This opinion piece was originally published in Stratheia on 6 December 2025.
The Government of Punjab has pursued one of its most ambitious governance reform agendas in decades — a multidimensional programme covering traffic licensing, underage driving enforcement, road discipline, vehicle emission testing, and mechanical fitness certification. The article situates these reforms within the framework of state paternalism and human security, treating Punjab’s actions as a contemporary case study in how governments justify limiting individual liberty in the interests of collective safety. Key measures include a Dubai-style licence-points system where traffic violations accumulate toward suspension; crackdowns on underage driving that resulted in more than 50,000 apprehensions in May 2025 alone; the issuance of over 23,000 driving licences within 24 hours as a transparency reform; Pakistan’s first Emission Testing System (ETS) with green-sticker certification under the Punjab Environmental Protection Act 2023; and the Vehicle Inspection and Certification System (VICS) — a joint venture with Opus Inspection operating 39 inspection stations across the province.
The article maps the public response along socio-economic lines. Urban residents and road-safety advocates have broadly welcomed the crackdown, recognising road safety as a collective good long overdue for enforcement. However, lower-income groups — motorcyclists, rickshaw drivers, and small commercial-vehicle owners — have raised concerns about the financial burden of rising licensing and fitness-certification costs, inconsistent enforcement capacity in smaller cities, and the replacement of free emissions testing with paid certification, raising fears of rent-seeking. The article acknowledges these distributional concerns while asserting the underlying necessity of action: Lahore’s vehicle-emitted pollution accounts for up to 80 percent of total air pollution, making the ETS a human security intervention, not merely an administrative one.
Analytically, Dr. Mohey-ud-din classifies the reforms across three tiers of paternalistic theory. Underage driving prohibition represents classical hard paternalism — the elimination of risks caused by those incapable of independent risk evaluation. Licence-point systems and roadworthiness inspections constitute soft paternalism — using incentives, surveillance, and sanctions to nudge behaviour toward safer norms without outright prohibition. The ETS and VICS represent eco-paternalism — state intervention to internalise the environmental externalities of individual behaviour. The article concludes that such paternalistic policies are not only warranted but necessary when unregulated behaviour threatens thousands of lives and millions of lungs — provided enforcement remains fair, institutionally capable, and trusted by the public.