Daily Times

With the Supreme Court’s majority judgement in the Orange Line Metro Train project, contractors hired by the provincial government have started demolition work within 200 feet of the proposed track at the 11 sites where work remained suspended during court proceedings. One of the demolition sites near Mauj Darya shrine is Maharaja Building where many families residing in one-room units have been offered a million rupees in compensation for their displacement. These and others who have found themselves in similar situation have claimed they have been settled in these units for decades, but could not secure that piece of paper called a property deed from the Revenue Department. Resultantly, such families have not qualified for the slightly more generous compensation package offered to those with property deeds.

That a million rupees do not get you comparable shelter in a 10-million strong city whose property market is not meant for low-income residents is a thought that simply does not register with the cold-bloodied, technocratic and market-oriented rationality that undergirds our public agencies’ approach to land acquisition for infrastructure projects.

The point isn’t that Rs1 million is insufficient, or that there could be a perfectly justifiable amount that can be agreed upon by both parties (public agencies and private citizens).

The problem is with the approach that treats housing and shelter not as a need but as a commodity tradable in the real estate market. If housing is seen as a need, should the presence or absence of a piece of paper authorised by a state agency matter more than the physical presence of women, men and children in housing units at these buildings?

If housing is ever to be treated as a need, regardless of the specific arrangements, it will require that questions of residence just cannot be left to the whims of the market. Other criteria will have to be evolved for allocation of residential space in our metropolises.

It is easier said than done, of course.

Based on the State Bank of Pakistan’s assessments, there was a shortage of nine million housing units in the country in 2015. Given that nothing groundbreaking has happened since then in terms of provision of affordable housing, the figure would have gone further up in the last two years.

Yet, our mainstream political parties aren’t even remotely willing to start a conversation about the issue. No party feels so strongly about affordable housing to raise it on the floor of the House or to hold a dharna for it.

The Supreme Court sits on a petition filed by the Awami Workers Party seeking a low-cost housing policy for the country. Though, the issue fits perfectly in the Apex court’s original jurisdiction, it doesn’t pay as much attention to it as it has paid to some of the cases like the Panama Papers trial, for instance. In fact, a low-cost housing policy would have served the public interest in a more direct and immediate manner, compared to the SC verdict in the fast-tracked Panama Papers trial.

At some point, we will have to initiate a larger conversation among ourselves about forming political platforms and alliances where the dispersed, fragmented and disorganised majority can come together and articulate their grievance as part of a broad-based progressive agenda for social and economic change in this country

Nonetheless, civil society activists did take up the issue of housing, alongside the preservation of heritage sites, during the OLMT project. The issue was raised at protests and there is a page on Facebook that constantly updates its members on demolition and displacement activities undertaken as part of the OLMT project. Some activists also assisted affected families to approach the court for remedy, but not much came out in terms of relief from those proceedings.

With the resumption of demolition work, these activists have once again raised voice for the issue. Hopefully, they and others will be able to build and sustain enough pressure to push the government to treat the affected families in a fair and a just manner. But it is not even remotely likely that the pressure exerted will be enough to either get the low-cost housing policy approved and implemented, or abolish the residential real estate market entirely. This has to do with the nature of civil society activism: it works best for recognised [occupational] groups and associations in collective bargaining negotiations.

The question of affordable housing is of a different nature. The aggrieved party here has not been recognised as such under any law of the land, notwithstanding the constitutional provisions that guarantee a dignified life to all citizens. Instead, citizens deprived of shelter are dispersed across our urban spaces and they mostly engage in what social scientists call non-movements i.e. ordinary day-to-day struggles that nonetheless push the authorities to yield some concessions in the form of regularisation of squatter settlements. Those of us concerned about the issue of (lack of) affordable housing in this country have been connecting ourselves with these non-movements of citizens deprived of shelter in one way or the other. We will hopefully hold protests in days to come for the Maharaja building residents. But at some point, we will have to initiate a larger conversation among ourselves about forming political platforms and alliances where this dispersed, fragmented and disorganised majority can come together and articulate their grievance as part of a broad-based progressive agenda for social and economic change in this country.

We owe this conversation to our convictions and hopes for a future that may be better than the present.

The writer is a journalist and a researcher based in Lahore. He can be reached at umair.rasheed@lums.edu.pk

Published in Daily Times, December 15^th 2017.