Muhammad Awais<\/p>\n
Outside a NADRA office in rural Punjab, a seventy-year-old widow stands with a plastic bag of papers pressed to her chest. She has travelled two hours by bus to renew the identity card that keeps her pension alive. A guard tells her the process has \u201cgone online\u201d. She owns no phone. She has never sent a text message. For her, online is not a place. It is a wall.
\nCharles Dickens could have been writing about today\u2019s Pakistan when he opened A Tale of Two Cities: \u201cIt was the best of times, it was the worst of times.\u201d For the connected citizen, the state has never been closer. Passports are renewed from a sofa. Bills vanish with a tap. For millions with no smartphone, the same state has quietly moved out of reach.
\nEvery new portal is announced as a triumph. Queues shrink in cities, and the paperless office is applauded. Nobody photographs the woman who turned back.
\nDigitisation was supposed to bring government to the people. For daily-wage labourers, the elderly, adults who cannot read, and women whose families control the household phone, it can do the opposite. Services that once required a body and a thumbprint now sit behind screens, passwords and internet packages.
\nShould a citizen\u2019s access to the state depend on owning a smartphone, understanding an app and maintaining a data connection? If so, citizenship in Pakistan is no longer a birthright. It is a subscription.
\nConsider the OTP, the \u201cone-time password\u201d: a short code sent by text message to prove identity. Six digits, a small thing. Also a gate. No phone means no code. No code can mean no online form or access to essential services. The circle closes, and the poor stand outside it.
\nThen there is the fingerprint. Brick-kiln workers, farmhands and washerwomen spend decades wearing their hands smooth. When biometric scanners refuse to recognise them, pensions or welfare payments can be disrupted. An expired CNIC can similarly shut citizens out of essential services. In a digitised republic, a database error is not merely a glitch. It can become a suspension of citizenship.
\nWhere the state withdraws, the market moves in. Outside NADRA centres, passport offices and banks, a fringe economy has taken root: agents, photocopy stalls and mobile-load shops that will \u201cdo it online for you\u201d. Three hundred rupees to fill a form. Five hundred near a deadline. More if you look desperate.
\nThis is a private tax on a public right, paid by citizens least able to afford it. Money is only half the cost. A stranger may now hold your CNIC number, photograph and personal details, often stored casually on a phone. The poor are not merely overcharged. They are exposed.
\nThe state saved paper. The citizen bought a new tax.
\nThe divide is also about gender. Many Pakistani women borrow a husband\u2019s or brother\u2019s handset, meaning the code for \u201cher\u201d account arrives in his pocket. Mobile wallets celebrated as financial inclusion require access to phones and SIMs, while cost, custom and limited schooling can stand in the way. We cannot claim to bring women into the economy while building systems their circumstances prevent them from using.
\nNone of this is an argument against technology. It is an argument against abandonment. A portal that only the privileged can open is not development. It is unfreedom with a login screen.
\nThe remedy is straightforward. Every digital service must retain a physical twin: staffed counters where trained officials help citizens complete online processes free of charge. Digital services should accommodate Pakistan\u2019s major languages. Paper routes must remain valid without penalty. Offices must remain accessible to people with disabilities. When a machine rejects a thumbprint or misspells a name, a human being with real authority must be available to fix it.
\nHybrid systems are not nostalgia. They are a human-rights obligation. Pakistan\u2019s digital leap must not be judged by the speed of its servers but by the reach of its hand.
\nThe widow outside the NADRA office is not asking her country to slow down. She is asking it to turn around and see her. A state that cannot be reached is, for her, a state that does not exist. No Pakistani should need a phone to be a citizen.
\nLong Live Pakistan!<\/p>\n
The writer is an engineer. He can be reached at: gcawais91@gmail.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Muhammad Awais Outside a NADRA office in rural Punjab, a seventy-year-old widow stands with a plastic bag of papers pressed to her chest. She has travelled two hours by bus to renew the identity card that keeps her pension alive. A guard tells her the process has \u201cgone online\u201d. She owns no phone. She has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[13915],"class_list":["post-567527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-article","tag-muhammad-awais"],"yoast_head":"\n