KARACHI: Victims of the government’s failure to deliver basic services, communities living in katchi abadis must not be looked at as the land mafia or encroachers. Instead of evicting them from their houses, the government should regularise and regulate informal settlements by setting up minimum standards.

These points were raised at a seminar held to mark the 20th death anniversary of Dr Jan van der Linden, a Dutch social scientist who extensively studied low-income settlements of Karachi and produced a number of papers concerning them.

Titled ‘Dr Linden’s contributions in documenting and theorising low-income settlements of Karachi’, the event was organised by the architecture and planning department of NED University on its city campus.

The programme started off with a brief introduction of Dr Linden by Dr Saeed-ud-din Ahmed. The scholar, he said, studied geography and later received a PhD in social sciences from the University of Amsterdam, where he served as an associate professor of Pakistan Studies between 1967 and 1987.

Seminar held to mark 20th death anniversary of Dr Jan van der Linden

“In 1975, Dr Linden became part of a research project in collaboration with Karachi University on low-income settlements. He also taught at Dawood College of Engineering and Technology,” he said, adding that the researcher died of lung cancer in 1998.

Seasoned architect Arif Hasan shared details of his interactions with Dr Linden who, he said, was also fluent in Urdu, Pashto and Punjabi. The last meeting between the two was held in February in France, just three months before Dr Linden died.

“He told me that he was prepared to leave (this world) but wished to live till the end of April so that he could see the colours of spring. That’s the kind of man he was,” Mr Hasan said while quoting him.

Focus on people, relationships

According to Mr Hasan, the distinction of Dr Linden’s work was that his was the first detailed documentation of low-income settlements of Karachi based not on numbers but rather on relationships communities had with the state and among themselves.

He stressed the need for publishing Dr Linden’s papers which, he said, presented a picture of the city’s evolution and transformation. Dr Linden’s theories, he noted, challenged traditional development concepts, including those of the World Bank.

Dr Linden, he said, was part of a Dutch advisory group assisting the local government at that time and he spent a lot of time in Karachi, producing a long list of research papers.

His major focus was on the anthropological aspect which, he said, gradually disappeared from the planning and development agenda as dependence on foreign donors increased.

“His message was that human beings and their relationships should have the central place in development. Unless you understand that it’s difficult to make proper development,” he said, adding that the researcher was thinking of ways to use capitalism for public benefit before he died.

Hinting at the failure of successive governments to foresee growing population and deliver basic services, he said: “If you don’t give the city what it needs, the city itself acquires it and you have to accept that.”

Recalling how informal settlements spread in the city, veteran bureaucrat and social worker Tasneem Ahmed Siddiqui said the process started soon after independence and later became an issue with people debating whether those settlements should be regularised.

According to him, while it was Z.A. Bhutto who raised the slogan of regularisation but it was practically taken up by Zia in 1979.

Citing one instance, he said that Dr Linden backed by the Dutch advisory group made a regularisation plan for Lyari in 1976 which envisaged providing housing at nominal rates of Rs10 to Rs15.

When Mr Bhutto was invited to Lyari during an election campaign, he announced that those houses would be provided for free at which the Dutch government backed out and the plan couldn’t be implemented.

“It’s a point to ponder over that while government housing schemes remain vacant, katchi abadis have expanded over cities,” he said, reasoning that it was because of a flawed land development and delivery system.

Dr Linden, he said, challenged the common perceptions about residents of informal settlements often looked at as criminals and vagabonds. He was the first man to come and encourage regularisation of low-income settlements, he said, while citing his efforts for the establishment of Khuda Ki Basti, a low-cost housing project for the poor in Hyderabad.

Answering a question, he said that initially there were migrants from India and later unemployed people from across Pakistan, who came to Karachi, took up various jobs and settled here. The phenomenon of land mafia came to the city in 2007 (which shouldn’t be confused with informal settlements).

“Successive governments neither provided basic services to them nor bound industrialists to provide housing to their workers, which led to the creation of informal settlements all over the city.” The cost of basic services in those areas, he said, was much higher than in regularised areas. People were willing to pay (for services) but there was no government strategy on how to help them.

“Accept katchi abadis and regulate them by setting up minimum standards. But the government doesn’t want [to] do it,” he said.

People with limited resources

Senior academic Fazal Noor of Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology spoke of the need for changing social mindset towards the people with limited resources.

It’s a living city because of the relationships and social networks people had with one another. There was a need to value them rather than dividing the city between the haves and the have-nots, he said.

Dr Noman Ahmed, chairman of the department of architecture and planning of NED University, gave a presentation on Dr Linden’s publications.

His works included Between Basti Dwellers and Bureaucrats, Squatment upgrading in Karachi (a review of longitudinal research on policy, implementation and impacts), The bastis of Karachi, types and dynamics, Settlement upgrading in Karachi: the role of public agencies, The mid-term impacts of squatter settlement upgrading (a longitudinal study of Baldia Township), and The land is pure gold, stagnation and development of a Karachi squatment 1973-1993.

Published in Dawn, December 6th, 2018