Why Karachi Sucks

By S.G. Jilanee | December 2019

With a 23 million population and a 3,780 sq. km. spread, Karachi is Pakistan’s largest city. It is also the country’s commercial, industrial and financial centre, as well as its only seaport. The city also boasts a round-the-year mild climate, sprawling beaches with sparkling sands that invite sunbathers, while its sea coast is dotted with health resorts.With such a shining score card, Karachi should have been a cool, prosperous city. Instead, it sucks. It is woebegone and miserable.

Karachi is also Pakistan’s garbage capital and seat of corruption. Litter is scattered over all open spaces, while refuse is dumped alongside roads, by-lanes and footpaths. And corruption burgeons because the province is governed by Pakistan Peoples’ Party, which is synonymous with corruption.

Civic amenities are few. Transportation is in a mess. The once flourishing Karachi Circular Railway is defunct. Some time ago there were reports about its revival, but they did not materialize. There was also some talk about reviving Karachi’s old tramway system. But nothing happened.

Without a question, it is the Government of Pakistan that is directly responsible for Karachi’s wretchedness. Its misfortunes date from the moment the rulers of Pakistan wrenched the capital away from there, in utter disrespect to the founder of Pakistan, whose birthplace Karachi is.

However, Karachi could have lived with the change, if at least, its status as federal territory, which it enjoyed as Pakistan’s capital, were left unaltered. But, the city was callously downgraded by the government to the position of a provincial city. The decision-makers overlooked the fact that, as Pakistan’s capital, Karachi had developed into a cosmopolitan city, outside the Sindh province. It was not only home to millions of migrants from India, displaced by the communal carnage unleashed there in the aftermath of Partition, but also to people from within the country, who flocked to Karachi for work. In consequence of this demographic upheaval, Karachi became the home of non-Sindhi people.

As long as it was a federal territory, as capital of Pakistan, the impact of this gross anomaly was not felt. But when it was handed over to Sindh, the effects of change surfaced with acute force that turned Karachi into a classic prototype of the old colonial rule, where the Sindhi rulers and their non-Sindhi subjects are ethnically different and do not speak the same language.

But, democracy is a game of numbers. So nobody takes notice if 23 million people of Karachi stand practically disenfranchised insofar as they have no representative in the Sindh government. The situation calls for urgent steps by the government for damage control because it is as plain as daylight that the burgeoning street crime in Karachi is a direct consequence of the frustration of the people at being deprived of their political rights.

Indeed, street crime is so rampant and so out of control for the provincial government that large numbers of paramilitary troops are permanently deployed to supplement the police force. But, this is a shortsighted approach to the problem which requires a radical and long-term solution.

The ruling Pakistan Peoples’ Party should have taken notice of the chaos prevailing in Karachi and adopted appropriate measures to stem the rot. But it is too concerned with plundering the city’s resources to spare any time for its development and redress its miseries.

Anon, the federal government’s conscience stirs with life and it lets out a puff of hot air, full of sound and fury, announcing lofty plans to turn this miserable city’s fortunes, including allocation of huge sums of money, But, in reality they amount to nothing, because the schemes and plans never see the light of day.

The Government can try the next best solution, by declaring Karachi a Federal territory and Pakistan’s winter capital.

In a fit of exuberance, sometimes, the Centre speaks of “transforming” Karachi, without ever explaining what they would transform the city into. Ideally, though, the city could be transformed into a federal territory.
Transportation is Karachi’s principal problem. But the revival of the Karachi Circular Railway still remains a dream. The talk about bringing back Karachi’s tram service is, therefore, idle talk.

Prime Minister Imran Khan appears to be seized of the problem and its urgency. He has, therefore, formed a committee with federal ministers for Planning and Development, Maritime Affairs and Law, as its members, to look into Karachi’s problems and recommend measures for their redress. But, because, no deadline has been announced for the submission of the report, there should be little ground to hope for results any time soon. If the committee fails to show any results within reasonable time, it will die and be forgotten as usual.

It would, however, be more sensible if the problems were tackled piecemeal, instead of a package, all at once. For example, the frustration of the people of Karachi can be removed at one stroke through a presidential ordinance making it mandatory for the government of Sindh to induct a home minister from Karachi in the provincial cabinet.

Without any question, this could be the magic recipe to combat Karachi’s main problem, which is street crime. Apply it today and watch the drastic downslide in street crimes. The reason is obvious. With their own representative overseeing law and order in the city as a cabinet minister, the criminals will have to lie low.

What the Karachi Committee will recommend, and how long it will take for it to be translated into action is a matter of sheer guessing at present. But, the government should have started work on some of the development schemes for which financial allocations have been announced from time to time.

However, the only way to restore Karachi’s glorious past as the “City of Lights” is for the Federal Government to atone for the insult it did to the nation’s Founder, by arbitrarily shifting the capital he had chosen. Of course, what has been done cannot be entirely undone.

Karachi cannot, once again, be made Pakistan’s capital. But the Government can try the next best solution, by declaring Karachi a Federal territory and Pakistan’s winter capital.

Several crucial benefits would accrue in such an arrangement. First of all it would offer some respite to Federal Government officials from the biting winter. But, more importantly, it will emancipate the people of Karachi from the colonial rule of the Sindh government. Under direct Federal administration, the city’s civic services will improve and it will progress.

This city of 23 million (private estimates put the population at 3 million) waits for a Messiah who could make it look forward. It needs better roads, better sanitation and a better transport system, among many other things. Hopefully, the Prime Minister will survive onslaughts on his office so that the Karachi Committee is able to complete its work.

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