WHEN I first moved to Lahore from Karachi to join the Finance Services Academy in 1967, my new friends rather looked up to me as the sophisticate from the big city.
Lahore was then a sleepy, provincial town where it was hard to find a restaurant that was open after nine.
Gradually, the city grew and developed to the point where on each visit, I find it harder to find my way around as many old landmarks have been replaced by brand new shopping malls. A continuous traffic engineering programme has seen a number of underpasses and flyovers built over the last decade or so.
Modern shops display brands from all over the world, and menus in smart restaurants offer many different cuisines. All these changes are not necessarily for the better as many trees have been cut down, and fine old buildings demolished in the name of progress. But there’s no denying that successive provincial governments have transformed the city beyond recognition.
In the same period, Karachi has decayed and stagnated. Never known for its beauty, the city has become even uglier: garbage is dumped in open spaces at street corners, plastic bags blow everywhere, and political messages and ads are plastered on every available surface. And yet it grows at a relentless pace with hideous apartment blocks marching into the desert, and smart office blocks springing up downtown.
One fact alone symbolises the difference between the two cities: a few years ago, around 200 modern buses were imported to ease the rush on Karachi’s inadequate transport system. They were never put into service, and are now rusting near the port. Meanwhile, the Punjab government has recently launched the Metro bus service in Lahore.
These two developments underline the different approaches taken by politicians and bureaucrats in the two cities. Lahoris take pride in a city renowned for its Mughal and colonial architecture, its parks, and its institutions of higher learning.
For us in Karachi, we had only the city’s vibrancy and dynamism to boast of. Many years ago, the late Eqbal Ahmed described it as the only secular city in Pakistan. But rapid Talibanisation is threatening even this saving grace. Meanwhile, criminal gangs and political mafias — the two are often closely related — are exacting a terrible toll.
Violence and demands for protection money have stunted investment and driven established businesses away. Earlier seen as the exclusive preserve of the MQM, these rackets have proliferated and today, several political parties have militant (i.e. criminal) wings. The turf wars that have resulted have made thousands of women widows, and orphaned tens of thousands of children.
These differences between the two provincial capitals can be extended to the rest of Sindh and Punjab. A vivid illustration was provided by Raju, a friend’s driver who said: “I can tell when I have entered Punjab because the road surface improves immediately.”
While rural Sindh has also witnessed a large road-building programme in the previous government’s tenure, this activity was accompanied by allegations of much corruption.
According to Arif Hasan, the well-known planning expert and author, south Punjab — an area he has been working in — has seen a rapid improvement in the provincial educational system. While he has noticed rapid social changes in Sindh, it still lags behind its larger neighbour.
Although I have no concrete evidence for this assertion, I suspect corruption levels are far higher in Sindh than in Punjab. This one factor goes a long way in explaining the imbalance in development.
Another factor is the difference in attitudes of the politicians and civil servants in the two provinces. Karachi has been the goose that lays the golden eggs for its rulers, and its recent history has been one long land grab. Parks and open spaces have been shamelessly converted into commercial buildings by developers while the authorities have openly connived in this loot.
The late Ardeshir Cowasjee wrote passionately and initiated litigation against these developers, but his was a rear-guard action that could not stop this juggernaut.
In Lahore, too, various qabza groups are active, but to a great extent, open spaces have been preserved, and the parks improved.
One criticism of Shahbaz Sharif was that he focused almost exclusively on the wealthier parts of Lahore and largely ignored the old city. He is accused of pouring money into Lahore while neglecting the rest of the province.
It is some time since I last drove around Punjab, but according to people who have done so recently, the province is being transformed rapidly. One factor has been the inflow of foreign remittances. Earlier, these were used mainly on consumer goods, but of late, a significant proportion of this money is being invested in small businesses. Then there is the increase in procurement prices for wheat, cotton, rice and sugar cane. This additional liquidity has been instrumental in raising the standard of living in large parts of rural Pakistan, but is most evident in Punjab.
We should certainly give credit to the efforts of successive provincial administrations for a level of governance not evident in Sindh. I am told by Lahori friends — many of them not fans of either the PML-N or of Shahbaz Sharif — that the ex-chief minister worked hard in his tenure, and has been a strong, focused manager.
Sindh, by contrast, has been ill-served by its outgoing government: corruption and mismanagement have been rife; infighting between coalition partners has hamstrung any serious effort at improving matters. Law and order has steadily deteriorated to the point where Karachi resembles a killing field.
It is important to remember, however, that Sindh is a far more difficult province to govern, torn as it is by ethnic and sectarian divisions. Since the rise of the MQM in the mid-1980s, these feuds have taken thousands of lives, and robbed Karachi of its potential.