Rayan walked through the corridors of the Prime Minister's Office like a guest in his own plan.
His official designation? Special Technical Advisor—vague enough to mean nothing and everything.
He kept his head down, spent more time at a rented apartment in F-6 than the PM House. The apartment had a whiteboard, a kettle, and sticky notes on every wall:
"Kill deadwood policies."
"Decentralize power, not confusion."
"Make one app for everything."
"Samosas are not a governance model."
---
Mehtab Qureshi began sending circulars under the SRS letterhead to selected departments. Requests like: "Submit your department's three most outdated procedures."
Responses ranged from shock to passive-aggressive comedy. One wrote: "We suggest the Constitution."
Another wrote: "The office fan. It hasn't worked since 2007."
Nadia Tirmizi quietly flagged 34 departments running overlapping IT systems. "We're not a government," she muttered. "We're a file circus."
Zara Faisal's Listening Tour kicked off in Hyderabad with a chai stall meetup. She recorded interviews on her phone: young doctors, female teachers, bus drivers, even a bored DSP. Most rants ended with some variation of:
"Humein system se problem hai. Banda theek mil jaye toh hum kaam karte hain."
---
One month in, Rayan presented the first internal progress report to a very informal, very desi reform circle:
> Tajdeed Progress Snapshot – April 2026
9 departments under soft review
2,300 ghost employees flagged
14 "pilot" officers trained in dashboard reporting
One provincial secretary (Sindh) already complained to a Senator
General Munir read it and chuckled. "You've declared silent war on bureaucracy."
Rayan shrugged. "They'll adjust. Most of them are just waiting for direction."
---
And so, without ceremony, posters, or a jalsa, Tajdeed-e-Pakistan launched quietly inside a state that hadn't realized it was being rewired.
No one had been fired.
No one had been elected.
But things were beginning to… work.