Dream city now a gaudy nightmare

By Mushir Anwar

Islamabad is not a commercial, trade or industrial city. It is the country’s capital. It was designed to serve as the seat of the federal government.

The locale was selected for its natural greenery against the lush undulating wall of the Margalla hills. To allow the natural habitat to retain its character and to protect the indigenous flora and fauna wide stripes of the land with its green cover were secured against construction. So at last when the city came up and its offices and its residential sectors with their cosy market places had been laid out, it gave an open, spacious and expansive look affording all to breathe easily its clean air. And although Aabpara, the first market place, was already a planning disaster with its congested shopping place, surrounded by clustered living quarters designed to make life difficult and ugly for the peons, clerks and other non-gazetted government employees, its low profile spared a great deal of the sky its blue and spaces their green. The afternoons arrived late and crows, mynas and babus with their faded files strolled at leisure giving secretaries and ministers time to think. Islamabad was growing into a green, peaceful, clean town unlike any other in the country. Even foreign diplomats thought it was a nice little place to spend one’s last posting abroad. But much has changed since.

An evil force is at work. Its relentless purpose is to destroy the basic character of the city. Vile men from all over have seized the capital and holding its populace in thrall. They are buying and selling and buying and selling. The mad commerce in property has become a pandemic. Rents have doubled and trebled and greedy owners of residential buildings are forcing out tenants who cannot pay the next month’s rent. Businesses are closing down as every penny of the excessive profit they are making is going to the landlord. The influx of quake relief workers from abroad has turned the house owners’ head. Now every vacant room is fetching dollars which has become the currency of the neo-riche. Tenants facing eviction are running here and there trying to get some shelter in the dirty mohallas of Rawalpindi that are nearer to their place of work in Islamabad. People in authority who are hands in glove with estate agents in this black business have only one greeting in mind when they meet: kaun banega crorepati, aur kab? This magic query sums up the current meaning of good governance.

Property in Islamabad is limited and cannot be sold or rented out multiple times in a short period. The eye of greed therefore is falling on the green belts. These are being quickly denuded of their tree cover to make land available for sale. The green belt that runs parallel to the Nazimuddin Road is already a desert in patches. The beauty of the Blue Area that softened its commercial purpose lay in the tall dark forest running along its length. This is being mercilessly destroyed. The Blue Area itself is being turned into a cheap, loud, florid mandi. The broad green island in the centre of the Jinnah Avenue, for long our city managers’ favourite spot for trying their lurid fancies, has been crowded with conical hoardings, ostensibly displaying national highlights, that have totally changed the airy spacious look of this central thoroughfare into something of a greater Talwaran bazaar. This gaudy decorative abomination is vulgar; atrociously, crudely vulgar. And when these hoardings light up at night the serenity of the city becomes a garish nightmare. Whose empty brain is conjuring up these cheap tricks to make money by robbing the city of its natural charm and humanity?