Corruption, crime, chaos, Karachi

On gaining independence, Karachi – a modest trading post with 450,000 inhabitants – became the capital city of Pakistan. Over the years, it welcomed all into its magnanimous fold.

Today, a megalopolis of nearly 300 million people, it is the industrial and business hub of Pakistan. Accounting for 65 per cent of the national and 75 per cent of the provincial revenue, this city merited being the showpiece of Pakistan.

That was not to be, however. Corruption, crime, and ethnicity ensured that Karachi, the city that was, regressed into the potted, rutted and totally gutted entity it is today. The reason: each societal aspect of the city is a goldmine staked by various mafias.

In a June 2015 briefing to the Sindh Apex Committee, the DG of Rangers put Karachi’s extortion through water supply, land grabbing and smuggling of Iranian diesel at Rs230 billion annually.

An International Crisis Group report states that mafias bleed Karachi’s formal economy to the annual tune of $2.9 billion. With such bounties, the hold and rapacity of these mafias is ever-increasing. Given this stark anomaly, those mandated with preventing these criminal activities are seen as stakeholders.

An inkling of these rapacious activities sees eight billion cubic feet of sand and gravel removed illegally each year from Karachi’s seashores and seasonal rivers. This has caused environmental damage like changes in waterways, wildlife extinctions, land erosion and increased flooding.

The tanker mafia extorts Rs22 billion whereas the land mafia dents Karachi’s exchequer by Rs7 billion annually. With around 5000 illegal electric connections, last year alone saw 168,000 cases being reported involving the theft of more than 298.7 million units of electricity. Karachi is home to 15,000 drug-selling and gambling dens raking up nearly Rs200 million daily.

This is the tip of the money-berg which includes the transport mafia, ghost schools, parks and their many employees. Criminal gangs involved in street crimes, kidnappings, vehicle theft and a bevy of other extortionists further exacerbate the lethality of Karachi’s extractive cauldron.

According to WWF, Karachi produces 475 million gallons of wastewater daily. It ends up in the sea along with poisonous chemicals from local tanneries and other factories. As a result, fish and other marine life have almost gone extinct in Karachi’s coastal radius of about seven kilometers. The government should mandate that industries, especially tanneries, set up effluent treatment plants to manage their waste.

Karachi’s 58 major stormwater drains and the smaller 600 feeding them have been encroached upon by the land mafia; 60000 illegal houses and many commercial blocks have been built on this encroached land. In recent years, Karachi has seen a monsoon season precipitation average of about 470 per cent than normal. With a non-existent drainage system, urban flooding is a norm now.

A 2019 study by Bloomberg found Karachi to have the worst and the most dangerous public transport system in the world. Doctors claim that 70 per cent of Karachi’s bike and rickshaw riders are suffering from vertebral damage. It has had extremely adverse effects on the women using these modes of transport. Alternate means of travel like a fully operational circular railway and large-bodied buses can alleviate the city’s transport system.

Waste management, an international industry valued at nearly $2 trillion annually, is one of the most important in the world. Karachi produces over 9,000 metric tons of waste per day. Littering the streets and choking drains, if recycled and utilised, this waste could be hugely beneficial for the economy.

The average surface temperature of the Arabian Sea has increased from 29 to 31 Celsius in just two years. By 2100, rising temperatures shall lead to the melting of 36 per cent glaciers in our northern areas and ending up in the Arabian Sea. This shall compound rising sea levels. Affected countries counter climate change effects by climate-smart development planning based on empirical evidence.

The Indus Delta was once the world’s fifth largest. It has shrunk 92 per cent from 12,900 to a meager 1,000 square kilometers. Its ecosystem hosted the seventh-largest mangrove forest in the world. With carbon-sequestration capabilities, these remarkable woodlands provide abundant and much-needed ecosystem services. Karachi’s mangrove forests have been mercilessly mowed down to reclaim land for commercial use.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EUI) 2023 Global Liveability Index ranked Karachi 169th out of 173 cities. Last year Lagos, the commercial hub of Nigeria, had a budget of $3.82 billion. This was the largest budget among Nigeria’s 36 states. It has also consistently generated the highest revenue for Nigeria for decades. Ranked 170th on the EUI index, Lagos is tied to Karachi’s coattails.

Lagos is Karachi’s twin, as is Pakistan that of Nigeria. They share common extractive woes. An article in The Economist revealed that, since Nigeria’s independence in 1960, $600 billion has been lost to corruption.

Tragically, our political and administrative landscape continues to be mired by primitive greed and constant jousting for pillaging rights. Karachi, worse off after the vaunted 18th Amendment, is the epitome of this lethal malady. Like Pakistan, Karachi needed nothing except honest and sagacious governance. Both remained bereft of it.

A Rubik’s Cube has 43 quintillion possible configurations. This translates into around 54 quintillion random moves. For reference, it is more than the total number of grains of sand on Earth’s surface. In this dizzying vortex of almost infinite unsuccessful moves, there is what is termed ‘God’s number’. Last year, at an international competition, it enabled 21-year-old Max Park to solve the puzzle in merely 3.13 seconds.

In our context, God’s number is the rule of law and order. It runs the whole universe in absolute harmony. Sans the same, the frantic and fruitless quintillion moves of our self-centered power elite shall never solve the unsolvable Rubik’s Cube that they have made of Pakistan.

The writer is a freelance contributor. He can be reached at: miradnanaziz@gmail.com