| May 4, 2003 | Sunday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 1, 1424 |
Immobility that is Lahore today
Water riots feared
PESHAWAR: There were times when a policeman’s uniform would inspire confidence and courage. There used to be an aura of fear about it. Sadly not anymore. More policemen are being killed in the NWFP than anywhere in Pakistan. The last couple of years have been bloody for the police force.
AS we now step into the unrelenting heat of May, there is every reason to take grim notice of at least two stories that reflect the violence that can be produced by water shortages in the Sindh capital. It reflects the anger of weary citizens on this theme, and the intensity of the protest that gets unfolded.
There have been instances when the police wrote new chapters of bravery by laying down their lives while taking on criminals. But there are also instances when they were lynched and fired at in mob violence. Never before has the morale of our police force been at such a low ebb. Unfortunately, there are only a few names now in the upper echelon of police hierarchy that exude the level of confidence and the kind of image that would go with the office of the IGP or equivalent ranks.
Talk to any police officer and he would toss quite a few names of the good old IGs of the NWFP, some of whom have long sung their swan songs, others, though few in number, are still in service. They were good, sound professional police officers, a quality that unfortunately has become too rare.
And among such officers was Afzal Ali Shigri. Police in our part of the world are notorious for feasting on other people’s expense — one factor that may be attributed to the growing number of bulging bellies in the police force. It is rare for the police to throw a party but it is all the more surprising for them to acknowledge the services of their former bosses.
It was, therefore, one of those rare occasions on Wednesday when the police threw a party to say goodbye to one of the respected and honest police officers, Afzal Ali Shigri. The venue was the Officers Mess, Peshawar, and the guests included former and serving police officers and civil servants who knew him well and wanted to say a word or two about him.
All kudos to Malik Mohammad Sa’d, the former SSP of Peshawar and the present director-general of the City Municipal and Development Department. A hard taskmaster and a no-nonsense man, Sa’d has developed some sort of a skill for organizing social functions. A fellow columnist described him as the municipal czar for his anti-encroachment drives and relentless efforts to undertake major developmental activities in Peshawar. But he has proved himself to be much more than that. And the grand farewell to Shigri was a befitting example of that.
From the horse-mounted policeman escorting Shigri to the venue of the function, to the illumination of the club’s premises, to good food and the skits performed by Ismail Shahid and Said Rehman Sheeno, Sa’di (as he is affectionately called by his friends), had gone into great lengths to make the evening memorable.
And surely, Shigri will remember this unforgettable evening for a long time to come as much as those who narrated the 35 years of his service in the police force. Born in Delhi, settled in Rawalpindi, educated in Gordon College, Lahore, and having served at many places of the country, Shigri has seen and witnessed many events unfolding before his eyes, whether it was the uprising of peasants in Hashtnagar in Charsadda or heading the police force in Sindh when the province was witnessing a bloodbath. From the Motorway Police to playing a key role in the police reforms introduced by the Musharraf government, Shigri has a long list of contributions to make the police feel proud of him.
Speaker after speaker praised Shigri for his services. Among them were two former IGs — Abbas Khan and Gohar Zaman Mohmand. FC Commandant, Israr Shinwari, who is likely to succeed the present IGP NWFP, Mohammad Saeed Khan, and former chief secretary Abdullah were among the speakers who paid rich tribute to Shigri. Saeed Khan made an interesting remark while narrating his association with Shigri. He said he had been following Shigri in his footsteps, taking up jobs where had served before and that soon he would follow him into retirement. Shigri was known to be a true commander of the police force who had an institutional and developing mind.
AS a child we used to go to school on a double-decker bus, part of a magnificent organization called the Lahore Omnibus Service. The fleet at its height had 1,200 buses; all well maintained in Lahore ... and being a bus driver was a prized position, just as it was to be a train driver. We lived in normal, sane times then.
Mobility is the cornerstone of economic progress. It reflects the ability of a population to move about with efficiency in search of livelihood. The history of the mobility of the people of Lahore, surely, can be the subject of a doctoral thesis, for it would be interesting to see how it has developed over the ages, and, most importantly, where it stands today.
The idea for this piece was generated as I flipped through he pages of a new and interestingly well-researched book by Fakir Syed Aijazuddin called Lahore Recollected: An album. I think this is a must for anyone interested in learning about Lahore and its past, especially since it is strong on visuals. Given the images I saw in that book, and also based on my personal experiences, it makes sense to try to piece together the various modes of transport that we have seen or heard of in Lahore.
We read extensively of Maharajah Ranjit Singh going to meet various people within the walled city on his huge elephant. One French writer describes the journey as “full of peril, as the sides of the elephant scrapped the narrow lanes through which it passed”. He certainly did often go to meet his favourite Billo at Shahalami on his favourite elephant. In those days, horses were the normal mode, and the Maharajah used them with a skill that few could match in those days. After his work, horses were his second priority, with women coming third. Sensible person he was. Makes me think why my brother-in-law spends hours clearing his car, often spending time just to watch a piece of iron standing there. I suppose many people watch stones too. But mobility and the sense of power it gives has been a major factor in the history of civilizations.
When I was young, my grandmother used to tell us about how she used to go on a ‘palki’ to school, that being the famous Victoria School inside the walled city. Even as a schoolteacher in the 1920s, she went to school on a ‘palki’, as did a lot of women inside the walled city. The Aijazuddin book has a magnificent lithograph by Prince Alexis Soltykoff made in February 1842, of a ‘palki’ in Lahore. The picture brought into visual form what my grandmother used to tell us. We often used to laugh behind her back at her stories, but she kept us in good check by always having a pocketful of ‘meethi phullian’ —- sweet puffed rice —- and annoying her meant missing out on the delicious snack.
But Lahore was served by tongas and bullock carts. The ‘Nakaskhana’ inside Akbari Gate was where they mostly centered, though the stand outside Yakki Gate, before the Lahore Railway Station was built, is where their main stand always was from Moghal times. There is a definite need to search out any old horse water troughs, and to preserve them. With time one tends to agree more and more with the Indian journalist and writer Khushwant Singh that our “increasing poverty is primarily because of the terrible increase in populations”. Just imagine that in 1871, the population of Lahore was 128,000 people. By 2001, it was estimated at between 7 and 7.5 million. Even if we assume it to be 7.0 million, we have over the last 130 years increased our population at an annual average of 41.2 per cent, with major increases coming over the last 20 years. Unbelievable statistic, but it tells us on how our mobility has been crippled, and why mobility is the major reason today for our inability to move ahead on the economic front, if not the major reason for extremist behaviour. But that is another subject, though related directly.
During the Raj, the city of Lahore was, initially, serviced by tongas, by ‘Tum Tums’ —- a corrupted use of the word ‘tandem’ —- by ekkas, which was somewhere between a tonga and a light bullock cart, and then came the 2nd Class hackney carriage just like they used to use in the London of Sherlock Holmes. The 3rd Class hackney was a ‘Barielly ka Tanga’. Every moving vehicle, be it a tonga, a hackney, a bicycle or even a hand-pushed cart, had to be registered and was not allowed on the road without proper lights. As a school-going child my small bicycle was fitted with a dynamo-charged light. Most people could afford a small kerosene-based light. But a light everyone had to have. Not any longer. The sheer volume of traffic has made implementing the law impossible, at least we like to believe this to hide our shortcomings.
Then came the first car in Lahore —- a Brougham Landauette with its interesting rubber horn. As a child we all used to stand outside Mrs Staratford’s house in ‘B’ Block, Model Town, to see her old Austin T-model. Later, the car landed up at a workshop behind Dr Bheek’s house just opposite the Sacred Heart School near the Mayo Hospital. What happened to it we do not know, but would be most interested to know about that particular ‘institution’ of Lahore.
But we started off with the Lahore Omnibus Service and its double-decker buses. They were all low chassis frames imported from Birmingham, England. The British had set up the service and most of the officers had served a short stint in England as bus drivers. Just imagine, would a modern bureaucrat do that for the poor of Lahore? I have my doubts. But once they returned they all insisted that the body by made in Lahore. And so in the Ferozepur Road depot, the entire fleet of double-decker buses were made and maintained. They were also made in the Gulberg depot, which an influential woman has purchased to make a commercial school, all very legal and ‘correct’, surely. The fate of the Ferozepur Road depot also awaits a silent hand to move it into ‘commercialization’, just as the residential colony of Model Town also heads towards commercial disaster. But regrets are useless in this day and age, for truly the law is an ass.
But the sand part is that the LOS was Pakistan’s most profitable undertaking. In the 1950s it earned 1.35 million rupees in cash every day. The managing director was Pakistan’s highest paid professional, a man who had driven buses in London and worked his way up. This was too much for the military when they took over, and a top brass was introduced. Very soon, it was all military and the service tho began to die as generous loans were given to the government from LOS coffers. In the 1970s it died, unsung. The late Z A Bhutto tried to revive it with Swedish buses, but the corrupt soon killed that effort.
Today we have no, Yes sir, no public transport. Imagine a magnificent city with no predictable public transport system. In an age when walking on the non-existing pavement is socially taboo, if not physically impossible, how can we in the name of sanity expect our population of 7.5 million to be mobile. A consultant recently tried to reintroduce a scheme with double-deckers, and the transport big boss said: “First prove by a visit to the factory in Italy, if Fiat exists or not”. End of effort. End of story.— Majid Sheikh
Remember the times when water shortages that the city would experience in the sixties or the seventies, and newspapers would carry photographs of men, women and children either quietly queuing for water in backward areas of the city, or carrying water in buckets and varied pitchers. That was all, and there would be news reports detailing of how the citizens were quietly suffering. No trouble.
That appears to have become or is becoming a thing of the peaceful past. Now there is an anger on this subject of water, with the citizens’ collective consciousness saying that in the 55 years of independence that we have had, through democracy and dictatorship, through the days of the mayor and administrator, and the Nazim now, the subject of water supply continues to remain one that defies solution. As someone says that this shortage has turned worse, and it seems that the poor are now on their own. The rich or rather the influential are looking after their interests as best as they can, and in some parts of the city (like Defence Housing Authority) there are solid plans to set up a desalination plant for making available sea water for daily use. Good.
I have heard angry citizens point to the way the city’s water supply and distribution situation has deteriorated, and every year it is getting worse, to the point that water riots (like power riots) appear to be real-life scenarios.
Let us take the two stories that have been mentioned at the very outset. The first was on April 26, with the headline saying “installation attacked as water crisis deepens.”
Reports further said that this was the second water-related violence in four days, involving a pumping station of the town. It was reported thus “Firing at Bihar Colony pumping station by unidentified people plunged the already hard- hit Lyari town into a much deeper water crisis on Friday as the facility’s staff fled in panic and supply from the station stopped.” The point that the staff fled is something to contemplate, worry.
Read further, “apparently aerial, the heavy firing left the pumping station’s building riddled with bullets, and according to sources, forcing the panicked staff to safety.” In an earlier incident, a group of residents of a water-starved locality attacked the official car of a superintending engineer with sticks and stones at the same pumping station. Eventually, due to another incident also, the police and rangers were called in to maintain peace.
The other story that compels one to take notice of the water shortages in the city detailed: “Protesters ransack water department offices.” This was in North Karachi.
The attitude of the water department staff is not acceptable to the public, and so it makes you ponder over the general complaint that the attitude of our officialdom towards the public is something that remains a source of delay, humiliation, and hell. Bureaucracy remains an obstruction is the perception.
It is imperative that one takes notice of the impatience of the people in the context of public utilities unable to cope with the vocal pressure of a growth in demand.
According to a news report, on Friday afternoon the chief engineer of the water and sewerage department of the city government went on leave in the midst of what is described as a severe water shortage. The interpretation being made is that the W&S department’s officials have gone on leave because they wanted to avoid facing the ‘wrath’ of the public.
Focusing on Karachi’s water supply and distribution and consumption, a thought that needs to be kept in mind is that not all people get drinking water, decent water, clean water. In fact the majority doesn’t get it, and piped water is a dream, a privilege, which often the average consumer doesn’t realize.
Attitudes to the easy consumption of water by people who receive it as they can afford it often betrays their total lack of concern on how they use it, misuse it, and waste it. The water itself may be small in measure, but it reflects, among other things, a certain symbolic gulf between the haves and the have-nots in this society. Like the contrast between the fact that while some people have no water for daily needs, kitchen-related in particular, there are those haves who maintain lush green lawns and flowery gardens, and contend they are nurturing the environment!! Which environment? That is the question. For the real environment is getting insecure, and the people becoming aggressive and violent, as they realize they are not getting their just share. There is more than mere semantics to this.
Just in case we have affluent citizens who may have merrily forgotten that there is a water holiday once a week in the city. One Karachiite takes a dim view of the water scenario ahead, and says that this water holiday is going to grow in the years ahead, as the existing availability options cannot cater to a growing population, regardless of the best efforts that may be made.