Tariq Ali’s Interview

By David Barsamian* 
April 2003  

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Tariq Ali, born in Lahore, Pakistan, is based in London where he is an editor of New Left Review. A prolific writer, Tariq Ali is author of more than 20 books, including history, politics, and fiction. His most recent books are Protocols of the Elders of Sodom (2009) and The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (2008). His latest book is the The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity. He is a regular contributor to The Guardian, New Left Review, and the London Review of Books. In his spare time he is a filmmaker and novelist.  I talked with him at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil in late January 2003.

Q. Imperialism is not a word that is often used in polite discourse in the United States.

I’ve always found it very strange, traveling and speaking throughout the United States, that it’s a word they don’t like. They assumed that an empire consisted of colonies abroad that were ruled and staffed by people sent from the imperial country, whether it was Britain in India or France in Algeria or Germany in Namibia or Belgium in the Congo. And they said, “Well, we don’t do it like that.”

For a long period the U.S. kept to its own sphere. What caused them to move out was not so much the need for colonies, which they didn’t need in that sense, given the size and scale of the United States itself and the natural resources it possessed, plus the fact that they dominated South America. What forced them to move out was the Russian Revolution. There is a very interesting parallel that at the same time as the Russian Revolution was taking place, Woodrow Wilson decided it was time for a major U.S. intervention because they were nervous now that the threatening of capitalist interests in Europe could actually threaten them in the long term. That’s when they decided they had to go international.

The victory of the Russian Revolution meant that it had an enemy. Here was a country that challenged capitalism quite openly. So for 70 years they fought that system. Finally they defeated it by forcing it to go on a binge of military spending, which was completely unnecessary. So the USSR imploded. That was a big, big victory for this empire.

To what extent is imperialism connected to or is an outcome of capitalism?

All the early empires were founded by the need for capital to expand, the need for capital to find new markets. It was this struggle for markets that finally created the British empire, the Dutch empire, the Belgian empire, the French empire. World War I was a war fought over colonial expansion. Who would control the trade routes? Who would control the markets? Germany, which had unified late and came to capitalism later than the other powers, decided it wanted its own empire. It felt that the way to get it was to defeat Britain, and then it could actually move forward.

For a while this got disguised because while the Soviet Union and that whole bloc of states existed, there was talk of imperialism, but by and large people in the West saw this as essentially fighting a war against an evil enemy, an evil empire. Now the slate is clean once again. We have the world before us naked. We see exactly what is going on. The September 20, 2002 strategy doctrine put out by the Bush administration makes it crystal clear what this is all about. They say a holy moral principle is the defense of free trade, i.e., free trade as we see it and according to rules that we make and how we regulate it. In order to defend this, we are prepared to go to war. That has been the principle of all empires. The difference between the American empire and previous empires is that the United States usually prefers to work through local compradors, local rulers who are on their side. They don’t like ruling directly because they know it’s an enormous expense. Why send your own people out to run a country when you can find locals to do it? That is how they’ve always operated. For example, they occupied Japan after World War II, they created a constitution and MacArthur was like a viceroy. But they pulled out after a few years and let their local relays in Japan carry on, as they still do. The Japanese Liberal Democratic Party was created by the United States to do the job for them.

At a distance, they see the Far Eastern region, the united Korean peninsula, Japan, and China, as a combination that could be deadly if it ever got together economically, politically, and militarily. They fear that if this happened, within ten years this area would become economically hegemonic. Thus, American strategic policy is designed to keep these countries separate from each other. That’s why the Bush regime is now trying to stop Korean reunification because they are fearful that a unified Korean peninsula with nuclear weapons would make the Japanese go for nuclear weapons. Then you would have three nuclear powers in the region: Japan, Korea, and China. If that happened, I think they would try and make them fight each other because they are really fearful of a link-up in this region. That would severely threaten their interests.

If you read Thomas Friedman’s article on the war in Iraq, this guy spells it out. He says, It’s laughable to pretend it’s not about oil. He says, It’s not just about oil and of course we know it’s not just about oil, but he says oil does play a big part in it. So they are no longer trying to conceal their real aims. They are saying, This is the situation. We’re the world’s mightiest power. These are our economic interests, these are our strategic interests, and these are our geopolitical interests. You’d better watch out, guys, because we’re going to defend them. This is imperialism, different from the past, in a new situation. In the war in Iraq they will assert new, raw imperial power in a way they have not done before.

Walter Rodney, a political thinker and writer from Guyana, talked about what he called “the local lackeys” of imperialism. Tell me more about this class of collaborators.

In the middle of the last century, you have the Korean War—a three-year war fought by the United States under the banner of the United Nations, in the course of which the industrially strong part of Korea, which was the north, is completely devastated. Not a single building was left standing. Its entire infrastructure was destroyed.

Then you had the Vietnam War. First, the French were defeated in Vietnam. The United States was not prepared to see that defeat and stepped in. The aim of the American empire was, by hook or by crook, to get rid of these governments somehow; to maintain a nationalist pretense and to get in a different group of people who could pretend to be anticolonial nationalists, but who would actually be serving the needs of the great metropolitan empire.

How did they do this? They failed in Vietnam. They succeeded in dividing Korea. But they couldn’t rule South Korea democratically because no lackeys could be found who could be elected. So when you don’t find lackeys who can be elected democratically, you put the army in power. They did the same thing in Pakistan. When a general election was planned for April 1959 that would have returned a government that would have withdrawn from the security pacts into which they tied Pakistan, they organized a coup d’etat and put the military in power in October 1958 to preempt a general election. The country that worried them the most in the middle of the last century was Indonesia because this country had the world’s largest Communist Party outside China and Russia, with a million members, with an additional two million people in front organizations. It had a big influence on the government and the armed forces. So what do they do? They organized one of the most dastardly actions we have seen since World War II, a military coup, where they put Suharto in power. Suharto proceeds to kill a million people and wipes out the most powerful social movement in the country. In 1975 he invaded East Timor, killed several hundred thousand people there and wiped out all the secular, radical opposition in the country. Then people are surprised the Islamists are so powerful because the Islamists are the people who were used in 1965 to kill “Reds.”

Then you have a new phase, which is the post-Cold War phase, where basically the triumph of the United States and world capitalism totally disarmed even seminationalist politicians, who said, Now there is nothing else to do. Just work with them, serve them. This led to a phenomenal growth in corruption all over the Third World, and not just the Third World, in the First and Second Worlds as well. Massive corruption in politics. Politics became part of corporate life, which they had been in the States for some time, but that process then began to seep through. It’s been very difficult for the last 20 years to get elected leaders who are prepared to fight for their own people.

Interestingly enough, we’re having this interview in Latin America, and this is a continent that has been in revolt for some time. You have seen the election of Chavez. You have seen the failure to topple Fidel Castro after 40 years of the blockade. You’ve seen a victory of Lula in Brazil. You have seen the victory of Gutierrez in Ecuador. Evo Morales in Bolivia, came very close to defeating the corporations’ candidate. So we are seeing beginnings of a new wave of, let’s call it, subnationalism or protonationalism, which wants to resist. But by and large, in Asia and Africa they have, so far, been pliable regimes.

I don’t think this can last indefinitely. I think, curiously enough, the war in Iraq and the occupation of Iraq and the substitution of Saddam with a U.S. puppet government, so the oil can be shared out as war trophy is bound to create resistance sooner or later. It may take four years. It may take ten years. We don’t know. But it will happen. In that sense, the American empire is no different from other empires. It is slowly sowing the seeds of the forces that will one day confront it.

Clearly, 19th century European imperialism was predicated on racism, the white person’s burden, bringing Christianity and enlightenment to the benighted natives. That was then. What about now?

You can’t deny the underlying feeling of white superiority in all this. I’ll give you a concrete example. The tragedy of 9/11, when lots of civilians were killed in New York and some in Washington, the whole world was forced to weep for them in public. Why? Because they were citizens of the United States of America. When Afghan citizens are killed by indiscriminate bombings, by so-called accidental bombings and the deaths from starvation, these deaths don’t count for much. No one will ever build a monument for the Afghan civilians who died in the bombing raids. Just a crude war of revenge, as I called it at the time.

Why not? Why are Afghan lives not as important as any other lives? Because underlying all this is still the belief that we are a superior nation, a superior race, and a superior people.

Look at the cavalier way in which casualties are discussed in the case of Iraq. There was a conference organized by the State Department and its favorite Iraqis and an Iraqi friend of mine attended who wasn’t on their list. He told me, “What shocked me was the way they were discussing casualties, how many civilian deaths would be acceptable.” He said the figure the Iraqis and the Americans were talking about was 250,000. It shouldn’t go above that. A quarter of a million civilian deaths acceptable? When 3,000 deaths are not acceptable in the United States of America, but a quarter of a million Iraqi lives are acceptable, what is that if not the most grotesque demonstration that the lives of these poor Arabs don’t matter a damn. The form racism takes is different from the old empires, but it’s still there.

Talk about the role of the media in shaping and forming public opinion. For example, the media constantly repeat that Saddam Hussein represents a grave threat to the United States.

This notion of Saddam Hussein being a threat to the United States makes everyone in Europe laugh, including European politicians. Recently, I was at a debate in Berlin at a big theater, 1,000-2,000 people there. I was debating Professor Ruth Wedgewood. She is an adviser to Donald Rumsfeld. To my amazement she suddenly turned to the Germans and she said, I know the reason you are opposed to this war. It’s because you’re scared of Saddam. Afterwards, people came and told me, “We were really taken aback by that. What does she mean?” I said, “This is what they say in the United States all the time. They frighten the people that Saddam represents a real threat. I’m staggered that they’ve begun to believe their own rhetoric.”

Why is Tony Blair such an enthusiastic partner of George Bush in his war on terrorism?

In terms of foreign policy, I think Blair decided very early on after he came to office that he was going to continue the deals Thatcher had done with Reagan. What these deals have done, basically, is they have locked the British Ministry of Defense into the Pentagon. It’s to the point now that when the Pentagon upgrades, the British Ministry of Defense, which doesn’t need to do it, has to do it because it’s part of the same system.

Now the British are totally committed to this alliance. It reminds you of what Charles DeGaulle used to say when he kept on vetoing British entry into the Common Market. He used to say that Britain will always be an American Trojan horse in the European Union. How right he was. Blair likes to go and tell the Europeans, I’m close to Bush. I can influence him. He tells Bush, It’s important I’m in the European Union, because I can make sure that your views there are properly defended.

Underlying Blair’s servility to the United States is how he sees the country. Britain is a medium-sized, northern European country. It no longer has an empire. The country has quite an exploitative deregulated system, which attracts foreign capital because wages and taxes are low. This is what Thatcher achieved. Blair believes this has to be maintained because he doesn’t have any other vision. One of the ways it can be maintained is by hanging alongside the United States in whatever they do, sharing part of the proceeds and being seen by Washington as a loyal ally. It’s classic.

I have to also tell you, because it would be one-sided not to do so, that he is hated by large numbers of people in Britain for doing this, including the British establishment, who find that sort of servility to the United States to be incredibly debased and vulgar and low. Both within the mandarin civil service and the military establishment there is a lot of nervousness and hostility to the war on Iraq. For the first time also in Britain you have a majority of public opinion against the war. So Blair is really putting his future on the line.

The United States, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, has been fervently looking for an oppositional force to replace it. They tried Noriega in Panama, Qaddafi in Libya, and the Cali and Medellin drug cartels. Now they’ve zoomed in on Islam, fundamentalist and militant, as the new archenemy.

It’s crazy to make Islam into a monolith. It’s just as divided as any other part of the world. The maximum number of people al-Qaeda has, 3,000? Maybe 4,000? Though no one has agreed on it, it’s definitely somewhere between 2-3,000, ensconced in different parts of the world, including Europe and the United States. So how come this can’t be destroyed? It could be. But the problem is not al-Qaeda. The problem is the conditions that create this mood, which drives young people to despair. That will not stop unless the central problems in the Middle East are solved.

Bernard Lewis has achieved almost iconic status in the West as an expert on Islam and how Muslims think. He wrote an essay for Atlantic magazine in 1990 called “Roots of Muslim Rage,” in which he used the term “clash of civilizations.” That term was picked up later by Harvard University professor, Samuel Huntington. He wrote a book called The Clash of Civilizations. Now you have written a book called The Clash of Fundamentalisms. What do you think about this so-called theory?

The Lewis theory is largely based on a view of a world that I don’t recognize. I grew up in that world and have traveled throughout it. There is rage in the Muslim world, obviously, and the reasons for that rage are the imposition of a settler state in the heart of the Arab world and the attempt to destroy the Palestinians and their identity. I know in the United States this is a sensitive subject, but before the formation and foundation of Israel, there was very little anti-Semitism in the Arab world. Large Jewish communities lived in the Maghrib, North Africa, or in the heart of the Middle East, in Egypt and Iraq.

The Baghdadi Jews in particular had a special flavor culturally in terms of cuisine, in what they did, in how they operated, and many of them were founders of the Egyptian and Iraqi Communist Parties. That’s how integrated they were in those societies. This was all destroyed by the Zionist project and the creation of Israel. Obviously, the result has been a lot of crude anti-Semitism. But please don’t think it comes out of something, which is fundamental to Islam. It doesn’t. It did not exist in that shape or form until the 20th century.

So the rage of which Bernard Lewis talks is a different rage from the rage I see because he sees it as inherent in civilizational differences. I see the differences as being fundamentally political and economic.

If you read Huntington’s book, you see that he has these formulas, which he’s now modified subsequent to 9/11. He said, we, the West, are a Judeo-Christian civilization. We are now confronted by all the other civilizations: Islamic civilization, Chinese civilization. African civilization he didn’t mention because he said he was not sure such a thing existed. The big danger, he said, came from a possible unification of Chinese and Islamic civilizations. When you read between the lines, these are coded messages for the phenomenal growth of the Chinese economy and Chinese exports to the U.S. and the centrality of Arab oil. That is what all this civilization nonsense boils down to.

In The Clash of Fundamentalisms, I said it was a clash between a tiny religious fundamentalism, which was very retrogressive and retrograde, but that the parent of all fundamentalisms was American imperial fundamentalism. This empire, the most powerful in history, now uses its economic and military muscle to reshape the world according to its needs and its interests. Resistance against this is bound to rise. At the moment, it’s taken the form of an ultrareligious fundamentalism, which will not work because it has nothing to offer. But this will change. Other resistances will come.

The average American might say to you, “Well, even though you’ve said many interesting things, I’m not quite sure. How do I get a better understanding of what the United States is doing and how the world system operates?

One of the suggestions I would make is don’t ignore history. One of the things that has happened in our culture as a whole is that history as a subject has become devalued. If you read the history of the United States, you will find not just the history of an empire in the making, but you will also find the history of dissent in the United States and you will also find many surprising things. Walt Whitman, for instance, is supposed to be the poet of liberation and anti-slavery and pro-Lincoln, but in his earlier years Walt Whitman was a firm believer in American whites as a superior civilization, which had the right to crush Mexicans because they were a second-rate civilization. There was a lot of ambiguity in the early American poets and writers about American expansionism. This changed by the end of the 19th century, with Mark Twain and with Whitman in his last years, by the way. After the end of the Civil War, he was a deeply shaken person, when he saw how much blood had been spilled.

I always say to my American friends that America is a very rich country in every way. It is rich economically. It is rich in the dissenting movements that have grown up within it. It’s rich also as a country that has committed atrocities all over the world. You have to choose which of these riches you want. Martin Luther King, the year before he was assassinated, said, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world is my own country.” People should learn that the most gifted and capable Americans, many of whom were killed by the state, historically are people who have stood up and resisted.

The World Class City Concept

 By Arif Hasan           (04 September 2009)

Email: arifhasan@cyber.net.pk

 (Paper prepared for the IAPS-CSDE Network Symposia on Culture, Space and Revitalization, Istanbul, Turkey, 12 – 16 October 2009)

Introduction

The welfare state model in Europe was born out of an uneasy reconciliation between capitalism and its opponents. Its principles were adopted by most of the newly independent countries (who did not belong to the Soviet block) in the post-Second World War period. The ethos of the model survived because of the division of the world into socialist and capitalist entities and because of the presence of a revolutionary China and a militarily powerful Soviet Union in the UN’s Security Council. In these circumstances a global market economy was simply not possible. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the repercussions of the failure of the Cultural Revolution in China changed all this and in political terms capitalism came to dominate the world. 

As a result, we are governed today by three global institutions. They determine global politics, culture, finance and development and as such most national development policies and concepts as well. These institutions are all undemocratic in nature and hence their decisions and policies cannot be changed through existing rules, regulations and procedures that determine their functioning. These institutions are: one, the UN which is controlled by five members of the Security Council who won the Second World War and who can individually veto any decision of the UN General Assembly; two, the International Monitory Fund (IMF) and World Bank, which function on the basis of one dollar one vote; and three, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which was born out of the G-7 green room negotiations that led to the creation of GATT and is controlled by the G-8. 

Collectively these organisations have promoted what has come to be known as the “free market” economy, the most important aspect of which is the freedom of capital to move across national borders and seek investment wherever it can multiply. The structural adjustment process, which most poorer countries had to undergo in the decade of the 90’s, facilitated the growth of the free market economy and helped in this process. Structural adjustment demanded from national governments the regulating of then balance of payment and returning loans taken from the IFIs. To make this possible countries undergoing structural adjustment agreed to remove subsidies on health, education and housing; increase taxation on utilities; sell their industrial and real assets to the private, national or international corporate sector; and remove restrictions on imports and exports. The resulting national economic crunch meant that the poorer countries could not invest, and in many cases even subsidise, infrastructure projects and these had to be built by the international or national corporate sector through international tendering. As a result, there has been a big boom of international companies bidding for these projects. The Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) and the Build-Operate-Own (BOO) processes were invented to make infrastructure development possible through this system. Both systems produce infrastructure at more than twice the cost of government produced infrastructure and in addition national governments have to give sovereign guarantees for the investment made by the investors.    

A whole new terminology and concepts has been developed to support the market economy. Concepts such as “it is not the business of the state to do business”, “cities are the engines of growth”, “direct foreign investment”, and the concept of linking economic well being with GDP growth have had a major impact on national policies of Asian countries. In search of growth and DFI, they have invested in a big way in the creation of industrial zones (instead of in their people) and accepted the concept of “corporate” farming. India is one of the emerging economic giants who have followed these policies since the mid-1990’s. As a result, its economic growth in the last decade has varied between 7 and 9 per cent. However, it is estimated that as a result of the creation of 500 Special Economic Zones (for attracting Direct Foreign Investment (DFI) and corporate farming (both promoted by the World Bank for GDP growth) about 400 million people would willingly or unwillingly be forced to move from rural to urban areas by 2015.[1] This is twice the population of the United Kingdom, France and Germany put together. This process is also being promoted in other Asian counties and is in many cases being resisted by the farmers.[2] It is replacing food crops by cash crops and in the process increasing the cost and shortage of food; creating agricultural refugees; and making the state vulnerable to corporate sector pressures and interests.[3] 

To promote DFI, the three undemocratic global institutions have also promoted the decentralisation of governance systems, giving considerable power to local level institutions. Increasingly this power is being used for accessing DFI and identifying projects independently of the provincial or central governments. It is too early to evaluate this process. Maybe an audit after one more decade will help us decide as to the benefits of the system – at present it is a mixed bag.[4] 

IFI pushed political reforms and deregulations have also had a major impact on property markets and have reshaped the politics of land development. Trading across borders in gold and contraband goods is no longer lucrative. As a result, the gangs and mafias involved in these underworld activities have become involved in the real estate business and linked up with their underworld partners abroad for this purpose. This has skewed the land market and promoted massive speculation.[5] The process has been further facilitated by regional conflicts, increasingly porous borders (both for capital and individuals) and the narcotic trade. All this has introduced an element of violence and targeted killings and kidnappings of opponents, rivals and social activists in the land and real estate sector.[6]     

The state in almost all cases has responded to these market pressures and made land available for development through landuse conversions, new development schemes and the bulldozing of informal settlements.[7] NGOs and CBOs who have challenged this process have faced two constraints (apart from their own internal organisational weaknesses and culture); one an unsympathetic international media and the other an absence of laws to prevent environmentally and socially inappropriate land conversions. Even where such laws do exist, rules, regulations and procedures and institutions to implement them are often missing. As a result, courts often deliver judgements that promote inequity, poverty and social fragmentation.[8] Media too is increasing being controlled by the global giants, who promote the new paradigm, and Richard Mindoch has predicted that very soon there will only be three global media grants and his company will be one of them. In 1983 there were over 50 such corporations. By 2002 they had fallen to nine.[9] National medias, where journalists and the intellectuals are fighting for reform and justice, are responsive to social and environmental issues but their owners are subject to both state and corporate sector pressures that they cannot resist.[10]   

Poverty in the countries who did not have the means to respond positively to the free market, has increased and the rich-poor divide has increased in all cases. The most damaging aspect of this divide is promoted by the privatisation of education. This is introducing two systems of education, private for the rich and public for the poor, and has very serious long term repercussions.[11] To rectify this increasing divide, the IFIs have promoted the concept of safety nets for the poor for which loans are being provided and the role of NGOs in these programmes is being encouraged. Safety nets are serving a very small percentage of the effected population and NGO involvement with big funds available to them is adversely affecting NGO culture and its relationship with development policies and poor communities.[12] Loans for infrastructure projects have also increased, especially for road projects. There is an increasing questioning of these loans and aid programmes and the projects they promote by civil society organisations in the South.[13] There is evidence that shows that most of the projects are either failures or unsustainable, expensive and that much (in some cases most) of the loans go back to the north in the shape of technical assistance, overheads and contractors’ profits promoted by the concept of international tenders.[14]    

What has been elaborated above has had a profound effect on the shape and politics of our cities. The shape that our cities are taking and the reasons behind them are the result of a powerful nexus of developers and investors (many of dubious origins); compromised government institutions and bureaucrats; and politicians seeking global capital for shaping their cities in the image of the “West” – an image that is promoted (implicitly or explicitly) by the three global institutions I mentioned in the beginning of this paper. To promote this paradigm, which I call the neo-liberal urban development paradigm, the concept of the world class or global city has also been promoted. It is a powerful concept and has almost universally been accepted by national government policy makers, the newly emerging middle classes and academia, especially in the West.      

The World Class City Concept and its Repercussions 

Karachi, Bombay, Hochiminh City, Seoul, Delhi all aspire to become World Class cities. Some wish to become like Shanghai and others like Dubai[15] although the context of Shanghai or Dubai is very far removed from them. The World Class city has been defined beautifully (also sympathetically) by Mehbubur Rahman in a brilliant paper and in other literature.[16] According to the World Class city agenda, the city should have iconic architecture by which it should be recognised, such as the highest building or fountain in the world. It should be branded for a particular cultural, industrial or other produce or happening. It should be an international event city (Olympics, sports fairs). It should have high-rise apartments as opposed to upgraded settlements and low-rise neighbourhoods. It should cater to tourism (which is often at the expense of local commerce). It should have malls as opposed to traditional markets. For solving its increasing traffic problem (the result of bank loans for the purchase of cars) it should build flyovers, underpasses and expressways rather than restrict the production and purchase of automobiles and manage traffic better. Doing all this is an expensive agenda and for it the city has to seek DFI and the support of International Financial Institutions (IFIs). For accessing DFI, investment friendly infrastructure has to be developed and the image of the World Class city established. For establishing this image, poverty is pushed out of the city to the periphery and already poor-unfriendly byelaws (which are anti-street, anti-pedestrian, anti-mixed landuse and anti-dissolved space) are made even more unfriendly by permitting environmentally and socially unfriendly landuse conversions. The three most important repercussions of this agenda are that global capital increasing determines the physical and social form of the city and in the process projects have replaced planning and landuse is now determined on the basis of land value alone and not on the basis of social and environmental considerations. Land has unashamedly become a commodity. 

The agenda for opting for high-rise redevelopment rather than the upgrading of settlements; relocating old informal settlements to the periphery of the city; and making room for mega projects and mega events has resulted in a massive increase in evictions all over Asia in the last five years.[17] Over 500,000 persons have been evicted in Delhi for the preparation of the 2010 Asian Olympics alone.[18] All studies show that the evicted population was not consulted in the eviction and/or relocation process; that there was always an element of subtle coercion and often of brute force; and that the evicted and/or relocated population became poorer than before and often in debt whereas before they were debt free.[19] Children’s education too has always been disrupted as a result; jobs lost and travel time to and from work increased to over five to six hours in many cases, thus effecting families and social life, health, recreation and entertainment activities.[20] The result of the above policies, along with an absence of appropriately subsidised land development and social housing, has seen a phenomenal increase in informal settlements. 

Politicians and government planners justify the high-rise redevelopment approach by insisting that a modern city has to be high-rise with open areas in-between. They also insist that high densities, needed for a well-functioning city, cannot be achieved by upgrading and densifying existing neighbourhoods.[21] The image of a city is governed by the perception of what it should be. One can discuss and disagree on it. However, a recent International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) supported study by the Urban Research and Design Cell at the Department of Architecture and Planning (DAP), NED University, Karachi, of Karachi settlements and apartment complexes has conclusively established that the same densities as prescribed by the Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA) can be achieved by building row houses of ground plus two stories (along with required social infrastructure) without damaging the environment or adversely effecting social life.[22]  

The study of a resettlement and upgrading project in Hochiminh City (considered as one of the better ones) illustrates the problems with the high-rise option as opposed to upgrading.[23]  The average compensation given to apartment dwellers in the project is about US$ 5,400 which does not include the loan required to bridge the gap between the compensation and the actual price of the housing unit. It does not include the cost of external infrastructure either. The apartment option, given Vietnam’s economy, is not sustainable except through massive IFI loans. The upgrading option on the other hand works out to US$ 325 per household and is manageable. Communities also prefer upgrading to apartments for they cannot perform economic activities in apartment blocks. Out of 72 households who had moved to apartments in the project, 50 were in debt as a result of moving, whereas previously none were in debt. One of the reasons was that they were paying the equivalent of US$ 8 per month for utility and maintenance charges and US$ 21 instalments for the apartment against an average monthly earning of US$ 75 per month. 

The World Class image of the city has no place in it for informal businesses and hawkers except as organised tourist attractions. The link of these hawkers and businesses with low income people (for whom they make life affordable) and with commuters is not recognised and as such large scale evictions of informal businesses and hawkers have taken place without any compensation in all the major cities in the Asia-Pacific region. This has impoverished millions of families.[24] 

The free market economy led in the last decade to considerable liquidity in banks and leasing companies. This has been utilised for providing loans for the purchase of cars. Evidence suggests that these loans were provided as a result of an understanding between the automobile industry and global banking and financial sectors. Many billion dollars of loans have increased the population of cars in many Asian mega and secondary cities in the last decade by over 80 to 100 per cent. In Karachi alone banks and leasing companies gave the rupee equivalent of US$ 1.8 billion for the purchase of an average of 506 vehicles per day in the financial year 2006-2007.[25] As a result of this automobile industry-banking sector nexus, traffic in the larger cities of the Asia-Pacific region has become a nightmare. To solve this problem, city planners have initiated a massive programme for the construction of signal-free roads, flyovers, underpasses and expressways which have aggravated the situation and in addition made life difficult for pedestrians and commuters. In addition to these traffic related projects, non-motorised means of transport, used mostly by the poor (such as cyclos, rickshaws, animal drawn carts) have also been banned in many cities or their movement restricted to the periphery or to low income settlements.[26] Mass transit light rail projects meanwhile have failed to provide an adequate or affordable alternative to the poor since they are essentially projects and not part of a larger comprehensive transport plan.[27]   

As a result of the above and related processes, the once poor-friendly cities of Asia have become poor-unfriendly, both for the migrants (mainly agricultural refugees) and for communities who have lived in them for decades if not for centuries. Land, construction costs and rentals have multiplied manifold as compared to daily wages for unskilled labour.[28] 

The Struggle Against the Negative Aspects of the World Class City

 I do not know of any city or country in the Asia-Pacific region where the neo-liberal urban development paradigm has been challenged as a paradigm or an alternative vision for the city has been promoted. However, projects promoted by the paradigm have been successfully challenged in those countries who have a populist political culture and strong civil society organisations and networks. 

Global capital, as has been said earlier, has desperately been looking for a home. Real estate development for the new rich and for tourism offers the best opportunities for investment especially in countries where regulatory frameworks are weak. Tourist resorts and condominiums along the beaches of Asian cities are prime locations for this development. For commercial plazas, the inner city informal settlements, if evicted, promise lucrative returns. National and the newly empowered city governments have clandestinely sold or arranged to sell these assets to national and/or international companies without the knowledge of the residents of these settlements and without developing any procedures for resettlement of the evicted population. According some reports,[29] almost half of Cambodia has been sold to foreign investors between 2006 and 2008, including seven islands off the coast and a large number of beaches and the homes of residents bulldozed. As a result, there was an increase of over 1,500 per cent in 2007 over the preceding four years in DFI. This investment has impoverished the poor and made them jobless and homeless. It has benefited the investors, their local partners and politicians.[30] Cambodia is a poor country, still recovering from years of devastation, genocide and war and as such with an almost non-existent civil society movement. So this clandestine sale was possible, with little or no organised resistance. 

Pakistan is also a poor country but it has a comparatively strong civil society, nascent environmental laws and tribunals and a populist political culture born out of repeated struggles for the restoration of democracy. In 2007, the Prime Minister of Pakistan agreed to sell two islands off the Karachi coast to a Dubai based company against an investment of US$ 43 billion. In addition, he agreed to providing about 33,000 hectares of coastal land to another Dubai based company for a US$ 500 billion project with an initial investment of US$ 150 billion. Another project of US$ 1,500 million, aimed at privatising 14 kilometres of beach has also been proposed and part of it has been initiated. In agreeing to sell the land and beaches the Prime Minister bypassed existing laws and procedures. In addition, the projects (which were exclusively for upmarket condominiums, 5 star hotels and marinas) were to adversely affect the livelihood of 200,000 fishermen, evict about 36 villages and prevent lower and lower middle groups access to the beach. At present, over 300 thousand persons visit the beaches over the weekend. Beach development projects have also tried to force lower income groups (and those who serve them) off the beach by preventing informal eating places and activities on the beach and replacing them with expensive formal food stalls.[31]       

Civil society organisations in Karachi formed a network to oppose the beach development and island sale projects. The network included fishermen’s organisations, community organisations from low income settlements, schools, NGOs, academia, prominent citizens (including ex-judges of the Supreme Court) and the print media. The sale was also opposed by a number of senior bureaucrats. As a result, the sale of the islands has been put on hold, the Limitless project cancelled and the US$ 1,500 million project considerably modified. Earlier, through the same process networks, backed by organisations that work with low income groups, had objected to the 1994 Karachi Mass Transit Project as a result of which modifications were made to it.[32] A US$ 100 million Asian Development Bank (ADB) loan was also cancelled for a waste water management project when an NGO, working with communities in informal settlements presented and lobbied through a network for a US$ 20 million alternative.[33] Professional bodies representing architects and planners were conspicuous by their absence in these processes although a number of architects did take part individually in the movements. 

A similar process to that in Karachi has been followed in Bombay. The Maharastra state government, of which Bombay is the capital, put out an advertisement for an “expression of interest” for the redevelopment of Dharavi, an inner city informal settlement. The developer was to survey the settlement, carry out the urban design exercise and relocate and/or provide housing for the displaced population. Dharavi’s population is over half a million and its informal businesses and industry serve the formal ones and generate the rupee equivalent of well over US$ 500 million a year. In spite of this, the advertisement called Dharavi a pocket and asked the investor whether the prospect “turns you on”.[34] The people and businesses in Dharavi were not consulted regarding this advertisement and had no knowledge of it. Also, for such a huge undertaking an EIA was required under Indian Law which was not carried out. What made the issue even more serious was that the developer was being asked to carry out the survey. Already there were major differences between government and NGOs surveys of Dharavi. Government listed 55,000 houses but no businesses whereas NGO surveys listed 81,000 structures and 120,000 businesses and households.[35]        

A network consisting of the National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF) (a national level organisation of 500,000 households), NGOs working with low income groups such as SPARC, concerned citizens and organisations formed specially for opposing the government plan, was formed. International academics, artists, researchers and NGOs also expressed their concern. Meanwhile, the President of the NSDF offered a partnership to the state government for the development of Dharavi and also threatened agitation if the government plan went through. As a result of this movement, negotiations took place and an NGO, Mashal, has won the bid for carrying out a survey of Dharavi with the support of NSDF and Society Promotion for Area Resource Centres (SPARC).[36] 

All successful movements against insensitive projects have a number of things in common. One, the existence of a large network or organisation of poor communities; two, the existence of organisations that support these communities with information and managerial and technical guidance but do not control or direct them; three, research on social, technical and planning issues that question the project in an informal manner and present alternatives; four, support from concerned and prominent citizens, professional bodies, academia and media; five, no one group owns the network and its successes as theirs. Another aspect that has emerged from a number of case studies is that violence or threat of it, unfortunately, is the only form of dissent that is acknowledged and accommodated by officialdom.[37] 

The bleak picture above has to be supplemented with hope. This is provided by the Baan Mankong nation wide slum upgrading project of the Community Development Institute (CODI). It is a Thai government project. Under the project communities (organised through a process of savings and credit) identify and acquire land for their housing and house building or upgrading through a government system of subsidies and loans through revolving funds. To prevent speculation the strategy of collective rather than individual ownership has been adopted. A search is also on to find ways to develop new social systems on the basis of the relationship established in the process of the savings process and that of land acquisition. Local governments, professionals, universities and NGOs are involved with poor communities in the CODI process. Between January 2003 and March 2008, over 1,100 communities (53,976 households) in 226 Thai cities had benefited from the programme.[38] 

An Alternative to the World Class City Concept?   

What is the alternative to the World Class city concept? An inclusive city based on the principles of justice and equity? A pedestrian and commuter friendly city? By what process do you develop a vision? And then there are a number of sub issues. After developing a vision how do you promote it? Or will it be born out the processes that challenge (successfully and unsuccessfully) the projects promoted by the neo-liberal urban development paradigm? Maybe we need to discuss this but in the meantime what should one do? 

In the case of Karachi, I see projects replacing planning for the foreseeable future. I have tried to promote some principles on the basis of which projects should be judged and/or modified. These are: one, projects should not damage the ecology of the region in which the city is located. Two, projects should as a priority seek to serve the interests of the majority who in the case of our cities are lower and lower middle income groups. Three, projects should decide landuse on the basis of social and environmental considerations and not on the basis of land values alone. And four, projects should protect the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of the communities that live in them. This would in my opinion produce better projects. But you cannot effectively follow these principles if you do not have affection and respect for the natural environment and for the people who form the majority in your cities.   

However, the question is whether the megalomania and opportunism of politicians and planners will accept a new and more humane paradigm that curtails their profits and decommoditises land? I do not think they will unless they are pressurised by city wide networks armed by alternative research and an alternative vision. The key to bringing about a change lies in the nature of professional education, I often think that it might help if graduating architects, planners and engineers should take an oath similar to those of doctors and if they do not follow the terms of the oath, their names should be removed from the list of practising professionals. In 1983, after evaluating the environmental damage that some of my work had done, I promised in an article.[39] “I will not do projects that will irrepairably damage the ecology and environment of the area in which they are located; I will not do projects that increase poverty, dislocate people and destroy the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of communities that live in the city; I will not do projects that destroy multi-class public space and violate building byelaws and zoning regulations; and I will always object to insensitive projects that do all this, provided I can offer viable alternatives.” I have tried to keep that promise and I think I have succeeded.

---

[1]. Devinder Sharma; Displacing Farmers: India Will have 400 Million Agricultural Refugees;        www.dsharma.org

[2].  In Pakistan a major movement of share croppers has struggled successfully against being evicted from their farms in the Okara district of the Punjab province over the last five years. Neanwhile, the Pakistan government has identified 7 hundred thousand hectares of agricultural land for lease to foreign countries. For details see, Ahmed Rafay Alam; Leasing Out Land And Food Security; The Daily News, Karachi, September 04, 2009.

[3]. Devinder Sharma; Displacing Farmers: India Will have 400 Million Agricultural Refugees;         www.dsharma.org

[4].  David Satterthwaite; Understanding Asian Cities; Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, Bangkok, October 2005. The paper asks two important questions. These are: “Does decentralisation give city governments more power and resources and thus capacity to act?” and “If city government does get more capacity to act does this actually bring benefits to urban poor groups?”

[5].  Liza Weinstein; Mumbai’s Development Mafias: Globalization, Organized Crime and Land Development; International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 32.1, March 2008 

[6].   Ibid. Also, planners in different Asian cities have voiced similar concerns to the author.

[7].   Arif Hasan: Understanding Karachi: Planning and Reform for the Future; City Press, Karachi 2000

[8].  Tripti Lahiri; A Nightmare Grows on Ruins of India’s Housing Shortage; Daily Dawn, Karachi, May 14, 2008 

[9].   John Pilger; The Invisible Government; Speech delivered at the Chicago Socialism 2007 Conference on June 16, 2007 

[10]. The electronic media in Karachi in 2006-2007 gave considerable coverage against real estate development projects that were going to privatise Karachi’s beaches. The media was forced to discontinue this coverage when the real estate companies threatened to withdraw their advertisements.   

[11]. Arif Hasan; The Neo Urban Development Paradigm and the Changing Landscape of Asian Cities; International Society of City and Regional Planners Review No. 3, The Hague, 04 June 2007

[12]. Arif Hasan: Discussion Document for UN University Event on “Sustainable Urban Future in an Era of Globalisation and Environmental Change”; New York, July 09-10, 2007 

[13]. These include the Independent People’s Tribunal on the World Bank Group in India; People’s Voice in Karachi; and Cambodia Development Resource Institute in Cambodia.

[14]. See Stephanie Gorson Fried and Shannom Lawrence with Regina Gregory: The Asian Development Bank: In its own Worlds; “An Analysis of Project Audit Reports for Indonesia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka; ADB Watch, July 2003. Also, Arif Hasan; The Neo Urban Development Paradigm and the Changing Landscape of Asian Cities; International Society of City and Regional Planners Review No. 3, The Hague, 04 June 2007. Also, according to research carried out by the Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi, the government develops infrastructure at 4 to 6 times the cost of labour and material involved. When loans are taken from IFIs the cost goes up by 30 to 50 percent due to foreign consultants and related purchase conditionalities. Where an international tender is also a condititionality the cost can go up by an additional 200 to 300 percent. Thus something whose cost is US$ 1 in material and labour terms is delivered at a cost of US$ 20 to 30.      

[15]. See City District Government Karachi: Karachi Strategic Development Plan 2020; October 2008 and State of Maharashtra; Transforming Mumbai into a World Class City; Chief Minister’s Task Force; 2004. Author’s conversations with politicians and planners in other Asian cities support this contention.  

[16]. Mahbubur Rahman; “Global City – Asian Aspirations; paper read at the DAP, NED University Karachi seminar on Planning in a Globalising World, Karachi, May 30, 2009

[17]. ACHR Monitoring of Evictions in seven Asian countries (Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines) shows that evictions are increasing dramatically. Between January to June 2004, 334,593 people were evicted in the urban areas of these countries. In January to June 2005, 2,084,388 people were evicted. The major reason for these evictions was the beautification of the city. In the majority of cases, people did not receive any compensation for the losses they incurred and where resettlement did take place it was 25 to 60 kilometres from the city centre. (Ken Fernandes; Some Trends in Evictions in Asia; ACHR, March 2006)

[18]. Tripti Lahiri; A Nightmare Grows on Ruins of India’s Housing Shortage; Daily Dawn, Karachi, May 14, 2008  

[19]. For details see Tripti Lahiri; A Nightmare Grows on Ruins of India’s Housing Shortage; Daily Dawn, Karachi, May 14, 2008 and Han Verschure, Arif Hasan and Somsook Boonyabancha; Evaluation & Recommendations for Infrastructure & Resettlement Pilot Project Tan Hoa-Lo Gom Canal; Ho Chi Minh City, 28 April 2006  

[20]. Arif Hasan; Livelihood Substitution: The Case of the Lyari Expressway; Ushba International Publishing, Karachi, 2006. According to the estimates of the Urban Resource Centre Karachi, the building of the Lyari Expressway adversely affected the education of 26,000 children.   

[21]. Government planners from Delhi, Phnom Penh, Hochiminh City, Seoul and Karachi have repeated this in their conversations with the author   

[22]. Arif Hasan. Asiya Sadiq, Suneela Ahmed; Density Study of Low and Lower Middle Income Settlements in Karachi; unpublished study prepared for the IIED, UK, 22 June 2009

[23].  Han Verschure, Arif Hasan and Somsook Boonyabancha; Evaluation & Recommendations for Infrastructure & Resettlement Pilot Project Tan Hoa-Lo Gom Canal; Ho Chi Minh City, 28 April 2006

[24]. For details see Arif Hasan, Asiya Sadiq Polak, Christophe Polak; The Hawkers of Saddar Bazaar; Ushba International Publishing, Karachi, 2008 and Bhowmik, S.; Social Security for Street Vendors: A Symposium on Extending Social Security to Unprotected Workers; Volume 568, December 2006 (quoted in Liza Weinstein; Mumbai’s Development Mafias: Globalization, Organized Crime and Land Development; International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 32.1, March 2008)  

[25]. Arif Hasan; The Neo Urban Development Paradigm and the Changing Landscape of Asian Cities; International Society of City and Regional Planners Review No. 3, The Hague, 04 June 2007 . According to government officials (in conversations with the author), 1,700 cars per day were registered in Bangkok and 1,300 per day in Delhi in the financial year 2006-2007.

[26]. Madhu Gurung; Delhi’s Graveyard of Rickshaws; InfoChange News & Features, September 2006. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi has destroyed 60,000 rickshaws which it had impounded for violation of registration related regulations. The rickshaw owners could not pay a fine of Rs 325 plus a storage charge of Rs 25 per day at the municipal yard to get their rickshaws released within a period of 15 days. Impounded cars have to pay only Rs 100 per day and if the owner does not pay this sum, the car is not destroyed.    

[27]. Cities such as Bangkok, Manila, Calcutta have made major investments in light rail and metro systems. Other Asian cities are following their example. However, these systems are far too expensive to be developed on a large enough scale to make a difference. Manila’s light rail caters to only 8 percent of trips and Bangkok’s sky train and metro to only 3 percent of trips and Calcutta’s metro to even less. The light rail and metro fares are 3 to 4 times more expensive than bus fares. As a result, the vast majority of commuters travel by run down bus system (for details, see Geetam Tiwari; Urban Transport for Growing Cities; Macmillan India Ltd., 2002 and Arif Hasan; Understanding Karachi’s Traffic Problems; Daily Dawn, January 29, 2004.)  

[28]. The seriousness of the situation can be judged from the fact that in Karachi (which is a far more poor friendly city than the other Asian mega cities) land costs in peri-urban informal settlements in 1991 was Rs 176 (US$ 2.35) per square metre or 1.7 times the daily wage for unskilled labour at that time. Today, the cost of land in such settlements is about Rs 10,000 (US$ 133.33) per square metre or 40 times the daily wage for unskilled labour. In 1991, the construction of a semi-permanent house in an informal settlement was about Rs 660 (US$ 8.8) per square metre or 6.6 times the cost of the daily wage for unskilled labour. Today, the cost is Rs 5,000 (US$ 66.66) per square metre or 20 times the cost of the daily wage for unskilled labour. In 1991, such a semi-permanent house could be rented for Rs 350 (US$ 4.66) per month or at 3.5 times the daily wage for unskilled labour. Today, the rent for such a house would be Rs 2,500 (US$ 33.33) per month or 10 times the daily wage for unskilled labour. (Source: Arif Hasan; Housing Security and Related Issues: The Case of Karachi; unpublished paper prepared for UN-Habitat, October 2008

[29].  Ardian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark; Country for Sale; The Guardian, April 26, 2008 

[30]. According to a paper by the Cambodia Development Resource Institute titled Technical Assistance and Capacity Development in an Aid-Dependent Economy; Working Paper 15, Year 2000; in 1992, 19 percent of all aid money was spent on technical assistance. In 1998, it had increased to 57 percent. Also, according to Tom Coghlan; Consultants Reap Wealth from Afghan Chaos; Daily Telegraph, 26 March 2008, almost 50% of British aid to Afghanistan since 2001 has been spent on consultants and contractors. According to Afghan MP Shukria Barakzai, only 11 cents out of every dollar goes to the Afghans – the rest goes back to the West.  

[31]. See “The Partitioning of Clifton Beach” in Arif Hasan; Planning and Development Options for Karachi; Sheher Saaz, Islamabad, 2009. See also, website of Fisherfolk Forum www.pff.org.pk      

[32].  Urban Resource Centre website: www.urckarachi.org.  

[33].  Orangi Pilot Project website: www.oppinstitutions.org  

[34].  Society Promotion for Area Resource Centres (SPARC) website: www.sparcindia.org  

[35].  Sheela Patel and Jockin Arputham; Plans for Dharavi: Negotiating a Reconciliation Between a State-Driven Market Redevelopment and Residents’ Aspiration; Environment & Urbanization, Volume 20(1), 2008    

[36]. Ibid 

[37].  This has been observed by the author in at least three cases in Karachi and the struggle of the tenant farmers in the Punjab. This has also been mentioned to the author by Sheela Patel of SPARC for Bombay and by Prof. Yves Cabannes for cases in Latin America..  

[38].  See CODI website: www.codi.or.th  

[39].  Arif Hasan; No to Socially and Environmentally Development Projects; The Review, 1983

Density Study of Low & Lower Middle Income Settlements in Karachi

 

By Arif Hasan         Asiya Sadiq             Suneela Ahmed

(Revised Draft, 19 August 2009) 

1.         INTRODUCTION 

There is a growing trend in Asian cities to demolish low income informal settlements and relocate their residents in six to eight storey apartment blocks. There is sufficient evidence to suggest that i) low income groups (other than white-collar workers and some of the better-off among the poor) are unhappy with the high-rise solutions for sociological reasons; ii) the units are expensive to maintain and instalments for lease or ownership are more often than not unaffordable for the poor residents; iii) residents cannot carry out any informal businesses in the apartments (apart from activities such as giving tuitions or running beauty parlours); and iv) the residents become poorer and some of them destitute. As a result, the majority of them sell their “possession” informally (if they can) at throw away prices and move back as renters to informal settlements in the city centre.[1] The city governments and their planners argue that high-rise apartment living is necessary for it provides higher densities, better social and environmental conditions and enhances the image of the city as a “world class” or “global” city.[2]   

Study was initiated to test the thesis that the same or considerably higher densities as prescribed by the Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA) bylaws can be achieved by building houses on small plots as opposed to apartments, without compromising on social and physical environment related concerns and to see if there are any social and economic benefits in providing plots or houses rather than apartments.  

3.        FINDINGS OF THE RESEARCH FOR THE DIFFERENT CASE STUDIES 

3.1       Khuda-ki-Basti – 3 Khuda-ki-Basti is located 25 kilometres from the city centre. It is spread over 40.8 acres (16.51 hectares). It is planned keeping in view KBCA regulations for the planning of townships.[5] 49.26 per cent of the site consists of residential plots of 80 square yards (67 square metres) each; 1.85 per cent of the site is allocated for commercial plots; 6.51 per cent is allocated for amenities (including schools); 7.24 per cent for open spaces and parks; and 35.14 per cent for streets and roads. The total number of plots is 1,237. The land was provided at subsidised rates to the NGO Saiban[6] who had the settlement planned as a plot scheme and developed a process through which only poor families could purchase a plot and be forced to live on it immediately. Repayment for the plot is in affordable instalments spread over seven years. 

The settlement is designed as neighbourhoods of 100 houses around a small open community space with a space for one primary school for two neighbourhoods. A central circulation and amenity spine containing parks and community buildings runs through the settlement. The maximum permissible density as per KBCA regulations for the township is 500 persons per acre (1,285 persons per hectare). This for KKB works out to about 15 persons per residential unit. Currently the average number of persons per plot is 6.7 and the density is 203 persons per acre (555 persons per hectare). According to the byelaws construction can only be for ground plus two floors. Important findings of the analysis of the physical and social survey are given below. 

All the persons who were interviewed and/or answered questionnaires moved to KKB-3 because they wanted to own a home that they could build on incrementally and because KKB was affordable. The fact that it was far away from the city was not a consideration since transport was available. 13 per cent would have preferred a 48 square yards plot in the city centre and 16 per cent an apartment nearer to their place of work but both these options were unaffordable to them. 65 per cent respondents were renters before they came to KKB. Now only 5 per cent are renters.   

58 per cent male and 72 per cent female respondents are between the ages of 20 and 40. They are aware that once their children are older, they will require homes. They see no other affordable alternative but to build additional floors for them (once they are married) on their present properties even if it violates the regulations. 

30 per cent of the respondents have businesses in their homes and an additional 65 per cent are interested in using their premises for income generation activities. As a result, 17 per cent of the respondents work from home although 68 per cent are artisans or day-wage labour. Meanwhile, all plots developed for commercial purposes have not yet been occupied.  

The open spaces provided by the planners are not utilised. Instead, the 24 feet (7.3 metres) wide roads, meant for vehicular traffic are used as community spaces. 85 per cent of the respondents feel that in the absence of traffic these spaces are more secure for children and more suitable for social interaction since the houses open out onto them. These spaces are used by children (even grown ups) for playing, for washing and drying of clothes, parking cycles and motorcycles and for social interaction (gossiping). Community gatherings (such as religious events and marriages) also take place on the streets. Even though the residential areas of Khuda-ki-Basti are fully inhabited, the street space is still not fully utilised and appears empty. A tripling of population would seem to be required for its proper utilisation. The larger planned open spaces meanwhile are un-kept (some of them have become garbage dumps) in spite of Saiban’s attempts to turn them into parks.

The average income at KKB is Rs 8,000 (US$ 100) per month. 4 per cent of this per month (Rs 350 or US$ 4.37) is spent on maintaining and expanding the house; 4 per cent is spent on children’s education (this is low as compared to other settlements because of cheap NGO operated schools in the neighbourhood); 18 per cent is spent on travelling which varies between one to four hours every day. The residents are willing to put up with this expense and with the long travel time because they wish to own a home and this is the only alternative. As a result, speculation on property in KKB is only 10 to 11 per cent[7]  although there is a major cost difference in the price residents have paid for their properties and the current market price.[8]

The wide streets and the single and/or double storey houses along them do not provide shade for people to sit together in the summer heat. Higher houses and narrower streets, however, would.

In spite of residents wishing to increase their accommodation, no encroachments on roads and public spaces has taken place. Also, since the settlement is properly planned as neighbourhoods, it is not congested and there appear to be no major social issues or conflicts. The presence of the NGO Saiban has guaranteed protection from encroachment. It has also guaranteed NGO run schools and health clinics due to which resident’s expenditure on education is very low as compared to other settlements.  

The houses in KKB-3 are in the process of being added to. The rooms are small and often badly ventilated. Not enough thought was given to the fact that construction would be added to them.  

Three important issues emerge from the KKB study.

 Circulation and community spaces can be combined so as to increase space for residential plots.

 The accommodation requirements of the residents can be fulfilled in plots of 56 square yards (47 square metres) instead of the current 80 square yards (67 square metres)provided permission to build houses of ground plus three is allowed. This would reduce the cost of the plot, infrastructure and construction.

 Respondents want that at least two of their children after marriage should be able to live in a semi-independent unit within their plot.   

 School teachers feel that the areas allocated for the schools are not only appropriate but with the use of neighbourhood open spaces for playing the number of students can be increased by over 50 per cent. However, for higher densities an increase in area allocated for education purposes should be “appropriately” increased.

 3.2       Nawalane

 Nawalane is situated in Lyari Town of Karachi which is over 250 years old. It is an informal settlement that was regularised in 1976. It is spread over 20.9 acres (8.4 hectares), has 769 plots and a density of 1,356 persons per acre (3,376 persons per hectare). Till 1976, when it was regularised, most of the houses were single or double storey. Today, the majority of them are ground plus two to ground plus four (and even ground plus five) and they continue to rise vertically. Parks and playgrounds are almost non-existent. However, there are parks in the neighbourhood of Nawalane. The settlement consists of houses on 38 to 300 square yards (31.38 to 100 square metres) and is served by 24 lanes. The maximum road width is 15 feet (4.5 metres) and the minimum street width is 2 feet 6 inches (0.76 metres).

 The settlement is ethnically homogenous. The ancestors of all the residents migrated from Balochistan. All the respondents were born here except for four women who had come to the settlement as a result of marriage. The average family size of the respondents is 13.56 and at an average two families live on one plot. There are 6.36 children per nuclear family and as such space is required for playgrounds. 34.21 per cent males and 54.84 per cent females are between the ages of 20 and 29. As such, there will be substantial growth in the population in the coming decade. 23.68 males are over 60 years and hence require space for recreation. Only 18.84 per cent of the population uses their homes for economic activity. This is because traditionally this is a working class area and does not have a tradition of entrepreneurship. 71.15 per cent of the area is residential; 19.6 per cent is streets; and only 0.12 per cent is parks and open spaces.   

 The important findings of the analysis of the physical and social survey are given below.

 Nawalane can be spatially divided into two almost equal zones, “A” and “B”. Zone “A” is in the south-east and has a majority of houses of ground plus three to ground plus four. Its density is around 4,480 persons per hectare. This is more than twice the maximum government prescribed density of 650 persons per acre (1,605 persons per hectare) for income apartment complexes. The physical and social conditions in Zone “A” are degraded. The streets are congested, obstructing air circulation and natural light. Due to this, the residents have constructed sky lights overhead or alongside bedrooms for capturing natural light and air. Interviews suggest that the residents are dissatisfied with these conditions because they pose issues of physical and psychological well-being, promiscuity and privacy. Social relations are also strained and the residents are less communicative than in Zone “B”. In many cases, 30 to 40 persons live on one plot. They cannot afford to purchase or rent accommodation except in informal settlements on the city fringe. They do not wish to go there because of strong social and family ties with Nawalane and because of tenure insecurity associated with the informal settlements.

 Congestion within the house (as in Zone “A”) also means that the father prefers to stay out of the house and that the mother is happier when the elder children are away. Due to this, the elder children have greater freedom and adolescents become part of gangs or take to drugs. [9]  

In Zone “B” (which is in the north-west), the people are visibly relaxed, more open and communicative. Parts of the streets and cul-de-sacs are privatised with the consent of neighbours and extended families. This provides badly needed open space. Interviews also suggest that in Zone “B” the social relations between neighbours are more cordial than in Zone “A” and adolescents, as a rule, “less aggressive”. Houses are also larger and plot sizes bigger in Zone “B” and most of the houses are of ground plus one floor. Younger people have moved out to other areas and come back for religious festivals and family gatherings. The density in Zone “B” is about 2,600 persons per hectare and the environment, in spite of ad-hoc planning and encroachments onto streets, does not give a feeling of congestion.

Streets are used as public space. Since most of them are inaccessible by motorised transport, they are secure. Respondents do not wish their children to play unsupervised and as such 50.72 per cent play within their homes. Children over 14 go to play in the neighbourhood parks. Streets in front of the house are the domain of women and young children. The periphery is the domain of men and male youths. 60.87 per cent of women face problems with regard to recreation and entertainment. They feel the need for community halls and vocational schools.  

Weddings and festivals also take place on the streets and this creates considerable inconvenience for the residents as access to their homes is often blocked off as a result.

People spend around Rs 5,000 (US$ 625) per year for the maintenance and improvements to their houses. The average income per household is Rs 6,500 (US$ 81.25) per month, 11 per cent of which is spent on transport and 22 per cent on the education of children. 62.28 per cent of the population feels that the major disadvantages of living in Nawalane are related to lack of open space, privacy and security. 85.36 per cent of the respondents felt that the major advantage of living in Nawalane is proximity to the city centre and places of work and to family and ethnic networks.

The narrow roads prevent access of ambulances or fire engines into the locality and pose problems for the maintenance of sewage and electricity supply lines.

66.66 per cent of the respondents said that they would not like to leave Nawalane even if they are offered an affordable choice. 17.4 per cent opted for a plot of land in other areas of Karachi and 5.8 per cent for a two room apartment on the city fringe. 10.14 per cent could not specify their choice.

There are health and education facilities in the settlement. The health facilities, however, are in the informal private sector and as such exploitative both in terms of costs and quality. Families spend a large amount on education but that is because of the large family size.

Houses have been built over time in an ad-hoc manner and do not function well. The rooms are far too small and as mentioned earlier there are problems of congestion, light and ventilation.  

The important issues that emerge from the Nawalane study are given below.

Densities over 3,500 persons per hectare create congestion that planning may find difficult to manage. Congestion and lack of space for social interaction is also responsible for discomfort in social relations.  

If circulation and community spaces can be combined, densities of upto 3,500 persons per hectare can be achieved without compromising on environmental conditions.

56.33 square yard (47 square metres) plots can accommodate three families provided permission is granted to build ground plus three floors and if there is sufficient accessible open space in front or adjacent to the house.

For densities of between 2,000 to 3,500 persons, at least 4 per cent of the area (as opposed to the present 2.32) should be allocated for primary schools.

Road width should be a minimum of 15 feet (4.5 metres) so as to permit access of service and emergency vehicles.

Space for recreation and related activities should be provided for women. 50 per cent of the area for amenities should be allocated for this function.

The settlement would have been very different if there had been an organisation that could have provided the residents with design advice and managerial guidance for the expansion of their homes and prevented the encroachments that have taken place.  

3.3       Paposh Nagar

Aurangabad in Paposh Nagar was created as a plot settlement in 1954 for migrants from India. At that time it was on the city fringe about seven kilometres from the city centre. Today, it is adjacent to the industrial area and to important health and education institutions. It was designed as 417 plots of 45 square yards (38.5 square metres) each. The houses consisted of one floor only. However, over time they have grown and many of them are now ground plus one to ground plus three structures. People have also increased the size of their plots by encroaching on the roads. For example, the tertiary roads were planned as 12 to 14 feet (3.6 to 4.2 metres) wide. Many of them are now only 4 feet (1.2 metres) wide. Secondary roads were 24 feet (7.3 metres) and are now 12 feet (3.6 metres) wide. The primary road, however, has not been encroached upon and remains 48 feet (14.63 metres). As a result of these expansions, the average plot size is now 81.6 square yards (68.2 square metres). Household size is 6.7 persons and there are 1.5 households (10.05 persons) per house. As such, the density is 478 persons per acre (1,182 persons per hectare). The settlement contains two mosques, six schools and private clinics. There is a proper park to the south-west of the settlement which is used by the residents. 

The important findings of the analysis of the physical and social survey are given below.

 The 12 to 14 feet (3.6 to 4.2 metres) wide roads are used for small scale gatherings and functions. Weddings, however, take place in wedding halls or playgrounds in the area. In the evenings children play in the streets and men hang around in them. Women are not found socialising on the streets. Car ownership ratio is estimated at 1:10 and they are parked wherever space is available. Most of the front gates of the houses open on the 12 feet (3.6 metre) wide roads.

Roof tops and courtyards within the house are used extensively and provide light and ventilation. 89.33 per cent of the respondents believed that the locality requires properly designed recreation spaces that cater to all age groups. The survey suggests that 58.3 per cent of the children under the age of 14 play in neighbourhood playgrounds and parks where parents supervise them. 69 per cent of children over 14 play on the streets unsupervised.   

The majority of residents would like to have more space in their houses to accommodate additional economic support facilities. At present, such space is limited.

89.33 per cent of respondents believe that their houses are well ventilated and they do not have any privacy related issues. However, observations and documentation of the houses suggest that they are not well ventilated and there are privacy issues especially where the upper floors of the houses project out onto the narrow streets below.

Almost all families are extended families. 36.32 per cent of the male respondents and 54.05 per cent of female respondents were between the ages of 20 and 30. They claim that they are the dominant group in the settlement. This means an increase in population requiring new homes will take place in the next decade. 26.32 per cent of the respondents are male above the age of 60. They also claim that they are a sizeable group and it is because of them that the extended family system survives and functions. 

40 per cent of the respondents have been residing in the area since the last 55 years and 37 per cent of the respondents moved into the locality over the last 10 years. The remaining 23 per cent have moved in during the last two to three decades. Interviews suggest that there is a conflict between the newer residents and the older ones due to a difference in cultural values although they belong to similar political, religious and ethnic networks. Ethnicity is one of the reasons for moving into this locality. The owners from whom they have purchased these houses have gone up in life and moved to better locations because of the improved education of their children and/or entrepreneual skills.

The occupation of the residents is mixed between working class and white-collar employees. The residents are teachers, drivers and maids, para-medics, tailors and beauticians. Only 32 per cent of the respondents work within two kilometres of Paposh Nagar and the rest of the 68 per cent travel long distances to and from work and as such they do not have enough time for social interaction on week days.

85.67 per cent of the respondents were previously living within two kilometres of the city centre. 33.33 per cent owned their houses and 18.67 per cent were renters. The rest lived as extended families. 93.33 per cent of the respondents now own their houses. 46.67 per cent of the respondents wished to continue living in Paposh Nagar as opposed to 2 per cent who would like to own a two room flat in New Karachi. 

85.15 per cent of respondents feel that the biggest problem they face in their settlement is related to poor infrastructure, especially with regard to plumbing related issues in kitchens and bathrooms.

Respondents spend 19 per cent of their income per month on transport and 18 per cent on the education of their children. In addition, they spend on an average Rs 7,574 (US$ 94.7) annually on maintenances and improvements and additions to the homes.  

The spaces in the Paposh Nagar homes are badly related to each other and also have problems of light and ventilation. 

The important issues that emerge from the Paposh Nagar study are given below.

Paposh Nagar was a well planned settlement with proper amenities. However, because of population pressure and the non-availability of alternatives, the settlement densified and encroached on road and public spaces, thus increasing their plot sizes. This densification and growth could have been managed if there had been an authority that would have given design and technical guidance for catering to this growth. With a ground plus three floor option for the 45 square yard plot, the accommodation requirements of the families could have been fulfilled.   

Given the current density of the settlement, at least 4 per cent of the area should be utilised for amenities and another 4 per cent for education purposes as compared to the present 2.6 and 2.85 per cent respectively.

By combining public and street space, Paposh Nagar can be redesigned to relatively higher densities without adversely affecting the physical and social environment.

As for KKB and Nawalane, a 56.33 square yards (47 square metres) plot is adequate for fulfilling the needs of the residents.

3.4       Fahad Apartments

Fahad Apartments are different from the other three case studies as they are not a settlement consisting of houses on individual plots but a developer built apartment complex. They are located in an urban development suburban project designed by the Karachi Development Authority (KDA) on 26,000 acres (64,222 hectares). The apartment complex is built on 1.5 acres (0.60 hectare) and consists of 248 apartments and 56 shops. Each apartment has three rooms and a covered area of 81.6 square yards (68.2 square metres). The entire complex is a walk-up affair of ground plus four floors. The average household size is 5.72 persons per apartment which works out to a density of 942 persons per acre (2,329 persons per hectare). This far exceeds the maximum density of 650 persons per acre (1,605 persons per hectare) allowed by the KBCA regulations for low income apartment complexes. Obviously, the developer of Fahad Apartments has violated the rules.  

The housing unit in the apartments is also different from the other case studies. It has balconies, attached bathrooms (with glazed tiles) and “American kitchens”. It projects a picture of a different culture and a different way of living. This is developer induced. Many of the residents would live differently if they had built their own homes. To what extent this has determined their lifestyles can be a subject of study.  

The other major difference between Fahad Apartments and the other case studies is that amenities and health and education institutions are available to it in a planned manner in the neighbourhood. However, the residents of Fahad Apartments have added a mosque in the open space provided within the complex. Unlike Nawalane and Paposh Nagar, Fahad Apartments are not ethnically homogenous since the apartments were offered for sale on the formal market. The owners and renters have formed a union that takes care of the maintenance for shared spaces and infrastructure. A small office for the union has also been built in the open spaces provided by the developer. The Complex has been occupied for the last ten years. 

Important findings of the analysis and of the physical and social survey for Fahad Apartments are given below: 

70.6 per cent of the plot area has been built upon and the rest (29.4 per cent) is available as open space. This is used for parking of vehicles (mostly motorcycles) and as a gathering and meeting point and for religious occasions. 80 per cent of the residents “hang out” in this space in the evenings; parents chat with each other and children cycle. Older children use the neighbourhood grounds and parks provided by the KDA. 72 per cent of women do not have any problem with regard to recreation and socialising and feel that the compound fulfils their requirements.  

Although transport, electricity and infrastructure are in place, residents complain of plumbing and sewerage problems. They also complain of the failure of their union to provide adequate services for maintenance of infrastructure. In addition, they complain that the union is subservient to a Karachi ethnic political party and this has adversely affected its functioning and also relationships within the community. Although only 10 years old, Fahad Apartments are run down and the open spaces could be better maintained.   

Of the 248 apartments only three have commercial activities in them. These are tailoring, an informal Montessori and a beauty parlour. Some apartments have been subdivided for rental purposes. Most residents feel the economic repercussions of inflation and recession and would like to have the possibility of setting up income generation activities in their homes. However, given space and social restrictions, this is not possible.        

60 per cent of the male respondents are between the ages of 20 and 29 and have recently got married. Thus, the three room apartment fulfils their requirements. They also feel that the majority of the residents are young people with not more than two to three children and that there are almost no older people living in the apartments. That is why the family size of the respondents is 5.7.

The respondents have not thought of the housing related problems they will face once their children grow up and wish to get married. However, they feel that when the problem arises they will not be able to raise funds for the purchase of an apartment or a plot of land. They are fatalistic and respond “God will provide”.

36 per cent of the residents are employed in “private” jobs such as bank-tellers, accountants, school and college teachers, in the entertainment industry and electronic factories, and also as cooks and drivers. 80 per cent of the families earn more than Rs 11,000 (US$ 138) per month as opposed to 52.17 per cent in Nawalane, 31 per cent in Khuda-ki-Basti and 35 per cent in Paposh Nagar. They spend 15.4 per cent of their monthly income on transport, 24 per cent on their children education and Rs 631 (US$ 8) on their house maintenance. House maintenance here means the monthly instalments they pay to the residents’ union unlike the other studies where it also means improving the home.  

36 per cent of the working population works within two kilometres of Fahad Apartments and the rest, 64 per cent, travel long distances to and from work. Unlike the other case studies, who use local markets for shopping, the Fahad Apartments residents shop at the Samama Shopping Mall and KDA market which are within two kilometres of the apartments.     

60 per cent of the respondents were previously living on rent in other parts of Karachi and 68 per cent chose to move to the apartments so that they could become owners of a place to live. Most respondents claim that their previous residence had a better environment and location but was more expensive in rental and shopping terms. 90 per cent of the residents chose to move to Fahad Apartments because cheap apartments (with a loan facility) were available for sale or on rent.  

The important issues that emerge from the Fahad Apartments case study analysis are given below.

KDA zoning regulations for plot townships do not apply to Fahad Apartments. However, it would be interesting to see what densities could be achieved if Fahad Apartments was developed as a self-contained complex with all amenities and facilities, as per these regulations.

 

If plots instead of apartments can be developed and with incremental additions to the first two floors, densities as high as those prescribed by the KBCA rules can possibly be achieved. However, in this case the developers would not be able to make the profits that they make through building apartments.

Apartments are suitable for white-collar workers. They give an “upwardly mobile” image to their owners. However, with time, congestion and poor maintenance destroy that image.

It is interesting to compare Fahad Apartments with Labour Square which was built 35 years ago in 1974 by the provincial government (for housing factory workers) next to the Sindh Industrial and Trading Estate (SITE). SITE is a major industrial area of the city. Labour Square consists of 28 blocks of three room apartments of ground plus two and ground plus four floor heights. The residents have, over time, become owners of their apartments by paying rental instalments. The important findings related to Labour Square are given below.

Unlike Fahad Apartments the number of persons per apartment is estimated by the residents interviewed as between 10 to 15 persons. When they moved in 1974, many were young married couples with one or two children. Now the children have grown up, got married and have children of their own. It is not possible for them, due to cash constraints and non-availability of affordable loans, to purchase apartments or a plot of land for additional accommodation for all the children. Rentals and even land in katchi abadis, apart from the outer fringe of the city (where there is no infrastructure) is unaffordable.    

The maintenance of the apartment complexes is poor. There are problems related to sewage, scarcity of water and poor garbage collection. In addition, a number of informal businesses have cropped up in the open spaces since it is not possible to operate businesses from within the apartments. This, it is claimed, has an adverse effect on the social environment.

Since this is a formally planned area, schools and colleges are available within two kilometre of the neighbourhood and health facilities in the form of private clinics are also available.

4.         CONCLUSIONS

A number of conclusions emerge from the four case studies on the basis of which these settlements can be redesigned to provide equal and/or higher densities than those prescribed by the KBCA and with better environmental and social conditions. These conclusions are given below.

All the respondents and interviewees in the four settlements wanted to own a place to live. The distance from the place of work mattered, but it was a secondary issue.

The respondents preferred a place that could grow incrementally to house some of their children after marriage since they were aware that finding separate accommodation for them was not an affordable option.

The vast majority of respondents wanted the possibility of carrying out some income generating activity within their home. This was an important consideration.

Except for the KKB-3, all the settlements had densities that were in excess of the KBCA requirements for apartment complexes.

In building their homes initially, residents in the plot settlements had not considered the additions that they would incrementally make as their needs increased. As a result, the houses were badly planned and ventilated and the neighbourhoods, in the case of Nawalane and Paposh Nagar, have problems of congestion and in certain areas of Nawalane there are also social problems. Planning in advance for the incremental growth of the house is a must.

Apartment living forces a different lifestyle and culture on residents. It is perhaps because of this that the majority of families that have opted for it in Fahad Apartments are less poor than those who live in the other three settlements.

The existence of a controlling authority and/or one that gives advise on development, helps the settlements to grow in an organised manner. Such an authority prevents encroachments on streets and public space and helps in the creation of education and health facilities. Saiban plays this role in KKB-3 but does not provide design advice on house construction. However, design and technical support for house construction is essential if an improved physical and social environment is to be created and sustained.  

Streets in low income plot settlements are planned for vehicular traffic but are not used as such. They can be integrated into parks and open spaces as a result of which space for residential areas can be considerably increased.

The site percentages allocated by the KBCA for different activities are rational and do produce a liveable physical and social environment. However, for higher densities than proposed by the KBCA, a higher percentage has to be set aside for education and amenity purposes.

In the case of plot townships of 15 acres (6.07 hectares) or more, core houses (which can be added to) or plots of land on which people can build, are normally provided. Such land is on the periphery of the city and developers accept these conditions. Space for facilities and amenities are set aside as per KBCA regulations and are built upon by the government, the developer or by NGOs inducted into the planning process.

Plots for apartment blocks and complexes are usually part of a larger KDA sector plan. The sector and its different neighbourhoods have spaces allocated for social amenities such as commercial, educational, health and recreation. As such, the developer does not have to provide for these in the apartment complex plan. In addition, land is expensive in these locations and the developer would loose financially if he were to plan for incremental growth. This has been discussed with developers and estate agents and their proposals have been considered in the re-planning of Fahad Apartments which are discussed in Section 5.4 below. 

Orientation of roads, their widths and the ultimate heights of buildings and their relationship to each other are important to provide a climatically comfortable environment so that they can be used in the heat and humidity of a Karachi summer.

In the re-planning exercise, it was not possible to achieve ultimate densities of higher than 3,500 persons per hectare without increasing the house heights to more than ground plus three floors or cutting back on spaces for amenities and social facilities. Increasing the heights make the houses uncomfortable and their living spaces on the floors below lacking in light and ventilation. Decreasing spaces for amenities and social facilities, adversely affects social and environmental conditions. 

The dimensions of the plots are important for developing rational and economic layouts. A geometrical relationship between width to depth is advisable. The narrower the width the cheaper are infrastructure and construction costs.

5.         CONCEPTUAL REMODELLING OF THE SETTLEMENTS

5.1       Khuda-ki-Basti – 3

Khuda-ki-Basti has been remodelled to increase its density to more than the maximum prescribed by the KBCA regulations. According to KBCA regulations, the density at KKB should be 500 persons per acre (1,285 persons per hectare). The density achieved is 693 persons per acre (1,714 persons per hectare). For details of density and landuse. The manner in which density has been increased and landuse changes have been made, with the results achieved, are explained below.   

 The plot size has been decreased from 80 square yards (67 square metres) to 56 square yards (47 square metres). This has been done because the requirements of the KKB residents can be fulfilled on a smaller plot. The dimensions of the plot have been changed so as to make the plot 13 feet x 39 feet (3.96 x 11.8 metres). As a result, a larger number of plots can be accommodated. After remodelling the number of plots has increased from 1,237 to 2,112.

 Residential and residential-cum-commercial landuse has been increased from 47.14 per cent to 55 per cent. This is in keeping with the maximum prescribed KBCA regulations.

 By combining road and open spaces, circulation areas have been reduced from 35.6 per cent to 23.5 per cent (KBCA minimum 22 per cent) and as a result commercial areas, parks, amenities and space for educational facilities have been increased from 1.85, 7.24, 2.86, 3.19 per cent to 5, 8, 4, 4.5 per cent respectively. This is a major improvement in the physical environment.

 The increase in the number of plots and the new dimensions also reduces the cost of the plot considerably. The Saiban cost of a plot was Rs 42,000 (US$ 525). After remodelling the cost comes down to Rs 24,600 (US$ 308). In addition, savings on infrastructure cost (water, sewage, road) per plot comes to Rs 5,965 (US$ 74). This means a 44 per cent saving on infrastructure development. This remodelling makes KKB far more affordable.

 5.2       Nawalane

 Nawalane currently has a density of 1,356 person per acre (3,367 persons per hectare). An attempt has been made to keep the same density. However, this has not been successful and as a result the density has been reduced to 1,291 persons per acre (3,214 persons per hectare). This is about 2.5 times higher than the KBCA prescribed densities. The remodelling exercise has improved the physical conditions and as a result many of the social problems faced by the residents (with regard to recreation, entertainment, education, public space, gender issues, privacy) have been taken care of. How this has been achieved is explained below.  

 The average size of a plot in Nawalane is 125 square yards (100 square metres). It varies between 38 to 300 square yards (25 to 251 square metres). Currently, there are 769 plots. These have been replaced by 1,000 plots of 56.33 square yard (47 square metres) each.

 Currently, there are 2.72 families (36.8 persons) living on each plot. Remodelling suggests two families or 27 persons on each plot. Housing plans developed for the settlement are ground plus three, with eight rooms.

Landuse allocations have also been changed. By remodelling residential use has been reduced from 60.5 to 55 per cent which is prescribed by the KBCA regulations. Commercial, parks, amenities and space for educational institutions has been increased from 0.02. 0.12, 1.81, 2.32 percent to 5, 10, 4, 4 per cent respectively. 

The existing circulation area in Nawalane is 19.6 per cent. It consists of narrow congested lanes. It has been increased to 22 per cent and wherever possible roads and open spaces have been combined so as to give the settlement a feeling of openness.  

 Amenities have been grouped together around large open spaces and the fact that they will be single storey (may be double) as compared to the ground plus three floor houses, will increase the feeling of openness at these nodes.

 Commercial areas have been developed on the periphery road. Each commercial plot is also 56 square yards (47 square metres) and may have three floors of apartments above it.

 Sections through the site indicate that the ground plus four floor heights of the houses will not create a feeling of congestion.

 Ideally speaking the family size in remodelled Nawalane should be 13.4 with a building height of ground plus two and a half. This would give a density of 641 persons per acre (1,583 persons per hectare) and if the commercial units are added, the density increases to 672. Again, this is higher than the KBCA prescribed densities of 500 persons per acre for townships and 650 persons per acre for apartments.  

 5.3       Paposh Nagar

 Paposh Nagar currently has a density of 478 persons per acre (1,182 persons per hectare). The average plot size is 81.6 square yards (67.8 square metres) and the average number of persons per plot is 10.5. By following the principles applied to the remodelling of Nawalane, the number of plots has been increased from 714 to 777 and at 13.4 persons per house the density has been increased to 694 persons per acre (1,715 persons per hectare).

 If the household size is reduced from 13.4 persons to the existing 10.5, the density decreases to 543 persons per acre (1,343 persons per hectare). If the commercial areas are added, then the density increases to 658 persons per acre (1,625 persons per hectare). This is higher than the KBCA maximum prescribed densities for apartment blocks.  

The remodelling of Paposh Nagar creates a pleasant non-congested settlement. The residential area has been reduced from 60.5 per cent to the KBCA prescribed 55 per cent. The commercial area, parks, amenities, spaces for educational institutions have been increased from 4, 4, 2.85, 2.60 per cent to 5, 10, 4, 4 per cent respectively. Road space has also been increased from 16.03 to 22 per cent. Sections through the site indicate that the ground plus four floor heights of the houses will not create a feeling of congestion.     

 5.4       Fahad Apartments

 Plots for apartment complexes are built by developers with loan facilities. The developer maximises his profits. As such, the concept of incrementally increasing the house was considered difficult to apply to a developer built scheme. Therefore, developers were contacted and discussions held with them and with estate agents. As a result, a number of interesting alternatives were proposed by them.

6.         RECOMMENDATIONS

The studies carried out prove conclusively that through proper planning much higher densities than those prescribed by the KBCA for apartment blocks can be achieved by building small houses on plots of land. It is also conclusively proved that the accommodation in these houses can be incrementally increased provided proper design and technical advice is provided to the house owners. All this can be done without adversely affecting the physical and social environment as envisaged by the KBCA regulations.

This study is really an exploration into an understanding of the spatial dynamics of low income settlements and their relationship to social, economic and real estate development issues. Further work is required before one can reach conclusions that can apply universally. A few recommendations are given below.

The high-density-incremental-growth-individual-house model is suitable for new settlements and townships. Additional work on the planning of individual units and landuse, governance systems and financial requirements for the model need to be initiated.  

There are groups among the better-off poor who may prefer apartments. A better understanding of who they are and what they can afford is necessary.

In incrementally growth, densities would require 20 years to achieve the targets they are planned for. A better understanding of the pros and cons of this reality needs to be investigated. 

Although the research deals with developer related concerns for the incremental housing model on apartment sites, it does not really offer a viable solution. Developer concerns need to be addressed.

A study for the comparison of the Karachi situation and the KBCA regulations with other cities in Asia should be initiated.

Study of further options and plot sizes to the ones that have been proposed should be carried out leading to the development of new zoning and density related regulations.

The results of the study should be presented to the area communities and their feedback should be used for modifications if required.

From the data that has been gathered, academics should draw urban design and housing related lessons and turn them into teaching material.   

---

[1].  Han Verschure, et Al; Evaluation and Recommendations for Infrastructure and Resettlement Pilot Project Tan Hoa-Lo Gom Canal Sanitation and Urban Upgrading in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, April 2006. Also, material available with UN’s Advisory Group on Forced Eviction for Istanbul, Turkey

[2]. Arif Hasan’s discussions with politicians and local government planners in Ho Chi Minh City, Istanbul, Karachi and Delhi

[3].  These interviews were carried out in August and September 2008 at Al Azam Square, Karimabad; Labour Square – 1, Orangi Town; Falaknuma Apartments, New Karachi

[4].  These interviews were carried out in August 2008 at Khuda-ki-Basti, Nawalane, Lyari and Chashma Goth

[5].  As per the KBCA byelaws, maximum residential area 55 per cent of site; maximum commercial 5 per cent of site; minimum 22 per cent for roads and minimum 3 per cent for educational use; and minimum 5 per cent each for playgrounds, public use buildings and parks. Source: Karachi Building and Town Planning Regulations, 2003

[6]. Saiban is an NGO engaged in providing unserviced land at affordable down payment and monthly instalments to poor families. They acquire infrastructure over time on the OPP model. Saiban provides support through other NGOs for education and health programmes and advice on infrastructure development

[7] . Plots were provided at Rs 10,000 (US$ 125) down payment and Rs 300 (US$ 3.75) per month instalments for seven years. This works out to a total of Rs 42,000 (US$ 525). The current market price for a plot in the area is Rs 300,000 (US$ 3,750)

[8].  Source: Akhtar Ali Khan, Project Director, Saiban, Karachi

[9].  Also see Arif Hasan, Demographic Change and its Socio-economic Repercussions: The Case of Karachi; unpublished paper, April 2009

Countering Militancy in FATA

Asia Report N°178
21 October 2009

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The military operation in South Waziristan is unlikely to succeed in curbing the spread of religious militancy in the FATA, unless the Pakistan government implements political reforms in that part of the country. Pakistani Taliban groups have gained significant power in the tribal agencies, seven administrative districts bordering on Afghanistan. While state institutions in FATA are increasingly dysfunctional, the militants have dismantled or assumed control of an already fragile tribal structure. This encroaching Talibanisation is not the product of tribal traditions or resistance. It is the result of short-sighted military policies and a colonial-era body of law that isolates the region from the rest of the country, giving it an ambiguous constitutional status and denying political freedoms and economic opportunity to the population. While the militants’ hold over FATA can be broken, the longer the state delays implementing political, administrative, judicial and economic reforms, the more difficult it will be to stabilise the region.

Badly planned and poorly coordinated military operations, followed by appeasement deals, have accommodated militant recruitment and actions, enabling Pakistani Taliban groups to expand their control over the region. Many militants, including commanders fleeing military operations in NWFP’s Malakand division, have also relocated to FATA. Instead of a sustained attempt to dismantle and destroy the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) network – led by Baitullah Mehsud until his death on 5 August 2009 in a U.S. drone attack and now by his deputy Hakimullah Mehsud – the military continues to rely on a two-pronged approach of sporadic strikes and negotiations with militant groups. Given that such operations are, by the military’s own admission, restricted, militant networks are ultimately able to absorb the blows even as indiscriminate damage alienates the local population caught in the crossfire.

The current military operation may well be a more extensive attempt to root out the Baitullah Mehsud network in South Waziristan but it remains an incomplete effort and could even prove counterproductive because of parallel efforts to reach or consolidate peace deals with rival TTP groups. It has yet to show that it will be directed at the Afghanistan Taliban or al-Qaeda strongholds. It has also already spurred a new round of IDPs with little to show that the country has planned for that eventuality.

More than a million FATA residents already have been displaced by the conflict, mostly from Bajaur agency in the north and Waziristan in the south. Ongoing military operations in Khyber agency have forced as many as 100,000 to flee to safer locations in NWFP. While the military restricts domestic and international humanitarian access to FATA’s conflict zones, neither the Pakistan government nor the international community has addressed the full costs of the conflict to civilians. Mala­kand’s IDPs have justifiably received considerable domestic and international attention, but the needs of FATA’s IDPs are yet to be addressed.

Militant violence and military operations have also undermined any prospect of economic development in the tribal agencies. FATA was severely underdeveloped even before the rise of militancy due to government neglect, legal barriers and structural impediments to investment and private enterprise. With no economic regulation or proper courts, a black economy has flourished, notably a pervasive arms and drugs trade. Violence is now contributing to poverty, with the lack of jobs making FATA’s residents vulnerable to militant recruitment.

The military’s resort to indiscriminate force, economic blockades and appeasement deals is only helping the Taliban cause. The Pakistan government could win hearts and minds and curb extremism through broad institutional, political and economic changes to FATA’s governance. The government should dismantle the existing undemocratic system of patronage driven by political agents – FATA’s senior-most civilian bureaucrats – as well as tribal maliks (elders) who are increasingly dependent on militants for protection. It must enact and the international community, particularly the U.S., should support a reform agenda that would encourage political diversity and competition, enhance economic opportunity, and extend constitutionally guaranteed civil and political rights and the protection of the courts. Earlier attempts to counter extremism in the tribal areas had failed because they prioritised short-term gain over fundamental changes to the political and administrative set-up.

On 14 August 2009 President Zardari announced a reform package lifting restrictions on political party activity; curtailing the bureaucracy’s arbitrary powers of arrest and detention; excluding women and minors from collective responsibility under the law; establishing an appellate tribunal; and envisaging audits of funds received and disbursed by the auditor general. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)-led government has described this reform package as the first step towards mainstreaming FATA, and much remains to be done. It must now swiftly implement these measures and, more importantly, take steps to fully incorporate the tribal areas into the federal constitutional framework, with provincial representation, legal protections under the Criminal Procedure Code and the national and provincial courts.

Donors, particularly the U.S., have allocated significant money for FATA’s development, but most is channelled through unaccountable local institutions and offices. This severely limits aid effectiveness and may even impede rather than encourage democratisation. The international community should recognise that the opponents of reform are not the people of FATA but the military and civil bureaucracies and the local elite, all of whom would lose significant powers if the government were to extend full constitutional and political rights to FATA.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the Government of Pakistan:

Pakistan’s Criminal Procedure Code, in accordance with Article 8 of the constitution and internationally accepted human rights standards, including prohibition of collective punishment.

2.  Extend full provincial rights to FATA by merging it with NWFP, in turn:

a) merging the Frontier Regions adjoining Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Kohat and Peshawar districts with their connected districts;

b) allocating seats for FATA’s seven tribal agencies in NWFP’s provincial assembly, with constituencies delimited by population, and devised after extensive consultations with stakeholders;

c) allowing the NWFP provincial assembly and the National Assemblyto legislate FATA policy;

d) eliminating the role of tribal jirgas (councils of elders) to hear civil and criminal cases, and establishing civil and criminal courts at the subdistrict and district levels, presided over by civil and criminal judges;

e) allowing defendants the right to legal representation and appeal to higher courts, and extending the jurisdiction of the Peshawar High Court and the Supreme Court to FATA; and

f) abolishing the FATA secretariat, the FATA Development Authority, and the office of the political agent, and transferring their authority to the NWFP secretariat, relevant provincial line ministries and district departments.

3.  Establish a uniform judicial system across NWFP by repealing the Nizam-e-Adl 2009 that imposes Sharia on NWFP’s PATA, and fully incorporating those districts into the provincial and national justice system.

4.  Prioritise relief and rehabilitation to FATA’s internally displaced persons and engage in broad consultation with local and provincial leaders on a plan for relief, future reconstruction and resettlement with the goal of sustainable provision of public services, economic infrastructure and citizen protection through civilian led law enforcement and judiciary.

5.  Disband khassadars (tribal police) and levies (official tribal militias) and absorb their members, after requisite training, into the NWFP police force, while strengthening the capacity of civilian law enforcement agencies to maintain law and order in the tribal agencies and the bordering Frontier Regions as well as NWFP’s settled districts.

6.  Disband all lashkars (private militias) immediately and take action against any member guilty of abusing civilians’ rights.

7.  Encourage private investment and economic growth by:

a) developing the physical structure of the tribal agencies, including viable road networks, farm-to-market roads as well as energy and irrigation projects;

b) facilitating interest-free loans and removing restrictions on lending to FATA residents;

c) while the FCR remains in force, preventing any legal action against small and large businesses under the collective responsibility clause in FATA and NWFP, including forced closures, seizure of property and economic blockades against tribes;

d) enabling private asset formation by implementing land reforms to partition collectively owned property and establish legal individual ownership through a transparent process, enforceable by regular courts; and

e) strengthening FATA’s public education system to make FATA’s students nationally competitive by raising teacher salaries in tribal agencies to higher levels than elsewhere in the country, improving school facilities, and inculcating strong written and verbal English-language skills.

f) Prioritise relief and rehabilitation of FATA’s IDPs.

To the U.S. and the Broader International Community:

8.  Develop meaningful dialogue with the government on broad institutional reform to FATA’s governance, without which taxpayers’ money is unlikely to achieve the desired results.

9.  Refrain from transferring control over development programs from international NGOs and other implementing partners to the Pakistan government until the FATA secretariat, the FATA Development Authority and the office of political agent are abolished and their authority transferred to the NWFP secretariat, relevant provincial line ministries and district departments.

10.  Establish financial oversight mechanisms over donor-funded programs that do not rely on the political agents and tribal elites but instead include more representative and independent bodies such as national and NWFP-based NGOs with proven records of carrying out programs in FATA.

11.  Linked to political reform, establish mechanisms for community and civil society participation along with provincial and national ministries in design of comprehensive FATA development plans covering small farm assistance, accelerated infrastructure construction, social service delivery, vocational training programs for FATA workers, particularly women, to make them more competitive in the local and national job markets and civilian police, judiciary and support for rule of law.

12.  Join the Pakistan government, the Office of the UNHCR and humanitarian NGOs in urgently preparing a comprehensive plan for IDPs in FATA expanding assistance to those displaced by conflict that assures domestic and international humanitarian access and their resettlement once citizen protection can be guaranteed.

13.  Condition military aid on demonstrable steps by the military to support civilian efforts in preventing FATA from being used by extremist groups to launch attacks from Pakistani territory within its region and beyond; if the Pakistani military does not respond positively, consider, as a last resort, targeted and incremental sanctions, including travel and visa bans and the freezing of financial assets of key military leaders and military-controlled intelligence agencies.

14.  Maximise the potential impact on proposed reconstruction opportunity zones (ROZs) by:

a) expanding the commodities identified for duty-free status to include staples of the local economy such as leather goods, wool products, carpets and furniture; and

b) requiring significant employment of FATA residents in companies participating in the program and where possible a preference for local FATA companies in program participation.

Islamabad/Brussels, 21 October 2009

Source ; http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=6356&rss=1

Militants from South Punjab Are Better Educated & More Ruthless

By Ayesha Siddiqa

The Punjabi jihadis are different from their counterparts in FATA: the former are comparatively more educated. There are many, such as Maulana Masood Azhar, who were educated in the Banuri town madrassa in Karachi and completed their dars-e-nizami – an eight-year course in religious ideology that inculcates the significance of jihad in the pupil. There is a constant flow of students from religious seminaries in South Punjab to Karachi.

There are also those who have a secular education and are given responsibility for further education or conversion, and not just jihad. Additionally, there is also a reverse flow of militant religious scholars from South Punjab to other parts of the country. A prime example is Lal Masjid’s Maulana Abdul Aziz Ghazi and his wife, who hail from Dera Ghazi Khan.

Besides being relatively more educated, thePunjabi jihadis are also distinguishable from the Pashtoon jihadis in terms oftheir style of fighting.

A lot of the fidayeen(suicide bombers) come from the Punjab and are reputed to be much more brutal intheir handling of victims.

Frontier Governor Owais Ghani says some of the more ferocious commanders of the Taliban forces in Waziristan and Swat are South Punjabi jihadis and are much moredifficult to crack than their Pashtoon counterparts. They have no emotional ties with people up north, and are mainly ideology-driven, just like their Arab and Uzbekbrothers-in-arms.

 So,  as one freelancing jihadi confided, Uzbeks chop off a victim’s head with extreme precision and fight with an enviable commitment. The Punjabi jihadis want to avenge the rape of Muslim women in Chechnya, Bosnia, Palestine, Kashmir andAfghanistan by waging a war against non-Muslims.

Militant groups show films of the killing of Muslims in these conflict zones and the rape of women to draw potential warriors. The preachers assure the fighters that a holy war is not only sanctioned by Islam but is a must for every able-bodied Muslim male.

 So, it does not really matter that the territories mentioned above are not connected with the immediate social reality of the fighters.

Unlike the Pashtoons, the South Punjabis are not motivated to wage war because they have lost one of their own in the war on terror. Instead, they are willing to give up their lives (or offer others in their family) because they are highly motivated about higher, selfless causes (70 Virgins)

Jihad provides an immediate sense of empowerment to people who now begin to see themselves as being capable of helping helpless women in far away lands. Those who are sent are even given Arab names to inculcate in them a sense of history.

source ; http://www.newsline.com.pk/NewsSep2009/coverstory2sep.htm

The Water & Sanitation Challenge: The Conflict Between Reality & Planning Paradigms

by Arif Hasan                                (27 October 2009)

             Since the late 50’s all governments in Pakistan have given great importance to the drinking water and sanitation sector  

• Their importance has been emphasised in all five year plans, in MTDF and in the Pakistan Vision 2030 (the correct vision in medical terms is 2020) 
• For the implementation of water and sanitation programmes we have borrowed heavily from IFIs and in most cases technical assistance was part of the loan package. This has added substantially to our development related debt burden (in my paper I will give statistics and their sources)  
• In spite of this, evaluation of these schemes and projects tell us that over 70 per cent of them have been unsustainable or unsuccessful in meeting their objectives (statistics and sources will be given in the paper) and in spite of “capacity building” our capacity in these sectors has actually fallen in proportion to the increasing demand
• Thousands of water and sanitation schemes lie abandoned or function erratically all over the country, forcing people back to their conventional water sources and sanitation methods. Attempts at rectifying this state of affairs have been made periodically over the last 30 years but with very limited success  
• The reasons for the problems faced by these programmes and schemes were (and still are) that they are conceived and developed as purely engineering solutions based on conventional standards and construction, delivery and maintenance mechanism. For this reason, they are also expensive to construct and maintain  
• Also the institutions that designed and maintained these schemes have over long periods suffered from neglect, inadequate funding (required to fund these capital intensive schemes) and ill-intentioned political interference  
• In the design of these schemes and programmes, there has always been an inbuilt assumption that the conventional design and maintenance institutions have the capacity to carry out this work and that the communities and the state have the required financial, technical and managerial capacity. Assumptions that have been proved wrong again and again 
• Over the last decade the importance of anthropological and sociological considerations in the design and O&M for the sectors has been recognised but has not been successfully applied in the public sector programmes except for a few schemes. NGO networks dealing with these larger realities have expanded in the last decade. However, their work has been on too small a scale to make a nationwide difference except for the Orangi Pilot Project’s initiatives in Karachi  
• In many seminars and papers it has been mentioned that the reason for the difficulties in the drinking and sanitation sector was because we did not have national drinking and sanitation policies. Today we have both  
• Policies, however, mean little by themselves. They lay down some principles and directions (sometimes also some grand concepts and wish lists) based on an analysis of the national situation  
• The implementation of policy requires rules, regulations and procedures and institutions and persons trained to deliver them 
• In 2005, I was asked by the federal government to prepare the background paper for the sanitation policy and then draft the policy itself. The drafts were prepared after feedback from a series of workshops and consultations and modified through a long process of seminars and further consultations with various stakeholders  
• In the policy we tried to lay down some broad principles which hold good for the drinking water policy as well. These principles were successfully applied  (but on a small scale)by the ATDO under the guidance of Ghulam Kibria in the 1970’s and have formed the basis for much of the work Akhtar Hameed Khan initiated in Orangi through the OPP. In recent years this work has expanded all over Pakistan  
• Broadly speaking these principles are:  

1.  Build on what exists. Most communities have water sources. Some of them also have sanitation systems. If we understand these systems and the sociology behind them, they can be upgraded. Similarly, damaged schemes (or parts of them) can be rectified rather than replaced. 

2.  Technology has to been subservient to sociology. The social unit in most of the rural areas and small towns of Pakistan is around the clan and/or extended family neighbourhoods. This has to be accepted rather than developing large schemes which bring together a cluster of villages. By building around the social unit we reduce capital costs, make maintenance easier and cost effective, the communities own the scheme and there is no need for compound walls round the scheme or for chowkidars.   

3.  But to do this technology as to be miniaturised and maintenance systems decentralised. This calls for the questioning of engineering standards and procedures. It calls for research.  

4.  Schemes have to be cost effective. And for this there are three principles: i) They have to be gravity flow so as to be free of energy requirements (this can be done through decentralisation); ii) they should be designed on the basis of the finances that are available rather than designing grand mega projects and then looking for loans for them. This is possible if we accept the process of incremental development which has been followed in much of OPP work. To do this an optimum relationship between demand, standards and resources has to be arrived at while accepting that all three can change over time; and iii) where energy is required solar technology should be used. Thardeep’s rube wells in he Tharparkar district are successful examples of this.     

5.  The component-sharing principle. Under this principle, different stakeholders share development components. For example, communities can finance, manage, construct and maintain their lane and neighbourhood water and sanitation systems whereas the government can develop the source, transmission and/or disposal systems. The OPP partners and more recently the NRSP have been following this principle. Similar arrangements can be developed between developers and development authorities/WASAs, cooperatives and local government, neighbourhood organisations and TMAs. This simplifies the development process and brings the technical and financial resources of a number of actors together. Responsibility is shared 

• The above principles are stated in the policies and work on the development of pilot projects has already been undertaken. However, the policies have yet to be mainstreamed and turned into effective action plans otherwise they cannot meet the MDG or the MTD targets and nor can they keep pace with the demand   
• To implement the policies effectively, a number of steps need to be taken.  

i)    The policies need to be disseminated. The public needs to know about them so that it can make informed demands around them. A media policy is required (FM radio, TV, print media). They have to be projected in a manner that people can relate to them   

ii)   For departments, agencies and other actors such as developers and housing societies, dissemination is not enough. For them there has to be a process of orientation and visits to projects where policy principles are being applied. Given the number of such institutions and enterprises, this will have to be a massive programme. Right now the policy is not being followed in a number of high profile projects. Open drains and soak-pits are still being built in government financed projects in violation of policy directives.   

iii)   Both the policies spell out some social and technology related guidelines. For these to be implemented, as said earlier, rules, regulations and procedures are required along with design options. Who is to develop these and how? Toilets for schools and public spaces come to mind; disposal of hospital waste (different criteria under different conditions); principles for the creation of landfill sites (they will be different for different locations); and turning natural drains into box trunks (different design principles for different ecological regions). One can go on. This is lot of work. It requires innovation, a questioning of conventional ways of doing things.  

iv)  The principles I have discussed earlier require skills in relating to and mobilising communities. They require mapping skills and on that basis decentralisation of design components and maintenance systems. Satellite imagery makes this easier. All Tehsil Municipal Administrations (TMAs) need it. It does not exist within TMAs. Introducing the system is not enough. It has to be sustainable. This requires training and continuous upgrading     

v)   For long term success, the involvement of technical and professional academic institutions and bodies is required – institutions where policy makers and bureaucrats are trained. In most of the technical and professional institutions the policies are not known.     

vi)     To do what I have mentioned above, what is required is a provincial government institution that takes the responsibility of initiating, coordinating and monitoring what I have suggested. This is how the PHED, its rules, regulations, procedures and designs were developed in the 60’s. A similar exercise but in a very changed context and with community and stakeholder involvement is required. If proper linkages are created between different potential actors and beneficiaries, a culture of continuous learning can develop and this will prevent fossilisation, something that has happened in the past. For the creation of such an institution provincial legislation may also be required.    

• A massive research, training and orientation programme is perhaps the most important ingredient of what I have suggested above. Much of the knowledge required for it exists in NGO and government projects. It needs to be turned into effective training material. Projects also exist, so both the problem and the solution are visible.    
• Bemoaning the present state of affairs with distressing statistics, carrying out irrelevant donor driven research, trying to replace government responsibilities by NGOs, and seeking fancy solutions far removed from the socio-economic reality of the country, will not deliver.  

When the Supreme Court Look into the Loan Write-off Issue?

 

Who will punish beneficiaries of loan write-offs?

Huzaima Bukhari and Dr. Ikramul Haq

In the wake of February 2008 elections, the people of Pakistan thought that the rulers would respect their mandate by moving towards an egalitarian society—the essence of people’s rule. The ruling elite—unholy alliance of bureaucracy, politicians and businessmen—always resist any such change. When matter comes to surrendering their ill-gotten wealth—the main source of their power—for the benefit of masses, the privileged classes, despite their political/ideological differences, start showing “gestures of reconciliation”.  As soon as media start exposing their financial corruption, tax evasion, plundering of national wealth, they “unite” (sic)—immediately meeting at sumptuous dinners and talking about working together for “national interest” (sic) by bridging their differences (sic). They start feeling threatened with open public debates about their tax declarations and figures of loan write-offs.      Tragically, the apex court did not decide the issue of loan-write-offs though suo moto action was taken in 1996 and 2008.  In 2008, according to Press reports, the Supreme Court took serious notice of the fact as to how banks wrote off a staggering amount of Rs. 125 billion as “bad debts” during 2000-2006, against Rs. 30 billion written off during 1985-1999. According to reports, larger numbers of loans were written off under Circular No 29/2002, issued by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), of which major beneficiaries were leading politicians and industrialists.   During the self-acclaimed “transparent era” of Musharraf-Shaukat, loan writ-offs in just seven years (2002 to 2007) crossed the figure of  125 billion, whereas in the much-publicized “corrupt” era of elected governments (1985 to 1999)  it was merely Rs. 30 billion.  This comparison speaks for itself and does not require any further comments. The country’s banks and other financial institutions wrote off an amount of over Rs 30 billion during the governments of Muhammad Khan Junejo, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. During the two tenures of Nawaz Sharif (1990-93 and 1997-99) Rs. 22.35 billion loans were written off– during his first tenure, a total of Rs. 2.39 billion were written off and in his second, the amount went up to Rs. 19.96 billion. The written off loans during the two tenures of Nawaz Sharif constituted approximately 74.5 percent of the total of Rs. 30.18 billion, written off between 1986 and 1999. During the two tenures of late Benazir Bhutto, a total of Rs. 7.23 billion loans were written off, constituting 24.2 percent of the total written off loans – Rs. 494.97 million in her first tenure and Rs. 6.74 billion in the second term.   During the Musharraf-Shaukat era, an unholy alliance of bankers, businessmen-turned-politicians and bureaucrats–that included many serving and retired general–managed to plunder public money through amnesty scheme from SBP, whereas banks had assets as collateral to recover the loans. The scheme shamelessly granted tax waiver to these people who could settle loans by just paying fraction of total outstanding amount. The SBP admitted before the Supreme Court that amongst the beneficiaries of its Circular No. 29/2002 were two sitting Chief Ministers of PML(Q) regime. The criminal culpability of successive governments in this matter has tarnished the image of Pakistan in the eyes of global community as a haven for the corrupt, plunderers and tax evaders..   Table A depicts the cumulative non-performing loans and advances of banks and non-banking financial institutions from 1982 to 2008, which have been compiled from annual published audited accounts. This shows how quickly non-performing loans have increased over the period of time, but more significantly, lack of political will to recover them through introduction of a simple foreclosure law. The beneficiaries of loan write-offs are the rich and the mighty. They have increased their wealth through squandering public money lying in the banks. This is high time that this money is retrieved for the welfare of masses and they should be banned for life to take part in politics.     TABLE A   Year                                                                                    Quantum 1982                                                    Rs. 8 billion 1988                                                    Rs. 39 billion 1993                                                    Rs. 62 billion 1998                                                    Rs. 118 billion 1998                                                    Rs. 140 billion 1999                                                    Rs. 164 billion 2000                                                    Rs. 171 billion 2001                                                    Rs. 185 billion 2002                                                    Rs. 218 billion 2003                                                    Rs. 229 billion 2004                                                    Rs. 241 billion 2005                                                    Rs. 255 billion 2006                                                    Rs. 265 billion 2007                                                    Rs. 272 billion 2008                                                    Rs. 288 billion   The Supreme Court of Pakistan, way back in 1996 (Reference: Dawn dated 16th October, 1996), taking suo moto cognizance under Article 189 of the Constitution of Pakistan, took up this issue of loan write-offs and expressed intention of studying all the governing laws in this regard. The apex court vowed to make authoritative pronouncement that “would eliminate the chances of misusing the laws for siphoning of public money” There is, however, no track as to what happened to that public interest litigation case, it appears the same is still pending even after a lapse of 13 years.   The said public interest litigation originated from a reference filed by then President, Late Ghulam Ishaq Khan against a PPP, MNA, Rao Rasheed Ahmad, who as a member of loan write off committee, blatantly ordered to write off a loan of his wife. There have been many such examples where the rich and mighty managed to plunder the savings of the have-not (small depositors) in a shameless manner. An unholy alliance of bankers, businessmen-cum-politicians and bureaucrats has destroyed the entire banking/financial system.     The politics of writing-off loans in this country requires proper investigation and study as it will unveil may “big names” that are responsible for corruption and failure of the democratic process in Pakistan. The country lost billions of rupees in the form of public revenues because of bad debts written off by the banks on specific directions of SBP. The Government of Pakistan, SBP and Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) never considered the report of Auditor General of Pakistan in this regard issued far back in 1992, showing loss to public exchequer of Rs. 120 billion. It is a matter of record that the Board of Revenue despite this audit report from the Auditor General of Pakistan, issued another Circular instructions on February 4, 1993 vide its letter No. 13(26)/IT-1/79 giving further concessions to the banks. The cases relating to plundering of public money to the tune of billions and blatant abuse of powers by rulers and their henchmen pose a serious threat to our democratic culture.   The unscrupulous businessmen (most of them are now politicians and elected members of parliament), state functionaries and corrupt bankers have joined hands to deprive this nation of billions of rupees of public funds and colossal loss to public revenues. The big bosses of the State Bank and FBR should be taken to task to explain who had asked them to issue “administrative instructions” in gross violation of law for loan write offs and allowing unprecedented tax benefits to the beneficiaries. The inquiry into loan write offs will not only reveal the modus operandi through which public money is siphoned off but will also unveil the real beneficiaries. If we want to establish true democracy in Pakistan, public money looted by these criminals should be recovered, they should be disqualified permanently from holding public offices and all those who facilitated them should be given exemplary punishment. ___________________________________ The writers, tax lawyers and authors of many books, are visiting professors at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).

Citizens in Pakistan ve to Protect Themselves and the State as Well

Relationship between state and citizens is a social contract. A basic ingredient of the contract is that the state shall protect the life and property of its citizens. It is in this context that violence is the monopoly of the state which it shall use according to the law. In theory this is so in Pakistan as well. In practice it is not so, in many parts of Pakistan.

But the most disgraceful and atrocious violation of the social contact can be seen in FATA and the NWFP in face of Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorism in the area.

The state has failed again and again to protect citizens from the atrocities of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The absence of state protection made many people in the NWFP and FATA create local lashkars (volunteer armies) to push Taliban and Al-Qaida terrorists out of their areas. Most members of the lashkar had never been fond of violence. They would prefer a peaceful and quite life. The state’s abrogation of its responsibility to protect them had forced them to take up weapons in self-defence.

Even then the state never came forward to help the lashkars, most of whose leaders and members were slaughtered by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, with the state just watching as an unconcerned bystander. But still the resistance of the people continues on self-help bases in several parts of the NWFP and FATA.

There is a lashkar in Badaber, an area of rural Peshawar on the border with Darra Adamkhel, the area taken over by the Taliban, to the south, and with Khyber Agency, ruled by Mangal Bagh and Hakimullah, to the west. The Badaber lashkar is playing an impressive role in preventing Darra Adamkhel Taliban from taking over Peshawar. The lashkar has had several clashes with the Taliban, which led to death and injuries on both sides. A striking feature of the lashkar is that it is not only protecting the people of Badaber but also extending protection to law-enforcement agencies in the area. It is not uncommon to see police and FC vehicles and personnel being escorted by the lashkar’s vehicles and volunteers. Thus, in Badaber the social contract between the state and citizens is turned on its head: the citizens are protecting the state!

In another country such citizens would have become heroes. Not so in Pakistan. For a long time the state ignored the efforts of the citizens. But at last the one and only “recognition” came from the state: a letter of appreciation. It was issued on Nov 17, 2008, by the chief secretary of the NWFP and addressed to two of the lashkar’s leaders, Khushdil Khan, deputy speaker of the NWFP Assembly, and Gulzar Hussain, former chairman of thye Union Council of Badaber.

The letter states: “The provincial administration would like to place on record its commendation/appreciation for the good work that your honour has undertaken regarding formation of Aman (peace) Committees for maintenance of law and order in Badaber and Sheikh Mohammadi areas of District Peshawar. This step would go a long way in ensuring maintenance of peace and tranquillity in the concerned areas in collaboration with law-enforcement agencies. Formation of Aman Committees is a commendable and enviable community measure emulable in other troubled areas all over NWFP.”

This letter has been a source of torture for many, if not all, members of the Badaber lashkar. Is this the recognition that they deserve from the state for the acute dangers they have taken upon themselves and their families by challenging the Taliban? Some lashkar members might have thought that it would have been better they never had that letter which is more a source of torture than appreciation for them.

In my view, the letter should have come from the highest political authority of the state: the president or the prime minister of Pakistan. If not that, then at least it should have come from the chief minister or governor of the NWFP. The letter should have clearly acknowledged the role of the lashkar in protection of the law- enforcement agencies. The letter should have been shared with the media so that everyone in Pakistan had seen that the state recognised the efforts of the lashkar.

But what is the most important is that the state must fulfil its responsibility to protect the people of the NWFP and FATA from the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. For that to happen, the state must abandon the idea of strategic depth for good. The state must stop using FATA as a strategic space. The state must respect the fact that the people of FATA are its citizens who are fully entitled to its protection. The lashkar people, both in FATA and the NWFP, have not taken up arms for fun or out of habit.

They have done so because the state has abandoned them to the wolves
The writer, Farhat Taj, is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy. Email: bergen34@yahoo.com

PML-n is Establishment’s Pet

Chaudhry Nisar was involved in toppling government of PPP, through his links with Army as he would sit for hours with Army officers as he is doing now.  His secret meeting in dead of night with Army chief along with Shahbaz Shareef is talk of town. 

While Nawaz Shareef the Groom of Establishment who never goes to jail claims that he will not be with Army, he secretly makes liaison with them through his brother .  Although they claim otherwise. I have termed this PML-N, as Punjabi Munafiqs League – Nawaz.  

Can we count the number of years PML has worked with establishment of Army since 1947? 

If they are so sincere in wiping out corruption, PML-N should leave the sugar held in their mills to Awam at 40 /Kg . 

Can they go to thier own Accountability Committee of which Ch Nisar is leader and ask about 15 Billion dollars  that was misappropriated during Musharaff days. They will never do that as they are establishements groom and PML is establsihements pet. They did not even call the generals to commitee even when it was demanded. 

Why they are crying hoarse over just tiny 1.5 Billion Dollars, when there are more then 15 billion dollars to worry about. 

Punjabi Munafiq League’s truth was exposed when they stopped just short of punishing Gen Musharaff after Saudia and America put foot on their tails. Arent they America stooges, and mainatin interests of American and Oil companies? Aent they making noise after Iranian Pipe Line deal was signed?  

Why isnt it surrendering financial autonomy to Provinces and maintaining centre grip to please Punjabi establishment. 

Even the Terrorist dont target them as they seem to have liason with them, while ANP and PPP leders are targeted at will. 

So PML-N is clearaly establishemtn pet .

Dr Khurrum Shaukat Yusafzai.
Email : Khurrumuk@gmail.com

Punjab is Dragging the Rest of Pakistan to a Snail’s Pace

The lack of common sense in inventing the Sasti Roti Scheme has emptied the coffers of the Punjab Government. What is use of 2 Rupees Roti , when plate of Dal is for 100 rupees to accompany with it . 

Punjab is bursting from seems , with its overpopulation, most highly populated cities, with more then 500 persons  per square km. 

To top it all, there are another nine cities in Punjab, which are above 400 persons per square Km. As a result the tiny country is ranked 6th most populous in the world in such tiny area, which is amazing. 

While you compare this with other three Provinces combined, they have only four such cities like Karachi, Peshawar, Mardan, and Nowshera in Pakistan. 

This heavy load of population, on infrastructure, and economy, by Punjab is dragging Pakistan to a snail pace and promoting, poverty and terrorism.  

As Punjabis fail to follow contraceptive measures, because of their backwardness and rigid religious, beliefs, the rest of the country suffers. 

The heavy concentration of people in Punjab, the health and economic matters are getting worse as well as water sources are getting scarce.

Punjab has highest amount of Hepatitis C and B incidences.  

Whole Budgets are wasted on useless pseudo socialist projects like providing cheep food (Sasti Rotis) and no real education and development projects. Only way out is by decreasing population. 

Shahbaz Sharif is bluffing the people and making a fool of them as they are capitalist in their hearts, and promoting pseudo- socialism, which fails to pay taxes on agriculture, and claims this luxury as its birthright. 

From where this money will be brought from snatching from other provinces rights, I suppose ? 

Dr  Khurrum Shaukat Yusafzai.
Email : Khurrumuk@gmail.com