KARACHI: It was an early Saturday morning when veteran journalist I.A. Rehman gave a history lesson to Karachiites on Karachi. Compressing information from before and after partition, the city was dissected and analysed, Karachi’s evolution charted, and its highs and lows presented without judgement.

It could not have been a more befitting start to the second day of the Karachi Conference held at the Arts Council.

In its fifth year, the Karachi Conference has expanded to incorporate discourse on the arts, politics and civil matters, and has tried to capture a small flavour of the city and present it through its speakers and panellists with some success.

Mr Rehman spoke on the role of Karachi in the genesis of Pakistan, and especially charted the before and after of the advent of communal strife in the city.

“Sindh was a distinct cultural, linguistic and geographical unit and had been autonomous or semi-autonomous for centuries and thus desired to be a separate province,” he said. “However, communal politics came to Sindh only in the second and third decades of the 20th century when in 1935 Sindh was separated.”

‘Understand and consequently challenge laws where they are unjust’

As Karachi’s importance increased, he explained, so did the issues it faced.

Though the day’s proceedings had incorporated a diverse range of topics, the panel focussing on the emerging built environment of Karachi allowed the speakers and the audience enough freedom to exchange conflicting ideas and raise controversial yet pertinent issues.

Environmental protection

Arif Belgaumi’s paper ‘Fallacies in the procedures of environmental protection agencies’ was an honest perusal of the lack of environmental thought given to development projects in the metropolis which are a combined result of institutional apathy, lack of government oversight as well as disinterest in the citizens. “The history of environmental laws in Pakistan dates back to 1983 when the Environmental Protection Ordinance was promulgated which remained largely unenforced until a new law, the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act, 1997. This law included provisions and empowered the citizens to engage in the assessment process and to approach the courts for redress of environmental damage.”

However, this largely remains on paper and [is] rarely seen in practice on a large scale with the role of citizens remaining minimal if at all, and major discrepancies when following the prescribed procedure.

He then spoke about the particulars of the law in a provincial framework.

“The environmental approval process involves the submittal of an initial environmental estimate to the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency. A hearing is set up and it must be advertised so that concerned citizens can attend it. Usually the consultant at the meeting attempts to paint a rosy picture and allays concerns by overwhelming the audience with statistical data. Very little confidence can be attached to these numbers.”

The law with regards to development in Karachi was discussed in detail with Arif Hasan stressing the need to look at the law from an ethical perspective. Citing examples of various laws that only favour a segment of society and disadvantage large populations, he insisted on the need to peruse laws so that they may be more ethical.

“Apartheid was legal in South Africa, but was it justified? We have several land-based laws in Pakistan that are very unethical too. It is very essential to understand and consequently challenge laws where they are unjust.”

Concerns about BRT project

Mr Hasan also raised concerns regarding the BRT project in Karachi, after a presentation was given on it by Rehan Zamin, principal engineer at NESPAK.

“When we quantify the percentage of commuting public in Karachi that this system will cater to, it accounts to about seven per cent. So the rest will use other methods of transport and not the BRT. In other countries, the BRT has been unable to reduce traffic jams in their cities. The number of cars on the roads keeps increasing.”

Despite several technical difficulties faced by the speakers when presenting their papers, the momentum sustained enough to allow a healthy exchange of ideas. However, care must be taken by the organisers to not allow the conversation to be one-sided or be hijacked, which happened during the Q&A session and was only halted after hue and cry by some in the audience.

Published in Dawn, October 29th, 2017