| June 11, 2007 | Monday | Jamadi-ul-Awwal 25, 1428 |
Good plumbing and rainwater harvesting
THE society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. —John W. Gardner
MOST of you must be remembering your school days when as soon as the PT master (or rather the physical training instructor) said “Ready, steady, go!” before a race (whether running, three-legged or sack race) you would shoot off trying your level best to leave all your rivals behind. The same can be said of the rickshaw drivers in Karachi.
Racing one another truly gives rickshaw drivers a kick. As soon as one driver passes another, it is enough to send his emotions into overdrive. He looks at his rival with a meaningful glare, which says: “Oh! You want to beat me. Well, I will show you what I am made of.” And off he goes making life hell for the passengers.
However, some passengers enjoy every bit of the ride – yes, it is that thrilling to them. While for others it is exactly the opposite as they look towards the heavens and pray that they are able to get out of this mess at the earliest.
A British tourist had once said that Karachians had a lot of guts as they travelled fearlessly in rickshaws, while he himself found it to be one of the most dangerous rides of his life, in fact death-defying. He was amazed as to how the three-wheeler could keep its balance. Makes you wonder what he would have said had he seen entire families riding on it: three adults on the back seat with three children on their laps and a teenager sitting next to the driver, of course, without any seat-belts!
Please don’t think that rickshaw drivers are the only ones who love to race. Minibus drivers, too, love it as much if not more. But there is one big difference between the two: Your life truly seems to be hanging by a thread when you travel in a minibus. Yes, the minibus drivers are that reckless. All your appeals to the driver to drive carefully fall on deaf ears.
Sometimes they apply brakes just in the nick of time. You can almost feel death breathing down your neck. And if you happen to sit in the back-seat you are bound to lurch forward and hit the floor, probably hurting your knee or your arm.
When the minibus drivers are racing, they don’t even care to pick or drop passengers. If they do, it will be for fractions of a second only. If you can get off by that time, well and good. If not, you will suffer bruises and gashes on your body, especially your knees. Mind you, this is no exaggeration as it happens to many Karachians on a daily basis.
It can be said with certainty that our minibus drivers can give the best of stuntmen a run for their money, including French actor Jean Paul Belmondo, who is renowned for doing his own stunts, and Evil Knievel. Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, Hollywood superstars of the 60s and 70s, who gave people the thrill of their lives with their fast-paced driving in films like Bullitt, Le Mans and Winning, were fabulous drivers in real life too. But the city of Karachi with its labyrinthine roads and streets and its traffic mess would have left both scratching their heads had they ever been asked to show their driving skills here.
Do you remember that in the 60s and 70s bus drivers, too, loved racing? Then the most far-off places from Saddar seemed to be Paposh and D’ Silva Town. The drivers of Bus No 40 and 25C, both of which started from Paposh, loved racing. However, they did not drive recklessly like the minibus drivers of present. Besides, the conductors then used to have a lingo all their own like “Jaan-dos” or “Double hai” for the driver to start moving and “Rokkays” for stopping. Now all you can hear from the minibus conductors is a list of places that the minibus will pass through with or without stopping. And for applying brakes all that most of them will say is “Brake sha”. You will also often hear the minibus conductor shouting “Oh! Rishkawala!” whenever he wants the latter to get out of the way. You will never hear him say “Rickshawala” as he just can’t pronounce the word.—Mohsin Maqbool Elahi
Dhaba freaks
The mention of a dhaba conjures up an image of a rustic eatery with a charpoy, platefuls of daal and tandoori roti and above all the sweet and tasty tea.
From the posh areas of Clifton and Defence to the suburbs, Karachi is dotted with dhabas though the charpoy has given way to tables and chairs. Located generally next to workshops or bus stops, most dhabas remain open round-the-clock and provide a haven to those fond of gossip. Besides the daal, roti, mixed vegetables, cold drinks and tea, they offer oily and not so oily (Sulaimani) parathas at the humblest of prices.
People from all sections of society visit dhabas every night where they can even have a back-rest to lean on besides having food and other services. Traditional massage is offered at night that helps the tired clients to rejuvenate. For the very poor among us, dhabas are economic necessities. No self-respecting restaurant in the City of Lights would serve bare-footed labourers dressed in torn shalwar-kameez, but these dhabas do. In this way they are also a cultural refuge where one can be himself.
Next to these dhabas one finds cabins selling paan, cigarettes and candies. I am sure that there will be hardly any dhaba in the city where one can’t find such cabins.
Dhabas are perhaps the closest to a Marxist ideal where the proletariat of all shades of blue-collared workers would co-exist, smoking their cigarettes, guzzling their tea, discussing and solving their problems.
Interestingly, most of them have names quite similar to each other. Quetta Hotel, Kakar, New Quetta, Anabi, Achakzai, Piyala, Chaman and Khyber are a few of the examples.
Dhabas serving people for decades are the only section of business the government has never extended its patronage. But remember, there is something timeless about dhabas though the world around them is changing at a furious pace, a dhaba once established seems to keep on going perpetually. Even natural calamities and economic cycles don’t seem to affect it.—H.A.
Gone with the winds
There were days when an outing included watching a movie in a cinema. And all cinemas had a “House full” board mostly hanging on the booking window. “Plans open” was the other board luring people to book a seat for a date one or two months ahead. There also used to be ‘strong-men’ deployed all around the crowds of ticket-seekers who enjoyed a ‘free hand’ to foil anyone’s attempt to bypass the early birds to fetch a ticket. And then, amid much hustle and bustle, several scores of people had to return without watching the movie of their choice, only to make another bid for the next show.
Such an activity was witnessed thrice a day at almost every cinema in the city. And there were quite a lot of cinemas back then.
The lively lifestyle suffered a severe blow when Gen Zia’s martial law was clamped and the so-called Islamisation was imposed. The coup leader resolved to infuse decency in society and check obscenity on the screen, stage and in the open. Gradually, the number of cinema-goers started declining. Subsequently, the cinemas were converted to other commercial facilities like shopping malls, residential complexes, hotels, etc. Watching a movie in a cinema has become the last priority in planning an outing or for that matter a date.
In the 80s and mid-90s, the entire film industry experienced a gradual destruction and painfully, the onlookers were the masses.
Ironically, no positive change has come even yet with the changing of the guards and the reforms introduced afterwards enjoying the full support from all foreign powers, including those who had until recently been regarded as enemies.
The film industry is dying, the surviving cinemas are decaying and the lovers of local movies, both old and new, are facing sheer frustration. But the enlightened moderation is bypassing the industry in its whirlwind journey through Pakistan. Film legends’ memories have been confined to their anniversaries and top stars have to find sanctuary in the small screen world. New talent is shy of opting for the big screen while the foreign talent, mainly Indian, is sweeping away our country’s potential and interests –commercial, cultural and political.
Is this heavy loss affordable to the nation? Those at the helm of the affairs know this very well and they are making the nation believe that there is no urgency to tackle the matter at this juncture. Heavy investments, local and foreign, are being made to develop every sector, but the film industry seems to be an ‘industria non grata’.—Abdul Wahab Memon
Compiled by Syed Hassan Ali
Email: karachian@dawn.com
It is not surprising that numerous complaints and criticisms have surfaced about the newly installed water filtration plants, some 6,000 of which are said to have been recently installed all over the country, including the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, as part of an ambitious Rs7.8 billion “safe drinking water for all” project.
These complaints and criticisms have come from both members of the public as well as government agencies like the Pakistan Council for Research in Water Resources and more recently, the Water and Sanitation Agency in Rawalpindi.
That the water filtration plants project was a non-starter was a foregone conclusion. Firstly, ‘water filtration plant’ is something of a misnomer: it is no more than a public water tap station, where citizens have to queue up for water with containers in hand, at the expense of sleep, office and other work. In this modern era where every household expects clean potable water to flow directly from their taps on demand, no government in any developed country can sell a ‘safe drinking water for all’ campaign merely through the provision of such public water tap stations.
The second reason why the project was a non-starter is that it was implemented as a separate one-time installation project through funds provided to MNAs and MPAs, not as part of a permanent integrated national water strategy executed by the respective water agencies in the localities under the ministry of water and power to ensure an adequate, clean and sustainable supply of water to all consumers. The result is that the maintenance of these filtration plants is in limbo with the local governments and water agencies passing the buck to each other.
In any case, the philosophy of providing safe water for all through filtration plants simply does not hold water. Filtration plants cannot take the place of an efficient supply distribution network that provides clean water to all consumer taps. However, good plumbing alone is not enough to ensure the flow of safe water: the pipes must be fed by a sustainable water resource.
Thus, a viable strategy to ensure the provision of safe drinking water for all would have to comprise two vital courses of action: firstly, major improvements in the infrastructure of the distribution network to minimise contamination specially from sewage and industrial effluents and from increased salinity resulting from over exploitation of the ground water; and secondly, major improvements in the infrastructure for water collection and storage.
In Pakistan where the evaporation rate in rivers, lakes, reservoirs and dams is high, particularly in the summers when the water level in lakes and dams drops and many household taps run dry, the more effective method of water storage in most parts of the country is underground. But the underground water resources are fast depleting because of over exploitation and the unrestricted use of tubewells. Moreover, increasing urbanisation has considerably reduced the area of exposed earth for rainwater to naturally seep in and recharge the ground aquifer.
According to a Dawn report last week, the Dutch government might be providing a grant to Wasa to help recharge the aquifer in the Rawalpindi region and improve the ground water level. Such a measure, however, ought to be part of a national water strategy to encourage rainwater harvesting and the artificial recharge of groundwater. At the moment, much of the rainwater that falls in the urban areas, e.g. on rooftops, road surfaces, etc., is wasted as it flows into drains and into sewerage systems, or it is simply evaporated.
Our neighbour India recognised the importance of its ground water resource when it instituted the Central Ground Water Authority under the ministry of water resources to regulate, manage and control the development of its ground water resources. One of the first things which CGWA did was to prepare a master plan identifying areas for artificial recharge, a plan which envisaged the establishment of a network of structures for artificial recharge and water conservation.
In accordance with CGWA’s plan, housing societies and schemes, institutions, schools, hotels, industrial establishments and farm houses have been directed to adopt rooftop rainwater harvesting systems. Building by-laws have been modified to incorporate mandatory provision of rooftop rainwater harvesting in all new structures, e.g., no water or sewerage connection would be given if a new building does not have provisions for rainwater harvesting. The various ministries in India have also been asked to lead the way in promoting rainwater harvesting by adopting roof top rain harvesting systems in their buildings. CGWA also launched a widespread awareness campaign to propagate ground water conservation measures to the masses.
In Pakistan, as it is the case in many other countries, pollution and over exploitation have shrunk the availability of clean and potable water. Thus, making use of each and every drop of rainwater to recharge the groundwater is not only an environmental-friendly method of increasing water availability, it also checks the depleting ground water resources.
If our cities, towns and builders can be similarly guided to adopt suitable rainwater harvesting methods in houses and buildings, the precious rainwater can be collected on rooftops and other surfaces, and the water directed to lawns, gardens, parks and other open soil surface areas where it can percolate and replenish the groundwater aquifer. The collected water can also be carried down to where it can be used immediately or stored underground (for car and floor washing, lawn/garden watering, industrial usage, etc).
In these times of scarce and fast depleting water resources, every drop of rain water that we can save and conserve counts. Needless to add, a campaign to promote rain water harvesting must also be accompanied by public education to cultivate frugality in the use of water.