Small things

In Pakistan, from airport behavior to falsifying polio certificates, we normalize disregard for rules.

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For the last twenty-seven years, every time I come back to Pakistan, I see a familiar sight. It does not matter whether I land in Karachi, Islamabad or Lahore. It does not matter whether the flight is from Europe or the Middle East. The airline is also irrelevant in this experience. Every time the flight lands, well before it comes to a full stop, most of the passengers get up, open the overhead compartment and get ready to disembark. Pushing starts immediately. The pleading voice of the flight attendant is disregarded. This happens every single time. With time I have given up requesting people to sit in their seats for an additional three or four minutes. In the past, I have been on the receiving end of taunts and abuse. I know better than to pick a fight now.

I am not sure why the passengers do this? Is it excitement of coming home? Is it our inner impatience that comes out? Or is it simply that they know they can get away with it?

I have also been intrigued by the reverse experiment. When the flight leaves Pakistan (regardless of departure airport or the airlines), no one acts the same when the flight lands in Abu Dhabi, Jeddah, Doha, Dubai or London. Everyone waits for their turn, gets up only after the flight has come to a complete stop.

The difference in behaviour here cannot be that different people come to Pakistan than the ones who leave. That is simply not true. First, this argument has a racist and a classist undertone, and second, those who disregard the rules come from all socio-economic backgrounds. Finally, most who are returning are Pakistanis. The same people who at one point left the country. I am quite certain that they acted differently when they were landing on foreign soil.

The argument that only certain demographics disregard the rules is also countered by plenty of other examples. In my most recent trip (last week), I learned of a new government policy about mandatory polio vaccination (or boosters) certificate for anyone who was staying in the country for more than four weeks. Instead of complying with the law, which is very reasonable given the uptick in polio cases, many have chosen to get certificates from their doctor friends who make up the dates and certify that a vaccination was administered when in fact it was not. I heard this first hand from people who are expat physicians themselves (and often talk about the importance of law and ethics), were visiting the country for more than four weeks and were delighted to share how their friends helped them out to get fake certificates. Was it because they did not trust the government vaccines, were too lazy, or have always been comfortable with disregard of the law?

We normalise not just unethical, but also the unnecessary. For as long as I remember, at every airport in Pakistan, I have seen a security guard do a pat down of every single passenger after they have gone through the metal detector. My wife tells me that a similar action is the norm behind the curtain for women. I have never really understood why? Is the metal detector at every airport in Pakistan faulty? And has always been? Why don't they do the same for every passenger at airports in most of the countries (including those in the Middle East)? Or is it that we simply do not trust the metal detector - regardless of its ability to do its job?

It is perhaps easy to dismiss the examples above as quirks of our culture. But there is a real cost to these. The costs range from being dangerous (standing up before the plane stops) to inefficient (wasting human resources on a job that is unnecessary) to criminal (putting lives at risk due to falsification of documents). Perhaps the big stuff that needs fixing is just a scaled up version of the small stuff we have normalised.