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August 18, 2002
Changing lifestyles
Arif Hasan reviews the changes that have taken place in the lifestyles of people living in Karachi and their impact on society
DUE to these changes, there has been a change in lifestyles, supported by the communication revolution. Nuclear families are replacing joint family systems. Clan and tribal organizations that the migrants had brought with them have ceased to be effective and are being replaced by new community organizations or by a dependence on state institutions.
The communication revolution has made the television and video an important entertainment tool. The television is the main source of information for the vast majority, according to the 1998 census 79 per cent of Karachi households, more than 50 per cent of whom have access to some form of cable. Thus, video shops and cable operators, all too expensive in the formal sector for the lower- and lower-middle-income population, have become a necessity.
“Santa Barbara”, “The bold and the beautiful”, MTV and all variety of news is now available in homes in all low-income settlements of Karachi and in the teashops and eating places located in these areas. These have brought about a clash of values and cultural confusion. It has also brought about a generation gap which seems unbridgeable and is one of the major reasons for an increase in honour killings of women in first generation urban families.
Liberalization and the communication revolution have also brought the corporate culture to Karachi. There is a great demand for information technology professionals, operators and technicians not only for the local market but also for employment abroad. The training for these professions is provided both by the government and private institutions.
In the case of government institutions, this training is affordable to low-income groups but is on too small a scale to service the demand. As such, only those who are exceptional students can get into government institutions. Private institutions are far too expensive and only the rich can afford them. Thus, a large gap has been created between demand and formal sector supply.
The corporate culture has introduced an air of affluence in the city which was unknown before. Golf clubs and various recreational and cultural facilities have been developed and are sponsored by companies for their clients, employees and for advertisement purposes. Unlike previously, these activities are performed in new locations in elite areas or five-star hotels and not in municipal or public buildings in the inner city.
As a result, the inner city as a space for multi-class entertainment is dead. These corporate sector promoted activities and the glamour and pomp that surrounds them is in sharp contrast to the physical and social conditions in lower- and lower-middle-income settlements. There is an increased feeling of insecurity among the promoters of these activities and so they and the corporate sector employees and clients are surrounded by security systems and armed guards. This is in sharp contrast to the Karachi of the pre-liberalization period.
Liberalization has also meant the introduction of fast food chain stores and the popularization of various consumer items. McDonalds, Pizza Hut and other food chains have opened branches all over the city. Huge advertisements, colourful and well-lit structures dominate the urban landscape and dwarf badly-constructed, badly-lit businesses and homes.
New post-modern buildings of the corporate sector, with posh interiors, stand in sharp contrast to the sedate government buildings of the previous decades. Since a lot of young people from Karachi’s informal settlements work in this environment, ties, white or blue shirts and the “corporate haircut” are becoming a common phenomenon and everyone knows what a credit card is and wishes to acquire it.
What has been described above is the emergence of a First World economy and sociology with a Third World wage and political structure. It is the emergence of new aspirations related to consumerism and the desire for belonging to the “contemporary” world as portrayed by the media but without the means of achieving these aspirations and desires through formal institutions and processes. Thus the most important role (and it is a new one) that the informal sector is trying to play today, and is likely to continue to play for the foreseeable future, is to help bridge this aspirations-means gap. In Karachi, a whole new world has emerged to do just this.
Although the younger generation has new aspirations, state culture and family pressures prevent or hinder them from pursuing their desires. There is a major conflict between the individualism of the young and the conservative social values of the older generation that seek to protect the joint family and clan systems. This is one of the major reasons, apart from financial, why young Pakistanis wish to migrate abroad.
According to a survey, 38 per cent Pakistanis wish to migrate. The figure for Karachi, therefore, must surely be higher. Getting a visa, a job and establishing connections after one migrates to a First World country is not an easy task for young Karachiites from lower-or lower-middle-income settlements. Middlemen have emerged to cater to this need and help in acquiring genuine and/or forged visas and arranging jobs abroad.
Newspaper reports suggest that these operators have contacts in visa sections in the embassies and that large sums of money change hands in this trade. For acquiring an American or Japanese visa, young Pakistanis claim to have paid up to Rs200,000 ($3,333) to middlemen. An entire street in the inner city of Karachi deals with arranging the necessary papers for migration and employment and the number of middlemen and clients in it are increasing every day.
All Karachi neighbourhoods, including low-income and even marginalized ones, have not one but many video shops in them. All these shops rent out pirated videos.... All attempts at curbing piracy have failed. If they were to succeed, the vast majority of Karachiites would not be able to hire video cassettes. The same holds true for the purchase of audio cassettes as well.
More recently, cable television has also made a big appearance in Karachi. Most of the cable companies are illegal and informally use the telephone network for providing home connections. They service all areas of Karachi irrespective of class. The telephone department officials and the police are informally paid by the cable companies to let this happen. The cost of a cable connection varies from Rs450 per month for a connection from a legal company to Rs150 from an illegal one. At a modest estimate there are over 150,000 people involved in video and cable related trade.
All low-income settlements (formal or informal) have video halls in them. These are large asbestos roofed shacks which show video films of all varieties. The films are advertised on the notice board outside the hall along with the names of the stars and are held at regular hours. In the interval tea and potato chips are available. Under law this is an illegal activity but it provides entertainment to the male-only day-wage labour that lives around the port and wholesale markets. The video hall operators consider this as a “joint venture” between them, the police and the Excise department officials.
The most important informal sector activity today is related to information technology. Training schools, actually no more than tuition centres, have opened up informally in all low- and lower-middle income areas. These centres require no qualifications for admission and offer no qualifications either. Their trainees are employed after having been tested by the prospective employers. If they are well-trained, the employers prefer them to qualified persons since they can pay them a much lower salary for the same work.
Similarly, there is a whole sector that deals with pirating computer software and marketing it to both informal and formal outlets. All attempts at curbing this activity have also failed and as a result both international companies and the government have simply given up. The cost of such softwares can be as little as five per cent of its original value. Without this sector, information technology would also be unaffordable to the lower- or even middle-income groups in Karachi.
New lifestyles promoted by the media and the corporate sector have also had an influence on the lifestyles of the poorer sections of the population. They wish to consume Seven Up, Coca Cola and beef-burgers. They are interested in designer shirts and brand name perfumes. However, these are all unaffordable to them. But then fake Seven Up and Coca Cola, costing half the price of the real ones, are manufactured in informal factories and marketed in a big way in the original bottles. Fake brand name perfumes and fake designer shirts are also manufactured and marketed. A cheap alternative to the beef burger is available in every Karachi locality.
Apart from the emergence of these new informal sector activities, the old ones have also undergone a change. Informal developers are now forced to develop their settlements very far from the centre of the city because land in the centre has become an important asset to its owners. The diminishing purchasing power of the new migrants to the city means smaller lots of land, narrower lanes and less open space. Health and education institutions established by the informal sector in the older settlements have come of age and struggle to become formal institutions and try increasingly successfully to access government poverty alleviation funds (also a by-product of structural adjustment policies) and related programmes. However, they find it difficult to establish themselves in the new settlements. This is because these settlements, unlike the older ones when they were established, do not dominate the politics or the economy of the city. They also contain a smaller percentage of the city population and as such politicians are less interested in them. They are also far away from the city and can be ignored more easily by local government and entrepreneurs. Given inflation and recession, their buying power is also limited.
The future of the informal sector in Karachi is difficult to predict. However, some trends are clear. Links of the informal workshops with formal sector industry are slowly being eroded except with those industries (such as garments) which have an export potential. It is feared that even these links would cease to be when formal sector garment factories are set up through local and foreign investment. The process has begun and since these industries have sophisticated machinery, they would be far less labour-intensive. This would result in further unemployment.
The informal sector is now moving into producing cheap consumer goods for the poorer sections of the population. This means less profit and marginalization from formal sector processes and economy. At the same time, the state sector is rapidly shrinking, specially in the provision of physical development and social services....
The above trends are creating unemployment and this would increase till such time as formal sector private investment replaces the informal sector job market. This is nowhere in sight and as a result, the rich-poor divide is increasing, leading to violence and crime. The worst affected are those sections of the new generation of consolidated lower- and lower-middle-income settlements whose aspirations to belong to this new world cannot be fulfilled.
Excerpted with permission from
The unplanned revolution
By Arif Hasan
City Press, 316 Madina City Mall, Abdullah Haroon Road, Karachi-74400. Tel: 021-5650623, 5213916.
Email: cp@citypress.cc Website:
www.citypress.cc
ISBN 969-8380-57-4
269pp. Rs395
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