| June 13, 2005 | Monday | Jumadi-ul-Awwal 5, 1426 |
A simpler view of the Advani mess
‘Houseless’ plot owners
Memories revived
A seven-hour power breakdown in Defence Phase-II was reported on Wednesday. And in Saddar, electricity was out for almost 24 hours, sporadically reviving only for an hour or two in between.
Electricity failures occurred in various localities on other days as well but they seem ‘less important’ when compared to the seven-hour and 24-hour kind of statistics. Our psyche has become so strange that we now pick out the most severe incident to lament on, and other ‘lesser’ miseries now involuntarily take a back seat. Misery, deaths and economic losses are now mere statistics — or perhaps ‘collateral damage’ — in the scheme of ‘routine inefficiency’ where Karachi is concerned.
Unless an ‘out-of-the-ordinary’ incident occurs, with more than average reported loss, it is not a point of concern. With the KESC officials too, it is the same procedure. Their spokesman says, “it should be appreciated that this year we are carrying out ‘lesser’ load-shedding than what we did last year.” So should that make the individual sufferer feel any better? Will it make a difference to those affected whether they are included in the suffering hundreds or the miserable thousands?
The KESC rhetoric hasn’t changed for the past two years at least. The same reasons are being given by their official spokesman that the supply is inadequate as compared to the requirements and we are short of at least 500 megawatts of power. With the number of users increasing every year, it is obvious that the gap is not being filled, in fact, it is increasing. According to KESC’s own estimates, 100 megawatts power consumption increases on a yearly basis. But is the production taking place accordingly?
With privatization being the only aim in mind for KESC, no funding had been allocated for the corporation till last year, since the preceding four years. A funding of Rs13 billion for its revamp programme was, however, outlined last year as per the president’s directive, but only about two billion has been forwarded to date.
It is also obvious that no preparation is undertaken during the winter months by the KESC to account for the imminent shortage that would occur in summer. Come summer and the blackouts and long outages hit the consumers with almost the same severity (if not more) as they did the previous year. All that the corporation does is prepare its routine replies (in fact even those are the ones used the previous year!) of not having enough funds and that the ‘line thefts’ are hampering the electricity supply.
The basic truth is that Karachi’s electricity problem — for which ‘acute’ would be an understatement — has never been given top priority. The federal minister for water and power, Mr Liaquat Jatoi, was seen dropping in ‘supposedly’ unannounced to check the running of the various KESC power houses last month. Accompanied by Brigadier Sadozai — the man-in-charge of the corporation — the minister looked into the complaints of the people and assured the smooth running of electricity. What intelligence are the citizens of Karachi credited with by these officials, may I ask? Is his one day of surprise visit his share of concern for Karachiites or for Sindh, as per his job description? Is this media ploy actually supposed to pacify the tormented millions who suffer extreme weather conditions for hours without the basic utility for which they are already paying tax every month?
Unfortunately, no words of shame are enough to rouse the total apathy shown for Karachi’s electricity or even water problems. Perhaps, since this too is mostly a common man’s problem in the ‘irksome’ city of Karachi, it is not worthy of immediate consideration for the federal government. They too know that the people will protest for a few months, and then get on with their work — so let it just blow over. Things are worsening, and God alone knows where it will lead. Riots have broken out a couple of times already, this summer, where the KESC offices were attacked by the affected consumers but the breakdowns are still persisting for hours, spreading into days at times.
The lackadaisical concern shown off and on, keeps citizens hanging onto a faint line of hope that perhaps the electricity problems are being looked into, but, it’s a sham.
The situation is well beyond the people’s endurance level and the thread can snap anytime. KESC’s statement of ‘things are improving’ might in fact lead to a quicker breakdown! The only way the situation can be controlled is by taking ‘extraordinary’ measures to ensure quick relief and control of power failures. Whether that includes immediate installation of Independent Power Plants, upgrading of the Jamshoro junction to increase its supply capacity or exporting some hi-tech, state-of-the-art machinery to aid power supply. There are many able engineers in the government and private sector to come up with a number of technical options and they can provide the correct answer. The only missing link is the ‘will’ to do it.
And if that ‘will’ remains absent any longer, there is no saying what the middle class millions who are at the end of their tether, will eventually be forced to do. Labouring in the stifling heat, the resentment is bound to focus on the official or elite residences enjoying uninterrupted power supply through extra relief measures or independent generators. Are the officials waiting for such an eventuality before they make a move?
AROUND the dates when he was being feted in Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi, Lal Kishan Advani was scheduled to have been in China on an official visit. He would have gone as head of the Bharatiya Jana Party, or perhaps as leader of the opposition in Lok Sabha, if that makes any difference.
The Chinese had told him that he would be given a guided tour of the Great Wall, the Great Hall of the People, and also taken to view Mao Tse Tung’s body, which is kept miraculously preserved since 1976. He would then be welcomed as an honoured tourist in Shanghai to savour the most important piece of the economic miracle that has made China a virtual superpower.
Mr Advani had told the Chinese that he would also be keen to meet leaders of the Communist Party of China as also some representatives of the government. He was told politely that the leaders were busy. Mr. Advani was given a stark choice — take the visit as it was or wait for a better occasion when the Chinese leaders he wanted to meet could find the time for him.
Now it would not have looked nice for the leader of the opposition to enter the Lok Sabha in the Monsoon Session dripping wet with embarrassment after returning as a tourist from China. After all it was his own government which had made India claim its place as a nuclear power, a move it justified to the United States as having been prompted by the threat that China posed to India.
The Chinese are known to deliver short and sharp messages when they want to express disapproval. They invaded Vietnam when Indian Foreign Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was on a so-called path-breaking visit to Beijing in 1978-79. The Chinese may have felt that Mr. Vajpayee was leaning sharply to the right and leading Prime Minister Moraraji Desai into the waiting arms of President Carter, who became the second US president to visit New Delhi.
This happened during the brief tenure of the Janata Party. Mr. Vajpayee was informed of the Vietnam invasion by the Indian media team accompanying him. Later, China exploded a massive nuclear bomb in a test carried out to coincide with Indian President Venkataraman’s visit to Beijing.
When they want to be friendly the Chinese can be excessively so. They have a sound logic for the way they react. It is the kind of behaviour that India has tried hard to imitate. For example, it had begun to throw out foreign journalists and issuing stern demarches to those who criticised its policies in Gujarat or Kashmir and other trouble spots. This is what China has been doing successfully for years.
India even tried the Chinese approach of threatening a military standoff a la Taiwan for example. But India is not China. It is prone to being influenced and tends to heed the advice of the superpower. Bill Clinton mediated with Pakistan in Kargil and the American president said so in as many words in the Indian parliament. Has anyone seen or heard China soliciting international support for Tibet as India does on Kashmir?
Has anyone ever tried or even dared to broker a solution on Tibet to China in the way that India does by way of what is known as second or ‘third’ track diplomacy?
Perhaps Mr Advani secretly idolises China. After all, India does try hard to take a stance with Pakistan which often resembles the Chinese stance with India. Stop Tibetan activities in India, Beijing tells Delhi threateningly. Stop Kashmiri activities in Pakistan, India tells Pakistan, also threateningly. The difference is that every time India tries to carry out its threats of retribution against Pakistan, the Americans step in to pull the two sides apart. These days the Americans say privately that they are brokering the peace dialogue between these two.
It was as part of this peace dialogue that Mr. Advani was welcomed in Pakistan. Unlike China, Pakistan needs to build him as a major Indian leader for a crucial reason. His asset is that he represents a sharply pro-American corner in the Hindutva pantheon. So did Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Jaswant Singh. In fact, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh which today views Mr Advani as a difficult entity was itself India’s most pro-American political body before the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is no longer so.
When the Congress Party also piled on to the gravy train seeking fringe benefits from Washington, having been orphaned by the loss of Moscow’s support, someone had to take the role of the opposition to the United States. Leaving it to the Indian communists is fraught with political risks as it might make them more popular with the masses.
Delinking from the RSS, which pretends these days to be opposed to Washington, is a political compulsion for Mr. Advani. The Indian business clubs where he is lionised and is invited to sit alongside the likes of Hillary Clinton do not approve of the RSS and even less so of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, which opposes economic reforms piloted by all Indian governments since Narasimha Rao started the process in 1991. All this talk of the Quad-e-Azam being secular is old hat. Mr Advani had read out the same passages from the Quaid’s August 11, 1947, speech to a Hindutva audience in February last year in Delhi; people had applauded him at that time.
Whatever doubts one might have on this score were settled by the terse statement of the BJP. All the proposals for restoring a Hindu temple in Katasraj, off the highway from Islamabad to Lahore, were made as far back as February 1999 to Sushma Swaraj and to the late K.R. Malkani, both Hindutva leaders close to Mr Advani. I have pictures of both being honoured at the very site. Mr Advani will now try to enter Lok Sabha with his head high, that is, till someone calls his bluff.
INDIA’S cricket legend Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi is being hounded for alleged poaching of a black buck, an endangered species under the Indian Wildlife Act. But black bucks are also a favourite part of the food chain for India’s rapidly disappearing tigers. Prime Minister Manmohan Singhj recently expressed dismay at the rampant poaching that has been going on of tigers in India’s supposedly protected sanctuaries. No one has been charged or accused in even one incident of their poaching. Ironically, Pataudi is best known by his nickname Tiger. But that does not seem to be reason with their powers that be to permit him an occasional delicacy, even if it’s a trifle out of line with today’s conservationists.
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MANY who do not own a house, especially those already retired or nearing retirement, wonder if the prime minister’s “housing for all” programme can benefit them soon enough. These people have not been able to own a house because housing schemes in the undeveloped sectors of Islamabad are taking too long to bear fruit, while the prices of plots and houses in the already developed sectors are simply beyond their reach.
Shahid, a grade-20 government officer who has just retired, has lived in a rented house in one sector or the other all his life. He and his son own two plots of land in E-sector (Zone-II) under different housing societies, but despite the passage of over 10 years, neither of the schemes are ready for construction work to begin.
The Capital Development Authority has recently issued NOC to one of the housing schemes, but construction work is unlikely to begin until several more years later at least, Shahid says. The other housing scheme, for which he started giving instalments in 1987, does not even fulfil CDA’s basic criteria of minimum land holding. It is a good thing he has a working son who can help out with the monthly rent until they are able to build or buy a house - whenever that will be.
Saeed, a grade-19 government officer who will be retiring in a year’s time, has been living in official accommodation provided by his organization since he returned from studies abroad 22 years ago. He has one plot of land in his organization’s housing scheme in G-sector (zone-II), which like Shahid’s two schemes are also not ready for construction. Upon retirement, Saeed will have to live in a rented house. But unlike Shahid, he doesn’t have a working son who can help him with the house rent.
Those in the salaried class who in recent years could buy plots or houses in the already developed sectors are mainly those who have spent several years working and earning abroad. However, most in the salaried class are like Shahid and Saeed who, instead of laying back and enjoying their retirement, have to worry where the money for the house rent is going to come from.
It is a relief that the government has finally recognized, although belatedly, that the country faces a “severe” housing shortage. Admitting the “gravity” of the housing situation, the recently released Pakistan Economic Survey estimates the housing backlog in the country to be six million units.
Apart from having to meet this six million units shortfall, the government also faces the task of meeting an annual additional requirement of 570,000 units, whereas the annual production is estimated at around only 300,000 units. To meet the housing shortfall in the next 20 years, the government estimates that overall housing production will have to be increased to 820,000 units annually!
The Economic Survey lists a whole gamut of incentives in the banking and finance sector, and in the fiscal area, which the government claims to have undertaken to promote the construction industry. Also listed are other measures to strengthen the institutional and legal framework to encourage the housing sector, as well as the main features of the “housing for all” programme.
But none of these measures, says Shahid, will help him get his house. What the government needs to do, he says, is to direct development agencies like CDA to work in close cooperation with the housing societies to facilitate and quicken the pace of processing and land development so that the construction of houses can begin and people can occupy them as soon as possible rather than having to wait for years on end.
Last Sunday, CDA took out a half page advertisement in several national dailies giving details about the status of the various housing societies in Zone-II (sectoral) and Zone-V (non- sectoral). Of the 20 housing schemes listed in Zone-II, only three have been issued NOC. None has permission to begin construction yet. Of the 26 housing schemes listed in Zone-V, five have been issued NOC, but only one of these five has permission to start construction.
Some of these housing societies had emerged in the 1980s. Yet some 20 years later, plot owners have not even been able to begin construction. One major reason has been the lack of a clear cut and dynamic housing policy from the government. Another reason is that many of the housing societies have been plagued by financial and/or administrative mismanagement, as a result of which they have been unable to fulfil some or all of CDA’s requirements.
There are at least six stages which housing societies have to cross before construction can begin: preliminary scrutiny clearance, approval of layout plan, approval of land ownership documents, permission to advertise and sell plots, issuance of NOC and permission to start construction.
The trouble is that the various vested interests involved, including the land mafia, real estate people, CDA personnel, etc., have been trying to extract maximum benefit at each and every stage, thus prolonging the process leading to the construction stage. The ultimate losers are the thousands of “houseless” plot owners like Shahid and Saeed.
Given the kind of slow time-frame which citizens in the capital are experiencing in getting their own house, it is difficult to believe that the annual production of housing in the country is actually 300,000 units, let alone imagine that the government is seriously trying to attain a production of 820,000 housing units per year!
Elsewhere abroad, housing schemes do not take more than three to five years to materialize. Unless the authorities take drastic measures to reduce the time taken for homes to be built, the shortfall in housing units in the country will continue to grow. This only means that the country will end up having to meet an even higher production target than the already awesome 820,000 units per year.
Many uninvited guests turned up at a reception hosted by the Indian high commissioner in Karachi in honour of Petroleum Minister Mani Shanker Aiyar the other day. They were not the usual gatecrashers, but those who were keen to meet the visiting minister, who was India’s consul-general in Karachi in the late 1970s, for old times’ sake. Such was the esteem and affection in which the former Indian diplomat was held by his friends in Karachi.
Though sweating in the summer heat of Karachi, Aiyar moved from one set of acquaintances to another, recalling how he had interacted with them during his stint in the city.
Earlier in the day, Aiyar paid a visit to the Karachi Press Club. He ran into nationalist politician Yousuf Mustikhan as he entered the gate. Known for remembering friends, Aiyar recalled how Yousuf’s father, the late Akbar Mustikhan, had arranged a meeting with the late Ghous Bux Bizenjo whom he described as a wonderful human being and a graceful politician.
A colleague says he first met Aiyar at a diplomatic reception in December 1978. “You journalists have put my job on the line,” was the first remark made by Aiyar as they were formally introduced. “How?” wondered the colleague.
Actually Aiyar had recently opened his consulate after resumption of diplomatic ties between India and Pakistan. And visa applicants used to start queuing up in front of the consulate in the early hours, sometimes sleeping there at night. Local newspapers carried reports and pictures of the applicants and described how they were inconvenienced. The Indian Lok Sabha received a motion in which it was asked why the Indian consulate in Karachi was causing discomfort to those applying for visas.
“I have improved the arrangements a lot. Please come and visit the consulate tomorrow,” said Aiyar to the colleague who duly paid a visit to the building the following day. And they thus formed a friendship that continues to this day.
BELATED RECOGNITION
It was a moment of immense joy for 89-year-old Polish-born Zofia Turowicz, who, along with her late husband Air Commodore Wladyslaw Turowicz, had become a Pakistani national in 1961. Belatedly, her native country last week conferred upon her a special medal in recognition of her struggle for Poland’s freedom during the Second World War. The investiture ceremony was organized by the consul-general of Poland in Karachi, Ireneusz Makles.
Born in Warsaw during the First World War, Ms Turowicz shared her husband’s passion for flying. Indeed, it was at the Warsaw Aero Club that the couple met and got engaged. However, their marriage plans were thrown into disarray by the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939. They had to face a temporary separation.
Ms Turowicz flew RWD8 biplanes during the Second World War, carrying personnel and documents to air force units, landing and taking off from improvised runways in fields. But when the Soviet army attacked Poland from the east, she crossed over into Romania after destroying her aircraft.
It was at an internment camp in Slatyna that she met her fiancé. They immediately got married. The couple had to flee Romania afterwards. Reluctant to go back to Poland which was then being ruled by communists, they came to Pakistan in 1949 following a brief stay in England. Along with 30 Polish air force officers and technicians, Mr Turowicz joined the Pakistan Air Force. He was awarded the Tamgha-i-Pakistan, the Sitara-i-Pakistan and the Sitara-i-Quaid-i-Azam.
Mr Turowicz died in 1980 and was buried in the Catholic cemetery of Karachi. Ms Turowicz, with two of her daughters married to Pakistanis, lives in this port city which, she says, she has known and loved for over half a century.
ILL EQUIPPED
There was a fire in a chemist’s on the main Khayaban-i-Shahbaz the other day. The shop was still closed as it was quite early in the morning then. The neighbourhood was woken up by the fire engine’s siren. The fire brigade had been notified by a police mobile patrolling in the area, and thanks to its early arrival, the fire was not allowed to spread to the rest of the building.
The glass doors to the entrance had to be broken so that the fire fighters could enter. It was a short circuit in the main switchboard behind the counter that had started it all. Close to the counter was a display of cigarette lighters which proved to be disastrous. There was black smoke everywhere and it was a while before the fire could be put out.
As the residents gathered to witness the fire fighting operation, they were shocked to see how unprotected the brave men who fought the flames were. The city government should be more thoughtful about these seemingly minor issues which are actually vital. Due to lack of funds or indifference, the fire fighters have not been provided some important items. No helmets, no masks, no foam to put out the electric fires – water and electricity made a bad combination. They just tied handkerchiefs over nose and mouth and went about their business. One thing they didn’t lack was courage.
DANGEROUS AT NIGHT
VIP movement and protest demonstrations on the streets of Karachi have made life a living hell, complains one friend, who was subjected to long traffic jams in the current unmerciful summer heat for up to 20 minutes at a stretch a couple of times during the past week. During one of these tortuous sessions, he found that M.A. Jinnah Road had been blocked as Qazi Hussain’s men registered their protest over the friend doesn’t even remember what.
This forced him to take a considerably long detour at the end of which he found himself behind a queue of cars, whose drivers waited resignedly for the never-ending vehicular entourage of some government official or the other to pass by.
At night, VIP movement or security arrangements involving road diversions can even be dangerous. When the traffic police refused to let the friend take a U-turn on Ziauddin Road, he had no option but to drive ahead on I.I Chundrigar Road. It was pitch dark, he recalls, adding that what is arguably the busiest section of town during the day, turns into a sinister graveyard of potholes and concrete structures at night that make driving difficult and risky. It doesn’t help matters when the odd racing monster — in the shape of a ramshackle truck or bus — decides to take the same route. Perhaps one of the worst of these roads in this regard is Mai Kolachi where the danger posed by heavy vehicles is compounded by streetlights that are not lit.
However, what is surprising is that the situation has not in anyway curbed the Karachians’ enthusiasm for nightlife. With the whole city being dug up for underpasses and overhead bridges, and no sensibly planned alternative routes, one would have thought that commuters would think twice about venturing out at night. But no, you see them packed like sardines in their cars, making as best a beeline as they can for their destination.
— By Karachian
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