ANYONE with an iota of good sense would have thought a million times before tinkering with the patterns of life in a city as large and complex as Karachi. Unfortunately, the folks over at the Directorate of Inspection & Registration of Private Institutions Sindh (Dirps) seem not to have been blessed with said good sense. In late January, they imposed new school timings on all private schools in the province, mandating that they open no earlier than 8:30am and throwing Karachi’s traffic dynamic into complete disarray in the process.

Every morning since forever, the good citizens of this city have torn up the social contract and returned to a Hobbesian ‘state of nature’. For about a 45-minute window starting a little after 7:30am, it is every man, woman and child for themselves as the chaos of early morning traffic turns roads, streets, turnings and alleyways into potential clash points. Kamikaze van drivers jostle for the right of way with irate rickshaw drivers and steely-eyed parents — each willing to go to any lengths to get their half-sleeping charges to their respective institutions of learning before the dreaded morning bell.

The frenzy of school-time traffic generally subsides shortly after 8:00am, by which time most of the schools are in session. This is when the next wave of early morning commuters — the office crowd — starts hitting the roads. Though things are not quite as chaotic as they are during school rush hour, the sense of urgency is still there. Most office-going Karachiites carefully calibrate every aspect of their morning routine to make sure they get where they need to be at the desired time after factoring in all the variables that come with living in a city as unpredictable and poorly managed as Karachi is. It was, therefore, not unexpected for them to react strongly to the Sindh government’s decision to upend the city’s morning routine completely. “It is an assault on the middle class,” as one parent wryly put it. “Rather, yet another assault on the middle class.”

There is good reason to feel frustrated. With the school time craziness now coinciding with office rush hour, there is no ebb and flow in the morning traffic — just a tsunami of vehicles crashing through the city’s arteries. Major thoroughfares quickly get choked, worsening the anxiety for all manner of commuters just wanting to get to their destinations on time.

Drivers then get reckless as they try to edge and cut to get ahead of the jam, creating unsafe road conditions. The winter timings have also caused additional stress to parents who would drop their children off at school and proceed to work. They must now either be late for work or very early for their children’s school — none of which is acceptable for one reason or another.

The decision to delay schools’ morning opening time had been taken in view of colder-than-usual weather in some parts of the province. While it may have been necessary for places where morning temperatures had dropped to the low single digits, it defies understanding why it was considered necessary for Karachi, which only experiences brief spells of cold before pleasant weather returns. It has only left Karachiites wondering why they need ‘winter timings’ till the end of March when spring is already in the air. As one parent put it, “You can almost picture a waistcoat-wearing babusitting in a dinghy office somewhere, signing off on the decision without giving a hoot for the chaos they were about to unleash in our world.”

“It’s truly Sindh government at its finest.”

Published in Dawn, February 9th, 2023