FOR many families in Karachi, there are no Eid festivities today. The monsoon rains that began on Wednesday evening have created havoc, bringing death and misery to its citizens, and laying waste to their plans for a joyous holiday weekend. At least 23 people, including seven children, lost their lives on Thursday alone in rain-related incidents, mostly electrocution, while three deaths were reported yesterday. Overflowing storm water drains choked with garbage and an aging, dilapidated sewerage system have spewed their collective filth into low-lying areas: homes are flooded, possessions destroyed, and roads — dotted with submerged vehicles — have been rendered impassable. Many sacrificial animals, purchased with hard-earned savings, have drowned. The rising water level in the Lyari River even submerged the heavy machinery being used to construct the expressway running alongside, nearly claiming the lives of the two men who were operating it.

This season’s monsoon has highlighted once again with devastating clarity the consequences of the decades-long neglect of governance in Pakistan’s largest city, one whose formal economy generates nearly 25pc of the country’s GDP. The dereliction of duty by successive self-serving and corrupt ruling dispensations and their brazen violation of rules are directly responsible for the plight of its citizens today. Warnings about this week’s spell of rain and high chances of urban flooding had been issued well in advance, but that could not prevent the inevitable: the massive amounts of rain that fell on the city had simply nowhere to go. Karachi’s multiple natural storm water drains — over 30 — are choked with garbage or drastically narrowed by land reclamation, the last a symptom of the construction ‘boom’ that brings eye-watering profits for some people in high places. The PPP-led Sindh government, by playing politics with Karachi’s present and its future, has further aggravated the situation. In 2013, it brought in legislation that stripped the elected KMC and district councils — which have hefty MQM representation and are responsible for municipal services in Karachi — of virtually all their functions, and handed over municipal services to the bureaucracy of Sindh’s local government department under its direct control. Even the distribution of water, disposal of sewage or solid waste — of which this metropolis generates more than 12,000 tonnes daily — no longer remained under KMC’s purview. Matters have become untenable. Only a holistic, well-thought-out solution that takes into account technical aspects as well as governance issues can prevent Karachi from descending further into a dystopian nightmare.

Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2017