| August 7, 2005 | Sunday | Rajab 1, 1426 |
The latest twist
EVEN those who are new to Karachi are under the impression that they have to carry on with life without having either any rights as a pedestrian and without being provided with footpaths. Indeed for all the bypasses, underpasses, flyovers and boulevards that are being built in this metropolis, there is amazingly no demonstration that there is anything tangible being done for pedestrians.
The risk, insecurity and multiple dangers that the common man faces while walking on the road are assumed to be integral to our urban lifestyle, and “part of the package”. I have been thinking about the fright of crossing roads in Karachi, as I heard a painful story of how a Karachiite suffered a fracture, when he was knocked down by a two-wheeler coming from the wrong side of the dual carriage road.
This happened to be a senior journalist, S.M. Yaqoob, in Gulistan-i-Jauhar’s Block-9. On Sunday afternoon, he was crossing the road when suddenly a speeding two-wheeler coming from an unsighted wrong side hit him. He was alone, and that predicament alone is enough to make a person vulnerable when he is down. Within minutes there gathered some people, and the three men on the bike came to Mr Yaqoob and accused him of not knowing how to cross the road. That they were on the wrong side didn’t matter.
Mr Yaqoob was in pain with signs of bleeding, and some passers-by ensured that they put him in a taxi, and send him off for medical help. He was disappointed that no citizen wanted to accompany him. On his cell phone, he called his family to say that he was going to AO Clinic in Nazimabad after having met with an accident. The taxi driver asked, “I hope I won’t get into trouble with the police or the hospital for bringing in an injured man.” The journalist assured him not to worry.
Now see what the three young men on the motorcycle did as he was leaving in the taxi. They didn’t want him to go, and wanted him to pay for damages to their bike! Upon intervention by the crowd, the situation was saved from turning ugly, observed the senior journalist, who spent five days in the hospital and left hand fractured in plaster.
One way of looking at this incident is to believe that it could have been worse. Newspapers carry such stories almost daily, and with cold brevity, of how citizens lose life and limb in road accidents. It makes you ask in exasperation and dismay whether for all the efforts and planning there is to make vehicular traffic move safely and sanely, is there any infrastructure visualized for the man who walks on the roads?
A cynical view is that the roads are often so narrow that there can be no provision for pedestrians now. There is either no space for pavements, and if there ever was it has been encroached upon for a variety of justifications. Pavement loss is small stuff, really, says a friend who dreads walking on the roads, anywhere in town. He recalls the days when there were pavements and zebra crossings too.
Zebra crossings! That is going down memory lane. I would like to contend that not just children, but there would be adults too, who would not know what a zebra crossing is like. There are a couple of these zebra crossings on some roads, but they have faded like memories of yesterday. And Karachi blessed drivers, always in a hurry, always tense, and terrifying if they can get away with it, ignore zebra crossings with a vengeance.
And see the way these drivers drive on the wrong side, to avoid going an extra minute or two because the Traffic Engineering Bureau and the traffic police have closed many road cuts, to improve the flow of traffic.
Quite certainly there is being witnessed effort and planning to improve the flow of traffic, in a small town gone metropolitan, where traffic chaos is recurring, and frustrating. But the questions that relate to the rights and privileges of a pedestrian are many. One of them relates to ensuring that there are pavements, and specified points from where they can cross the road.
One young citizen who resides in Defence observed that reflective of the low priority that is attached to pavements is the fact that even in the newly developed areas there is no thought given to people who walk on the roads. It is assumed that everybody moves about in a car. May be only in a chauffeur driven car, and hence there is no need to walk any distance.
One is reminded here of the ‘Safety Weeks’ that were held in the city once upon a time. Schoolchildren were taught how to cross the roads. Now that our educational standards are so pathetic and questionable, it is a matter of doubt if these are still held.
This brings us pointedly to the question of what is ground reality for the Karachiite when it comes to crossing the roads. Perhaps an underplayed risk that the pedestrian takes because the roads are designed to belong only to vehicular traffic is something that town planners and the traffic police have to take notice of. Not just that, but there is definitely required an action to make the pedestrian feel safe.
A housewife I spoke to was very angry on the absence of pavements and roughshod manner in which children and women are treated and exposed to a variety of hazards because of the indiscipline of drivers. No one is bothered about this subject, she lamented. Indeed, it is a lonely world for the man walking on the road. Little wonder that parents and families feel very helpless and vulnerable when they have to send their children unescorted, even to cross a single road.
Anyway, it is not asking for too much to hope that after the local body polls are over, those entrusted with the city’s well-being will give to this neglected aspect of Karachi, a meaningful, respectable, long lasting environment, wherein walking on the road will not be a dreaded proposition.
NOT all seems to be going well with the local body election process in Punjab amid claims by rulers that a fair playing field will be given to all candidates. The latest spanner thrown in the way of the MMA-backed candidates is the refusal by returning officers to accept the seminary certificate of Shahadatus Sanivia as being equivalent of matriculation, which is the required educational qualification of a local body contestant. The Lahore High Court also dismissed a petition filed by those affected, upholding the decision of the district returning officers concerned.
The fact is that courts can only decide cases on the basis of existing rules. The latter were amended by a hurriedly called meeting of the province’s Inter-Board Chairmen Committee on July 21, ostensibly under orders from the Punjab government. Thus changed, the rules now require the seminary certificate holder to obtain a ‘pass’ in each of the three compulsory subjects at the secondary level, i.e. English, Urdu and Pakistan Studies.
The concerned maulvis’ argument that if the higher seminary certificate of Shahadatul Aalimya is acceptable as being equivalent of a master’s degree for contesting provincial and national assembly elections, then why reject its junior counterpart on flimsy grounds. Well, for once the bearded men are right in their logic that does not have a twist to it. But they keep forgetting the fact that a general election is not due until 2007, and who knows what rules will be altered then to keep the undesirable elements out.
The local body system, as introduced under the devolution plan four years ago, is fraught with lacunae, as time has shown. It was unveiled at a time when there existed no elected governments at the provincial and federal levels. Once these came in, it was amended to serve the convenience of the provincial masters who had been made watchdogs over it. The mandate of the system was amended yet again recently to further and completely suit the whims and convenience of the chief minister.
Vesting such unbridled powers in the upper, provincial tear of governance, whose purpose it serves to continue the system on a non-party basis, amounts, in effect, to a virtual undoing of the devolution plan. The incoming city nazim, who will very much be a product of the amended local body ordinance, should be required to affix a plaque outside his office that says: ‘I am the boss of this city, and I have the CM’s permission to say so.’
THE opening of the Dharampura underpass has been delayed yet again. Marred by a number of disputes involving claims of the dislocated katchi abadi-dwellers, initial flaws in design, contractor-labourer disagreements, and sheer disinterest in completing the project on time on the part of all concerned, the proposed underpass has been a major hurdle in the way of an estimated 150,000 motorists who are affected by road closures and diversions.
Work on the project started last December, and it was supposed to have been completed in April. But the deadline was revised quite religiously, a month hence at a time; yet there is no sign of getting the contractor out of the construction site. The plight of those motorists having to take a 10-km detour to commute daily between their jobs and homes aside, the misery faced by residents of Zaman Park and Mian Mir Colony is no less.
Is there no one who would own the project, get on its case and see it through to its logical end? The caretaker city district administration is certainly not the one showing any interest in the matter because it is not their baby. But what about the Punjab government? Knock, knock, is anyone home?
PARTICIPANTS in yet another conference held in Lahore this week have urged the government not to suppress any regional language. The conference in which language scholars, writers and intellectuals from across the country took part was reportedly called at the behest of the chief minister. It afforded the neo-Punjabi language enthusiasts another opportunity to push for their demand for the acceptance of the language as a medium of instruction at the primary level.
Speaking on another occasion, the international Punjabi conference chairman Fakhar Zaman also reiterated the demand, this time round lacing it with the request that the Punjab government should help the conference set up a Punjabi university in Lahore by March next year. A fly on the wall also reported hearing some participants gripe that Mr Zaman takes up the cause of Punjabi only when the PPP is out of power, so his party can take the credit for highlighting the neglected cause while letting the ruling party face the music.
WE are now told by the federal state minister for culture that Pakistan faces no threat of a cultural invasion from India. The minister is right. Few Pakistani homes have not been exposed to Indian music, films or soap operas via the idiot box. The skies will not come crashing down on us if we were to allow a legal import of Indian films and their screening in the few cinemas that are left in this country. A recent report put the number of cinemas in Lahore at 27, down from 80-something back in 1978.
A section of the Lollywood film industry also believes that may be the only way to lure cinegoers back to the silver screen and, in the process, challenge Pakistani filmmakers to do better. Others, however, continue to disagree. They had rather watch the industry die unsung and the remaining cinema halls pulled down to make room for more shopping malls that would sell, among other things, uncensored, smuggled and non-copyrighted Indian flicks on DVDs. —OBSERVER