Welcome to Pakistan, the country projected by its current rulers to win the super bowl in everything from foreign investment to scientific discovery. Until we get to Utopia, driving made easy for dummies — dummies being our current rulers — could help in preventing potential foreign investors from cringing or reflexively ducking when being driven around on the roads here. They may yet decide to sink their dollars here if their necks and limbs are safe each time they step out on our roads.

But before I begin my lesson plan for our policymakers, let me register a case against the interior minister for allowing millions of drivers around the countryside to drive like yahoos. Aftab Sherpao has failed the accountability test. It was his sole responsibility to put in place a foolproof method for safe driving. The task was his to order the big police wallahs to get off their backs and impose law and order on the roads. Now, in the twilight years of his government, Sherpao has belatedly announced the setting up of a Public Safety Commission which will modernise the police system to secure people’s safety. I ask from what? Is it from cops and robbers? The minister must go to office using the same roads that we in Islamabad do (unless he hops on to a helicopter for the commute, but I don’t see a helipad in his E-7 home), why then the criminal neglect for the traffic bomb waiting to explode?

Why not a suo motto notice by the chief justice of the supreme court? Changing the driving culture through laws that must apply to all, including the scoff laws in Musharraf’s government, would be the greatest service the chief justice can do for the love of his country. I am dead serious.

Get the policemen off the road this moment. End the dumb charade. The president and the prime minister don’t need these semi-starved sentries standing with obsolete rifles along the VVIP route. The taxpayers are already paying a horrendous amount to procure the most sophisticated weaponry to keep the two safe from a sniper’s bullet or a roadside bomb. The farce of lining the roads hours before ‘VVIP movement’ with policemen must go. Who in this day and age commandeers thousands of policemen to line up the roads to keep the badshah salamat safe. It’s the 21st century, hello!

The thousands of freed up cops can be put to straightening a nation gone completely crooked. I mean the stunt drivers streaking across the countryside. They need to be tamed and taught some basic driving rules. The driving etiquettes will automatically follow. But first the driving license. Don’t just give it to anyone who pays a bribe to get one. Make it really tough for folks over the age of 18 to pass the driving test. It should be digitalised. Like the national identity card, carrying a driver’s license must be mandatory. Anyone caught without it should pay a hefty fine.

Position policemen in all the strategic places where there are bottlenecks and traffic jams to catch the culprits. Demarcate the lanes, for heaven’s sake.

Ever heard of lanes? I don’t see any clear demarcations of lanes on the roads. Invest in paint. Yellow paint, and draw up dividing lines on single-lane roads all over Pakistan with a warning that if any driver crosses over to the other side, he will get a traffic ticket by the policemen watching with eagle eyes. Get the point system going on the driver’s license. Each time there’s a traffic violation, hit the guy where it really hurts — heavy fines and points towards cancellation of his license. The point system is easy to devise by the police and the information seamlessly passed on to the driver’s car insurance company.

And how would that pinch a driver? More points means that he is an unsafe driver and his insurance premium would thus go up. So the next time when he breaks the speed limit (clearly signposted), or jumps a red light; or drives on the wrong side of the road; or overtakes on a solid yellow line that forbids overtaking; or does not stop at the stop sign; or drives without lights when darkness falls; or parks where there’s a ‘No parking’ sign; or honks when there’s a ‘No blowing of horns’ sign, the driver is pretty much doomed if caught again and again doing what he’s not meant to do. He must know that his driver’s license can be taken away from him, which is almost like a death sentence. You cannot drive anymore, unless you go through a reform programme or serve jail time.

“I have often felt that it is pointless to protest, at least publicly, about issues which seem so minor when they are worded. I try hard in my daily life to find things of hope and value and decency, to see our society as one where not everybody is driven by selfish motives and is ignorant of others. I speak here of strangers, not people whom we know, although I have seen even familiar faces behave in a manner which disappoints when they feel they are not being watched. I despair for my children, not just because of the kind of future society they will be a part of, but that they may turn out, like most people in our society, to have lost their humanity. They see me protest, they see me break down and they feel I am being too ‘fussy;’ and that dismissal in itself is enough to make me feel hopeless. Two days ago I tried explaining to my 16-year-old how it may be embarrassing for him when I insist while driving that a driver on the wrong side of the road heading straight at our car on a one-way road, must reverse his car to get on the right side. But it is still important.

No, vitally important, that it is recognised as WRONG. Too often we let people get away with things, too often we look the other way; and too often then it is just this kind of placid ignorance that is construed as acquiescence.”

Aftab Sherpao and all his inspectors-general of police must read the above lines penned plaintively by a senior teacher of the best-known school in Karachi. She has capped the Pakistani character in just one telling paragraph, ending with a refusal to sit back and allow lawlessness to run her over.