For whom the tag tolls Governance is adhesive, and the queue is eternal!

2026-03-01 - 19:53

Urban Bystander Islamabad treats deadlines like difficult relatives: it acknowledges them, performs sincerity, and prays they won’t stay. The M-Tag deadline is now in its second year of refusing to die, an undead date that keeps returning with better stationery. Deadlines here molt. Islamabad is the only city where “final” is a genre, not a date. At 6:30 a.m., Adnan, a Bykea rider on the I-10 to Blue Area run, left home to be first in line. He needs eight rides before noon; school fee is due Friday. He has a folder: original CNIC, registration book, one photocopy of each. The folder is how you learn a city, by the thickness of your paperwork and the thinness of your time. Cars: January 1. Extended. Motorcycles: February 28. Extended. In Islamabad, every deadline is a first draft. The ICT Administration announces dates like a service. The ICT Police enforces them like a mood. For offices, an extension is mercy. For Adnan, six more days of not knowing whether Srinagar Highway will stop him or wave him through. The city calls this “facilitation,” the way a VIP route is called ‘traffic management’. He did the calculation at the gate. Two hours: six rides, roughly Rs900, less fuel, less phone credit, dinner and a partial school-fee installment. A thana visit was a day erased. He had come to buy legality in small denominations of time. Nosy Mynah landed at Kachnar Park at 7 a.m. The counter opened at 7:40, after a brief conference about the printer. A handwritten sign was taped to the glass: SYSTEM DOWN. PLEASE COOPERATE. A guard informed the first twelve that they needed a photocopy of their CNIC. The photocopy shop, materialised overnight, fifteen metres away, charged Rs100 per copy, the way panic always improves a business model. Original needed. Photocopy needed. Both. A man near the front discovered forty minutes later that “documents only” online meant “bike required” in person. The line developed tributaries. The Smart City began with a stapler. By the February 28 deadline, described as final, 8,928 motorcycles had been tagged. Mynah looked up. “Out of?” The denominator was not in the press release. For reference: 1.7 million vehicles, 2.4 million people, 8,928 tags. The arithmetic hung like exhaust. Above the Margalla toll, Babloo tried philosophy. The city cured him. “Plan,” he said, wings snapping. “Tag. Extend. And call it facilitation.” The tag is a Rs250 adhesive sticker near the speedometer. The ambition is wireless. The sticker is not. Cars have windows. Bikes live in weather, in open parking, in Faizabad, and within reach of anyone with idle hands and a peeling corner. While Adnan waited, his phone accumulated three cancellations. He looked at the queue, eleven ahead, typed “I am stuck in a queue,” and watched the ride disappear. A heavy bike arrived: imported gloves, an imported patience. One call later, a staff member guided him quietly toward a side window. Islamabad loves equality. It just doesn’t queue for it. At the Directorate, Mirza Chughal Khor was unsurprised. “The extension was necessitated by the gap between aspiration and arithmetic.” Mynah had his January quote ready: Will extend, until numbers learn manners. She raised the sticker: peeled by rain, lifted at Faizabad, riders sent back to queues across the city. “Recurring compliance,” Mirza said softly. “Elegant.” Prophecy was policy with better timing. In this city, the future arrives, then asks for a photocopy. At G-14 checkpost, Tufail waved a tagged bike through without looking up. Beside the barrier, a rider without a tag held his documents like a plea. “Your bike is innocent. Your paperwork is not.” He raised a hand. “I don’t decide the deadline. I just meet it on your behalf. Move to the side. The barrier won’t learn empathy.” Random checking was never random; it just changed paperwork. The tagged rider was not safer. He was simply approved. Adnan got his tag at 9:40 a.m. He made four rides before noon. He needed eight. The deadline got its four. It lives on to March 5, rested, entirely unbothered. The untagged riders were not criminals. They were just early to a deadline the city had not yet finished inventing. Motorway tag readers work perfectly, Mynah noted. Motorcycles do not use motorways. Below Babloo, the city moved in several directions, most of them untagged, most of them late. The deadline thrived. Only the citizens missed it. For whom the tag tolls? For anyone stoppable. The sticker will peel, the queue will regenerate, and the press release will announce another “final.” In Islamabad, progress is a line that moves slowly enough to be photographed. (The writer can be reached at bystanderinthecity@gmail.com)