Lamenting a glorious city

IT is a city that houses major financial, capital, and industrial services and labour markets, and provides livelihoods to millions of people.It generates more than half the total federal taxes, and serves as the principal gateway to the country’s goods, services and transportation. It has preserved its unique multiethnic and cosmopolitan milieu, and was once known as the ‘glory of the East’ for its pristine beauty, cultural diversity, and excellent services.Should such a city be left to its fate — condemned to suffer bad governance, a broken infrastructure, unplanned growth, unclean water, untreated sewage, ethnic divides, political violence, and, above all, an apathetic and extractive class of administrators and ‘stakeholders’? Yes, you guessed correctly. This city is Karachi, which has been treated in a deplorable fashion by, among others, its ‘own people’.Modern metropolises are living testaments to higher forms of civic life, besides being the engines of economic growth and cultural effervescence. They are cherished by their denizens for their identity, success, quality of life and the provision of livelihoods. They are run by elected representatives with the help of a well-regulated bureaucracy. Professionals, academia, businessmen, corporations, and even cultural leaders play their due role in framing policies and managing civic bodies. There are independent courts and regulators to enforce private rights, and public order.The law of tort has also provided people in such metropolises with a ‘sword and shield’ to protect and recompense them for losses and injuries suffered at the hands of inept and negligent public and private providers of goods and services. More importantly, public assets, particularly land, are strictly regulated. Land is central to developing cities under a corresponding regulatory framework to ensure harmony and balance between growth and demography, aesthetics, and ecology. Water is another commodity which is treasured qualitatively and quantitatively. In recent years, the environment is increasingly taking the front seat in town planning and development.But why is it that Karachi despite being the country’s economic hub continues to lack most of the attributes of great cities like London, New York, Paris, São Paulo, Tokyo, and even Mumbai? Unfortunately, Karachi mirrors the overall failures of governance. But are there any specifics reasons for the rot it suffers? Let’s examine the situation.Karachi’s politics: Lenin defined politics as the pursuit of political power. In its true sense, this meant empowering the common man/ working classes. But, strangely, the city’s principal political parties, including the PPP, MQM, Jamaat-i-Islami, and ANP, have rarely sought to empower ordinary citizens. Nor have they contested elections on the urban agenda — development, security, services, entertainment, climate, etc.Why does Karachi, despite being Pakistan’s financial hub, lack most of the attributes of great cities?In fact, Karachi’s politics has been historically marred by three maladies. A rigged electoral system, the state’s patronage to one or the other political force, and cyclical political violence. The politicians’ focus has largely been on securing a greater share of the city’s power and resources. The people are left to fend for themselves.No wonder, no party has addressed the city’s most critical problem: developing a master plan for Karachi to ensure its orderly and regulated growth, both horizontal and vertical. The resulting policy chaos has allowed powerful vested interests to change rules at whim. Of late, the entire city has been ‘commercialised’, with no regard for the disastrous impact on privacy, planning or the environment.Karachi’s elites: Like any other modern megalopolis, Karachi has resources. It possesses a range of elites consisting of business interests, rights groups, media houses, cultural icons, and various bureaucracies — provincial, federal, civil, military and corporate.Equipped with such a powerful array of guardians and doorkeepers, the city should have been fortified enough to protect itself against continuing bad governance, policy chaos, and the merciless exploitation of its key resources — land, water, and the coastal belt. But deplorably, the city is in a mess. Half its population — about 12.5 million — lives in katchi abadis. The other half — regardless of class or position — also remains perennially starved of basic amenities, ie, clean water, sanitation, gas, electricity, and even a modicum of security and order.Yet, the elites have rarely confronted the aberrant administration, barring some occasional stirrings triggered by natural calamities or utility breakdowns. Their studied indifference is puzzling. For they are consuming highly contaminated water, inhaling toxic air, living by a sea that receives 500 MGD of untreated effluent, which is destroying marine life and the mangroves, and they keep silent while the city’s lands — the most precious asset for present and future generations — are being grabbed by powerful private and institutional interests, including Bahria and DHAs.Karachi’s commons: Thanks to an opportunist political leadership, and equally indifferent if not collusive sociocultural elites, the city’s poor and marginalised people — those who keep industry, trading, construction, services and labour markets running — are bearing the brunt of the ills afflicting Karachi.Indeed, it is the poignant stories of these common men and women that are recorded in the annals of city’s regulatory failures, opportunistic politics, societal conflicts, cyclical violence, and governmental apathy. Yet these people of the working class and the white-collar community have no political representation or institutional support for their legitimate grievances to be redressed. Instead, their voices are gagged by a slew of oppressive laws — industrial, employment, and penal.Even then, residents in katchi abadis and the suburbia are rising. Hordes of people, uprooted by terrorism in the north, or those seeking better jobs and opportunities, are coming to Karachi, raising a crucial question: given Karachi’s creaking infrastructure, limited resources, and eternally poor governance, how long can the city sustain the ongoing demographic shift?Indeed, Karachi faces another lurking threat. The ongoing construction of new canals of the Indus river system will imperil even the city’s existing, much-stressed supply of water (650MGD) that it receives mainly from the Indus.This raises critical questions: Will Karachi’s sociocultural and political elites rise to the occasion and save the city from the impending ‘water death’? Or will they remain characteristically indifferent to the worsening plight of this glorious city? Karachi is waiting for the answer.The writer is a [email protected] in Dawn, April 16th, 2025

IT is a city that houses major financial, capital, and industrial services and labour markets, and provides livelihoods to millions of people.It generates more than half the total federal taxes, and serves as the principal gateway to the country’s goods, services and transportation. It has preserved its unique multiethnic and cosmopolitan milieu, and was once known as the ‘glory of the East’ for its pristine beauty, cultural diversity, and excellent services.

Should such a city be left to its fate — condemned to suffer bad governance, a broken infrastructure, unplanned growth, unclean water, untreated sewage, ethnic divides, political violence, and, above all, an apathetic and extractive class of administrators and ‘stakeholders’? Yes, you guessed correctly. This city is Karachi, which has been treated in a deplorable fashion by, among others, its ‘own people’.Modern metropolises are living testaments to higher forms of civic life, besides being the engines of economic growth and cultural effervescence.

They are cherished by their denizens for their identity, success, quality of life and the provision of livelihoods. They are run by elected representatives with the help of a well-regulated bureaucracy. Professionals, academia, businessmen, corporations, and even cultural leaders play their due role in framing policies and managing civic bodies.

There are independent courts and regulators to enforce private rights, and public order.The law of tort has also provided people in such metropolises with a ‘sword and shield’ to protect and recompense them for losses and injuries suffered at the hands of inept and negligent public and private providers of goods and services. More importantly, public assets, particularly land, are strictly regulated.

Land is central to developing cities under a corresponding regulatory framework to ensure harmony and balance between growth and demography, aesthetics, and ecology. Water is another commodity which is treasured qualitatively and quantitatively. In recent years, the environment is increasingly taking the front seat in town planning and development.

But why is it that Karachi despite being the country’s economic hub continues to lack most of the attributes of great cities like London, New York, Paris, São Paulo, Tokyo, and even Mumbai? Unfortunately, Karachi mirrors the overall failures of governance. But are there any specifics reasons for the rot it suffers? Let’s examine the situation.Karachi’s politics: Lenin defined politics as the pursuit of political power.

In its true sense, this meant empowering the common man/ working classes. But, strangely, the city’s principal political parties, including the PPP, MQM, Jamaat-i-Islami, and ANP, have rarely sought to empower ordinary citizens. Nor have they contested elections on the urban agenda — development, security, services, entertainment, climate, etc.

Why does Karachi, despite being Pakistan’s financial hub, lack most of the attributes of great cities?In fact, Karachi’s politics has been historically marred by three maladies. A rigged electoral system, the state’s patronage to one or the other political force, and cyclical political violence. The politicians’ focus has largely been on securing a greater share of the city’s power and resources.

The people are left to fend for themselves.No wonder, no party has addressed the city’s most critical problem: developing a master plan for Karachi to ensure its orderly and regulated growth, both horizontal and vertical. The resulting policy chaos has allowed powerful vested interests to change rules at whim.

Of late, the entire city has been ‘commercialised’, with no regard for the disastrous impact on privacy, planning or the environment.Karachi’s elites: Like any other modern megalopolis, Karachi has resources. It possesses a range of elites consisting of business interests, rights groups, media houses, cultural icons, and various bureaucracies — provincial, federal, civil, military and corporate.

Equipped with such a powerful array of guardians and doorkeepers, the city should have been fortified enough to protect itself against continuing bad governance, policy chaos, and the merciless exploitation of its key resources — land, water, and the coastal belt. But deplorably, the city is in a mess. Half its population — about 12.

5 million — lives in katchi abadis. The other half — regardless of class or position — also remains perennially starved of basic amenities, ie, clean water, sanitation, gas, electricity, and even a modicum of security and order.Yet, the elites have rarely confronted the aberrant administration, barring some occasional stirrings triggered by natural calamities or utility breakdowns.

Their studied indifference is puzzling. For they are consuming highly contaminated water, inhaling toxic air, living by a sea that receives 500 MGD of untreated effluent, which is destroying marine life and the mangroves, and they keep silent while the city’s lands — the most precious asset for present and future generations — are being grabbed by powerful private and institutional interests, including Bahria and DHAs.Karachi’s commons: Thanks to an opportunist political leadership, and equally indifferent if not collusive sociocultural elites, the city’s poor and marginalised people — those who keep industry, trading, construction, services and labour markets running — are bearing the brunt of the ills afflicting Karachi.

Indeed, it is the poignant stories of these common men and women that are recorded in the annals of city’s regulatory failures, opportunistic politics, societal conflicts, cyclical violence, and governmental apathy. Yet these people of the working class and the white-collar community have no political representation or institutional support for their legitimate grievances to be redressed. Instead, their voices are gagged by a slew of oppressive laws — industrial, employment, and penal.

Even then, residents in katchi abadis and the suburbia are rising. Hordes of people, uprooted by terrorism in the north, or those seeking better jobs and opportunities, are coming to Karachi, raising a crucial question: given Karachi’s creaking infrastructure, limited resources, and eternally poor governance, how long can the city sustain the ongoing demographic shift?Indeed, Karachi faces another lurking threat. The ongoing construction of new canals of the Indus river system will imperil even the city’s existing, much-stressed supply of water (650MGD) that it receives mainly from the Indus.

This raises critical questions: Will Karachi’s sociocultural and political elites rise to the occasion and save the city from the impending ‘water death’? Or will they remain characteristically indifferent to the worsening plight of this glorious city? Karachi is waiting for the answer.The writer is a lawyer.shahabusto@hotmail.

comPublished in Dawn, April 16th, 2025.