City waiting for monsoon

In a way, it is a city waiting for rain. On the other hand, is it really a city waiting for the grey, grim clouds hanging above, to burst? Now three weeks through with July, often conversation does turn to the possibility of real rain. Light whimsical, drizzle has been teasing parts of Karachi, making some citizens dread the thought of a downpour, while other citizens yearning for it regardless of the battering that the city can receive.

It is the getting wet that Karachi cannot stand, putting it mildly. The city loses further its shape, argue some Karachiites, who contend that now 57 years after independence the infrastructure is still not equipped for the monsoons.

Light flippant drizzle, that is fine! That’s all!

When I said at the outset that it seems that Karachi is waiting for rain, it perhaps was a statement of the obvious. Keep in mind that May and June, which brought those familiar heat waves and the humidity of the season, aggravated by power failures and shortages, have gone. Now the weather too, has become milder, even kinder, and with schools and colleges closed until 1st of August, a family holiday mood is very much in evidence. Late evenings and very late nights, enthusiastic families visible on the streets of the Sindh capital, appearing relaxed in the refreshing evening breeze symbolize possibly the point that the tension of summer has declined, and instead there is a sense of relief. The worst of summer has come and gone, as if? Karachi is glad.

So will it rain now? For a couple of weeks now, the local authorities have been preparing for monsoon 2005, and those traditional newspaper announcements that detail the location and readiness of emergency relief centres, have also made their appearance. In numerous residential and commercial areas, the delayed cleaning of storm water drains and sewerage lines, has taken place, and a manifestation of which is the untidy, ugly sight of the garbage spread on roadsides. Almost our culture that the filth must lie unattended for days, and its stink and stench remind passers-by that there are sweepers and supervisory staff who do their jobs at this time of the year! It makes one wonder whether these storm water drains (odd name, observes one Karachiite) are cleaned once the monsoon season is over. Then these are used as dumping grounds for uncollected garbage for the rest of the year, until the next rains.

But let us sound cheerful with the thought of rain, in the middle of summer. I am lured by information that this newspaper provided on the subject of summer flowers and how one could enjoy them. For what was described as “summer flowering” to beat the heat and fight the “harshness” of the weather there was provided a list of plants which are easily available from local nurseries. One would like to reproduce some of the recommended plants and flowers.

There is the Gaillardia — a “genus of vividly coloured daisies. Easy to grow, and can be planted even in poor and exhausted soils and relatively dry conditions.” Then there is the Zinia with a large number of dazzling hybrids, including a very popular dwarf variety that has increased its popularity. It can brighten the garden and give it a soft touch.

Then there are the papery flowers which come in mixed shades from pink to lavender white, yellow and orange and are called Gomphrena. They give to your garden a fresh look in summer.

And finally there are recommended the Pentas. These can be grown as a perennial border plant in the garden. They are very much at home by the seaside, hence regarded as suitable for Karachi. They can be pruned to a required height depending upon the location of the flowerbed.

These are not all. There are other summer flowers such as cockscomb, summer cosmos, portluca, sunflower and Vinca Rasea to select from, to liven up a garden.

Let us, however, concede that Karachi’s summer is not all flowery. Rain or no rain, it is tough living, here. Weather plays a major role in making the city what it is.

So there are those who are keenly focused on the local met office, and what it forecasts. Many still distrust the met office, and value what the BBC and CNN have to say, which they argue takes a broader view of the climate. It is able to look into the next week, even fortnight.

One Karachiite, not disappointed by the absence of rain so far, looks optimistic as he says that in about a week’s time will come the downpour. He smiles happily as he says this and argues vehemently that rain will bring about the mood that the city deserves, the relief that it needs after having braved through the worst of another summer.

This waiting for monsoon rain is not only bringing to an end the summer vacation in schools, but is also characterised by the fact that the local body elections mood is gradually taking shape — gaining momentum. Little wonder then that the governor earlier this month presided over a meeting that reviewed both the upcoming polls and the monsoons. The expression used frequently until the rains actually come is “expected rains”. How long the wait?

As one says this, the thought of the dislocation and disruption of infrastructure that will take place, cross the mind. What will happen to the area where the Clifton underpass is being built? Fears and fears alone on this count. Ask residents and those who have to use roads here, and they have nightmares already, it seems.

And what about the nightmares and fears of vis-a-vis the Lyari residents, of those who reside along the “Lyari river”? All our lives we have heard of the dreadful experience that Lyari residents have undergone because of houses and hutments that are parched “precariously” alongside. Strange river, stranger people: What else can one say!

Monsoon 2005 when it comes will also be watched for what the city undergoes after the full term of the former city district government. In the local body politics that has unfolded the monsoon rain could become factor, a slogan, a real consideration? Time alone will tell.

The city still does not have a reputation for rains. And yet my nostalgia, this evening, reminds me of the loveliness and the magic of rain in this very city of concrete. It is in this city that so many of us have the memory of the beauty of rain. As one colleague underlines every time we feel low, that “this is a very beautiful city, I insist”. I agree. Do you?

Of politicians and criminals

BANGLADESH’s two major political parties have lent credence to a popular belief that they have criminals in their ranks by saying in public that it is now time to get rid of outlaws.

Two senior leaders of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Awami League (AL) recently ‘agreed’ that they would no longer tolerate ‘hardened criminals’ and those ‘holding black money’.

Abdul Jalil, general secretary of the League, said at a roundtable conference on ‘good governance and parliamentary democracy’ earlier this month that political parties should now be run by politicians and ‘we should try to free the parliament from those holding huge amounts of black money and having records of violent crimes’.

Mr Jalil has reasons to be serious about the issue as it is generally believed that allegations of patronization of criminals played a big role in the party’s defeat in the last general election in 2001.

Besides, most of the veteran League politicians have hardly anything to do with the party’s policy-making process these days – thanks to the taking over of important party positions by tycoons accused of having links with the underworld.

The situation in the ruling BNP is not different. Prof Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, an influential member of the party, agreed with Mr Jalil’s observation.

The BNP, however, is not ready to do the cleansing unilaterally. “Both the political parties should do the job on the basis of consensus,” Mr Khandaker told the conference.

Clearly, the BNP will not act against offenders in its fold unless the Awami League does the same.

Mr Khandaker has also reasons for taking such a position as BNP policymakers believe that ridding the organization of criminals would eventually weaken the party.

So bad elements in the two parties should breathe freely.

The government is considering a proposal to pardon BNP members convicted during the Awami League rule. Apologists contend that the people in question were caught in AL’s ‘victimization frenzy’.

A fraction of such cases can safely be assumed as instances of victimization, but to think that most of such people were innocent, is beyond belief.

A committee, headed by a retired High Court judge, found that only three to four per cent of the cases could be withdrawn without further investigations. But the ruling party ignored the observation for reasons only known to its high-ups.

The Awami League recently alleged that the government was manipulating the presidential authority of clemency to protect a convicted murderer, Mohiuddin Jintu, who is at present president of the BNP’s Sweden chapter.

The allegation is not baseless.

Mr Jintu, and two others, were awarded death sentences by a trial court in Dhaka for the murder of two businessmen in 1982. Since then Jintu remained absconding, while the two others who were under the police custody, were hanged to death the same year.

After evading arrest for more than two decades, Mr Jintu turned himself over to the authorities in January this year. He was granted amnesty within 10 days of his surrender.

The saga drew wide media attention when an Awami League lawmaker, Suranjit Sengupta, took up the issue with the ministry of law.

He argued that it was wrong to invoke the president’s powers of pardon in a murder case.

Whatever the truth may be, no one in Dhaka believes that a convicted killer could get away with his crime had he not been a member of the ruling party.

Crackdown on militants

FRIDAY, the protest day announced by the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, came and went as nonchalantly as many in Lahore believed it would. All the religious alliance was able to do was gather some 50 odd people at the Jamaat-i-Islami headquarters in Mansoora who raised anti-government slogans, without trying to disrupt traffic — something for which the devil must be given his due.

Meanwhile, arrests of newfound, believed-to-be ‘militants’ continued on the directives of the president, many of them people the PML chief Chaudhry Shujaat Husain and the minister for religious affairs had given a clean chit earlier in the week. It is this lack of cohesion among key office holders in the ruling establishment that leaves everyone confused. The only ones not found rattled were the rights activists at the HRCP, who came out in defence of those being held without due process, and they can’t be faulted for it.

Does it really have to be done so clumsily? There is much hyperbole that has come to be associated with the madressahs and their registration. Many will argue that it is not even the handful of the so-called known ‘bad’ madressahs that have caused the rot but for the official patronage of these for over two decades. If Gen Musharraf doesn’t know this, then God save us all.

Talking of clumsy measures betraying a knee-jerk reaction on the part of the government following the president’s latest orders, Lahore police have gone around distributing forms to public call offices in the city, asking them to log each and every call made from their facilities. And, yes, you need to have your ID card on you for making that call home to tell your wife you’ve had to run a few errands before catching the next bus home.

The police have asked the PCO proprietors to not only log your personal details on the prescribed form but also to dial each and every number themselves. Intending callers are also required to give as much information about the person being called as possible, and proprietors have been asked to ensure it is only that person at the other end that the caller is talking to. This is simply ridiculous. But, is this to say that ordinary people’s phones will also be tapped at random? Nobody knows.

The police have claimed sealing off the offices of the banned extremist outfits that managed to resurface under different names following the ban imposed on them in January 2002. The very fact that the police were aware, all along, of the exact number of such offices and as to which belonged to which banned outfit operating under a new name leaves one with cold feet. Who are we trying to fool by tolerating the extremists in our midst and then taking turns to clamp down on them every now and then? Who brought to MMA to the fore as a potent third force to discredit the more liberal and mainstream parties? The question assumes critical importance in the face of the religious alliance’s inability to put up a show of strength on a protest day announced by its leadership. Do they really have roots in the people? If so, they should have been able to gather big crowds like they did before when the powers that be wanted to establish their credentials.

The fact remains that on Friday, the MMA was not able to gather even as many people as it did two months ago, in sweltering heat, to stop a mixed marathon. Back then, obviously, the Punjab government was an active party to stopping the race from taking place. It’s funny that this time round when the rank and file of the MMA is allegedly being harassed and arrested, none of their supporters should show up.

Such are the mechanisms of a managed democracy and its more managed crackdowns on the so-called extremists.

THE Lahore Electric Supply Company’s chief has demanded a raise in the utility’s tariff. This is totally incomprehensible and does not gel in well with the utility’s claim that it is the country’s most profitable power distribution company. Also, by the top man’s admission, the Lesco recovery of dues stands at an impressive 100 per cent. Why, then, this demand for a raise in tariff?

The Lesco chief says the utility needs to spend some five billion rupees on structural development over the next four years. Surely, this kind of money cannot be expected to be raised from utility bills alone. There are ways to go about upgrading infrastructure, for which seeking medium and short-term bank loans should be the obvious solution, especially for a profit-making utility.

Passing the burden on to consumers has unfortunately become the norm in these pressing economic times. The example of the petrol companies revising oil prices every two weeks is a bad one to follow, and Lesco would do well not to take that route.

THE arrest earlier in the week of the so-called serial killer accused of having smudged 14 homeless people to death comes as a relief; that is, if the police have indeed caught the right man. Amir Qayyum, believed to be in his late 20s, was nabbed in the Shah Alam Market area after a hit-and-run attempt on a beggar.

Seemingly mad, the man was reported as saying that he resorted to killing people to avenge the murder of his uncle who was gunned down by dacoits. The brother of the accused said Amir was a recluse and an outcast; the family didn’t have much to do with him over the years. The sickly behaviour on the part of the accused points to a rise in psychiatric illnesses in a society that largely lives in denial of its many contradictions. A society in transition by all accounts, where the rich are becoming richer and the poor poorer, is bound to give birth to such psychopaths. The ‘urge’ to kill innocent people to make up for one’s personal sense of loss or injustice is the ultimate expression of unbridled rage against a hopeless system.

For every clinically mad killer out there, there will be tens more waiting in the wings to flip the loony way. A recent study carried out by psychologists put the number of mentally disturbed people in Pakistan at over 20 per cent, most of them residing in big cities. It is for sociologists to get to the root of the prevailing malaise, but those in authority cannot be absolved of their moral responsibility for making life a rough deal for the majority of the middle class urban dwellers reeling under the crippling effects of inflation. — Observer