| 4, April 2005 | Monday | 24 Safar 1426 |
Hartals unlimited
SURPRISINGLY, the construction of a third lane to Islamabad Highway from Zero Point to Faizabad Interchange was completed relatively quickly last year.
Generally however, infrastructural development in the capital has been moving at a snail’s pace, whether it be the building of the new Islamabad International Airport, the flyover at Zero Point, or the dualization of IJ Principal Road.
Lack of financial resources and controversy over land rights are the usual reasons cited for the delay in the execution of such projects. But it is quite obvious that these are just lame excuses for bureaucratic inertia and the lack of political will.
The result is that Islamabad is left far behind many other capitals of the world in terms of infrastructural development.
Take the case of the new Islamabad International Airport, which undeniably is needed to improve access between Islamabad and other cities, both within the country and in the world, both for business and tourism purposes.
The idea of a new airport at Pind Ranjha, about 30kms from the current Islamabad Airport in Rawalpindi city, had materialized soon after the creation of the Civil Aviation Authority of Pakistan in 1982. Some 3,200 acres were acquired for the project.
Thereafter, according to CAA’s website, a feasibility report of the project was prepared by a French company, master planning and detailed designing was done by a German company, and all planning activity was supervised by an American company between 1984 and 1986.
A few years later, a British consultancy company specializing in international airport development also became involved in the planning of the new Islamabad airport. According to this company’s website, it had completed the master plans, operational strategies and business plans for the new airport. But for some reason or the other, the project was not proceeded with at that time.
Such an impressive mix of international consultancy should have created a state-of-the-art international airport for Islamabad. Yet the result was zero!
Meanwhile, CAA went on to complete the Jinnah Airport at Karachi (inaugurated in 1992) and the Allama Iqbal Airport in Lahore (inaugurated in March 2003). Going by this rate, i.e., one new airport every 10 years or so, the earliest that the new Islamabad airport can be expected to be completed is in the year 2013 — provided that Islamabad airport is CAA’s next target!
It may be a fact that airport development usually has a long gestation period. But 30 over years (between 1982 and 2013) must certainly be beyond the normal gestation time for any transport/communication project!
Two other infrastructural projects, viz., the dualization of IJ Principal Road and the proposed flyover at Zero Point, are also taking much longer time than necessary to materialize.
The stretch of IJ Principal Road from Pirwadhai to Faizabad has been in a deplorable condition for many years and still is today, four years after approval for the dualization of this road was given in May 2001. The reconstruction of the stretch from GT Road to Pirwadhai (Phase I) was eventually completed and inaugurated last December, but progress on Phase II (from Pirwadhai to Faizabad) is still painstakingly slow.
Meanwhile, no attention seems to have been paid to the deteriorating condition of another road leading into Islamabad from the Motorway, viz., the stretch of Kashmir Highway from Golra Mor Chowk to Peshawar Mor in G-9. This major two-lane road from the toll plaza at Golra Mor Chowk onwards has been lying badly damaged for at least half a year now, so much so that part of the dual-lane Kashmir Highway leading out of Islamabad is now being used for both incoming and outgoing traffic.
Kashmir Highway and IJ Principal Road are major arteries linking Islamabad with other cities and are used by inter-city buses/coaches, goods-carrying trucks and containers as well as private cars. Such prolonged neglect of the road worthiness of major links connecting Islamabad with other cities is not tolerable from the commercial and business point of view. Neither does it give a good impression about the capital from a tourism point of view.
As for the flyover at Zero Point, for at least two years now it has been reported in the press every now and then that CDA has been told to launch the project, which is intended to ease traffic congestion. In January this year, CDA claimed that work on the flyover would start in May/June 2005.
In February however, it was reported that snags had hit the flyover project, as well as three proposed underpasses along Jinnah Avenue in Blue Area. Even if work does really begin on these projects soon, the inordinate delays in completing similar projects like the IJ Principal Road and earlier on in the 1990s the flyover at Faizabad, tend to dampen any optimism of on-time completion of either the Zero Point flyover or the underpasses on Jinnah Avenue.
Not only have the relevant ministries apparently failed to provide overall policy guidance for the capital’s infrastructural development, but also neglected to constantly review their policies to ensure that they are relevant with the times and that they meet the needs of people and the businesses.
Failure to plan and build infrastructure ahead of demand obviously has negative consequences for overall economic development.
The heavens would not have fallen if the government had allowed the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal to go out on strike on Saturday in Karachi, as indeed in the rest of the country. In any case, most cricket aficionados – and Karachi has lots of them — would have been more interested in the Pakistan-India match in Cochin than the game of hide-and-seek played by MMA activists and police on the roads of the city.
By the same token, a pre-dawn raid on Idara-i-Noor-i-Haq, the city headquarters of the Jamaat-i-Islami, was also completely uncalled for. Hundreds of MMA activists were needlessly rounded up. Even those totally unconnected were arrested, including a poor man having his ‘halwa-puri’ at an eating place in Delhi Colony. There were several such persons sitting forlornly at the Frere Town police station. Perhaps the police had been given a specific target for the numbers to be detained.
A statistical analysis of the 2002 general election results would have told the authorities that the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam carries more political clout – and perhaps greater street power – than the Jamaat-i-Islami whose political fortunes dwindled with the rise of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement in the early 1980s. For instance, there were more JUI flags on display at the so-called million march staged by the MMA last month in Karachi. (As an aside, Maulana Fazlur Rahman of the JUI was not in the country when the MMA went on strike on Saturday.)
A couple of days back a strike called by the Pakistan Oppressed Nations Movement also drew a mixed response in the country. Karachi was largely unaffected by the strike, which was supported by the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal and the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy. A day earlier, a group of transporters kept their vehicles off the road in protest against a substantial rise in petroleum prices in recent months.
While political observers have rightly criticized the government for overreacting to strike calls, it must be conceded that the recent hartals have dealt a blow to the city’s economy. And yet the city nazim, former Karachi chief of the Jamaat-i-Islami, has not expressed disapproval of the shutter-downs and wheel-jams supported by the MMA. Similarly, one wonders why the Muttahida Quami Movement is so critical of strikes, because a couple of years ago it used to call at least two extremely violent strikes a week.
A malign influence
A young and bearded boy thrust a folded pamphlet into a friend’s car the other day as she pulled up at the traffic-lights on Sharea Faisal. Since the boy looked different from those who distribute publicity material issued by quacks, claiming to have discovered a cure for piles, and professional magicians, promising to help star-crossed lovers, she tucked the pamphlet into her bag so that she could read it at leisure.
The pamphlet was issued by the student wing of a leading political party and criticized the Aga Khan University and its examination board for asking young and impressionable youths some extremely personal questions in a nationwide survey. Though she is quite liberal, she says she found that some of the questions were really bold and assumed that the country’s young men and women had a promiscuous lifestyle.
A few days later she read in the press a public statement issued by the university making it clear that it was in no way associated with the controversial health survey. This meant that the political party had allowed its student wing to distribute propaganda material knowing full well that the information was wrong. According to the university, the survey was part of an international initiative by the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a United Nations initiative, which works in close partnership with the World Health Organization.
Drive cautiously
Going down Khayaban-i-Saadi last Monday morning, pedestrians and motorists were met with a strange sight, that of a silver car lying upside-down right across the KGS college campus. The car was empty. A helpful lot of passers-by along with a bunch of boys from the school were trying to turn the car over, which wasn’t an easy thing to do. They were really disturbing the traffic flow as the car’s roof on which it stood would skid to the middle of the road from where it would be pushed back to the side which resulted in further damage.
When asked about the missing people in the car, a man, who was also trying to turn the car over, told the colleague that the couple, a “sahib [and] begum sahib”, was miraculously unhurt. After pulling themselves out from the car through its windows, they had called someone on their cell and within minutes another car with a driver had come to pick them up. The accident, according to the passers-by, was a result of the car’s axle breaking.
“It wasn’t their fault”, said another man, “the car just went out of control after that”. But looking at the upside-down vehicle, one could see that the axle was still intact. Was it another case of speeding and reckless driving while taking a U-turn?
Bus stops for whom
The city government has started a new project of constructing bus stops on major city roads and many have sprung up in the past month. However, there are several problems with these that need to be addressed.
For one, all bus stops have a shop attached to them and therefore this venture has commercial connotations. The structure of these new bus stops is such that it leaves little room for pedestrians who wish to use the pavement. In one instance, at the stop built barely one person can pass the small space left for pedestrians.
One wonders what the purpose of these bus stops are – is it to provide a utility to the people or another excuse to encroach on the city’s congested pavements and open up more shops? The latter seems to be the case and many new bus stops have appeared on Sharae Faisal despite the fact that there are bus stops at these locations.
There has also been no effort to ensure that buses actually stop at the new stops. Finally, the aesthetic sense involved leaves a lot to be desired. The stops are decorated on the outside with cheap shiny tiles reminiscent of bathroom tiles.
Visiting musicologist
Vijay Kumar Kichlu speaks chaste Urdu like most Kashmiri pandits settled in Uttar Pradesh. But Almora-born, 75-year-old Kichlu doesn’t live in UP; he divides his time between New York and Kolkata, where he spent most of his life.
Kichlu, the founder of the prestigious Sangeet Research Academy, Kolkata, first came to Karachi in the early 1980s when he performed with his brother Ravi Kichlu at the Indian Consulate. They were not the star attraction at that time; the elderly Prof V. Jog, a violinist of repute, was the main performer that evening. Sadly, both Jog and Ravi Kichlu are no more.
A musicologist of great reputation, V.K. Kichlu was in Karachi for the entire week. This time he didn’t sing, but Subhra (pronounced Shubra) Guha, the bright exponent of classical music who was trained at the Sangeet Research Academy, enthralled the audience twice, first at a concert organized by Sampurna and then on the eve of their departure at Saaz aur Awaaz, another club of classical music enthusiasts. She was in Karachi for the first time and like Kichlu was overwhelmed by the hospitality of Karachians.
In 1981, Kichlu, who was given the title of Pandit in appreciation of his immense knowledge of the theory and practice of classical music, stayed at the house of the Nawab of Chattari, Rahat Saeed Khan, whose younger brother Farhat Saeed Khan was his colleague at the Sangeet Research Academy.
He does accept that Karachi has become more crowded since his last visit but he insists that the city still has more breathing space than any Indian metropolis. He mentioned this at a dinner when someone at the table remarked: “You haven’t been to our slums; you have only been to the elitist part of the city.” “Yes, but unfortunately no elitist area in our cities is as open as yours,” argued Panditji, who was also impressed with Lahore and its people.
He flew from Karachi to Delhi, where after spending a day or two, he will go to New York, where he is in the process of setting up a classical music institute.
“Will you come again?” someone asked him at the dinner. “I shall come again and again, but I’ll miss my brother Ravi as I did on this occasion,” he said wistfully. “I regret why was there a gap of 24 years between my first visit and the second one.”
— By Karachian
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