A photograph in the Karachi metro section of this newspaper last week could well have been captioned “Who’s the odd man out?” The photograph in question was of a meeting held at the Governor House to discuss mega development projects in Karachi. In attendance were Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad, Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah, assorted city government representatives, including Karachi Administrator Rauf Akhtar Farooqui and, curiously enough, Corps Commander Lt Gen Sajjad Ghani.

The meeting was convened to discuss three mega projects for the city, including the Karachi Circular Railway, the Greater Karachi Sewerage Plan S-III and the K4 Water Supply Project. Two other projects, the construction of the Malir Expressway and the completion of Lyari Expressway, were also on the agenda.

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“The federal government had committed to funding 60 per cent of the cost of these projects with the remainder to be met by the provincial and city governments,” said Mr Farooqui. “However, this was not reflected in the latest budget, which was our main purpose for calling this joint discussion meeting.”

When pressed as to why the corps commander’s presence would be required at such a meeting, he said: “We are hoping that the army can exert some pressure on the federal government to meet its financial commitment. We want our city to be developed, and whatever needs to be done to achieve this, we’ll do it.”

According to environmental activist Roland deSouza, “These are not new projects, they’ve been in the pipeline for a while and I would like to think that the army is trying to put some muscle behind their getting off the ground.”

He added however that while these particular projects have merit, governments in Pakistan focus too much on projects and less on long-term planning. “Projects generate money and political capital, not to mention a list of ‘achievements’ that the government gets to flaunt on the pages of newspapers.”

Of course, the real dynamics of urban development play out far from the glare of newspaper headlines. There are many powerful actors — formal and informal — jostling for control over Karachi’s resources, nowhere more so than in the realm of real estate. Control of land has a direct bearing on political clout, and vice versa.

“The army’s keen interest in the development of infrastructure in the city is linked to the Defence Housing Authority’s phases 9 and 10 spread over 13,000 acres off the Superhighway. It’s a purely supply-driven, speculative scheme,” maintained a development expert.

“The Malir expressway also furthers the same objective, which is to open up land for value extraction. The city doesn’t need the expressway.”

As the army’s senior-most representative in Karachi, the corps commander, heads the DHA’s executive board. Excluding the two new phases, DHA Karachi comprises an area of approximately 9,000 acres. There are also six cantonment boards within the city that are administered by the military. All told, the institution owns 5pc of all land — that too, prime land — in Karachi, making it one of the major players in the city’s real estate and its associated politics.

According to social scientist Ayesha Siddiqa, “Wherever the army has a physical presence, it has a habit of expanding its boundary inch by inch, and it always does that in collusion with civilian authorities at the time of political rule. Plus the Sindh government is weak — it wants to keep the GHQ on its side.”

Political expediency and commercial interests have conspired to trump the interests of citizens.

“The Sindh government has capitulated before the developers’ lobby,” said architect and social researcher Arif Hasan. “It’s the same in London, Mumbai and other cities too. The mantra of the market has changed the way land is looked at. It’s developed according to land value not according to social and environmental values. Lack of governance makes it worse here.”

Meanwhile, a military spokesman said that the corps commander’s presence at the meeting was “to give assurance to the government representatives that the army was willing to facilitate them in undertaking mega construction projects, including through the National Logistics Cell and the Frontier Works Organisation [both of which are military-controlled]”. He dismissed the contention that the army could in any way “pressure” the federal government to meet its financial obligations.

Published in Dawn, July 9th, 2014