Another ignominious retreat seems to be round the corner. This time it’s the real estate sector that is forcing the government to backtrack. Reportedly, up to seven trillion rupees are stacked in this part of the economy. Most of this wealth comes from undeclared sources of income, which translates to ill-gotten capital. Furthermore, during routine transactions in the real estate sector, the property is substantially devalued on paper. This is an old way of evading taxes. The guy next door owns a plot in, say, Y block of Super-Rich Housing Society Lahore. The paperwork says he paid three million for it. In reality, he paid ten million. By reducing the amount in the documentation, people get away with paying peanuts to revenue-collection authorities. This running scam is bigger than the Panama scandal. It is not just the investors though. Many of us who own houses even in the old parts of the city and have been living there for ages are, well, basically tax thieves. We know our houses aren’t actually worth the price it says on the registry. It is kind of like a social contract of venality we’ve all entered into. Those who are out of the loop are the dregs in the narrow stem of the white-collar funnel — those wretched thousands (or millions maybe) who don’t own houses and never had the money to invest anywhere. Since the real estate sector is tax-evasive — and we contribute to it — it actually does the country more harm than good. Real estate is completely at the mercy of realtors, housing society developers and investors. Property prices continue to rocket. Some double in a little over a year. These developments have varied but significant consequences. A gentlemanly teacher of mine jokingly told me he had become a multi-millionaire by default. He had bought his (now old) house in Model Town Lahore for less than half a million in the 1970s. Now, realtors are offering to buy it for 40 million. Some nouveau-rich are interested in tearing it down to build a multi-storey mansion. They have already razed most of the old Model Town to make way for modern architecture. For those of you who don’t know, Model Town had some of the city’s oldest, most spacious houses with tall, rounded pillars. The outer walls of these houses were painted a conspicuous yellow. A little furrow ran just outside the front to serve as a drain for accumulated rainwater. Only a handful of these old structures survive. Not just in Model Town, but elsewhere too. Many of the old structures in the Walled City have been demolished to make warehouses for sundry goods. It might have started when the people razed the outer wall of the city to make way for their ugly encroachments. Delayed update: the Walled City doesn’t have a wall anymore. Residents have also encroached upon parts of the Wazir Khan Masjid and the Victoria High School, jewels of Lahore’s old architecture. The now-quite-rich don’t really give a horse’s rear about heritage. The growth of the undocumented real estate sector also has other affects. An acquaintance of mine saw Anarkali bazaar for the first time when he turned 20, and that’s hard to grasp. How can you have been born and bred in Lahore and never have been to Anarkali? How can you grow up here and not have tasted the pathooray from the Lahori Gate end, and the sheermal and taftaan from Qutub-ud-Din Aibak Road. How can you not know who Aibak was, and not have been to his 13th-century mausoleum, all of these spots being on the same road? Rewind a bit, how many even know what a taftaan is? If you must know, a taftaan is a king’s naan — Moghul ambrosia. And there’s no use trying to find approximate English words for any of these delicacies. They are un-translatably delicious as they are. You can grow up in Lahore without having seen any of this if the accident of your birth occurred in one of the city’s burgeoning elite housing suburbs. These localities seem to have developed a counter culture aided by their deep insularity from the rest of society. They have expensive private schools, colleges and universities, spas, massage parlours, golf courses, artificial lakes, waterfalls and 3-D cinemas in addition to shopping arenas, fancy restaurants and theme parks. What this means is that residents are never really compelled to travel outside the bubble of the suburb. It’s a bubble because the elite suburb is a synthetic creation. Sure, it looks nice and it’s pleasant to live in, but how can a country with 40 percent of the population living below the poverty line have the wherewithal to build extended golf courses, artificial lakes, waterfalls, 3-D cinemas, revolving restaurants and theme parks? Here is one probable answer. This happens in countries where sizeable parts of the economy are undocumented. Where shady entities can launch elite housing ventures without questions being asked. Where ill-gotten wealth can be invested in real estate. Where property is undervalued on paper to evade taxes. Consequently, there is dearth in one and affluence in the other part of the same city. The land-grab seems to have spiked in recent years. Growing up in the 1990s your parents wouldn’t let you go to Johar Town alone for the simple reason that Lahore ended there. It was “outside.” There were very few houses in that part. Stray dogs roamed in the streets, and there was little lighting at night. It was a no-go. Now, Lahore has been stretched up to Raiwind. Go back in time a little farther, and there weren’t any elite housing schemes at all. In 1947, there was just Model Town, which had been established by the Raj. Most from the dynamic middle class –lawyers, public servants, doctors, teachers — lived in the pre-Raj parts of the city, the old Lahore. The real Lahore. But all that’s changed now. This is the new Lahore of the 2010s. A city conspicuously divided on many levels, between the nouveau class, who prefer to dwell in elite housing suburbs, and the old-city people, who live in congested areas with abysmal garbage disposal, dark narrow streets and hiccup-ridden broadband. It’s a city divided between those who drive Civics and Corollas, and those who ride pillion, or at most, drive old jalopies with manual transmission. The lady-owner of a daily I worked for once condescendingly referred to these people as the “Suzuki Mehran class.” It’s a city divided between Bahria, Valencia, EME, and DHA on the one side, and Badami Bagh, Raj Garh, Garhi Shahu and the rest of the local Harlem on the other. And the divide is poised to deepen with time. It’s not hard to see why. It’s because of the social contract of venality we’ve all entered into. The only ones out of the loop are the dregs in the narrow stem of the white-collar funnel — those wretched thousands or millions who don’t own property. And probably never will. The writer is lecturer in English Literature at Government College University, Lahore. He may be reached at sameeropinion@gmail.com