Now the sad part. There are kilometres upon kilometres of spacious green belts along the Islamabad Expressway between Zero Point and the airport intersection. A request in the public interest was made to the Chief Executive who never tired of rattling off, ad nauseam, his deep feelings for the youth, the poor and the country. The request was to convert the green belts into sports fields, parks and athletic tracks for the fun-starved youth of the twin cities. A fear was also expressed that encroachers, litter dumpers and real estate hawks would swallow this prime land if left unattended. Since he hardly meant what he said, therefore that request fell by the wayside. Any traveller on the Expressway can see the damage already done. It has become an eyesore of bald dusty patches, chopped tree stumps, garbage dumps, ugly ditches and unauthorised link roads to petrol pumps built on the service roads.
Like all nations, our youth are our most precious asset and their education our greatest investment, or that is what it should have been. Town planners of the capital city had devoted entire sectors to schools, colleges and universities. One is not sure how and with what facilities they visualised that to come up. But what has happened is an extensive and disjointed growth of educational institutions all over those sectors. These are sprawling structures, luxurious offices and large faculties but what about the students? They were the ones for whose benefit the whole orchestra was assembled, yet ironically they are the most neglected.
These two sectors should have been dotted with sports grounds, gyms, spacious parking lots, parks, wide and shady sidewalks for bunches of students to walk upon, hurrying from one education centre to the other, affordable restaurants, and finally an inexpensive transport system. Regrettably, none of these exist, nor is there the typical sprightliness of young men and women that characterises student communities all over the world. A distressing pall of silence and dullness perpetually hangs in the air. Strangely, the only federal government university has been built directly across and on the other end of the city, practically in the wilderness. It is physically and perhaps perceptually unplugged from the central mass of educational institutions in Islamabad.
The city is in any case split like a cracked saucer into various protected zones impeded by intensive road blocks, LEAs check posts, menacing bomb-proof walls, miles of concertina wire, proliferation of armed guards, scanners, security cameras and disturbing body searches. All this and the intrusive lookouts, peering out of towers and every other high point, seriously rupture the rhythm and privacy of life.
The municipal authority’s unmitigated neglect and inhabitants’ disinterest in the wellbeing of Islamabad are apparent and so pathetic. There is a sense of general and expanding decay in the atmosphere. Green patches are being either cut down or trampled upon by uncontrolled population or unprincipled men. Road medians and crossing places are in a dismal state of disrepair and are neither respected by motorists nor by pedestrians. The Islamabad Expressway has virtually become a battleground between agile jaywalkers and speeding traffic. The worst offenders are motorcyclists and cyclists who appear out of nowhere and cross the highway quite recklessly, endangering everybody else on the road.
The environment is being callously degraded by greedy lower municipal staff in league with firewood gobblers. There are deliberate forest fires started by these criminal men in parks around Shakar Parian and along the Margalla Hills slopes during dry season. These incinerate large numbers of trees, displace scarce wildlife and scorch the earth. Burnt trees have to be cut down and are taken away. There is no attempt either to effectively prevent this loss or do any replacement plantation. This practice is repeated year after year, leaving ugly black patches of desolate landscape behind. No less than five such fires destroyed a considerable number of trees around Shakar Parian alone last summer.
In Islamabad, like anywhere else in the country, there is an ongoing tussle between man’s tyranny and nature’s bounty. We seem to doggedly persist in our insensitivity. Our thoughtlessness and lack of civic responsibility could well undo that gift irreversibly. All fresh water streams entering the capital, including the Rawal Lake, are polluted by raw sewage, human refuse and all varieties of disused polythene bags. This criminality against ourselves is expanded manifold by the citizens of Rawalpindi who have converted the accumulated waters of Lye, Korang and Soan Rivers into highly toxic thick liquid. In this crime against humanity and the environment, not only they, but also most of the elitist housing societies are equally guilty. Arsenic levels in the underground water must have risen to alarming proportions. We should also be mindful that the polluted Soan River eventually empties into the River Indus, which could be the subject of a separate study.
What started off as a drive to save electricity has turned into another tale of neglect and incompetence. Mismanagement more than actual shortage of power has converted Islamabad into some place like a remote village on the fringes of the Suleiman Mountains. The prestigious Constitution Avenue lined with the country’s topmost seats of governance is an education in itself. Rusted light poles hardly ever light up and the road is dark and deserted as a morgue at night. This also is the case with the rest of the city where streetlights are rarely switched on. Most localities remain draped in depression at night.
However, the city is not dead yet, but is dazed. There are throbbing spots here that are capable of generating pulses that can cause the city life to bounce out of dormancy. There are five such potential power points that if focused upon and developed intelligently can remove the haze of the gloom gripping Islamabad. They are Lok Virsa Arts and Crafts Village, Shakar Parian complex, Super Markets-Kohsar Market leisure zone, Karachi Company Commercial area and F-10, F-11 markaz complexes. Of these, the greatest cultural potential resides in the Lok Virsa Arts and Crafts Village and Shakar Parian, which if developed purposefully, can explode into tourist and civic activity. The CDA’s emphasis on any other area or expensive facelifts elsewhere is understandable but basically futile. Someone responsible in the municipal administration has to come and see the number of bright and very eager school and college students and local tourists who arrive in their busloads almost every day at the Lok Virsa and neighbouring museums and compare it to the total absence of such visitors to places like Constitution Avenue and other grand structures to understand that it is curiosity and culture and not the awe of power that generate collective civic activity. While power is a mirage, our culture and values are real and give us a definite civilisational identity. It is time we set our priorities in life right. Alexander, Darius, Caesar and Kanishk are history, but Greek, Iranian, Roman, Indus and Gangetic civilisations live on in their magnificence and grandeur, if not physically then in the benevolence with which they enriched mankind.
(Concluded)
The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army and can be reached at [email protected]