Daily Times

Cities are the drivers of economic growth and innovation. Nowadays, tremendous attention is being paid to create vast yet liveable cities that can lure entrepreneurs into investing time and energy. A big prosperous city provides its entrepreneurs with a home market to test their ideas and products. No country, state, or province can economically thrive without at least one big city. China has created megacities of tens of millions of people each to boost economic activities and innovation.Pearl River Delta and Yellow River Delta are two such examples.

Country or state capitals naturally attract entrepreneurs, investors, artists, politicians, and all other kinds of people to live there because these cities are the seats of governments, and it is easy to reach policymakers if you live in the capital. Also, the government pays more attention to the development of capital cities as politicians and bureaucrats themselves live there and want to have every possible facility. In most countries, capitals have naturally developed into megacities and became the heart of economic growth. Some of the examples are London, United Kingdom; Paris, France; Berlin, Germany; Moscow, Russia;New Delhi, India; Beijing, China; Tokyo, Japan; Tehran, Iran; and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to name a very few.

Capital cities also play a significant role in economic growth at the provincial level; Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta are provincial capitals as well as big cities playing a central role in the economic development of the respective provinces. One of the fundamental reasons for these cities to become economic hubs is the fact that these are also seats of governments. Even a relatively new city of Islamabad is fast becoming a commercial hub only because it is the national capital, and people want to move there due to better physical infrastructure and law and order and because it is the seat of federal government and bureaucracy.

The state of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) lacks economic development, and one of the fundamental reasons, in my view, is that it does not have a sufficiently big city that can attract people with money and ideas to come and invest. When the valley was liberated in 1948, the first capital was established at Janjal Hill near Plandri. Later, the capital was shifted to Muzaffarabad, which was mainly due to Muzaffarabad being selected as a temporary capital on the road to Srinagar.

Muzaffarabad is situated in a small valley between Srinagar and Rawalpindi, 125 kilometres from Srinagar and 95 kilometres from Rawalpindi.It is a very narrow valley at the confluence of Jhelum and Neelum rivers and is surrounded by mountains on all sides. The city’s population is currently about 200,000. Muzaffarabad is presently suffering from various problems, which is why it is essential to move the capital of AJK from Muzaffarabad to some other place.

If a large part of the population lives in one city, government can provide health, education and transportation facilities quite easily due to the economy of scale and geographical concentration

The biggest and foremost problem is the shortage of space. The valley of Muzaffarabad is so small that in no case, it can be turned into a big city. For the economic development of any state, at least one major city must exist. Since the government is the largest employer in AJK, a large number of government employees live in Muzaffarabad. Also, thousands of people, from all over the state, come to Muzaffarabad daily with the issues related to government departments. For these reasons, the population pressure on Muzaffarabad has increased tremendously with no space to accommodate.

In Muzaffarabad, now vacant space is almost extinct. Apart from the poor construction resulting in thousands of deaths in Muzaffarabad in the 2005 earthquake, one reason was that it was practically impossible for people to flee to safer places due to the absence of space in the city. Further expansion of the city is now almost impossible due to which land and property prices are touching the sky, and it is unthinkable for a common man to build a house in Muzaffarabad. Lack of space forced the AJK government to construct the new King Abdullah campus of the University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir 15 kilometres away from the city at a place that is very small and vulnerable to landslides.

Due to this lack of space no reasonable economic activity can take hold in Muzaffarabad.It has no space for an airport, any medium to large size factory to be established, any metro to be built and for new people to move in, which is vital for consumption growth leading to economic growth. But as it is still the seat of government of AJK, it effectively blocks the development of any other major commercial hub in AJK, as in that state, life revolves around government and where it resides.

In the past, the idea of shifting the capital of AJK from Muzaffarabad to Mirpur has been under discussion but has never been able to get anymomentum due to political wrangling. It is also because Mirpur is not situated in the geographical centre of AJK where people can reach easily.

It is important that the capital transfer should be made on a purely administrative, economicand environmental basis. The new capital should be established at a place where the poorest people of AJK can easily reach easily by public transport. Where small and medium-sized factories can be founded, public transport networks can be built, and most importantly, people can affordably move to live permanently, a place where in the future a city of a couple of million people can take shape. Such a big city will not only drive economic growth, providing jobs to tens of thousands of jobless youth of the state, but it will also reduce government expenditures tremendously.

If a large part of the population lives in one city, government can provide health, education and transportation facilities quite easily due to the economy of scale and geographical concentration. Better public services attract more people and investment, and the chain reaction goes on and on. But in the case of AJK, this cannot happen unless the government shifts its seat to some new city.

So where is it that a new expandable city in AJK can be established, which can become its capital and economic hub, besides being accessible for people of the state to reach?I think one of the two valleys in the district Kotli, Sehnsa, or Sarsawa, can be selected. Of these two adjacent valleys, the Sarsawa Valley is better in my view. That is because it is closer to the northern districts of AJK. It can expand south towards Sehnsa and Dodyal to become a large city. Also, it is effortless to supply water to this valley because River Pooch runs just nearby.

The Sarsawa Valley is a low-lying semi hilly area just like Islamabad, so a new city can be built in the style of Islamabad, keeping in mind the principles of sustainable development here. The topography of the area from Sarsawato the Mangla Dam in the south allows for large residential settlements to be established. Thus, a relatively large city can be founded here, ushering a new era in the economic development and prosperity of Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

The writer is a PhD candidate LKY School of Public Policy, NUS, Singapore