What’s in a name? Everything, says this neighbourhood for new Banaras flyover

People want it named after the Bacha Khan Chowk it has virtually destroyed.

KARACHI: At almost two kilometres, ‘Banaras flyover’ may be Karachi’s longest yet but for many people in the neighbourhood, it will be its name and not its utility that will matter in the end.

The 24-metre wide double-track flyover, that runs from North Nazimabad to Orangi, is set to be fully inaugurated in a few days. It was informally opened one way a short while ago but this caused more of a nuisance than a relief as repairs and work continued. Now, as talk of the inauguration circulates in the neighbourhood, there has been some grumbling. As the flyover cuts through Banaras Colony, a stronghold of the Awami National Party (ANP), the party is unhappy it isn’t called Bacha Khan flyover after the old chowk it swoops over.

“I don’t know why officials keep on calling it Banaras flyover. This was Bacha Khan flyover from day one,” said Bashir Khan, an ANP leader from the area. “Even the tender for its construction was issued with the name Bacha Khan.”

When Governor Ishratul Ebad came for the ground-breaking ceremony for the flyover, he called it Banaras. In subsequent meetings, the governor apologised for this ‘slip of tongue’. “We want Bacha Khan’s name put on this flyover,” Bashir Khan reported him as saying.

Of the few places in Karachi that the ANP cherishes, Bacha Khan Chowk is the most prominent. But now it has disappeared under the concrete and cement darkness of the two-billion-rupee flyover. Indeed, the entire area underneath the flyover, as happens with this kind of questionable development, has become a dank, muddy mess. The gutters from adjoining roads were destroyed by the movement of heavy machinery and the bridge’s girders.

“We had spent Rs2 million on the chowk’s beautification but all that has gone to waste,” Bashir Khan said. The chowk was named after the famous Pakhtun leader by former city mayor Farooq Sattar of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement.

Business in shops located along the flyover has dropped as the traffic takes the overhead route.

The ANP used to hold its rallies at this spot. “But now it has become a den for heroin addicts,” Khan said. “Whenever some Urdu-speaking person is robbed by these addicts here, a Pathan gets a thrashing in Orangi.”

The long-delayed inauguration of the flyover is supposed to take place by the end of this week. As it runs from Abdullah College in North Nazimabad to Orangi No. 5 area, it has effectively linked one MQM-dominated area with another.

But flyovers come with a price. They may seem like development, but town planning experts point out that the areas underneath them become a hotbed for encroachment, drug users and crime.

Amber Alibhai, a member of not-for-profit Shehri that fights for properly planned development in Karachi, says that the unused portions underneath flyovers are called interstitial spaces. “Our project planners are too shortsighted. They did not plan anything for all this empty space,” she told The Express Tribune.

There are many examples of the badly planned flyovers in Karachi. Along Rashid Minhas Road, the area under the flyover has become a dumping ground for garbage. The Gizri flyover, which was challenged in court, has opened up illegal parking spaces underneath. The entire area is blocked out from sunlight and the economic and residential peripheries are negatively altered forever.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 13^th, 2012.