THE monsoon announced its arrival a touch late in 1971. Usually, the rainy spell begins in the first week of July or middle of the month, but that year it was on July 30 that citizens received the first rainfall of the season. Here’s how a media report described it: “The rains caught Karachiites with a pleasant surprise. The impregnated clouds hanging low and heavy over the city for the past few days opened forth to give Karachiites the monsoon’s first real showers. Unaccompanied by any slaps of thunder or streaks of lightning, the rainfall started in the early hours of the morning and continued steadily through the day. After a few hours only, the city donned a wet and dripping look with the refreshing green... By afternoon, Karachi was its usual rainy picture of car breakdowns, waterlogged roads, overflowing gutters and mud-swishing traffic.”

This meant, like today, enjoying the soft, romantic side of the season was a desire that couldn’t last for long. Torrential rains often damaged weak infrastructure, disrupting everyday life. As a result, a large number of telephones, particularly run by Pak Capital Exchange, which were thrown out of order, remained unattended even after 24 hours. The number of complaints received by the exchange swelled to 317 in a day. The repairing squad of the department failed to restore half of the lines. On the other hand, about 90 per cent of complaints registered by various emergency centres of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC, now KE) were repaired by July 31.

It was a difficult time health-wise, too. A study that came out on July 27 revealed that polio had claimed 18 lives out of the 129 patients admitted to the Epidemic Diseases Hospital (EDH) in the ongoing year. The mortality rate because of the ailment – 14.2 per cent – was considered to be very high by medical experts. They suspected that the number of cases admitted to the EDH did not show the real magnitude of the prevalence of the disease in the Sindh capital because cases were treated at different hospitals. The stats collected by the Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC) from EDH sources showed that 64 out of the aforementioned 129 patients were brought to the hospital in the last 26 days alone.

Naturally, the polio vaccination drive at the time assumed significance. The problem was that the vaccine imported from some western countries against the issued licences was 800 per cent costlier than the one of Russian origin. The government had recently issued licences for the import of the vaccine to meet the emergency caused by the increasing incidence of polio, particularly in Karachi. Dealers were importing the vaccine from the UK, US and Germany which was eight times costlier than the Russian vaccine because of cost and import factors.

Not that the authorities concerned weren’t doing anything about it. On July 28, the Sindh government requested the Central Ministry of Health to appeal to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other friendly countries to donate polio vaccines.

One of the ways to keep oneself healthy is to take part in sporting activities. In a related develop­ment, on July 30, it was claimed that work would begin within two months on a major sport complex on Kashmir Road on the open space between Muslimabad and PECHS. The scheme had been pending for a long time and could not be implemented earlier because of legal flaws in the processing of tenders. The KMC was the sponsor of the project which was estimated to cost about Rs1.5m.

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2021