Adil Najam
Karachi is at war with itself. Again.
Karachi bleeds, so does all of Pakistan. And Karachi bleeds too often. In a country that seems to be forever falling apart, the falling apart of this, the greatest of its cities, is both a sign and a foreboding. As painful as the daily killings and mayhem in Karachi is the sense that no one has any interest or any idea about what can or should be done. To be honest, I am not sure what I would do myself.
And so, dear readers, I turn to you: What would YOU do if you were made King of Karachi?
What realistic, practicable, and implementable steps would you do to deal with the perennial bouts of panic and death and destruction that this wondrous metropolis seems to be perpetually caught in? What would YOU do: in the short term? In the medium term? In the long term?
This question hit me hard when this morning I was talking over the phone with a rather influential Pakistan. In desperation I lambasted at how no one was doing anything. In equal desperation, he agreed. But then he asked me what could be done? What would I do? It was an honest question, not a cynical one. He was not making an excuse. He was searching for solutions. As am I. I have thought of this question all day and not come up with much. I do have some ideas. But they are vague and I wonder how practicable and realistic?
Hence, I reach out to you, dear readers. What would you do if you were made king of Karachi for a day?
Someone, desperately needs to come up with an answer. And soon. In the very first weeks of this blogs life (back in 2006) we had carried a post about why nobody in Karachi whistles anymore. We desperately need Karachi’s whistling days back!
True, this is a city that has never really been at rest. We have seen all of this, maybe even more, before. But any city – even one as resilient as Karachi – can only take that much restlessness. At some points its nerves have to give up. Distraught and in disarray, it has to scream out in anguish and hit out at itself. One wonders if we might already be beyond that point.
Seize all illegal arms
Use CCTV cameras for crime prevention purposes (i recall the police refusing to do so when the cameras were installed)
increase salaries of police officers and punish bribery by prison time and heavy fines to set examples.
cut off all illegal electricity outlets/stealing of electricity
implement proper transparent tax policies so that tax is paid by all, and cannot be avoided through a bribe.
prosecute all instances of incitment to violence whether by political parties or neighborhood masjids.
hold political parties financial responsible for any/all property destroyed during rallies organized by them
deport all illegal residents
these seem overly simplistic, but even these are not currently implemented
I am an Indian and therefore can only make outside observations….but as most Indians are obsessed with the well being of Pakistan (including Karachi I have made the following observations) which are provided with good intentions only.
1) Many here have talked solving the ills by implementing the rule of law to solve Karachi. The rule of law in Pakistan however does not apply equally to all. In particular minorities are much more prone to falling foul of unjust biased laws – look at the way the hudood laws are discriminatory agaist them.
If and when Pakistan Hukumat has the will, strength and the vision to BE FAIR to ALL it’s citizens – things will get better.
Once unfair laws are scrapped, all people get a sense of fairness, corruption goes down, security is only increased when people can TRUST the law.
Pakistan however is uniquely founded on the religion of Islam – the government lies about being democratic and can never be truly democratic until it gets to seperate this (or any other) religion away from the politics. But can that ever happen?…. because this is your founding principle and also the chain around you.
Pakistan in effect is chasing its own tail ….has been for over over 60 years and always will. Your OWN people will not allow this separation, the more you try, the quicker your religious fanatics get armed and kill the separation movement.
Without this separation you (or any other country setup like that) cannot and will not move forward. Karachi’s problems are only one symptom of this.
To start with be truthful to yourself and to this objective,
get a massive re-education process together.
a) monitor all madrassae, get them to teach maths, science, english and yes truthful history. Getting your yound to rock back and forth and learning may have it’s place ….but will that help your postion in the world that we all live in.
It may take a generation to get to this …but for Pakistan to survive …you must try.
b) Build a condom factory in most large cities…and distribute them freely in the villages ( I would advocate this to India too) to bring DOWN the population. This way there are less mouths to feed, better chance of educating the others and getting to a stable country …
It may take a generation to get to this …but for Pakistan to survive …you must try.
c) Monitor your people ….those that want to stop your hukumat from implementing these programs….round them up or eliminate them….
It may take a generation to get to this …but for Pakistan to survive …you must try.
From this I can see that Pakistan has one generation where it has a good chance not only to survive but to thrive and join the world community….the choice is yours
One generation Pak….one generation.
Karachi is bifurcated into several political fractions..in some areas the one is leading than the rest of others and so the rest leads in other areas respectively.If i were a kind i would have evacuated the whole karachi from such pathetic politcal thugs.This is the only way to get rid of this present worst situation the remaining things would automatically be settled.
I would have handed over Dawood Ibrahim and his gang residing some where in Karachi back to India.When we are looking for justice for Samjuda express blast why should we deprive justice to the hundreds of people killed in Bombay (I lost both my uncle’s that day).
ANP and PML ( N) would be a moral and rightful contended for power sharing in Karachi—the moment MQM is shared power in running Peshawar and Lahore!!
The former has only last year named a province entirely on ethnic and linguistic basis, the latter’s base starts from Lahore and ends at Gujrat——possibly the same area where Kashmiri genes are found in the highest concentration( a phenomenon colloquially known as zaat, baradari)
MQM is the one and only truly democratic, un corrupted party which is the quint essential democratic voice of urban Sindh. Any contention against that key point is indefensible!!!MQM is the only party which can possibly offer any tangible and salvagable solution for Pakistan—if only people from rest of Pakistan could for a moment think beyond their baradari, zaat and tribes.
Bilawal Bhutto—a represenative from Lyari——that would be the sickest joke of current times—–
I would challenge any closet bigots to complete a single sentence without uttering the following key words torture chambers, Jinnah Pur, mafia, don, bhutta, ethnic ………………………these have all been proven fabricated by none other than by their own moles from Army, ISI and MI