A premature celebration

With 25 per cent of the work yet to be completed and dependent on decisions by the courts in at least three cases brought by civil society, the ceremony at the Orange Line Metro Train (OLMT) in Lahore on Sunday 8^th October may be putting the carts — or carriages — before the horse. In an unusually apocalyptic address Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that ‘there will be a bloody revolution if public projects are halted’ and asked that the courts announce their pending decisions on the OLMT and that the government would accept their decision ‘wholeheartedly’. Given that of late the courts have had little sympathy for ruling elites a decision in favour of the government must be seen as far from a foregone conclusion. As to whether civilisation as we know it will collapse in the event of the courts’ finding in favour of civil society we can but wait and see.

There are now 12 weeks to go until the OLMT is due to go operational and officials connected with the project admit that the deadline is going to be missed but were unwilling to be drawn on by how much. With cases involving environment, transparency and heritage all pending it is obvious that the remaining 25 per cent of the work cannot be completed until they are resolved one way or another. The government says it has contingency plans but is not allowing them into the public domain.

At the heart of this shambles lies a failure to consult with all relevant stakeholders, an almost complete lack of transparency, a coalition of vested interests that stand to make a lot of money — and a civil society that was able to mobilise a protest of sufficient heft to have the courts consider the arguments being presented. This in itself is a notable rarity, and given the lack of confidence that civil society has in the various pillars of the state it took something of a leap of faith for the civil society groups to take the case to law — doubtless with their fingers crossed. There is not a shred of doubt that Lahore needs a mass transit system — but not at the price of heritage.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 10^th, 2017.

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