OF all the success stories likely to be mentioned by historians as the achievements of my generation, none will be considered more striking than the assault on the Pakistani environment. Relentless, inexorable and without a thought to the consequences are the hallmarks of this offensive.

The philosophy behind this endeavour is notable for its simplicity. If there is a tree standing it must be cut down: and the older and shadier it is, the better. Judging by this animated hostility, it almost seems as if a standing tree is an affront to Pakistani manhood.

If there is an open spot of land it must be covered with concrete. Fifty odd years of cultural vandalism, fifty odd years of de-educating the nation, have ensured the glorification of cement and concrete as the prime national symbols of development (plus plastic replicas of Shaheen and Ghauri missiles). The idea that nature might also have something to do with human happiness seems alien to the Pakistani mind. That is why anything green, hilly or forested and the urge to assault it with cement becomes overwhelming.

The third pillar of this philosophy: if there is a stream or river it must be polluted with every kind of effluent imaginable.

We inherited some of the planet’s best water resources. The eternal snow of our highest mountains (some of the highest in the world), spectacular glaciers and then, from these sources, the life-giving Indus (without whose waters this land would be a desert) and the rivers of Punjab immortalised in song. Surely, there is some imperfection of soul which pushes us to defile these heavenly streams.

When the All-High was distributing His riches, He gave us no gold or diamonds or other minerals but In His wisdom three things: water, land and clear skies. We have been heedless of our patrimony.

This wilfulness can be seen in the way we have turned our cities into extended monuments to asphalt, the manner in which valuable farmland has been taken over by ‘housing societies’ — the army’s own housing authority, DHA, as much guilty of this as any private authority — and the ruthlessness with which the country is being deprived of what’s left of its forest cover.

Greed is not the only factor which explains this vandalisation. Some aspect of culture is at work here too because many of our planners and developers seem genuinely convinced that when they broaden a road, even when there is no need to do so, or when they raise a hideous building, when everyone concerned would be better off without it, they really think the cause of development is being served.

Take the almost unbelievably hideous expansion of the road from Kuthchery Square to Saddar in Rawalpindi. In order to carry out this expansion — ordered at the behest of a corps commander — trees on both sides of the road, some almost a hundred years old, were cut and the walls of all buildings on the way — including the Fatima Jinnah University, the Armoured Mess, the EME Mess, etc — knocked down and pushed inwards.

To what end? The traffic mess there is worse than ever while much of the leafiness for which Rawalpindi Saddar was famous is gone. (If one corps commanders can do this to one stretch of road, imagine the effect of a whole group of them on the country.)

From Faizabad to the Islamabad Club the double highway is good enough to take an armoured division. For some strange reason another lane is being added to it. Amongst other things, it will mean more cutting of trees.

Islamabad once a bucolic town has been turned into a vast construction site, all in the name of development. Green belts are being destroyed with a vengeance for the sake of more roads. Work on the new GHQ has started. This means more roads and more cars and more traffic mayhem. (Day-dreamers who may have thought that because of the earthquake and other demands on resources GHQ might shelve its plans for HQ-shifting obviously have little idea of how things work in the Islamic Republic.)

Nor is this confusion confined to Islamabad. All our cities are in a mess partly because, thanks to easy consumer credit, there has been a sharp surge in car ownership across the country. Planners call it development when they should know that public transport — transport for the masses — is development, not greater car ownership which, if you only remember global warming, is a curse.

Daewoo bus service connecting some of our major cities shows what can be done with public transport. It is convenient and efficient. We need more services of this sort and less of a fixation with motor cars. That’s the only way to ease traffic congestion and make things easier for the travelling public. But who’s interested and who cares for the public good?

In the form of Varan transport we had what could have become a model public transport for our cities. But vested interests killed it. The old mafia is back in control and you only have to get into one of their wagons running between ‘Pindi and Islamabad to realize how easy it is to be stripped of all self-respect, that’s how bad it is.

Our rail service, a gift of the Raj, used to be so good, almost a marvel. We have utterly destroyed it. The priority now is not how to fix the railways but how to sell off precious railway land. Over a hundred acres of railway land was given to a private club in Lahore. The investor concerned is making a packet but what good has it done the railways? No one knows.

This is the pattern being followed across the board: sell off state assets hurriedly in a less than transparent manner, all in the name of ‘privatization’, the new god we’ve been worshipping for some time at the hands of our IMF/World Bank masters. This is less privatization and more a loot sale, almost something like what happened in Russia after the fall of the Soviet empire, the only difference being that there were more assets to be looted in Russia.

Pakistan was always a divided society but now thanks to the unbridled capitalist system to which we are yoked the gap between rich and poor has widened to an extent almost obscene. The less privileged sections just get along while the rich are living it up like never before.

‘Enlightened moderation’ is the slogan bandied about by this government but there is nothing remotely enlightened or moderate about its economic policies. ‘Private affluence, public squalor’ was the celebrated phrase used by J. K. Galbraith to describe conditions under the more extreme forms of capitalism. Nothing describes conditions in Pakistan better.

While it is all partying for the richer classes, on the other side of the hill public services are breaking down. The various branches of administration are virtually paralysed. Justice is not to be hard unless you make it to the Supreme Court and catch the ear of the Chief Justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudry, a rare judge in Pakistan’s miserable judicial history.

(Long may he preside over the bench and long may his path be guided by sound judgment, wisdom and, what’s equally important, discretion. Even so, with all the goodwill in the world, what can a single man do?)

But leaving policy and administration aside, what will we bequeath the next generation? We didn’t invent our rivers, mountains and countryside. It lies not in our power to do so. These are God’s highest gifts to us and we have no right to destroy them. So let’s be a bit more careful about our trees and forests and forest-covered hills. For if they are gone all the ‘development’ in the world will not be enough to save us or to earn us our salvation.

And while we are it, will someone please do something about that biggest curse of all, the plastic shopping bag? What prevents us from doing something about it?