In a karachi state of mind: Che is for....?

Truth of the matter is, as Roland D'Souza of Shehri pointed out, it is already too late.   We are neck deep in illegal commercialization, and illicit collaborations amongst the real estate developers, the military, political parties, and the so called land mafia..

Every day I drive by the Abdullah Shah Ghazi shrine.  Small business along the shrine, including shops and rehri walas, were illegally evicted by 2008.  The area was home to sea shell craft sellers, some of whom had been there for 80 years.  There is a new kind of development -- a gaping wound in the belly of the earth: foreign excavators, cranes, machinery of the highest quality.  Needless to say, an investment of crores of rupees.  Ejecting the poor residents of Karachi from the area, Behria Town (BT) is constructing a power plaza right next to the shrine where the affluent will enjoy offices, spas, gyms, and high end stores.  They had no legal recourse, and were stripped of their vested and customary rights to use the land to run their businesses

There are two points worth noting:

BT is a rogue builder.  In 2007, an accounts committee was set up to investigate how the Ministry of Defense had allowed private builders like it to use the name of the armed forces.  The links are there -- BT has developed special housing schemes for retired generals and judges at subsidized rates.  

http://www.dawn.com/2007/01/26/top11.htm

Smack next to this proposed glitzy project stands the shrine that suffered a suicide attack earlier this month.

Do the math.

Shrine: A place that suffered a breach of security with fatal consequences for the poor who probably had no social and health insurance. 

Plaza: A place that must never suffer a breach of security, and if it does, there is insurance cover of millions.

Plaza:  Military real estate and private corporations.  
Right Next to Shrine: frequented by the superstitious poor who must pay homage to their saints, armed with taaveez and garland, when health, education, housing and all social safety nets miserably fail them.

The concerns I have:

Was the attack staged by the powers to secure more real estate for further voracious development?    Doesn't the land make land speculators lusty?  This land that the shrine is on is worth millions;  but it is a sacred space for the poor and the middle classes.  Most of old vendors have already been driven out.

Does this seem like a bid to see if the rest of them can be shooed away as well.  Afterall, Muslim sufi followers are a tricky bunch.  While the temple close to the shrine is easy prey, the shrine represents the sentiments of a large, loyal population.

The state has also been promoting sufi Islam as a hybrid and tolerant version of the religion that preaches peace and love -- both locally and abroad.  Multinationals jump on the bandwagon and Coke studio does shows on Sufi kalaam.  In that narrative, an attack on a shrine threatens peace of a sacred nature - never mind that it is a fictionalized, hyper, corporatized  version of peace and Islam.

But isn't it evident that the real threat to peace is the slow, gradual, and systemic destruction of the landscape by builders with dubious connections with the military  -- raising towers that break the law, ignore the deleterious effects on the environment, evict legal occupiers, and necessitate high level security assurances?  Buildings that will do nothing to elevate anyone's economic status except that of the military, the builders, the landowners, the multinationals, and the banks.

Now even if the shrine does not possess the magic to cure tuberculosis and cancer, at least it is a multi-class space.  Its a place to visit on a Thursday.  Its an amenity.  The glitzy tower will only see construction workers slog in the initial phase - and then it will be cordoned off, and become inaccessible to the poor.

Will the shrine then pose a risk for the tower, or an eye sore?  Is the attack going to serve as a convenient precedent to heighten security measures along the road of the shrine to control and monitor access by the poorer residents of the city?  Will big business want to be neighbors with the wretched?

Just thinking out loud in a Karachi state of mind when everything seems plausible, and life imitates a conspiracy theory.

There were at least 11 killed in Shershah today.  The future is bleak, and its going to be a long, long time before we see real social change.  Who cares if Che is on a shoe?

reasons to oppose the commercialization of Saadi

As you know the struggle is on to resist the commercialization of Khayabane Saadi.  The parents who protested energetically yesterday were opposed to a tower being constructed next to the Karachi grammar School.

If you are following this action, and want to know whether or not you should be outraged, here is a list of concerns for you:

Anyone who might cause an adverse effect to the environment is required to first conduct an EIA or an environmental impact assessment. The City District Government Karachi (CDGK) did not conduct one, and zoned Khayabane Saadi from residential to commercial in June 2005 in plain violation of the law.  This is not simply a procedural violation that can be corrected easily.  An EIA facilitates the very decision of whether an area should be commercialized.  Its purpose is to consider all detrimental effects on the surrounding communities and the environment.  Since such an assessment was not done the very commercialization road on which the odious (commercial)  tower is to be built is on shaky ground. (no pun)

Noman Castello (NC), the builders of this office tower on Saadi, hired consultants who did a bogus EIA on their proposed project.  This EIA is an eye opener and a must read.  The more you read it the more you will see how terrible this project really is, and how it proposes to change the contours of this neighbourhood to a hostile public space that represents commercial interests and ignores the health and safety of communities -and is a slap in the face of environmental concerns.

This project represents the ugly trend of rapacious builders all over Karachi who are bypassing laws and building ethics for profit.  They are only interested in the bottom line, and consider EIAs a pure formality, instead of a genuine probing into adverse effects.  Here are a few examples of how this EIA, a shoddily put together document, attempts to evade all issues.

The  EIA states that the tower will result in an increased burden on sewerage lines.  But nothing has been done in terms of stepping up current capacity.  If the public sewer can't cope, the EIA asserts, "all sewage shall be disposed of after appropriate treatment...and discharged safely into a soak pit as temporary measure till such time as a sewerage system is laid out."   In other words, the school will be surrounded by a stinking nala, possibly open?

The EIA claims that the Karachi Electric Supply company (KESC) has indicated that it will provide the extra power needed for the towers.  So the builders do not anticipate a burden on existing infrastructure.  The report cites to a "No Objection Certificate" (NOC) from KESC, but does not supply it.  The EIA is 150 pages long.  It would not hurt to add a one page copy of the NOC in the appendix. 

300,000 bags of cement -- sand, gravel will be used in the construction.  In addition to dust, diesel fume emissions, the whole area will be health disaster over the course of a three and a half year construction period.   Children as young as 3 years will be exposed to an enhanced risk of respiratory diseases, and those with such disorders will probably suffer the most.  Parents of children with such concerns should be specially alarmed, and should seek professional medical advice to voice up their resistance.

There will be an excavation that will affect the integrity of surrounding structures, and be dangerous if ever unsecured.  Drains may be blocked with extra solid waste resulting from the construction, and the report states plainly that there will be flooding in monsoon seasons.

They have allotted seven floors for parking; but who know if these will actually be put in.  There are an allotted 104 parking spots, but there is no explanation whether these are an adequate number for a tower like this. 




Any of the mitigation measures can be abandoned by the builders.  They are not on honor code to carry these out.  These mitigatory measures are mere statements of intention, and do not mean the builder will follow through, unless of course, the regulatory system shines through and one of the Environmental Protection Agencies (EPA, FEPA, PEPA) enforces these.  


Also, plans for waste management and traffic will be developed, states the report.  Who knows who will develop these plans, who will implement them, and who will police the implementation?

The privacy and security of the young pupils will be severely compromised.  With increased traffic around the area, and cameras placed on external entrances of the tower, anyone could be in a position to record everything that goes on in the school's premises.   

That all parts of the city, and all schools, are vulnerable to attacks does not mean we do not oppose one particular commercialization which elevates the security risk for a certain community, when we can --and when the law accords us the right to do so.  People with children in the school and residents of the area are naturally the most obvious aggrieved parties - but by no means does this represent an elitist effort or an exceptional group.  

All people should be united against all commercialization efforts that would be a security risk for children and a nuisance.  Wrongful commercialization must be opposed in any neighbourhood or school.

Yes, KGS, carries with it a distinct reputation of being a resourceful and privileged institution, and perhaps at an increased risk of security violations.  But this does not undermine the legitimacy of the concerns - the school is an evolving institution, and instills civic values. 

Concerns for increased traffic are dismissed summarily.  

In fact that is the tenor of this EIA document.  


Dismiss all concerns summarily.  Develop city unethically.  Disregard the concerns of the people.  

tall towers in poor cities

It is evident that we as a community have become thoroughly accustomed to bad news.  There were barely any outbursts at the parent's meeting at my daughter's school today.   Despite the horrific bombing that occurred just two days ago, life in a metro is back to business as usual for those unharmed.  

Parents debated over the best arguments to stop the construction of a 22 story tower next to Karachi Grammar School.  It will compromise security, and pave the way for unchecked commercialization. The city government of Karachi, CDGK, approved a change in zoning from residential to commercial at Khyabane Saadi without conducting an environmental impact assessment (EIA).  An EIA is required by law, and is essential for all parties to assess whether commercialization is desirable.  By neglecting this very important step, the CDGK has violated the law and illegally commercialized a road which was residential and housed schools.

An article in the Express Tribune attracted comments that accused the school of elitism.[i]  They contended that lower income areas routinely suffer the detrimental impacts of commercialization-- pollution, noise, traffic, congestion, a heightened burden on infrastructure -- without so much as an outcry, why should the public support the right of elite schools to circumvent the same urban curses in a city of voracious developers, pervasive land speculation, where more than 5 million people live in slums.[ii]

Truth is such accusations should be cause for introspection, rather than tactful rebuttals, and knee jerk reaction such as ---why do they hate us?  It should be an opportunity to examine our own social interconnectedness with the rest of the city.  (or our hypocrisies, if necessary)

While a handful of individuals link themselves with causes that affect the working poor[iii], most avoid it, and restrict action to when their narrow interests are threatened.  They do not see their rights as entwined with the rights of the rest of the city's residents.  


And they'd prefer action be limited to hitting up contacts in the government and higher judiciary to achieve their objective rather than democratic resistance (i.e. attending public hearings and holding a sign on the street.)


This is less than ideal.

24,400 families were evicted for the construction of the Lyari Expressway.    According to Urban Resource Centre, the building of this road adversely affected the education of 26,000 children, and their families’ livelihoods.[iv] Builders encroached Gutter Baghicha, a large public park; a leader of their movement, Nisar Baluch, was slain in a tactic to scare activists who dare oppose the “horror parade” of commercial development.[v]  Makro-Habib, a large supermarket, was constructed in direct flagrance of a 2007 High Court order that stated it must be retained as an amenity plot for a playground.[vi]   

Perhaps more people should support such causes, perhaps we boycott Makro, light a candle for Baluch, perhaps committees can be sent to support similar actions against schools in middle income areas.  For examples, Generations, a school recently opposed a similar zoning change in Nazimabad, and some parents openly supported a show of solidarity with such cases.  Perhaps, we should build sister schools in slums?

As an extension, we can't be oblivious to the changes the city has seen on a structural level -- rising unemployment, poverty, inflation, “third world wage structures”, housing insecurity, poor being driven to peripheries, artificial growth through increase of loans available for cars and consumer items, government privatizing industries, deregulating, and cutting subsidies for the poor. 

The same poor from slums such as Ibrahim Hyderi and Rehri Goth who are, due to neo liberal policies, forced to work 12 hour days for Rs. 1,000 in garment factories that promise a dubious diploma -- have children who do not even go to schools.

Yes support TCF -- but more importantly build and help run schools in slums?  

Analogous to (but a more cancerous) version of  zoning changes from residential to commercial  are the set up of export processing zones (KEPZs) in Landhi where private foreign investors are wooed by the pimps of neo liberal development who promise that there will be no unions or strikes, inexpensive labour available in abundance, and various concessions of taxes and duties.[vii]  (Thus rampant violation of the law, generosity to capital, cruelty to labor, and a race to the bottom.)

It is the same liberal policies that seek to eliminate traditional grocery stores and butcher shops,  in lieu of massive air-conditioned super markets and boutique meat-stores that keep the blood and gore out of sight.  They also seek to eliminate street hawkers and vendors from the city landscape, except as cute tourist attractions.[viii]  Arif Hasan writes about the evictions of pappar and chana walas from a strip of the beach so people are forced to purchase Walls ice cream and more expensive fast food items.  One, bunder wala (whose monkey was named Aaloo Master) had performed on this beach for 25 years, and was suddenly thrown out.[ix]  He has also talked about the sea shell jewelry vendors near (the venue for the recent blast) Abdullah Shah Ghazi Mazar who were evicted after tenancies of generations, and thus stripped of a source of livelihood.  

Instead, I see a disappointing attitude.  One otherwise okay opponent of the  22 floor building (a commenter on the Express Tribune article) unnecessarily confuses  the commercialization by unethical builders and the corporatization of the city in line with investor interests, with another kind of "degradation" – one where poor hawkers are part of the insufferable buzz and filth of big city life.  The comment is as follows:

The law must be applied to stop this wretched encroachment by stealth which lowers the tone of the area, ruins domestic peace and encourages other elements, hawkers, general public and one might as well be living in Saddar with the whole gamut of commercial activity and not what was supposed to be a designated “residential” area.”[x]

Switching one twisted argument for another, she continues that the building in place of the Mideast Hospital would facilitate terrorist activity against the new American embassy at Mai Kolachi with the help of a rocket propelled gun (RPG).

What?  What a reason to save the city from a high rise!

On the positive side, one can at least celebrate in the fact that as we embark on a protest for a (yes!) worthwhile cause, we rely on the show of street power (never mind that it is powered by bottled water and ray bans, not burning tires and effigees) – instead of substituting it with solely behind the scenes negotiations  -- and of course the charmingly city domicile activism of showing up for the EIA public hearing. 

To a more holistic activism! 

---

[i] http://tribune.com.pk/story/55415/kgs-parents-ex-students-meet-to-fight-22-storey-project/

[ii] Challenge of Slums  Global Report on Human Settlement, UN 2003.

[iii]  A cross section of society but mainly the middle and upper middle class publicly opposed Waterfront Development Project where builders sought to construct high rises on 14 kilometres of land from Sindbad (Old Casino) up to the Golf Course in Clifton Beach.

[iv] Arif Hasan; Livelihood Substitution: The Case of the Lyari Expressway; Ushba International Publishing, Karachi, 2006.  See http://www.achr.net/UAC/Arif%20World%20Class%20City.html.

[v]  http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\11\09\story_9-11-2009_pg12_2

[vi] ttp://www.shehri.org/Marko%20Habib.pdf

[vii]  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb092/is_n7_v27/ai_n28674498/pg_2/?tag=content;col1

[viii] http://www.achr.net/UAC/Arif%20World%20Class%20City.html

[ix]  http://www.urckarachi.org/CLIFTON%20BEACH.HTM#CLIFTON BEACH Ghariboon ka Sahil, Ameeron ka Sahil

[x]  http://tribune.com.pk/story/55415/kgs-parents-ex-students-meet-to-fight-22-storey-project/

crooked lines

I've been thinking about my daughter a lot recently and whether she will have a twisted and dark version of sex and sexuality programmed into her by school.  Of late she has been singing this rhyme.

criss cross, apple sauce

Her teacher sings it as a hint to girls to cross their legs so their panties may not show because that's not proper.  (She is five.)  The subtext of this seemingly innocuous rhyme is that female sexuality must be managed.

So I  explained to her.  "It does not bother me so much if someone accidentally sees your underwear.  You tell your teacher that girls have to learn to be girls first.  And girls climb jungle gyms, they don't huddle."  All this while explaining to her how another girl's obsession with underwear is not healthy either.

It's hard to get it straight, but more or less you do what you can so your kids don't equate propriety with chastity, use sex as rebellion against feeling oppressed at home, or to overcome inadequacies.

There is really no easy way to teach kids to regard sex and sexuality as positive, variant,  affirming and not something you deviate into, use as a weapon, or manipulate to get things;  but also not something you avoid or consider shameful.

====

Those of us who watched, "Aangan Tehra", a PTV drama serial, written by Anwar Maqsood,  will remember the flamboyantly gay character, Akbar, played by the late Salim Nasir.

Akbar is a classical dancer with a razor sharp tongue, and is a servant in the house of a couple, Jehanara and Mehboob.  Jehanara and Mehboob bicker a lot.  They are strained for cash and owe Akbar about Rs. 30,000 in back pay.

Jehnara and Akbar argue as well, and often we see Akbar and Mehboob finding solace in each other's company and sharing their caustic view of the world, despite their oddly naive inhabitance of it.  Mehboob is restrained in his criticism of his wife, and prefers underhanded remarks in line with his Urdu speaking, middle class, respectable upbringing; but Akbar takes jabs at her quite explicitly.

Jehanara admits in one episode that the worst day of her life was when her father accepted Mehboob's proposal.  Up until that time she was active in sports, vocal, and enjoyed life which clearly got interrupted.  To which the response from a reporter staying with them is, well, it sounds like Phoolan Devi's childhood.

Akbar is a dancer and his flourishes indicate he may be gay.  It is never confirmed, but there are hints in different episodes.  In one he is star struck when film actor, Lehri, comes to reside in the house. He struts before and flirts with him.   Lehri is fully aware of Akbar's presence and reciprocates, and asks Mehboob how he came upon Akbar.

In one scene, Lehri and Akbar are alone and the sexual tension between the two is apparent - actually more from Queenish Lehri's side; he seems intrigued by Akbar who sashays past him.  Akbar, though,  is more interested in using Lehri to get a role in a film.

When Lehri tells him that films about raqasahs (dancers) simply can not be made, Akbar gets mad and wishes he were born in the times of Mohenjodaro, so there would be a murthi of a dancing boy in every home in the city.

In another episode, Akbar is seen crying dramatically over a letter announcing that his fiance just had a baby.  Jehanara is horrified, and Akbar explains that she married someone and had his baby.

A failing male-female relationship, a 40 something gay classical dancer, same sex emotional triangles, a couple that is critical of marriage yet resigned to it.  A slap in the face of heteronormativity and subversive for PTV.  Add to the mix -- looming poverty, even in a class that seems outwardly middle-class.  (When Mehboob asks Akbar whats for lunch he erupts and says "mutton gosht, chicken karahi, and biryani," and later clarifies that its the same as every day, daal and aaloo ki sabzi.)

In some sense we all traverse crooked lines.*  We all live in crooked aangans.  And I am pretty sure, as parents, we will get it all wrong as we resist capitalist patriarchy and homophobia, and our children will have their own set of parental misgivings.

But we can get some things straight -- Akbar was not.  And apple sauce has nothing to do with being a girl.  And there's nothing wrong with a two year touching his penis;  something surely is when you slap his hand and say "buri baath."

*Title borrowed from Ismat Chugtai's "tehri lakir" about the a girl coming of age and her emotional and real world.  Meant to sound like: Teri Larki (your girl).