What sets Karachi flooding apart?

Karachi is faced with a triple threat that may eventually wipe us out of existence. The city is not a city in a traditional sense – it’s a cash cow for all stakeholders. The wealth of the city is generated and then shipped off for personal gain. As long as we can squeeze it for more money, it will remain a desirable place to live in for some – and the rest who serve them, until it has been skinned to the bones, at which point it could fade into oblivion as if the city never existed, with the eventual submersion of the city under the Indian Ocean in 30 odd years.

So, if Karachi is just a cash cow, why bother with developing the city? When you own a car you are more likely to care for it than when you rent it. When you own a house, you are more likely to care for it than when you rent it – and it is no different with your city. This is why the Punjab cares more for its capital than we do, because we don’t own the city – we are renting it out to make some money in it, until we leave it.

Ever since partition, the general culture of settlements in Karachi has been dominated by the desire to benefit from the city, build a better life, without caring for it, diminishing a sense of ownership of the city. Naturally, if a population lives in a particular place for centuries, with a shared memory and a sense of history, they are more likely to care for the city and understand its historic value. We see this in Lahore. In Lahore, it rains significantly more than it rains in Karachi, and although there is urban flooding, it almost never creates the same level of havoc as it does in Karachi. Lahore is remembered by locals as an ancient capital of the Punjab, with people living in the city caring for it for centuries. Despite the city suffering immensely after the exodus of a large part of the population after partition – a sense of continuity remained. This sense of continuity did not remain in Karachi. Soon after partition, the majority: Sindhi Hindus, were expelled in 1948 despite negligible communal violence the previous year, at the time of partition, due to the centuries old Sindhi Hindu-Muslim coexistence – when Bengal and Punjab were on fire.

Everyone who made Karachi what it is today has been slowly and directly or indirectly pushed out of the city – whether it was the explicit cleansing in 1948, or the increasing religiosity that slowly pushed out much of the Parsi population as well, who were responsible for a significant portion of Karachi’s heritage, same with the Jewish population, and of course the Hindu population. If you visit the Dawood Foundation “Ghar” (TDF Ghar) you will see an exhibition for the contributions of the lost minorities of Karachi to the city’s development, in the form of civil engineering amongst other things. Ironically, today, a lot of people who descend from immigrants themselves refer to other ethnicities migrating to Karachi as outsiders who are ruining the city – when in fact the decline began shortly after partition, with an unsustainable population boom which was bound to ruin the city.

Much of Lahore’s civil engineering, which has been improved upon to some extent over the past 10 years, was designed by Sir Ganga Ram – a Punjabi who loved the capital of Punjab and wanted to make his people proud and wanted the world to be proud of his people. Karachi also had a phenomenal city management under its first mayor, a Parsi by the name of Jamshed Nusserwanjee Mehta, who served as mayor from 1933-1934, prior to which he presided over the Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC) from 1918-1933. His contributions included developing the drainage system which no longer seems to exist, parks, sanitation and roads – all things that Karachi lacks today. Mr. Nusserwanjee Mehta is also said to have helped create the Servants of Sindh Society, and helped lead relief efforts during precisely these kinds of floods.

The sense of belonging and responsibility to Sindh and Karachi is indisputably evident in his life’s work – why? Because he firmly belonged to this land, and wanted to see it flourishing. One doesn’t have to be living somewhere for generations to care for it, but then that sense of responsibility, continuity and tradition has to be actively cultivated, and can’t be expected to happen by itself, and it certainly cannot happen when we don’t own individuals who made this city great, and of course their identity is an integral part of why and how they made it great, and their identity is the problem for us.

Our politicians like to say that the flooding is largely due to encroaching properties on the water pathways – putting aside the fact that some of these encroachments are apparently approved housing societies, they speak as if they have no control over these encroachments and they are built under their nose. The reality is that this is yet another manifestation of the looting of the city for personal gain, despite the consequences.

Karachi has 2 natural seasonal rivers: the Liari River and the Malir River, and smaller “nallahs” like the Orangi and Gujjar nallahs, which have been completely destroyed through urban development such as the Malir Expressway, and housing societies that choke these water pathways. In cities like Los Angeles they engineered the LA River which is not a real river but is built to carry drained water during floods. Instead of building upon these natural seasonal rivers, which could have solved this problem, we let them deteriorate and choked them.

The climate crisis is now an integral part of our landscape - Pakistan’s primary responsibility is to prepare itself for it. Even if we begin to address the crisis globally, which is what needs to happen considering Pakistan’s relatively low emissions, it still won’t affect the impact of the emissions from the past 20 years. The past 20 years of emissions are already locked in to lead to increasing temperatures over the next decade, and will create more havoc soon. Our best bet is to own up to being members of the city, embrace those who made this city great, learn from them, and learn to love the city like they did. This will, of course, require us to identify more with the land and its ancient history.

Zain Haq is a freelance contributor

All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the author