Where is our Rosa Parks

My column in The Express Tribune today is about the exclusionary nature of cities.  You can't fit more than a thought in an 800-word piece, so I'll be the first to say mine is nowhere near the last word on the subject.

What I also find interesting is how the inequity/exclusion in cities is a global phenomenon.  There's some solace, I suppose, in knowing we're not the only ones.

My piece brought back recollections of another I wrote some years ago for The Friday Times:

A friend recently told me of her interest in global warming.  I asked why.  I often do.  It’s a great way of finding out what the word “environment” means to someone.  “It’s already so hot,” she complained.  “If it gets any hotter, even the ACs won’t work.”

The Lahore I grew up in was a sleepy little metropolis.  It wasn’t the Lahore of the 1950s or 1960s where my parents’ generation wore drain-pipe trousers and The Mall was where writers and intellectuals rubbed shoulders at Pak Tea Houses.  My Lahore was the Lahore of Zia and the 1980s, where everyone either lived in Gulberg or in far-off Model Town.  The Lahore of today is a behemoth.  It stretches from the North shore of the Ravi past Thokar Niaz Beg in the South while the DHA – when it finally completes and colonizes its ten or so Phases – is fast approaching India.  Today’s Lahore is a mixture of things: a confused and congested Old and older City, where pollution and poverty detract from the beauty and complexity of the built heritage; a post-partition sprawl trying to come to grips with the demands commercialization and consumerism place on the existing urban fabric; and a mess of residential housing (some public, some private and some controlled by the Army) that exhibits the hopes and aspirations of today’s Lahoris – all expressing their aesthetic sensibilities through the homes they build.

To a large extent, my politics were shaped – as are everyone’s – by my environment.  But for me, it was the limited urban environs of the Lahore I knew that shaped by opinions.  My Lahore was the Lahore where an active civil society objected to the treatment of women under the Hadood Laws and the religious persecution of the Ahmedi and minority communities by a host of Blasphemy Laws.  Those were (and are) pressing issues of the day, and no one but civil society gave the establishment a run for their money on these issues.  But this civil society never protested for clean drinking water; the Lahore I knew always had clean drinking water.  The sewers worked and, other than an hour’s load shedding here or there, there was no reason to take the local government to task.  There were also never any protests for better educational institutions; all my friends went to Aitchison, Kinnaird, LAS, LGS, LCAS and the host of other O and A level acronyms that passed for schools in residential districts.  Oh, and of course, everyone had a home.

Roti, kapra and makan?  That was and remains a slogan of the poor, for “the masses”.   Now that I think of it, when was the last time civil society protested against poor civic utilities?  Or the lack of a clean sewerage system?  Or the fact their daughters don’t have a school to go to?  It hasn’t because it hasn’t needed to.

A disclaimer: Civil Society has and does play an indispensable role in Pakistan’s politics.  It has shaped and refined the quality of debate and sophistication of argument.  It has taken on issues – like women’s rights, religious freedoms and, more recently, the judiciary and the imposition of Emergency – when few dare to do so.  On the national level, it has been able to amend laws and to change public perceptions.  But it has always had the luxury to choose from many issues that plague our Republic.

Just as my politics were shaped by my physical environment, my friend’s opinion on global warming reflects hers.  In her world, everyone has an AC and, if they don’t, well, they can eat cake!  She is from a Lahore where the 4 kanal “farm house” is the residential accommodation of choice, catered by two automobiles and a phalanx of split units.  Fuel conservation for her is not public transport, its not using the older car.

Our urban environments have made elitists of us all.  This is not a popular thing to say, as it goes against the grain (Islam-, we are told, teaches us that we are all equal).  But it is a false shackle.  Just as we hoisted it on ourselves, we can take it off.  The secret lies in identifying the elitism and segregation that lies everywhere in our urban environment.  Then, if one is so inclined, it’s just a matter of casting it away.

There’s a high wall separating the Cantonment from the non-military homes off of Zarrar Shaheed Road (the stretch of Allama Iqbal Road before it changes to Barki Road).  As if the residents of that locality do not have a right to gaze onto the green belt and ceaseless private traffic.  The smaller entrances to DHA are actually guarded by the Punjab Police – there to ensure undesirables do not enter.  Some time ago, a snake charmer – trying his best to answer my questions about his most lucrative neighborhoods – told me he wasn’t allowed in the Cantonment or DHA.  Everyone’s seem police pickets in Gulberg, but how many times do you see the police pulling over the driver of a private automobile.  It’s almost always motorcycles and rickshaws.   These are bit little examples of the segregation actively enforced and applied before us.   On a larger scale, you have a city designed entirely for those who own or drive automobiles.  Anyone who is unlucky enough to commute by foot will find nothing but a torturous urban environment.

How long can such an urban environment sustain itself?  At some point, one of the many millions of have-nots who support the lifestyle of the haves will stand up and take notice of this segregation.  They will ask why their families aren’t allowed in Cantonment’s Polo Ground Park.  Then someone will ask why just a handful’s of God’s own civil servants – all employees of the people, mind you – continue to occupy such a large tract of urban land in the middle of the city, while at the same time property prices skyrocket and there’s a shortage of housing units.

On a cool December evening in 1955, 42 year old Rosa Parks refused to vacate seats reserved for whites on a public bus.  Her simple and elegant protest started the Montgomery Bus Boycott and earned her the recognition (by the US Congress) as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”  By simply refusing to play the immoral rules of the game, Rosa Parks began the fight for racial equality in the US.  When will our cities produce their Rosa Parks?  Who will be the first to react to the classist segregation that identifies us and forms our world-view?

The Kerry Lugar Distraction

The Kerry-Lugar Bill has become the black-hole of Pakistani political debate. Its din of conflicting rhetoric and opinion drowns out everything else. Even good sense. Sovereignty, which reference to any nearby encyclopedia will tell you, is a quality, possessed by a sovereign, of having supreme and complete control over a territory. In light of the KLB (it’s even got its own acronym), we seem to have gotten this concept mixed with ghairat. While all this is most amusing, it is no substitute for meaningful debate about the future of this country.

Too many others have offered their expert opinion on the new American administration’s attempt to change how and whom it funds in this Islamic Republic. It’s mildly surprising how so much of the debate has remained centered on the idea that Pakistan’s “sovereignty” (may Allah bless it and protect it with the Bomb) will be irrevocably tarnished. This is an old debate that has its antecedents in our characteristic dependency on the United States and paranoid concern of what others think of us. I’m surprised that the debate hasn’t moved beyond the hackneyed jingoism we’ve been forced to read and hear these past few weeks. I’m surprised that so little of the debate has dealt with the reality that it’s basically the folks whose names have been left off the payroll who are hopping mad at being passed over. But that just proves that KLB is a massive black-hole of political debate.

While the KLB debate goes on consuming all the air in the room, the real challenges this country faces remain unaddressed. We are a country of nearly 170 million mostly poor and illiterate people that is facing an energy crisis, a population explosion and potential water scarcity. Environmental degradation already costs the economy at least Rs. 1 billion a day and kills hundreds of thousands of us a year. And soon we will be forced to play one of the worst hands Nature has ever dealt man: Climate Change and the water scarcity, food shortages, population migrations, increased incidents of disease and natural disaster it will bring. To this equation, add the variables religious extremism, militancy and terrorism.

And here we are, with this KLB debate, talking of nothing but whether or not it is acceptable for Pakistan to be a beggar and a chooser. I would think that saner counsel (“get whatever you can get and be thankful”) would prevail.

In the next ten years, it is estimated that rural to urban migrations will transform our rustic rural people into an urban people. It’s estimated that, by 2050, as many as 65 percent of Pakistanis will live in cities. The failure of population stabilization policies means that, by then, there will be nearly 300 million Pakistanis. Three challenges immediately come to the fore.

First, where are you going to get the electricity? We’ve got a woefully inadequate installed capacity somewhere in excess of 20,000MW, nearly 25 percent of which is wasted in an efficient distribution and transmission system (a day ago, I read that, “because of forced closures, fuel shortages and some scheduled closures”, the PEPCO system is only generating 11,750MW). The Planning Commission estimates that, by 2030, Pakistan will need approximately 164,000MW of electricity to meet it demands. Of course, at the moment, such an amount seems impossible and if efforts don’t start now to increase installed capacity, improve line-losses and think up ways of jumping to a “smart grid”, the our ability to industrialize our economy will be compromised.

Second, will there be enough water? About 90 percent of our water resources are consumed in irrigation, yet unlined canals, water theft and out-dated farming practices mean that 40 percent of this is lost to inefficiency. The remaining 10 percent of our water resources are consumed as drinking water and for sanitation. Almost all of our water resources are from glacial melt. At Partition, our water resources stood in excess of 5,000 cubic meters per capita. Now, they are fast falling to less than 1,000 cubic meters per capita. The rate at which climate change is affecting glacial melt have surprised researchers, and it is predicted that, after accelerated melting (which means flooding and lots and lots of silt) our glacial water resources will be depleted. This is set to happen in the next 100 years.

Third, will there be enough food? Climate Change, outdated farming practices and depleting water resources will have an effect on food productivity. All of our cash crops are going to be affected by Climate Change. Of course, there will always be mitigation and adaptation, but even if food production can be maintained through science and discipline there is no telling the effect on rural economy and society. Certainly Climate Change will contribute to the great desire of people to move from the labor of subsistence farming to the potential offered by the cash economy of an urban area.

Parenthetically, let me again mention the proposal to lease hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of hectares of arable land to certain Arab is a bad idea that hasn’t been clearly thought out yet. Also, how come no one raises the question of sovereignty at the thought that our government was/is to negotiate the lease of such land under the guise of foreign investment? The Lahore High Court has done the right thing, while disposing of a petition filed before it by a farmers union, by requiring any such negotiation be brought to its notice.

An increase in the number of people in cities will put stress on the availability of housing, sanitation infrastructure, employment opportunities, healthcare facilities, educational institutions, transportation services and recreational space. All these are already stretched beyond capacity, but nobody involved in the windbag KLB debate seems to have an eye on what’s around the corner.

The three challenges highlighted above also overlap, in one way or another, with the role of the city. The centrality and importance of urban management in the future of Pakistan must not be underestimated. In the near future, the issues of housing, sanitation, employment, health, education and poverty will all primarily be urban issues. Even issues like energy can be regulated by the of size and manner in which our cities are run. The latest sustainable development initiatives are experimenting with "urban farming" to reduce emissions resulting from the transport of produce from the field onto the dinner-table. Urban areas produce disproportionately large quantities of the world’s green house gas emissions, and for sure Climate Change mitigation and adaptation strategies have huge urban components.

At the moment, our cities are managed by junior to mid-level bureaucrats acting on the instructions of provincial governments (though the City District Government of Karachi, it must be said, is the most independent) that have woefully little knowledge of what makes cities tick. At the moment, they are centers of sprawl, congestion and pollution with rapidly growing katchi abadis and slums. Yet, while these challenges seem insurmountable, they are, in fact, completely manageable. Enrique Penalosa, the charismatic former Mayor of the Colombian city of Bogota who transformed his city in only three years, told me once that the only thing we need to do to start is a vision of the type of city we want to live in.
Now wouldn’t that be a debate worth having?

Small, sustainable cities; the key to the future

Pakistan's current installed energy capacity is approximately 20,000MW. By 2030, the Planning Commission thinks we will need somewhere in the region of 162,000MW. Where do you think we are going to find this energy?
As things stand, the single largest source of energy in Pakistan lies in conservation. But, as of yet, none of the energy or electricity policies to come from government have looked towards conservation as a means of providing energy.
At the same time, our large cities are incredibly difficult to supply energy to. They are very large and so need large energy production sources - usually situated hundreds of miles away - to pipe energy to them. An alternative: smaller cities. Smaller cities will require smaller energy production facilities and, it is possible, that such facilities be made to provide energy from renewable sources such as solar, wind or run-of-the-river.

Catherine Tumber writing in the Boston Review makes a compelling case for small cities. But she goes further, much further, in describing the potential benefits of smaller cities. Read here to find out more about the possible future of urban development.