ONE recurring theme vis-à-vis Karachi’s history and its current situation is the demographic boom that it began to face some years after independence. Consequently, and ever since, the issue of inadequate public transport, along with some other pressing problems, has been giving quite a bit to the authorities to think about. On Jan 22, 1974 a study highlighted by the media revealed that nearly two million people commute on a daily basis by various modes of public transport in Karachi (four million people lived in the city at the time). This kept about half the number of citizens away from transportation benefit which had assumed great significance in the wake of the high cost of petrol (so that issue, too, isn’t new). The study claimed that 1.5m people travelled by bus alone; others opted for taxis, minibuses and auto-rickshaws. The public zone covered by the Karachi Omnibus Service had 28 routes and the private zone had 59. The city needed between 1,500 and 2,000 buses in a road-worthy condition to meet the bare minimum need of commuters. However, the number of buses on the roads did not exceed 900. The shortage had caused overcrowding, long queues and ill-treatment of passengers at the hands of bus conductors.

Inadequate transport facilities didn’t prevent accidents from taking place, though. On Jan 24, a 16-year-old student of Government College of Women in Nazimabad was ‘crushed to death under the wheels of a bus’. The driver of the bus, instead of waiting for the police to arrive, drove straight to the Nazimabad police station and surrendered himself. An eyewitness said, the girl, a first-year science student, was coming from Lasbela and wanted to get off at Chowrangi No 1. But the driver did not stop there and proceeded towards Chowrangi No 2 leaving her college behind. When she protested, he slowed down and asked her to get off the vehicle. In the process, the girl slipped from the footboard of the moving bus and fell under its rear wheels which crushed her skull. The tragedy was watched by hundreds of college-going boys and girls who had rushed to the scene. By that time, the driver had escaped leaving the girl in a pool of blood. The incident angered the students. They stopped the buses coming from Paposhnagar and set two of them on fire. Another bus was burnt later at night.

Things needed to be rectified in other areas of public life as well. On Jan 23, for example, the Karachi Development Authority (KDA) announced that a plan worth Rs300 crore had been proposed by the Karachi Master Plan to provide better water supply and sewerage facilities to Karachiites. The proposal was put forward during a meeting of KDA and the Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC) officials with a four-member team of the World Bank, WHO engineers and management specialists.

On the cultural front, on Jan 24, Dawn in a story claimed the growing list of young painters in the city witnessed two additions in Mashkoor Raza and Shamim Haidri whose joint exhibition of paintings opened at the Arts Council. While Shamim’s oil paintings represented distortions, Mashkoor had tried to express himself through the world of illusions by extensive use of colours.

Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2024