My family has been a Karachiite for generations. We live in an old building my grandfather built 70 years ago, relocating his family from old Lalukhet to Garden. Despite temptations, my siblings and I have not been able to muster enough conviction to move out of the city, even for work. (A year-long stay in Islamabad confirmed it was a bad idea). Admittedly, it’s more because of the comfort that familiarity offers than any self-proclaimed love for our home. Yes, comfort, despite the uncertainty characterizing Karachi.
With time, we Karachiites have developed sufficient ‘crisis dodging’ skills. In times of halaat kharab, we stay indoors; seeing a dacoity on a roadside, we change tracks; a killing two blocks away means avoiding that street for the next 12 hours; and, we don’t waste time reporting wallet or phone snatching episodes to police. These self-protection tactics have made us survive so far. And it hasn’t been bad!
However, there is something unusual about Karachi these days. Its familiarity and affability are gone. There is a sense of urgency on the streets where people don’t even stop when their car is brushed against by another.
Unnecessary quarrels are strictly avoided unless there is a major crossing of limits. Overpricing and poor customer service is no longer made an issue of. Lazy walks at Sea View are not carefree anymore. Staying out after 11 at night can now keep the family back home extremely stressed.
The city’s law and order crisis is a topic of everyday discussion, on media, at the President House and in railway waiting rooms. The state is accused of bearing the responsibility for the 3,000 killings the city suffered in 2011-12 alone and many before that. Its eyes remain closed to the growing influence of the criminal mafias, land grabbers, abusive construction lobby, and political parties’ backing to these elements.
Despite evidence of state support to the mafias, police and rangers have been brutally killed in the past years. The sectarian monster is back. The Taliban outreach has stretched beyond Manghopir with Shahrae-Faisal now splashed with wall chalking carrying jihadi slogans.
Karachi has changed for the worse and the state of degeneration is most evident in citizens’ response to the crisis of the city. When in distress, you seek protection or fight back or both! Karachi’s citizens are seeking protection, and not from the state.
In an HRCP report on Karachi’s violence in 2011, town planner Arif Hasan notes: “Cells in ethnic parties now settle community and family disputes regarding property, crime, marriage and divorce. Government institutions dealing with these issues have become redundant.”
Businesses, too, turn to political groups for protection from their own bhatta mafias. One in five persons in Karachi carry licenced arms, the remaining majority holds unlicensed ones. Arms sale in 2011 was above 200,000.
Ghettoisation of communities along ethnic and sectarian lines is so strong that estate agents officially refuse Shias looking for residences in Sunni areas. The city’s 42% population housed in 500 plus slums are ghettoized on ethnic lines.
Karachiites are also under attack by the builders mafia speedily encroaching upon public spaces including sidewalks, community centres and public parks (citing Arif Hasan’s observation of change in land use seen in google images).
While children scramble for play areas, the irregular high rises for residential and commercial use occupy main roads for car parking. Not only does this encroachment make citizens’ mobility difficult, it also puts people into competition for spaces and public utilities causing frustration and resentment.
Obviously “public interaction” is the biggest casualty of this crisis with physical space and forums for such exchanges fast disappearing. Shopping and eating out — Karachi has a substantial share in the country’s $40bn retails sector — have replaced communal sports, theatres, reading groups, community interaction (there wasn’t much to begin with).
Workplace maybe a space for interaction but it has limitations in the absence of poor organization of workers (3% of the total workforce is unionised). Hence no forum for raising issues.
Entertainment spots such as restaurants, exhibitions, parks and shopping malls are neither accessible by all, nor do they allow much scope for healthy human interaction, since spending is the prime objective.
Public transport in other countries offers an opportunity to know fellow citizens. Here that’s not possible given 34 commuters are competing for a single bus seat. Moreover, it is hardly used by the middle and elite classes.
The result of this isolationary regime is the death of mobilization around common issues. Despite terrible conditions, there has been limited expression of demand by citizens from the state to address Karachi’s violence.
The Supreme Court’s suo moto hearing has little involvement of citizens, who are seen as victims and not as partners in the development of the city. Citizens no longer bother about the safety of public spaces. Whether it’s gutters overflowing or the construction of three flyovers around the Water Pump area violating the EPA rules; no-one cares. When citizens protest independent of political parties’ calls, it is mostly around power and water shortages. Tragedies such as the Abbas Town blasts and Quetta killings failed to mobilize Karachiites beyond a limited period.
By turning citizens into self-protection and self-interest seeking creatures those benefitting from Karachi’s lawlessness have succeeded in killing the spirit of the city. Karachi was always a state without authority, now it is becoming a city without citizens.
The writer is Co-Manager Programmes at Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, based in the city by the sea.
