KARACHI is not misgoverned because it is chaotic. Actually, it is portrayed as chaotic because misgovernance needs justification. Karachi’s greatest problem is not chaos, crime or congestion. It is the story repeatedly told about the city: that it is inherently ungovernable, and, therefore, must be ‘controlled’ rather than represented.

Karachi is persistently framed as a big, problem child: too large, too diverse, too political, and too unruly for normal demo-cratic governance. This framing, in fact, conveniently absolves those in power. Instead of acknowledging decades of deliberate underfunding, fragmented authority, political engineering, and extraction of resources, blame is shifted onto the city’s people.

The provincial government’s relation-ship with Karachi reflects this paternalism. While the city generates the bulk of provincial revenue, it is denied meaningful autonomy or representation over its own affairs. Karachi is treated less as a political community and more as an asset to be administered. Dissent is not engaged; it is ‘disciplined’. This is not accidental. Colonial port cities were governed in precisely this manner: tightly controlled, economically exploited, and politically mistrusted.

When satire punctures this arrange-ment, the response is telling. A passing joke about ‘privatising Karachi’ triggered an outsized reaction not because it was policy-relevant, but because it exposed an uncomfortable truth: Karachi is already governed as though it exists for others, not for itself. Satire is dangerous to paternal power because it threatens hierarchy. It reminds the governed that authority is not sacred; it is contingent.

And, this is where military narratives neatly intersect with civilian paternalism, with both justifying authority at various points in time by portraying Karachi as incapable of governing itself effectively.

The persistence of this logic explains why governance debates in Karachi rarely move beyond law and order or capacity. Political demands are dismissed as noise. The irony is stark. Colonial rulers claimed to civilise natives. Postcolonial elites now claim to civilise their own people. The language has softened, but the hierarchy remains intact.

Karachi does not suffer from an excess of politics; it suffers from its denial. Until and unless the metropolis is recognised as a legitimate political community, capable of self-governance, dissent and even disorder, no amount of administrative tinkering or securitised intervention will fix it. The problem is not that Karachi is unmanageable. The actual problem is that power depends on pretending that it is.

Jamshaid Ahmad
Karachi

Published in Dawn, May 12th, 2026