KARACHI: Eminent development experts Arif Hasan and Yasmin Lari on Sunday said there were certain factors that hindered the city from becoming a jewel of Pakistan.

Mr Hasan said the chief hindrance in making Karachi a truly modern megacity was the fact that the city’s matters were being controlled by the market and not politicians and the bureaucracy.

“The city’s important matters are being controlled by the market, while Lahore is developing because it is being controlled by politicians and bureaucracy as it should be,” said Mr Hasan while speaking at a session of the arts and ideas festival organised by the Sindh Madressatul Islam University (SMIU) on the concluding day.

Four-day SMIU festival concludes

Mr Hasan said there were 36 market associations in Empress Market alone. Similar situation was elsewhere, thus virtually ruling the metropolis.

He said a comprehensive planning was highly needed to develop the metropolitan city. Besides, he added, the citizens of Karachi should come forward and own the city.

Mr Hasan said there were numerous reasons for the destruction of the old heritage of Karachi. Among them, he added, the fact remained there that those historical buildings and places were located in the areas where it was extremely hard to save them.

“Unless we get certain strong institutions, no positive change in the city is forthcoming. While, the institutions which we had in the past have already become history,” he said.

He said there was no master plan offered by the Karachi Development Authority. Besides, certain legislation related to the development issues had messed up the situation further.

He asked universities and students to play their role for the city’s betterment.

Mr Hasan said Karachi could not become a world-class city with the present propositions. He added it needed better planning, modern modes of transport, construction of footpaths etc.

Ms Lari, chief of the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, said the city was saturated with ever-increasing population, but it offered no better means of transport.

Besides, she added, supply of clean drinking water was an issue while the sewerage had broken down.

“Trees are being cut, footpaths have disappeared and circular railway system is a thing of the glorious past,” she said.

She said the city needed toilets, particularly for its female population. Besides, once a rich city, now suffered from abject poverty.

Ms Lari said most of the heritage buildings in the city were stone-built and needed heavy funds to get restored.

“Every citizen should play one’s part to make Karachi a clean and better city.”

She also called for eradication of “mafias” to improve the public transport system.

The festival concluded after four eventful days which were decorated by international lectures given by foreign scholars, distinguished lectures by national experts and several other activities in which faculty and students both enthusiastically participated.

Dr Muhammad Ali Shaikh, vice chancellor of the SMIU, said the prime minister would place the foundation stone of the university’s new campus in Malir, where the SMIU had got 100 acres.

He said the project would cost Rs12 billion and initially Rs1.63bn had been allocated.

“It is a matter of a few years when the SMIU will have a new sprawling campus in Malir,” he said.

He said the key purpose of the festival was to familiarise the youth with new ideas that could help them succeed in their future life.

He said the festival was organised on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Pakistan’s independence and the new generation would have to play a positive role to make the country a modern nation in the world. He said the event would be an annual feature.

Delivering the distinguished lecture, Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui, federal secretary for planning and development and former commissioner of Karachi, said administrative accountability was needed more than financial accountability.

He said many projects were pompously inaugurated but because of little follow-up they became non-functional.

“The same has been happening in Karachi. A number of such projects have met the same fate in Karachi. Unless administrative accountability is begun, the country cannot progress in real terms,” said Mr Siddiqui.

He said the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was an extremely important project for the country because construction of roads was the very foundation of a country’s development.

“Through this project Pakistan will link with other countries of the world, and it would fetch wealth in terms of increased exports. CPEC will help increase the country’s GDP by 23 per cent,” he said.

He dispelled the impression that more Chinese than Pakistanis were employed with the CPEC projects.

Dr Weimin Delcroix-Tang, a professor at the University of Sanya, Hainan, China, presented her essay on the ‘double-sidedness’ of the oceanic culture of China’s tropical island Hainan.

She said located in between the South China Sea, the eastern and western, marine and continental, indigenous and Hakka cultures met and interacted.

In a session on women and gender issues in Pakistan, Shaista Muhammad Ali, honorary adviser on cultural and gender affairs, SMIU, Mehnaz Rehman of Aurat Foundation and scholar Khalida Ghous spoke.

They called upon mothers to keep their children away from being affected with gender discrimination. They said anti-harassment law helped keeping safe both women and men. They called upon the government to effectively implement the pro-women laws.

Naheed Memon, chairperson, Sindh Board of Investment, advised the youth to start their own businesses instead of waiting for jobs. She said expertise was more important for starting a business than wealth.

Dr Sahar Ansari, poet and educationist, spoke on the creative and philosophical aspects of Dewan-i-Ghalib, Quratulain Hyder’s Aag ka Darya, and Ashfaq Ahmed’s Zaviya.

He said the era of Ghalib was full of bards and masters such as Ibrahim Zauq, Momin Khan Momin and Bahadur Shah Zafar, but Ghalib earned more respect and fame as he had greater imagination and had mastery in reflecting his thought process.

He said Aag Ka Darya covered the subcontinent’s history spread over 2,500 years stuffed with a fantastic style of narration. He said Ashfaq Ahmed was inspired by Shaikh Sa’adi.

Ameena Sayyid, managing director, Oxford University Press, Pakistan, spoke on the rampant book piracy issues in Pakistan. She said it deprived writers of royalty they deserved and also cost publishers heavily.

She said reading habit had not faded away in Pakistan, but it was a country of many cultures and entities, thus, the standards varied vis-à-vis topics of books.

During the festival, some 40 sessions were held and attracted good audiences. They included lectures by international and national speakers, panel discussions, screening of documentaries, photography and painting exhibitions and singing and quiz competitions. Shah Latif’s seven heroines were depicted in tableaus during four days.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2017