KARACHI, May 18: “When people say what has happened to this land which was so peaceful earlier, I say to them that the past was like the ‘peace of the dead’,” said architect, town planner and researcher Arif Hasan at the start of his keynote address on ‘The eclipse of feudalism in Pakistan’ at the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology’s (Szabist) 19th National Research Conference here on Saturday.

Mr Hasan gave various examples of how he has noticed change in the people of Pakistan over the years. He said that in 1968, a man in a bullock cart who had accidentally blocked their car’s path apologised for it profusely. “But does anyone care when cutting your path now?” he asked.

As the country’s main source of income was agriculture, rural areas were the only place for farmer. With the advent of industrialization, tractors, thrashers, fertilisers and pesticides came along. “Therefore, experts such as the weaver, chamar, kumar and sunar found no use of living in rural areas and migrated to cities. Such kind of migration to urban areas was forced, like a push,” he said. “It was not out of choice like earlier when people from able societies only opted for it to improve their lives,” he explained. “With the Suzuki coming here, marketing of goods also changed. The bullock carts vanished. The location of many mandi towns changed so did the way of trading,” he said.

“Globalisation has helped people talk to other people living far away to change trends in their own areas,” he pointed out.

“The 1960s saw the creation of polytechnics and vocational schools. We also have a big university set up now, but all our educational institutions are like castles built on sand with no support from below,” he regretted.

Tasneem Siddiqui, the founder of Khuda ki Basti, the other guest speaker, spoke about the perceptions about Pakistan. “There are two perceptions here basically,” he said, “one is that Pakistan is in dire straits and the sec-ond that the country is in transition and transitional societies have their problems.”

Mr Siddiqui said that Pakistan with its centres of excellence, flyovers, bridges, dams, airports, etc, looked quite grand from the outside, but it lacked in basic things such as primary education, sanitation, water supply and housing. “We know how to build structures but don’t know what to do with them afterwards. School buildings are there but the education system is poor. Hospitals are there but we can’t run them properly. Flyovers are there but we don’t know how to control traffic,” he said.

“We have done no research when planning development. We haven’t spoken to the people about their needs and problems and we have in the process ignored all our natural resources to make our focus lopsided and increase our dependence on foreign donors, hence multiplying our problems and making us dependant on foreign donors,” he concluded.

Dr Riaz Ahmed Shaikh, head of Social Sciences at Szabist, Dr Amanat Ali Jalbani, its VP (academics), Dr Saqib Rizavi, its president, also spoke.