How much of Islamabad is 'planned'?

The capital is well known as a planned city. But there seems to be a lot going on in a rather unplanned manner.

The most recent example is the new monument-cum-fountain that came up recently at a corner of the intersection of Faisal Avenue and Jinnah Avenue. Islamabadites hardly had time to sink in its beauty (it's quite a majestic scene at night) when they were told that the monument will have to be removed to make way for an underpass being planned for that intersection.

Removing or shifting a Rs3.8 million monument (and one in which the CDA is reportedly bound by agreement to keep at the same place for 10 years!) is going to incur extra costs unnecessarily. Where were the "planners" when approval for the monument was being given? The fact that another fountain already exists in the same area hardly 50 metres away speaks volumes about the planning or the lack of it in the installation of the monument.

An earlier episode of ill-planning pertains to the disastrous plantation of 260 date palms along the major arteries of the city - a project which cost Rs2.6 million - and their removal hardly two months later because they could not withstand the cold temperatures in the capital. Surely we don't need "planners" to tell us that date palms can only survive in warmer climates! An official report on the fiasco is being tabled in the Senate.

These two episodes show how insistent CDA can be in implementing certain "pet" projects regardless of their feasibility (economic, environmental and social). Fortunately two other much more expensive projects, viz., the Rs210 million safari train project at Shakarparian and the chairlift project on the Margallas, the feasibility of which had been openly questioned, were recently shelved in time before they were executed.

In fact, a plethora of development projects (e.g., science city, tunnel through the Margallas, mini-Oxford city, several underpasses, etc.) are being announced left and right but many Islamabadites wonder if all these projects are being processed with proper planning, coordination and comprehensive feasibility studies being first undertaken.

Take for instance, the recently announced intended establishment of a new industrial estate. The old existing industrial estate in I-9 and I-10 sectors has turned out to be an environmental disaster, although it was supposed to have been a "planned" one.

It is located too close to residential areas, causing the whole area to be enveloped in a thick cloud of smoke, sometimes black and sometimes white, emitted by factories which are not being taken to task for causing this hazardous air pollution. Who can tell whether the new "planned" industrial estate will not cause similar kinds of "unforeseen" problems in future?

If this is the state of "planning" that has been going on within the better looked after sectoral area of Islamabad (zone I and II), one can imagine the state of affairs in the non-sectoral area (zone IV and V) located in the eastern part of the city. (Zone III comprises the Margalla Hills National Park and other ranges and forest areas falling between Margalla Hills and north of Murree Road.)

Only last month it was reported that a London-based consultant firm had been awarded the contract to prepare a new master plan for Islamabad, with special focus on zone IV. The latter comprises Islamabad Park and the rural periphery wedged between Murree Road towards the north and Lehtrar Road towards the south, extending beyond Simly Road upto the ICT limits in the northeast (excluding the Margalla Hills National Park and Rawal Lake). But this master plan revision exercise is being done decades late.

The Greek architects who prepared Islamabad's original master plan in 1960 had only designed the planning for a limited area of the city, viz., the existing sectoral areas. A revision of the Islamabad master plan was done in the 1980s but it did not lay out the design plans for the non-sectoral areas.

According to the Islamabad Capital Territory Zoning Regulation 1992, in which the capital city was divided into five zones, the non-sectoral zones were supposed to be "master- planned" and the existing urban sprawl in these areas organized into planned urban development with housing schemes being encouraged. But unplanned construction and slums seem to be the only kind of development that has mostly been taking place in these zones.

According to a CDA website, the total ICT area is 906 square kilometres. This, according to the website, includes Islamabad Proper, Islamabad Park and Islamabad Rural Areas - an area equivalent to the five marked zones of the ICT. But the same website says that the "specified area" of Islamabad is 3,626 square kilometres! This means that the ICT actually consists of 2,720 square kilometres more of so far un-zoned and undeveloped territory.

However, some housing schemes, e.g., those near the site of the yet-to-be constructed new Islamabad Airport, have already started coming up in these areas. Does this mean that all these "unplanned" construction will simply be "regularized" whenever the master plans for this part of the capital territory are drawn up?

Logically speaking, master plans for the non-sectoral areas in zone IV and V should have been prepared when the land was undeveloped, not now when all sorts of unplanned construction and housing projects, including even a whole new town, Bhara Kahu, have sprouted up. Incorporating and regularizing all this "unplanned" construction (which is reported to comprise some 70,000 to 80,000 acres in zone IV alone) into the new master plan that is expected to be completed soon cannot be passed off as "planned" development.

Only the sectoral zones of Islamabad city, as laid out by the Greek architects in 1960, exemplifies any sort of planned development. It is quite clear that no new development design plans beyond the sectoral areas have been drawn up since then and Islamabad seems to be growing as unplanned as any other city in the country.

Is Lalu's Bihar worse than Allawi's Iraq?

Curiously enough, some of us in India who routinely accuse Bihar's rustic leader Lalu Prasad Yadav of fomenting election violence happen to be the ones who have eagerly endorsed the elections conducted last week in occupied Iraq.

In a similar vein, the very supporters of President George W. Bush, who had rallied to his defence against highly credible charges of electoral fraud in the 2000 election, were the ones who raised Cain when similar, but not any more serious, hanky-panky was detected in the Ukraine presidential elections recently.

There is more than a grain of truth in the lament that historically democracy has been everybody's concubine. Caesars were democratically elected by Roman Senators who, however, themselves thrived on a notoriously inhuman slave society. Hitler and Mussolini could not be successful fascists without the help of popular electoral support.

To tinker with ballot boxes and to use state power to subvert the process by which common folk express their choices would seem to be a relatively new phenomenon even though it has been around in India for a few decades. But how can we arbitrarily support one fraud and rush to reject the other?

Who are these Indians whose contempt for Lalu Yadav is as intense as their affinity with Iyad Allawi of Iraq who they do not know from Adam and yet see as a saviour of democracy in Iraq? Is there a caste issue here since Laloo Yadav is a leader of lower caste Yadavs' and wields the electorally crucial support of the poorer Muslims?

It would be preposterous of course to lump all upper caste Hindus as supporters of the US occupation of Iraq. But if we have to look for pro-American Indians then an overwhelming majority of them would be upper caste Hindus, mostly typical supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party. And because the BJP is as much a mentality as it is a political party, its ideology pervades the Indian system, in which the bureaucracy and the media are equal stakeholders.

Here's a specific instance from an election coverage in Bihar to help extrapolate a more general picture of how the media usually works to take sides behind the veneer of objectivity, inevitably reflecting a caste bias.

In the state polls in the mid-1990s, on assignment for a Western news agency, we were "tipped off" about looming violence in Gaya, a hundred miles from state capital of Patna, on election day. A former centre of Buddhist learning, Gaya is today a Maoist hub.

A TV cameraman, who had an obvious soft corner for the BJP, was the leader of the group since he was the one who had brought news of impending violence whispered to him by a 'reliable' police source. Some of us did wonder though at our easy, made to order conclusions. If the police were aware of arriving violence shouldn't they be even better prepared to ward it off, instead of helping gullible (or conniving) media-men in finding locations of electoral violence.

Anyway, when we reached Gaya, at the crack of dawn, there was already plenty of evidence to suggest large-scale electoral violence there. A schoolteacher, who was a Brahmin, came forward in tattered clothes and held up what looked like a destroyed ballot box. There were ballot papers strewn all over the classroom, a makeshift election booth. Elsewhere we found ballot papers floating neatly in a pond with a few ballot boxes flung casually to complete the picture.

Then came small batches of slogan-shouting BJP supporters who were also joined by some socialist sympathizers, both proclaiming how there had been widespread violence in Bihar. A quick check with the Delhi bureau of the news agency revealed that a similar account was coming in from the Press Trust of India and possibly also the United News of India. But their stories were confined to violence in Gaya.

By evening it was official that contrary to widespread fears, fuelled no doubt by the media, Bihar had actually voted quite peacefully, barring of course the strange incident in Gaya. But it was already too late. Pictures of the Gaya 'outrage' being the only ones our cameraman had taken, were already on BBC news.

This is how Bihar was reported then, and this is how it being reported today. This is not to say that Lalu Yadav is God's gift to democracy. He has done little to improve the lot of his Muslim supporters. And he has done far less for the really hapless and downtrodden Dalits. His party is crawling with powerful criminals and mafia dons. But this the way the cookie crumbles in other states too, in other parties as well.

So why do some Indians who mock Bihar as a violent, lawless state of India, rush to greet Iyad Allawi's strange coronation first and then tamely accept subsequent elections in the war-ravaged and completely devastated country like Iraq?

When the Ukraine Supreme Court invalidated Ukraine's presidential election, problems cited by the court included inaccurate voting lists, precinct totals that exceeded the number of registered voters, and a host of bugs in the electronic system for counting votes. These and similar problems were equally prevalent in the US presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 and probably altered the election outcome in both cases.

Why do we have different yardsticks to determine a fair election? Is there a pattern emerging, where definitions of democracy change with our class and caste interests?

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At the height of the tsunami tragedy, scores of individuals and young couples rushed to look for orphaned children to adopt. Others sent money, food, clothes and tents to tend to the survivors. There is, however, never a moment when millions of Indians are not in need of one or all of these things. In a word we are looking at grinding poverty as a form of ceaseless tsunamis.

Now grassroots journalist P. Sainath has come up with another startling comparison. The number of homes destroyed in Nagapattinam, which bore the brunt of the devastation in Tamil Nadu - 30,300. The number of homes destroyed by the Congress-NCP government in Mumbai in its slum-clearing drive - 84,000. "How agonised we are about how people die. How untroubled we are about how they live," says Sainath, whose stories about the wretched of the earth never fail to create a ripple or two.

What price prices?

Oil prices went up to more than Rs 42-plus a few days ago. Now the gas rates, you may be glad to know, have also risen by a whopping 8.25 per cent. The tanoori roti is already Rs 3 per piece. Don't be surprised if tomorrow you have to pay an extra rupee for your rotis and naans. And if your salary has been constant for the last five years, it is your bother and not the prime minister's. And it is not the roti alone.

There are other things, all other things, which will cost you more and more and more and more until you, a middle class bum like me, give up the ghost.

And that reminds me. I had to have a spinal operation. The surgeon's fee was a cool 60,000. Now how many of us have that kind of money? You bet not one in a hundred thousand, five hundred thousand or five million. I did not have it, either. So I had to borrow right, left and centre. I think I will need another operation by the time I have repaid all those who were foolish enough to trust me with their money. The poor must have no spines. You must be spineless, gutless. So that you can, when the time comes, die in peace and rest in peace.

When I was a child, petrol was Rs 4 to the gallon -- four-and-a-half litres for four rupees. Just imagine! Once one of my uncles took me to Multan for Rs 32. How much will it cost you to drive to that city in a Morrise Oxford? Be happy in your poverty and multiply like flies.

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The following piece, taken from The Times, January 26, it is being reproduced here for your manoranjan:

As the Home Secretary vowed to crack down on alcohol-fuelled violence, his local chief constable voiced his support for the planned relaxation of the licensing laws.

Andy Hayman, Chief Constable of Norfolk, has criticised politicians and other chief constables for being "premature" in their opposition to the move, which comes into effect in November. He admitted that he was ashamed of the night-time antics of some Norwich drinkers, but said that the police and local councils had a duty to help the responsible majority to benefit from the change.

Mr Hayman said that the police, local authorities and the drink industry had to do a lot of preparatory work to prepare the nation for flexible licensing laws, but that police had to make sure that responsible people who welcomed the change could benefit from more liberal legislation.

He said: "I'm not saying the behaviour of some people is not a problem, and that binge drinking does not cause problems. If you come to Norwich on a Friday or Saturday night, you will see things going on that will make you feel ashamed".

He defended the Licensing Act, explaining that the legislation appeared to be based on a majority of people wanting it, and said that police had to accept that lifestyles had changed. "I want industry to succeed in Norwich and I want Norwich to be the recognised night spot of East Anglia" he said "whether you like it or not, these big pubs are packed at the weekends and there is a demand out there -- a client base that has got to be met".

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There is this piece in Alan Coren's Notebook, also taken from The Times, January 26:

You will have seen that the Qualification and Curriculum Authority has recommended written school tests in sex education; what you will not have seen is an example, because it was leaked only to me.

1. Two vans are approaching one another, van A is travelling at 30 mph, Van B is travelling at 45 mph, and the vans are nine miles apart. In the back of Van A are John and Jayne, who normally reach a satisfactory conclusion after 8 min 7 sec. In the back of Van B are Wayne and Kylie, who take 6 min 8 sec. What will be the distance between the two vans when:

(a) John and Jayne finish?

(b) Wayne and Kylie finish?

You may use a calculator.

2. Tom is taller than Maureen, but shorter than Mary. Mary is shorter than Arthur, but thinner than Jim. Freda is fatter than Jim, but taller than Tom or Arthur. Tom prefers Jim to Maureen, and Maureen prefers Arthur to Eric. Jim prefers Mary to Freda, but Eric to Maureen. Arthur is left-handed.

Draw a diagram in which everybody under the dulvet is happy.

3. Edward is fourteen years younger than his father, but two years older than his sister and one year younger than his twin sisters. The sum of the ages of their three mothers is the same as the age of their paternal grandfather, which is two and a half times that of their father.

How old is their father?

You must use a rubber.

How the times have changed. And The Times.

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How do they write their editorials in The Times these days? They were quite constipated until about a generation ago but are now beginning to unbend just a little bit. Read the following piece (January 26) and decide for yourself:

STRANGE BREW: Tea is proving a positive force in prisons Some punishments really are cruel and unusual. It is one thing to take away all personal freedoms. But taking away tea? To the British that is one insult too many. Do not fret for the imprisoned, though. Not only are Her Majesty's prisons happy to supply inmates with the traditional four o'clock refreshment, they have started to offer daily doses of its hip cousin, herbal tea.

For the past four years, Wandsworth jail has supplied its inmates with speciality herbal and fruit teas. Downview, High Down and Lewes prisons are now doing the same. It seems inmates bring news of soothing valerian and calming chamomile with them when they switch facilities. So now, herbal tea is not just for criminally annoying, but technically law-abiding, yoga fanatics.

It is progressive of prisons to acknowledge the stress of being behind bars. Not incidentally, Tranquillity tea, an alternative to pharmaceuticals, is the most popular herbal request. It is naturally decaffeinated, so guards appreciate its mellowing effect almost as much as prisoners. Surely it is a matter of time until jails hone their herbal delivery system. For some inmates, ginger tea will work best. Big on taste, and just a little spicy, it provides the little thrill some recidivists require. Detoxifying blends are effective, too.

There is nothing like dandelion and burdock to get the criminal itch out of your system. For those serving a life sentence, when the strain of long days and no chance of appeal is just too much, there is Triple Ginseng Plus, a blend that includes the "zing" of lemon grass. It is made by Dr Stuarts, a brand whose slogan is nothing if not rehabilitating: "There's a better you inside."

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As Charles Dickens wrote in one of his novels, "At least that is over and done with, as they say in Turkey when they cut the wrong man's head." I would have written: "At least that is over and done with, as they say in Australia when they cut the right men's heads." This about sums up Pakistan's performance in the just concluded Victoria Bitter (VB) tri series.

The umpiring left a whole lot to be desired, especially in the first game in Melbourne. Neutral umpires? My foot! One of the men who officiated in the first of the two VB finals was shocking. He had no business to be anywhere near a cricket field.My question is: If a cricketer questions an umpire's decision, he is punished with either having his match fee reduced or with a ban for one or more matches. Why, then, can't a blundering umpire be similarly penalised?

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Basant in Lahore has been marvellous this year despite the bad weather. The only fly in the ointment was television. Both PTV and a private channel were outrageous contrived humour and silly music never made a Basant.

Visiting protesters

Karachi attracts visitors from all over the country. They come to this port city for various purposes, including employment, business, education and medical treatment. Recently, people from the interior of Sindh have started to come to the provincial capital for an altogether different reason - to protest over the injustice which has come to dominate every field of life in the rural hinterland of the province.

Karachi has been host lately to a number of protests against the Kalabagh dam staged by political parties based in rural Sindh. But it was the arrival of groups of government employees, like those of the food and other departments, here to observe hunger strikes outside the Karachi Press Club that marked the beginning of the new trend.

After the emergence of a stronger Sindhi press in the 1990s, such groups took to staging protest demonstrations and token hunger strikes outside press clubs of their own cities and towns. When their cries fell on deaf ears, they made the Hyderabad Press Club a centre of their activities, turning the place into something of a Hyde Park, where protests are staged on a daily basis by one group or another. When demonstrators found no compensation there, they made Karachi their next station of protest. Here, too, the most they get are hollow promises made by ministers.

Recently, a group of first year students of the Quaid-i-Awam University of Science and Technology, Nawabshah, came to the city to draw attention of the education authorities to their problems. They said that they were forced to appear in annual examinations after their nine-month course had been completed in just two months. They deplored that their protests in Nawabshah cut no ice with the authorities and alleged that the vice-chancellor and other officials of the university had no interest in raising the standard of education.

When they returned to Nawabshah, they had to reportedly face the wrath of the university administration and five of their leaders were arrested on a complaint of the students' adviser of the university.

For the love of art

Someone who visited the V.M. Art Gallery at the Rangoonwala Centre in Dhoraji after years was pleasantly surprised to find that from one room the gallery has grown into a three-room display place with better lighting arrangements. An exhibition of selected works from the country's four leading art schools - the National College of Arts from Lahore, the Karachi School of Arts, Central Institute of Arts and Crafts and the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture - made impressive viewing.

In some centrally located art galleries the opening of an exhibition becomes a social event where most people come to see who is there and to be seen amongst the movers and shakers of the art world. At times, artists feel neglected, because instead of appreciating the merits of works on display, most people spend time exchanging pleasantries. So, the best time to have a good look at the paintings is on any day after the opening.

Another familiar aspect about art exhibitions is the stereotype photographs that appear in some evening papers, where young ladies are asked to stand next to a painting and pretend as if they are feasting their eyes on it. The camera is focussed more on them than on the artwork on display.

Occupied schools

It emerged at a recent meeting in the Sindh education department that even government officials did not know exactly how many buildings and premises were occupied by paramilitary Rangers, police and other law-enforcement agencies. A colleague reports that provincial education secretary Hashim Leghari, who presided over the meeting, wasn't particularly happy when no executive district officer (district heads of the education department) could submit a list of colleges, schools and other educational institutions occupied by the law-enforcement agencies.

The provincial education secretary was said to have asked for a list of such buildings and said that the law-enforcement agencies would be told to vacate them.

Some time back, the Sindh Home Minister, Rauf Siddiqui, submitted a list of 55 buildings that have been occupied by the Rangers and the police. Most of these buildings are owned by the education department. A senior Rangers official issued a press statement soon after the list appeared in newspapers and said that his agency would vacate the buildings if and when the government asked them to do so. "But, the government will have to make alternative arrangements for us," the official had said.

Interestingly, the police department chose to completely ignore the report and continue to occupy the buildings.

Helpless!

Imagine you're in your car waiting for the signal to turn green and, all of a sudden, another car pulls up next to yours and then...flash. You wonder what has happened and then you realize, all too late, that a bunch of strangers have taken your picture with their modern cell phones fitted with cameras.

This is exactly what happened to a colleague and her friend at a traffic light in Karachi the other day. She says she felt utterly helpless and could not understand why some people get a kick out of violating others' privacy.

She, however, insists that it would be foolish to demand a ban on cell phones with in-built cameras, which can otherwise be employed to capture a memorable moment with a sibling or a friend. But surely some kind of mechanism could be devised to take to task those who misuse perfectly innocuous technology.

All that jazz

Much has been written about the programmes that foreign cultural organizations help put together not only in this city but also in other parts of the country. The French, Germans, British, Japanese and Italians do Karachians a real favour by importing artists at regular intervals to spice up our (mostly) bland cultural life. And the latest in this series of events was a concert organized by the German Goethe Institut, which featured the talents of the German jazz trio Der Rote Bereich, a curiously titled group whose name translates into 'The Red Zone.'

Featuring three musicians - guitarist Frank Mvbus, bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall and drummer Oliver Bernd Steidle - the group thrilled Karachi's jazz aficionados by jamming on multiple tunes at the FTC auditorium recently.

All three musicians are thoroughly schooled in the art of jazz having studied at various prestigious institutions such as the Berklee School of Music in Boston, US, and the Meistersinger Conservatory in Nuremberg, Germany. The Berlin-based group put in an hour-long set, wrapping up a South Asian tour in the port city, yet played to quite a thin crowd, between 160 to 170 according to conservative estimates. That might have been due to the fact that on the day the group chose to play, the city's social calendar was chock-a-block with events considering it was Basant.

According to a Goethe spokesperson, such concerts will continue after Muharram and one should look forward to more innovative performers from foreign lands to brighten up the local cultural horizon.

email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com