Daily Times

If justice, like charity, began at home, Pakistan would not have turned a blind eye to yet another real estate project cutting legs from under hapless farmers while shamelessly destroying greenery in the name of “development.” The accusations of Ravi Urban Development Authority (RUDA) deploying bulldozers in the protection of an army of private guards to destroy crops and damage waterways right before the eyes of those who took great pride in Ferozewala’s soil were quite damning on their own. But to twist the dagger further in, the entity has decided to bring the full force of police upon the few who still dared to raise their voices against the gross injustice.

That the 46-kilometres-long venture was controversial, to begin with, needs no greater evidence than it being rubberstamped “illegal” by the Lahore High Court. However, those with an eye for detail seldom pause when reprimanded about “violations.” The verdict was suspended by the Supreme Court whose strictly-worded caution regarding compensation to landowners was supposedly thrown out of the window. Since it was former prime minister Imran Khan, who had spearheaded the Ravi Riverfront Project despite an uproar by environmentalists over its impacts on the fate of Ravi, any attempt to hit the brakes would have gross political connotations.

Mr Khan’s infatuation with turning the entire river bank into a sandbox for real estate players is hard to understand given his much-talked-about championing of ecological conservation. Projects like the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami and Japanese Miyawaki forests in urban areas have repeatedly made headlines for a highly-called-for shift in the priorities list. However, allowing RUDA to entertain greedy urban sprawl at the expense of lush orchards and rich farmland would be, for the lack of a better word, a gross display of misplaced priorities. Pakistan has been desperately trying to make other countries realise how it was paying the price in the form of an unprecedented climatic disaster for their industrial ambitions. Does our case for justice-based”retributions” remain as strong in the wake of our own colonial treatment of water bodies? When every corner is abuzz with chatter about building resilience against such catastrophic episodes, whose frequency and scope are bound to multiply, the state should have fared better by considering the consequences of yet another attempt to control a river and twist its course as per financial whims. *