Bus karo!

The metropolis of Karachi will have a spanking new bus system by next year. This despite the Pakistan People’s Party, not because of it. Is Nawaz Sharif finally doing what Asif Zardari and Altaf Hussain should have done for this city a long time ago?

The plot thickens.

Development is streaming into this decaying city on the wheels of an ambitious project with a mouthful of a name: Green Line Bus Rapid Transit. This is a federal government financed and managed project, and apparently the funds have already been transferred. Soon the route will transform into organised chaos dotted with cranes, bulldozers, dug-up roads and mounds of dirt, sand and cement. The traffic will degenerate into a living nightmare.

Ask the inhabitants of Lahore and Rawalpindi/Islamabad as they braved the rigours of the Metro Bus construction. In fact, the Orange Line project in Lahore is yet again carving up major portions of the city into an elevated rail track and distributing mayhem with official efficiency. Big projects, big money, big risk, big reward? The Sharifs are unstoppable when it comes to infrastructural bonanzas, and Karachi is about to experience the pain that comes before the pleasure of a completed project.

But wait. Something’s wrong here. Shouldn’t the provincial government be doing stuff that the province requires to improve the lives of those crushed under the weight of its electoral mandate? Shouldn’t the local government be doing stuff that the city of Karachi requires to improve the lives of Karachiites suffering the burden of the local elections mandate?

Let’s face it: Karachi is the only truly, genuinely, authentically urban centre in Pakistan. Relax you people of Lahore, Faisalabad, et al; if you think your city has what it takes to be urban in every sense of the word, you need to come to Karachi. This mega city is not just physically urban — like Lahore and Faisalabad — it’s culturally urban too. Here on the streets of Karachi, you can feel a certain urban rhythm pulsating through the sprawl. This is the city that has always driven Pakistan like an engine.



But then the PPP happened. Then the MQM happened. Then decay happened.

Today Karachi bleeds from rapid-fire ballot wounds. The PPP rules the province but cannot win the city. Yet it controls the city having arrogated all powers in the hands of the provincial government. The MQM has won the city but complains of having no powers to rule it as per its mayoral mandate. Together, these two parties are squeezing the city like a python. The PPP leadership knows it will not win the city in the next elections. So it sits pretty and admires the rot. The MQM will win the city yet again, despite the decay. So it sits pretty and admires the rot.

Enter the Sharifs. They know they have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the mandate in Karachi or Sindh. But while they have nothing to win, they have nothing to lose either. So they figure it can’t hurt to throw a few billion rupees in Karachi, sprinkle the bucks with efficient project management, and give the mandate-wounded inhabitants of Karachi a dose of the Sharif infrastructural magic.

Nature abhors a vacuum. The Sharifs clearly don’t.

So in this gigantic vacuum created by the Olympian incompetence of the provincial government, Brand Sharif is all set to drive into Karachi on the Green Line. The spanking new buses will not win the Sharifs Karachi or Sindh in 2018. But the Sharifs aren’t just interested in 2018. They’re eyeing 2022 and 2026 and yes 2030.

Get ready Karachi.

And get ready the PPP and the MQM. Narratives are funny things. They take time in moulding themselves into a potent force, but once moulded, they ride roughshod over memories and craft a new line of perceptions.

Ask Narendra Modi. Yesterday, February 27 marked the fourteenth anniversary of the Godhra massacre in Gujarat in which, according to estimates, nearly two thousand Muslims were shot, hacked and burnt to death. As chief minister of the state, Modi was held responsible. He has since then repeatedly denied the accusation, and was also exonerated by the court. But it has slowly become clear that he indeed has blood on his hands. At best, he looked away while the massacre unfolded, and he did so because he calculated a political windfall for himself. Well-known Indian journalist Rajdeep Sardesai was on the ground in Gujarat when the massacre was taking place and in his latest book he has indirectly pointed the finger at Modi. Since 2002, Modi was defined by the massacre, and the United States had refused him a visa as the chief minister of Gujarat.

Within a few years however, Modi was successful in transforming the narrative. From being called a murderer, today he is called Mr Prime Minister. In the 2014 elections, he hammered Rahul Gandhi like a nail in the coffin of the Congress party.

The narrative that swept him into the Prime Minister’s office was a narrative of good governance. In Gujarat, he delivered development, and he made sure everyone in India and abroad knew that he was delivering development. He cast aside his ministers, surrounded himself with a team of efficient bureaucrats, and then for three successive terms as chief minister, he delivered on project after project, thereby crafting a persona of a doer — a man of action.

Sounds familiar?

Shahbaz Sharif as the third-term chief minister of Punjab is creating a brand around him and his brother that signifies delivery of development. You may criticise him for his obsession with infrastructural projects at the expense of social development, but then does his brand have a visible alternative? It’s not as if the PPP and the MQM have carved out a social sector heaven in Karachi and Sindh. In the absence of any enviable track record of development, do these two parties have any message, or any narrative, for the voter beyond ethnicity, provincialism and past sacrifices? You take the voter for granted long enough and you ultimately pay a heavy price. Ask Sonia and Rahul Gandhi.

For the people of Karachi, the Green Line may be gift. For the rulers of Karachi it is definitely a warning: Bus Karo!

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2016.

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