Daily Times

Before the new country came into existence, Karachi was a neat, clean and bustling city with a sprawling secretariat, monumental structures of architectural grandeur, buzzing shopping streets, educational institutions, public transport facilities, recreation and entertainment spots including bars, night clubs and casinos, a busy Seaport and a railway that linked it with the other towns of the province and Punjab. Though it had a manageable and heterogeneous population (700,000 according to 1941 census) of Sindhis, Balochs, Memons, Kathiawars, Gujratis, Punjabis and Pathans and religious minorities like Hindus, Parsis, Christians, Jews etc, Karachi was a peaceful, tolerant and accommodating city. Out of its population, 406,000 or 57% were Sindhi speaking. Urdu was the lingua franca. The British officers and the local leaders, Mayors and Chairmen of the Local Boards and philanthropists built the beautiful city of Karachi that rightly earned the title of the ‘Queen of Asia’ before 1947.

Karachi grew in area and population disproportionately due mainly to the massive induction of migrants. This induction continued unabatedly for decades. The job and business opportunities in the city attracted migration from other federating units. This, over the years, rendered the city unmanageable like all the Metropolises in the world. The countries with cities matching Karachi never thought of cutting them from their home states and placing them under the control of the federal or national regime or any military organization. Such a suggestion could only come from a half lettered person motivated by selfish interests or by a desire to gain cheap popularity among some misguided groups. The problems of big cities cannot be addressed by passing the buck to the National regime or any other national institute.

No federal regime in the history of Pakistan has so far been able to set an example of good governances providing for the constitutional rights of the common populace to education, healthcare, and security of life, honour and livelihood with a guarantee of rule of law and equality before law, social justice and economic equity. It will be sheer absurdity to expect Islamabad to swirl the magic wand and solve the complex problems of Karachi. The national institutions have their own constitutional mandates with clearly demarcated parameters of jurisdiction. They can be called in aid of civilian authorities in emergencies and natural calamities only. They cannot be called in to shoulder the responsibility of managing a city howsoever complex and daunting its problems may have become. This is exclusively the task of the civilian political and administrative institutions. We should understand it once for all.

All the big cities of Pakistan – Sukkur, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan, Faisalabad, Peshawar and Quetta, more or less, have identical problems of public transport, drainage and sewerage, sanitation and hygiene, garbage lifting, traffic congestion, clean drinking water, building of road and streets etc. However, Karachi surpasses other cities in the gravity of these problems due to the vested interests of political parties and groups. They have kept their selfish political interests over and above the welfare of the city. The MQM – claimant of the representation of the Karachi, lost repeated opportunities for developing the city into an exemplary Metropolis, free from the problems we cry hoarse about since decades, and maintaining its earlier fame for peace, tolerance and economic, industrial, educational, intellectual and literary activities. They made a horrible example out of the ‘city of lights’ and now cry over the spilt milk.

The Pakistan People’s Party also failed to discharge its responsibility towards the Metropolis particularly after 1988. The first PPP provincial administration accorded due importance to the city – building and widening roads, running urban transport, developing new sources of drinking water, setting up Steel Mills, corporations including Pakistan Naval Corporation, revamping Karachi Port Trust and constructing Muhammad Bin Qassim Seaport etc. The second PPP administration in coalition with the MQM could not maintain the same tempo in developing Karachi falling in the quagmire of the ethnic division. Over decades, the virulent and violent contest among the political parties and groups to carve out their areas of influence or electoral pockets to the sheer neglect of the city has brought us to this ugly situation where both the elected Mayor of the Metropolis and the provincial administration are locked in an unending and inexplicable quarrel over administrative powers, jurisdiction and financial allocations.

This brings us to the logical argument that Karachi should have one of the same systems that govern its peers in the Asian and European countries. The city should be further divided into small districts or boroughs – each governed by a local government with a body of elected councilors, and necessary powers for administration, building controlling and civic duties. The Mayor of the city should be elected by direct or indirect vote of the people as in all the big cities of Asia and Europe with a Legislative House. The House should approve or reject the legislative plan, development schemes, and financial levies of the Mayor. There should be a methodical system of allocating funds between the Mayor’s office and Borough Local Governments. The Mayor should have powers to generate funds from local taxes, tariffs and fees and a share from the provincial pool of resources through Provincial Finance Commission. The Metropolis should have its policing system overseen by the Mayor for maintenance of law and order and controlling traffic. An effective auditing system, independent of Mayor’s office, should be introduced under the Accountant General of the province with the national anti graft watchdog taking cognizance of more serious cases of pilferage and mismanagement.

Shunning their political vested interests, the stakeholders will have to join heads to evolve a local government system which may effectively address the growing problems of our cities and towns. Such a system of local governance will take out the wind out of the sails of the people hell bent on the territorial division of Sindh, and bring the much-needed respite to the beleaguered Karachi and other cities of Sindh.

Concluded

The writer was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books