Daily Times

Karachi has a world of its own. One of the largest cities in the world, as big that it can accommodate three cities the size of Islamabad, Karachi shelters the densest population with more than 15 ethnic communities and major religious minorities living inside this mini Pakistan.

With the outbreak of COVID-19, Karachi is the main focus of national media today. It is referred to as the “worst-hit” of COVID-19 in Sindh with almost 5000 plus cases at the moment.

Media reports on Karachi and rigorous efforts of the provincial government to curb the spread of the pandemic focus on how the lockdown and the SOPs can be observed by ensuring minimum economic loss of the backbone of Pakistan.

After seeing what local media is showing about Karachi’s governance, COVID-19 seems to be played as an opportunity for political, ethnic, religious and socio-cultural capitalism. There is constantly seen a struggle of political differences, point-scoring and settling between provincial and federal governments over strict and smart lockdowns of the city. Pandemic is being played up to create more ethnic divides by blaming the provincial government to have provided more medical equipment to interior Sindh and less to an Urdu-speaking Karachi. In some cases, the COVID-19 spread was sectarianised by condemning the Shia pilgrims coming from Iran or Tableeghi Jamaatis due to their frequent visits in the closer neighbourhoods. Ethnicisation was also seen when low-income (mostly Pashtoon) migrant groups tried to go back to their native places in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa and FATA after a strict lockdown was implemented in Karachi. Sindh’s Chief Minister, Murad Ali Shah, has been lauded for his timely preventive mechanism to contain COVID-19’s speedy spread. However, the Sindh government’s tireless efforts could not match the speediness of the spread of the virus, despite strict lockdown. What went wrong?

COVID-19 is not bigger than Karachi’s persistent ills; poor governance and lack of sense of ownership are

The nature of Karachi, as a metropolitan city, merits both as a blessing and a curse. It is a migrant’s city; catering around three million migrants and immigrants from all over Pakistan and neighbouring countries or conflict zones like Iran, Afghanistan, Burma, Bangladesh etc. Long before the independence of Pakistan in 1947, Karachi was an active economic hub due to its seaport, vibrant economic activity and geographical connectivity outside and inside British India. There was constant trade traffic between Karachi and other states of the country. Independence just enhanced Karachi’s importance being the economic backbone and a major contributor in the national economy and industrial sector. A city with around 18 million population and home to millions from the diverse migrant community, pandemics are not alien to Karachi. Dengue, malaria, cholera, plague, typhoid, measles, respiratory disorders, tuberculosis and various types of allergies and viral infections in both humans and animals/cattle, caused by air pollution and unhygienic conditions, are rampant in the metropolitan city.

As an insider (I was born and grew up in Karachi in the 1980s and 90s), I found plenty of threats there at various levels, both traditionally and that of human security. 1990s was full of terror where our schools would be closed for days because of MQM’s paiyya jaam hartaals (vehicle bound strikes) throughout the city. The violence and student politics at the University of Karachi in the decade of 2001-2010 had another story of the problems that the city has always been facing. Pickpocketing, street crimes such as mobile snatching, sectarian and ethnic violence, target killings, unannounced and indefinite electricity breakdowns and continuous “Kunda system” (stealing of electricity through some hotched potched electric device), which costs you high amounts of electricity bills/charges without knowing who is stealing your “bijli” and enjoying airconditioned sleep all summers, there are 100s of woes in Karachi and one cannot fathom which one is the bigger ill in the city. Is it slow response by the local law enforcement mechanism to curb street crimes during the peak years of the 1990s and 2000s onwards? Is it the broken road starting from Civic Center towards the entire University Road or stagnated water on the streets of Abul Hasan Isfahani road in Gulshan e Iqbal? Is it the skyrocketing utility bills of Sui gas consumption due to the leakage of pipeline and inefficiency of the institution for not repairing it or insufficient water supply in the elite areas of Defence and Clifton? Is it the tanker mafia that has a monopoly and supplies unhygienic water on hefty price rates and which is not even usable?

Moving away from the main downtown areas, we have slums in Karachi where migrants coexist with the stacks of dirt and garbage along with the garbage-filled rills and oozing gutters. I chose Karachi as the topic for my doctoral research and somehow I had to reconcile with the fact that I cannot focus on each and every aspect of Karachi because the range of the problems is as expansive as its areal and demographic extent and as diverse as the number of languages and dialects spoken in Karachi and they are going to multiply in future as well. It is this reason that I focused on ethnic conflict and various types of migrations to Karachi and how they were (mis)managed by the local government in all these years. With continuous migrations starting from the first day of independence in 1947, Karachi has become ghettoised with ethnic and religious/sectarian communities. One can gauge and identify the areas through their unique names such as Bihar Colony, Bengali Para, Sindhi Muslim Housing Society, Punjab Chowrangi, Rizvia society, Pathan Goth, Delhi Colony etc. The informal settlements that are said to be sheltering almost 50 per cent of the total population of Karachi as indicated by a well-known urban planner and architect of Karachi, Mr Arif Hassan, have long been neglected by the authorities. Ethnic differences are smaller but loom larger and incite violence on the issue of unequal distribution of resources and unavailability of civic amenities such as water supply and electricity-related problems in these areas. Throughout these 2.5 months, the SOPs for Karachi’s smart lockdown detail about ‘social distancing’ which is a distant dream for areas like Sohrab Goth where a family of 15 people living together in a smaller household of less than 250 square feet covered area with a single shared bathroom, disrupted the supply of water and almost no means to buy sanitizers. And this is normal for all informal settlements aka Katchi Abbadis. The industrial areas such as Landhi, Korangi, Orangi Town, Manghopeer road, Mauripur, F.B and F.C Areas cater labour community and many companies have hostels/apartments for their migrant labourers where a good number of people share a single room with commonly used bathroom.

COVID-19 is not bigger than Karachi’s persistent ills; poor governance and lack of sense of ownership are. This pandemic is very recent one, which is only an addition to the quagmire of problems in Karachi. It’s easier to blame the government all the time yet the communities, whether indigenous or migrant, lack a sense of ownership for their own city too. When pandemic doesn’t affect them, unemployment, lawlessness, poor governance at district and municipal levels do kill them. The people in Karachi, no matter which ethnicity or religion they belong to, have also become insensitive and unbothered. They lack collective effort to eradicate a few issues on their own. Providing relief funds to the daily-wagers, strict or smart lockdowns, exempting utility bills, massive testing capacity are not enough remedies for Karachi’s COVID-19. The already persisting issues of informal settlements which help the novel virus to grow and infect easily, change in the mindset of the communities, more awareness to control the population, better provisions for civic amenities, proper use of public funds to be spent on suitable and smart urban infrastructure and effective law enforcement may help Karachi to overcome myriad problems including COVID-19. Karachi has yet to be owned by everyone; both its local government and people in letter and spirits.

The writer is Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at National Defence University and holds a PhD on Karachi’s Ethnic Conflict from SPIR, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad