THERE was a time when Pakistanis would be found chanting loudly for internationalising an issue. They thought that by involving the world they had a better chance of getting a result in their favour.

It was a far cry from now when everything from the detention of Jamaatud Dawa emir Hafiz Saeed to the government’s ‘plans’ to ban the ‘sasti’ taxi are thought to have been forced under pressure from ‘international powers active’ in this struggling, often slow-moving, land of ours. The conspiracy, or the theory of it in our minds, never had so many foreign hands involved at one time as is the case now.

But signs are that Hafiz Saeed, long associated with the jihad in India-held Kashmir, thinks otherwise. His insistence in his statements is to keep his focus narrow and on Kashmir. Likewise those who have so far spoken against his detention appear to also concentrate solely on India, only making an occasional jibe at the United States. The idea is to separate India from the world, which is just the opposite of what Islamabad had long worked for and finally achieved a few years ago.

It was thought that no place could claim the status of a modern city without a reasonable number of vehicles rushing all over.

It took Pakistan long years to internationalise Kashmir. In the meantime, the allegations of international jihad put Pakistan face to face with the international front against militancy. That is the problem even if it is not discussed as vociferously today as some Pakistanis believe it should be.

These voices are a little less heard today by the media but they do exist. Pakistanis in general will not be prepared to retreat on Kashmir in the name of any global cleanup operation against militancy. Kashmir is too just a cause and too close to the heart of Pakistanis — the military, politicians and citizens — to be part of any trade-off on the international front.

All Pakistani politicians realise this. The Jamaat -i-Islami has increasingly discussed Kashmir in recent times. Even the PPP, which is usually lacking in ideas and is considered to be beholden to the international powers, thinks it is advisable for it to shout ‘Kashmir’ every now and then. Clearly, the PPP feels that Kashmir is the one cause it can continue to champion without critically offending international allies against militancy which include many countries in addition to the US and India.

The JuD emir does it with greater intensity, given his old links to the valley, and his camp is not inclined to discussing the compulsions of the Pakistani state at an extremely critical stage of the country’s economic development. They are not prepared for the moment to debate — or to recall — how a world collective today impacts on an issue that we Pakistanis were once so keen to internationalise. This is the time to delink and localise and try and avoid global notice as much as possible. The immediate job is to make a loud enough solidarity statement about the singularity of purpose on Kashmir Day that is to be observed like each year on Feb 5.

From one ‘international’ issue to another, there will be so many reasons for the government in Lahore, and in Karachi or anywhere else in Pakistan, to want to streamline private call-cab services. The obvious ones cast the government typically as an entity which wants a share in the money being generated by a profitable venture. There may also be a genuine urge to protect one particular taxi service from the unfair and unregulated advance of other cheaper options lacking legal sanction.

There could be yet many more explanations but the man on the street — who had just found a comfy alternative to the insufficient or exorbitantly priced transport in the city will have none of it. People are quite convinced that this is yet another episode in the old, unending series where something — anything — that gave them relief was brutally snatched away after early promise.

Tiger balm was pure magic to your blocked nostrils. They put restrictions on its free availability as soon as they realised that it brought some kind of relief to the aam aadmi. Dolobid provided an instant escape from that excruciating toothache, but after its effects became well known it couldn’t be tolerated by the government. The butcher down the street had to pay heavily for his willingness to provide a cheaper, more reliable choice to customers — because ‘his’ meat did not have the official seal that miraculously wraps the unhealthiest and most unpresentable and utterly rotten stuff in socially acceptable clothing.

In that series is now the most affordable and comfort-providing taxi which had kind of heralded Lahore’s — real or perceived — long-delayed flight to becoming a modern city.

This has been somewhat complex. It was thought that no place could ever come close to claiming the status of a modern city without a reasonable number of vehicles rushing around in a hurry. A modern city, it was said, needed frantic movement about it and there was no better agent to fulfil that role than the taxi cab and its know-all and story-spinning driver who went around busily with a mission, building just the right mix of myths.

That process has been checked in the name of regulation, the people who were quite enjoying the ride would tell you. Instead, the stories doing the rounds say this has all been done to protect this or that call-taxi service, at the expense of the citizens in whose name all rulers ostensibly wield governmental power. There are fears that if and when the taxis under the cloud are allowed to return they will have lost their appeal since they will certainly be not as cheap as they were before the government felt compelled to call a halt to their people-friendly operations.

At the end of it there would eventually be a few muffled voices demanding price rationalisation. However, since this could involve a — shall we say ‘thankless’ — study based on the spending powers of an average Pakistani pocket, you can trust your average celebrated economist to stay away from any such attempts.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, February 3rd, 2017