Desultory efforts to stop flooding only torment Karachi poor

Taking pictures of poor kids as they smile, and then convincing the world that the reality is confined within the frame, is sheer dismissal of traumas they suffer. This only pushes people to look the other way when they are not smiling or posing. It’s an unforgivable deception, despite the starkly humble mien of these photographed characters, but one that sells so commonly.

Poor of the Karachi kutchi abadi, with their forever survival mode, live day to day, that is until they give up surviving or die trying. The misfortunes that ambush them from poverty gateway routinely range from famine, inaccessible potable water, lack of education, to being violently discriminated against. So much so that this treatment has been normalized.

12-year-old Ahmed*, a Pashtun kid residing in Liaquatabad katchi abadi, who would have smiled at someone taking his photograph all the same; or if offered a sweet, didn’t live for that moment of deception. He fell into an open deadly nullah. The same nullah which the Karachi and federal authorities together dug wide to ‘resolve’ all the flooding during monsoons. His death didn’t cause uproar among circles beyond family and his own community. And there has been no criminal proceedings.

They dug it wide at the expense of all the once “leased” houses that flanked its shores. Many houses were straight up bulldozed by the authorities after weeks of markings that haunted the dwellers. On the day of anti-encroachment operations, the tenants were dragged out so there are no hindrances. But even the houses that were spared because they didn’t “violate” an arbitrary line that had just recently been marked, some of them eventually fell to settlement– an engineering phenomenon where water streams weaken the base soil and compaction of earth.

In one such house resided Fatima, whose roof collapsed while she was resting inside. She died.

In the name of climate-led changes and risk management, the policymakers, it seems, are reducing their full swing efforts, state machinery and devices to make-shift and photo-op-worthy steps. They say these illegal establishments have shrunk the nullah channel and thus the rain-drains can’t dewater the city when it rains more than expected.

It does them two benefits, among others: a) it’s immediately noticeable so the chances of people believing government is finally doing something for the city are higher, b) real reasons behind this flooding are easily glossed over.

So what are the real reasons? And why razing the houses of the poor without sooner or later rehabilitating them is not going to do anybody any good, but in fact only chronic harm?

Dr Noman Ahmed is dean at NED University’s architecture department and has been an active voice on the parasitic policies, or lack thereof, that have eaten up Karachi’s urban planning. He says only when the watersheds of Karachi are left open is when the city can avert flooding. Those watersheds are not effected by shanties built around the channels, but by the heavy constructions on lands that

In July, National Logistics Cell said that ahead of heavy monsoon rains and flood warnings, it “chalked out a detailed plan to help avert flooding in Orangi storm water drain and minimize chance of damages to the properties.

When the city floods, the most expedient thing for the government to do is to find the fall-guy (or fall community) and then make them the collateral to seem concerned about deluged cosmopolitan.

Little do they realize that razing shanties from banks of nullahs do just as much good to drainages as their being there in the first place caused the floodings: next to nothing.

City’s master planning and engineering experts all equivocally say the real reason is large housing projects and high-rise buildings that cropped up illegally to cater to the desperately increasing housing demand.

“Unless you set right the wrongs done by these illegally built societies that are constructed either smack in the middle of nullah channels or in violation of master planning, no good will ever come out of rendering poor homeless…,” Ahmed notes.

Bashir Lakhani, an engineer who designed drains for city’s DHA society and is now consultant for largest water project K-IV, Arif Hasan, a celebrated architect and critic on illegal housings, and Amber Alibhai, a civil society activist who runs Shehri NGO, all agree and have more or less the same opinion.

Today one-third of Pakistan is literally deluged and while major chunk of blame is on the global north for their untamed contribution to climate catastrophe that led to Pakistan’s monsoon “on steroids”, some share of blame also lies on Pakistani officials for making policies that were either half-cooked, made in bad-taste or were outright intentional to cause harm to certain segments of the country.

The talks and conferences like COP27 scheduled later this year must convince people in authority globally to take active responsibility and make the responsible literally pay reparations to those at the receiving ends. It should also practically do something to chart out workable policies for developing states to better resolve the cataclysmic effects of climate. Or this may just be another futile talk that would lead nowhere and waste millions of dollars spent on it and entrusted to it.