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Once
it was called "A City of Lights".
For Europeans it was mini-London and for the others - "A
City of Opportunities".
Karachi
- A city of the founder of Pakistan,
Mohammad Ali Jinnah, embraced everyone, indiscriminately.
From labourers to businessmen; students to professionals or
visitors to migrants, Karachi welcomed everyone. Today, it holds 140 million people from various parts of
Pakistan. It feeds the entire country. Both seaports of Karachi
deal with 90% of imports and exports of Pakistan. It earns 60% revenue of the state, yet
Karachi
has never been given the status it deserved.
The multicultural city of Karachi is a symbol of
the ethnic diversity of Pakistan. The people from every town and city of
Pakistan can be seen making money to feed their families back
home. Almost every political leader of Pakistan exploited this generous land to flourish their political
streams. Its parks, playgrounds and roads have been used for
anti-government movements and in marketing political
manifestos and religious demonstrations. Yet, Karachi
treats everyone like a mother who always opens her arms for
her children generously and indiscriminately no matter how her
children treat her.
Located
at the Arabian coastline, Karachi, that was declared the capital of the state upon
the creation of Pakistan, used to be neat, clean,
quiet and a place of interest for
tourists. There was a time when the downtown of Karachi, like Sadar Tower and then Bohri Bazar reflected a wonderful
image of an international city as the market places were found
to be busy with foreign tourists. Even Iranians, Bahais, Chinese
and Afghanis were running businesses side by side with
locals. The environment, transport, roads and other basic
necessities were incredible. The neat and clean parks,
dirt-free water, uninterrupted electricity, wide gleaming
roads, excellent public transport facilities like trams,
beautifully decorated buggies, old style American &
European taxis, colourful double-decker buses had kept Karachi
as an equal with any modern city in the world. The friendly
and pleasant shop-keepers, drivers and workers communicating
in local and English languages, could be found serving locals and
tourists in a well professional manner. Even weather used to
be cloudy like Europe. No political fighting, no ethnic violence, no sectarian
killings, no bomb blasts, no looting and shooting. Thus, Karachi
used to be the best and the most beautiful place to live in
Asia.
I
never forget my childhood days when I used to visit with my
mother from Hyderabad (Sindh) to spend the school holidays.
That was a golden time when my cousins and I used to walk
around Sadar, Cantt Station, Ferrier Road and Bohri Bazaar
spending hours on the roads, at the parks and shopping centres
without any fear. The beaches, Clifton, Ferrier Hall and Cantt areas were the best places for people
for outings and picnics. People used to spend hours with their
families in the evening watching movies on the big television
and film screens placed in public parks by the local
authorities and private companies.
Many foreigners could also be seen mixing and gossiping with
locals at the public places especially at parks, restaurants
and shopping areas. Frequent theatres, beautiful cinemas and
social clubs kept people busy in night activities. The people
were very cultured, friendly and helpful.
As the time passed by, the other metro and cosmopolitan cities
in the region like Bangkok, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur - which at
one stage were following Karachi are now far ahead of Karachi.
Today, these cities possess all sorts of modern facilities for
their citizens and visitors and are a central attraction for
local and foreign investors and symbols of pride for
their respective states, whereas Karachi, instead of moving forward went backward.
The city which was supposed to be the most modern and advanced city is
now the most
apprehensive city to live in or visit. The negligence,
mismanagement and corruption have ruined almost every
institution as well as the social environment of Karachi.
With its exhaust discharging transport, over-population, undrinkable water,
interrupted electricity, boiling gutters, busted roads and bizarre
law and order, the situation has transformed Karachi
into an unreliable place to live.
Today,
Karachi possesses a depressing disposition in the world. No
international celebrity, artists or players are willing to visit
Karachi. A city that produced world-class superstar cricketers like
the Hanif brothers, Asif Iqbal, Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miadad and
Mohsin
Khan is now thrusting to have a single game. Most of the
Western teams refuse to play in Karachi.
In the last 40 years almost every politician and religious
leader used Karachi as a campaign ground for anti-government and other political
and religious movements.
In 1960s, Gohar Ayub
a national celebrity today, spent a rakish life in Karachi.
Surrounded by model girls, he was involved in disgraceful
activities during his father Ayub Khan’s rule. His
unavoidable acts eventually resulted with the bloody
Mohajir-Pathan ethnic conflict in early 1960s. Many innocent
people were killed in that first ethnic violence in Karachi.
Then Ayub Khan rewarded Karachi by shifting the capital from
Karachi to Islamabad.
In 1970s, Zulfiqar
Ali Bhutto and his buddies inflamed the Sindhi Mohajir issue by
trying to implement Sindhi as an official provincial language
in Sindh and then the Quota System was also introduced by his
government. In fact, the Quota System was the first step in
dividing Sindh in Sindh-Urban and Sindh-Rural which actually
reflected as the division of Sindh between Sindhi-speaking and
Urdu-speaking. The people of Sindh who had been living
peacefully since the creation of Pakistan and gradually accommodating and absorbing each other, were
divided. Replacing merit in the government jobs and admissions
in professional colleges by the quota system brought a
discrimination and hatred between two strong ethnic identities
of Sindh. Quota system provided opportunities for undeserving
students possessing the lowest marks to get admissions in highly
reputed professional colleges. Since then, the educational
level in Karachi, particularly in professional fields which used to be the best
in Pakistan, started falling and eventually and regrettably, reached to its
worst. The admissions based on quota system and favouritism
also
brought the political, anti-Pakistan, nationalist, violent
elements into the educational professional colleges and
Universities. The healthy and productive social and union
activities of students, became the centre for confrontations,
demonstrations, bloody clashes and other uncivilised
activities. Karachi was again the centre of anti-government agitations.
Singhi-Mohajir ethnic violence and ongoing strikes again badly
affected the businesses of Karachi
and Karachi
was again pushed behind. Most of the senior ministers of the Bhutto government
were found to be involved in corrupting the major
institutes of Karachi. The then Minister for Communication, Mumtaz Ali Bhutto, a
senior minister and cousin of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, bungled the
National Shipping Corporation which used to be one of the most
profitable and financially strong department in Karachi. Most of the highly reputed and major institutes like
Ministry of communication, Karachi Port Trust, Shipyard,
Custom, Fisheries, Pakistan Steel Mill and Pakistan International
Airlines which were the backbone of Karachi, were damaged by
corruption, bribery and incompetent appointments and
promotions. The religious cum political parties formed
national alliances against Zulfiqar
Ali Bhutto in 1977. This anti-Bhutto campaign was also
launched and operated from Karachi
which cost many hundreds of lives and industrial losses by
everyday strikes jamming almost the entire industry of
Karachi including seaports and airport.
In 1980s, another military ruler Zia ul Haque helped in
flourishing Mohajir Quomi Movement (MQM) under the leadership of Altaf Hussain in Karachi
to crash Pakistan Peoples Party and the Sindhi nationalist
groups in Sindh. During more a decade era of Altaf Hussain in
Karachi, everyday agitation, strikes and devastating ethnic violence
again destroyed almost every institution of Karachi. The industry collapsed. The industries were moved to other
parts of Pakistan by industrialists. Unemployment reached
its peak. Every day
closure of educational institutes also obliterated the
education in Karachi.
In 1990, bloody army operations in Karachi against MQM
by Benazir Bhutto
and Nawaz Sharif governments transformed Karachi
into a battle field. Many thousand young people lost their
lives during that black era of Karachi. The people of Karachi
who were known as an educated community were changed into a
community of gun culture. Open firings, lootings, kidnapping
and indiscriminate killings were the everyday activities in
Karachi. In addition to the loss of many hundreds of people, an entire
generation was helplessly out of education, jobs and
businesses.
The current ruler of Pakistan, President General Pervez Musharraf in fact belongs to this
unfortunate city. So, one expects that President Musharraf
would understand and would be aware of all sorts of ignorance,
misconducts and problems that this city has seen in the last 4
decades.
I never blame the people of Karachi. It does not matter to which race or culture they belong,
what language they speak or how long they have been living in
Karachi or which part of the world they came from, Karachi
as history tells us is that the people of Karachi used to be very
generous, friendly and highly civilised. They had been living
harmoniously even with non-Muslims like Bahais,
Chinese, Hindus and Buddhists for a long time.
No government ever showed an interest in fulfilling the genuine
and increasing needs of this city. Being a commercial and
industrial land, Karachi required a master plan for another 50 years since it
became a part of Pakistan. The best transport system, communication, roads, water,
electricity and environmental control were the main areas where
long-term projects were required to be launched.
The root cause of today’s frequent violence, frustrations
and anger among the people of Karachi is the lack of basic facilities in
the mega city. The city is
expanding without any planning and direction. Mismanagement,
administrative injustices, shortages of water &
electricity, pollution, open rubbish depositories and lack of
public transport are the basic reasons which have changed the
attitude of the Karachi residents. These are the problems which have been cashed
in on by the political gurus for their own vested interests.
Sadly, more and more residential schemes are announced and built
without any consideration of increasing existing demands in
the basic infrastructure. There may hardly be any area in Karachi
where the residents could get uninterrupted water, power and
efficient sewerage system.
During my last visit to Karachi to the launch of my new book, I
heard President Musharraf announce Rs.29 billion for the
construction of roads and flyovers. No doubt, better roads and
flyovers are the needs of today’s increasing volume of the
traffic. Nevertheless, can anyone imagine without enough power
and efficient sewerage & cleaning system any new or
existing roads can be maintained efficiently.
In fact, I saw the construction work was going on major roads
and a few flyovers were under construction. Ready-grown palm
trees were also planted on the roundabouts. One should
generally appreciate the efforts of the administration and I
also don’t have any intention to criticise just for the sake
of criticism. However, one must also realise that things never
pay if you do not do it in a systematic and prioritised
manner.
I also noticed that either underneath every fly-over, or at
the corners, or on the side of the roads there were open
rubbish storage allocated by public. I asked one person with
the intention to stop him from dumping the rubbish he was
dumping underneath the Nipa Chourangi flyerover. He very
defiantly resisted and replied, ‘where should we throw our
garbage… you provide us the garage bins we would be happy to
put in there…, the government prohibits us not to throw the
rubbish on the roads but the council never bother to provide
the people rubbish bins like in most of the other cities…
they want to follow other countries in building flyovers
and wide roads but they never bother to provide better system
of cleaning…we know there is the need of a flyover now in Karachi
but there are also other things which are more important and
must be done before building roads and flyovers… and so
on’ . I did not have any answer to this person for his
frustrated arguments. As a matter of fact, his arguments had
sense and logic. Full sizes palm trees are being imported and
planted by KMC on the roundabouts but they don’t feel the
necessity of having the proper system of maintaining the
cleaning system in every area and providing enough water to
the residents which are far more important for the people.
Karachi has been ruled either by Jamat-e-Islami or MQM
in the last few decades. Both are now the part of the
administration of Karachi with the government. At present, the Mayor (or Nazim)
belongs to Jamat-e-Islami while Governor of Sindh is from MQM
with provincial government is a share power of
MQM
and PML. In the past, these parties always blamed the
government for the problems of Karachi, now who should these political factions blame to?
Now the point is, is President Musharraf really sincere with Karachi's
problems and the development packages he announced with the genuine intention to help Karachi
and not political carrots to gain the support of those who are
controlling this city. If the answer is ‘yes’ then
President Musharraf must also know that Karachi needs an
implementation of a master plan in different areas at the same
time keeping in consideration not only the needs of the
present time but at least for the next 20 to 30 years. Water,
power, sanitation, sewerage, roads, public transport and
pollution control are the immediate areas to be worked on. And
of course, corruption-free and threat-free administration and
enforceable law & order are also essential parameters to
implement any project successfully.
(The Writer is a
Sydney-based journalist and editor Tribune International
Australia)
Concluded
on 10th of January, 2004
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