How to deal with katchi abadis

Even though 6 decades have passed since creation, a significant proportion of Pakistanis do not own their home.

Even though six decades have passed since the creation of an independent homeland, a significant proportion of Pakistanis do not own their home. This article will focus on the issue of inadequate housing which has led to the mushrooming of katchi abadis in major cities of Pakistan. Such settlements are an informal market response to the failure of official planning. The genesis of katchi abadis goes back to the influx of Partition migrants who settled into camp settlements in cities. Resettlement delays led these camps to grow and slowly take the form of katchi abadis. They began to attract labourers migrating from other areas within Pakistan, as well as impoverished refugees pouring in from Afghanistan since the 1980s.

Two years ago, the World Bank estimated that around half the Pakistani urban population lives in katchi abadis, many of which lack access to safe drinking water, sanitation, regular electricity supply and paved roads. Initially, government officials tried demolishing these settlements, many of which had encroached on prime land. However, these attempts failed because squatter settlements were being built with the connivance of the land mafia, backed by political groups, and with the tacit approval or facilitation of members of law-enforcement agencies. As these settlements grew, the government realised that regularisation instead of resettlement would be a more effective option.

The proportion of katchi abadis that have been regularised is a very small fraction of the overall number of such settlements. Homes of residents in these non-regularised abadis remain under constant threat of demolition, leaving the poor and desperate families who live in them with the fear that they could lose their dwelling at any time. The All-Pakistan Alliance for Katchi Abadis is a modest attempt to mobilise katchi abadi communities to struggle for their rights instead of falling prey to political manipulation or extortion by land mafias. The Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi is a good example of a poor local community improving its living conditions on a self-help basis. However, these efforts need to scale up significantly to make a discernable impact. Our NGOs should learn from the work of Asha, an organisation doing excellent work for slum-dwellers in New Delhi. It works with almost 400,000 people in Delhi’s slums. However, even if our NGOs become similarly proactive, the government will still need to show more political will to solve the problem of poor urban residents; especially since the recent flood and conflicts in the northern areas have increased the pace of rural influx into our major cities.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 22^nd, 2010.