Such government initiatives which aim at alleviating poverty, promoting health or education in the lowest financial stratum of the society need volunteers to assist and guide people in apparently simple tasks which tend to get very confusing for them e.g. registration in the national database, confirmation of eligibility (BISP communicates eligibility via a text message when ironically a good number doesn’t have phones) etc. I don’t think it should be difficult to get schools, colleges and universities on board, devise volunteer programs and hand out certificates to the participants for their social service. That’s how it’s done all over the world. Universities should in fact develop sophisticated acceptance criteria, leaving space for volunteer work to reward the participants and, hence, reinforce such programs. That’s the only sustainable way to integrate the most important and flexible resource of our youth in our national initiatives.