KARACHI: In a seminal sociological study in 1988 on understanding homicide trends in the US, Williams and Flewelling postulated that in large American cities, the communities with the highest crime rates were also the ones with the highest rates of poverty and population density.
The results of that study should be kept in mind when analysing the recent violence that has engulfed Karachi’s locality of Lyari. Similarly, research conducted in Latin America suggested that violence in a community or society had a correlation to the degree of inequality found in it.
The problem that prevails in the upper-middle and elite classes in our society is that they seem to think that the resources of the nation are their right to partake of, rather than considering that they are lucky to be in the position that they are, where they have unbridled access to state resources. Similarly, the majority of the population that lives in Lyari is unlucky to be living there since their neighbourhood seems to suffer from endless bouts of violence with the writ of the state nowhere to be found.
In the early 1960s, in the times of Sherok and Dadul (the old gangster kingpins of Lyari), violence was not as organised as it is today. Now it revolves around the market for illegal weapons and drugs, both of which, incidentally, are not made in Lyari.
If the primary causes of violence in Lyari and elsewhere in Karachi — such as unemployment, economic inequality, poor physical infrastructure and high population density are not addressed properly — Lyari will continue providing human fodder to organisations such as the People’s Aman Committee.
Jawad Khan Baloch
Published in The Express Tribune, May 7th, 2012.
