KARACHI: An island of prosperity cannot be created amidst widespread poverty; the government has to give due attention to other parts of Sindh if it really wants to develop Karachi. This holistic approach will not only help tackle the city’s growing population but will reduce inequalities and conflict, an essential step for development and social well-being.

These points were raised by experts during a dialogue held on Thursday at the department of architecture of NED University’s city campus. The subject was a recent joint preliminary report of the World Bank and Sindh government that depicts a grim picture of the metropolis.

Starting off the discussion, Naseer Memon, the head of Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO), the co-organiser of the event, shared some details of the yet-to-be finalised Diagnostic Report on Karachi, and said that the report highlighted the key challenges that the city had been facing for a long time.

“It refers to the index for the world’s most liveable cities which ranks Karachi very low on the list due to poor services and urban planning,” he said, adding that the city’s degeneration could be traced back to 1946.

On factors negatively affecting the city, he said that there had to be a limit on its population growth and certain conditions could be introduced for new settlers. “For instance, the Musharraf regime negotiated with the Baloch over restricting property and voting rights when he started working on the Gwadar port project. Second, Karachi can only prosper through integrated development of the entire province. One needs to look into the reasons which attract people to Karachi and these are lack of employment opportunities and basic facilities [elsewhere],” he explained.

Seconding his views, Dr Hafeez Jamali, a social anthropologist, said that military operations in Fata and the government’s lack of support to the agriculture sector were some other reasons which forced people to move to Karachi.

He also spoke about the need to rethink the concept of development, which in the case of World Bank was only focused on economic growth. “We should be mindful of the bread and butter issues and people’s social rights. We should move away from the concept of shining cities without giving proper attention to civic issues,” he observed.

Karachi, he believed, had been a victim of injustice since the country’s independence as it was gradually abandoned by the federal government and powers were shifted to Punjab.

Another blow to the city, he said, was deliberate propagation of ethnic politics to counter progressive forces.

Seasoned urban planner Arif Hasan said the most important thing about the WB report was that all its seven parts were authored by foreign experts and had no reference to any in-depth interviews required for surveys.

“The WB is not here to serve us but to give us a loan. There are issues in taking loans and it’s our job to understand them and do proper homework,” he said, citing some past WB-funded projects in Karachi. The blame for the failure of these projects, he said, was equally shared by the government.

Chairperson of the NED University’s architecture and urban planning department Dr Noman Ahmed regretted that though many research-based documents were prepared for the city’s development, none of them were ever implemented.

Published in Dawn, December 30th, 2016