Adil Najam
This headline is sensationalist. 3 inches of rain does not make a ‘Katrina.’ Why, then, does Pakistan’s largest city look like it does?
Rain has brought near mayhem to Karachi. Just to look at the telegraphic headline details leaves the head spinning:
Rain-related death toll in Karachi reached to 26.
Most of the victim died by electrocution.
Military police called to control the relief work in the city.
Govt. announced holiday in Karachi and Hyderabad on Friday.
Power supply, telecommunications, and mobile systems disrupted.
Severe traffic jams as many vehicles stuck.
A headline in Dawn (19 August, 2006) screams: “Flooding ruins all vital thoroughfares” and points out that:
… Rafiqui Shaheed Road, which houses four major hospitals (JPMC, NICVD, NICH and Kidney Centre), has been completely devastated by the current monsoon rains and flooding, yet the Faisal Cantonment Board has not yet bothered to undertake the patch work to fill the deep ditches and potholes all along it.
And here is what it looks like, as seen on Sindh TV. Double click on arrow at center, or view it directly here:
Listen especially to the citizen comments in this TV report. As one person say, “its been 60 years… they can’t event build a drainage system, and they talk of building an elevated highway.” Note the despair in the voice of the people.
Another headline in Dawn (19 August, 2006) shouts: “Defence, Clifton stink with stagnant water”:
The stinking stagnant rainwater in Defence and Clifton continued to cause miseries to tens of thousands of people…. The Gulshan-i-Faisal in Bath Island was again the worst-hit where knee-deep to waist-deep filthy water wreaked havoc on roads and streets, forcing the residents to remain indoors without potable water as rainwater streamed into their underground water reservoirs. Dr Shahab Osto, a resident, said the entire locality was flooded by rainwater which instead of receding continued to increase with the passage of time on Friday though the city did not receive a single drop of rain. Nehr-i-Khiyam is blocked and the rainwater is being redirected to our area, he said. Dr Agha Hameed, another resident, their locality had been cut off from rest of the city. “No vehicle can go out or come in the vicinity due to waist-deep waterâ€Â?, he added. He urged the authorities to supply drinking water to the trapped residents as all shops and general stores nearby are closed.
This despair is articulated in this editorial in Dawn (19 August, 2006):
Thursday’s heavy rain and the rainfall a few days ago have thoroughly exposed all the city’s civic warts. Many roads were in knee-deep water. The main traffic artery, Sharea Faisal, was totally choked for hours with traffic going out from downtown. Buses were stranded. People stood in the middle of roads, away from the water pools on the sides, in the forlorn hope of getting a lift. Some people reached home well past midnight. Cars stalled all over the city, and both functioning and under-construction underpasses were again flooded. Police and city government officials were at sea about how to go about controlling the chaos. If it had not been for scores of ordinary Karachiites who came out of their houses to help traffic move and warn off motorists from the more dangerous water traps, the situation would have been far worse. Things sorted themselves out only when the rain stopped and a weak sun came out on Friday morning.
Why is it that we are caught unprepared every time we have an emergency like this on our hands? Fifty-six millimetres of rain doesn’t constitute an emergency, and yet we had this civic breakdown in Karachi. There is of course a whole history of lack of planning, bad planning, corruption and sheer inefficiency behind the existing urban mess, which becomes more difficult to tackle as time passes because of the increasing population, allowed to grow unchecked by governments. But more than anything else, it is the lack of concern for the ordinary citizen on the part of governments and politicians that is responsible for many of our woes.
But it is The News (19 August, 2006) that hits it on the head by pointing out, quite simply, that the death, destruction and mayhem is not just unfortunate, it “borders on the criminal.”
Photographs from Dawn; first from Karachi, second from Hyderabad.
I drove past the Clifton underpass today and an angry mob was stoning police vehicles there. There is immense amount of anger amongst Karachittes and rightly so. Every year for the past few years, the rains come calling and Karachi finds itself swimming in waist high water. Opposition leaders point fingers at the government and the government makes bold statements in the press “we will make sure this doesnt happen next monsoon season”…The thing is nobody really cares about Karachi, and i know a lot of people who will read this will agree. We bring in the most amount of money to the government yet we get very little in return and for years we have accepted that we are the country’s step child. The question is how long will this continue? the strikes, the rain delays, the violence, the water crisis, the sewage problems, who will be Karachi’s Shahbaz Sharif??
i understand the criticism but the common man is made of stronger mettle and as i always say one as to be a bit of sufi to live in this country, such is the belief in Allah that no one complaints about the rain itself and the concern rightly pointed at the administration
the aftermath is painful but people are resilient, people walking home from Metropole to Karsaz, which is huge distance under 3 feet of water in some locations
Thank God for the radio!
CityFM89 was giving traffic updates throughout…
Check it out they have good music too… http://www.cityfm89.com.
Cheers!
Roshan, you rightly said about the blame game. Everyone puts blame on present regime who in turn blame it on one before. Here I want to recite an Anwar Masood sher:
bachay ke haath se jo dahi gir paRa hai aaj
is meiN tamaam pichli hukoomat ka dakhal hai
(Yogurt has slipped out of a child’s hand
It must be because of the previous government)
In the pictures Karachi does look like New Orleans in August last year. The only difference is that New Orleasns was hit by Katrina, a category 5 hurricane (highest category) traveling at 175 miles per hour, one of the worst hurricanes in 100 years. Karachi, on the other hand, received only 56 mm of rain — a little over 2 inches!
If 2 inches of rain can do this to the business and commerical capital of the country then obviously something is terribly rotten somwhere. It was pathetic to watch on the television muncipal workers trying to drain the flood water from a major road with buckets.