The News on Sunday: What do you make of the mega mass transit projects going on in the name of development in Lahore?

Kamil Khan Mumtaz: The idea of progress and development is a very heady idea which draws people irresistibly. In this larger paradigm of progress and development, the city has a very special place. People never tire of saying that cities are the engines of growth. So much so that urbanisation itself is seen as an indicator of progress and development. And it is proudly referred to in all the political and economic speeches. It doesn’t hurt anyone when you put a little honey in the pot. So there is a lot of mega bucks involved.

You have to see this as a part and parcel of the whole post-modernist world. This is the age of consumerism, global capital, where we have actually gone beyond the nation state. The nation state and democracy was a creation of bourgeoisie, European bourgeois revolution, and it was their need. We still hang on to this idea and complain why is the ‘state’ not addressing our problems?

The nation state is an obsolete idea. The state was first and foremost a reification of power: it replaced the clan, the tribal chief, the feudal lord and before that the family, the male head of the household. There was always a symbol of power and authority and the state then under the bourgeois arrangement became the representative of power, autonomy and sovereignty.

But another aspect that is necessary for any form of state, whether feudal, tribal, family or post-modernist, is legitimacy. In the modern world, power has gone beyond the state; it is now reified in money. Global capital rules even the most powerful state in the world. The most powerful president cannot move an inch without the permission of five families and the big money, banks, corporations lay down the rules.

So, big international financial and other corporate institutions arrive and have access straight to the highest levels of governments. They tell you what you need -- a dam, city, infrastructure. We say that’s fine but we don’t have the money to do this. They say here is the money. So we fall in line, whether it’s New Murree, Patriata Forest, world class cities along the coast of Karachi or a mega project on River Ravi. A prime example is the Walled City Authority (WCA). The last one was dreamed up by Asian Development Bank. They said you have a great asset, an investment opportunity, turn your culture and history into an advantage, income generation. There will be poverty alleviation; call it sustainable conservation. That will be your equity, we’ll provide the cash, together we’ll make this mega project, we’ll make mega bucks, you get money, photo opportunity and everyone is very happy, consultants, contractors, suppliers.

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TNS: But there are political dividends at the local level, too. Where would you place Lahore’s Metro Bus project, for instance, in this scheme because the funds were said to have been generated locally?

KKM: Of course, there are because there is a populist image of progress and development. Everyone loves it. It’s the dream, the material paradise, that’s where we all want to go. It’s a highly sellable product and it costs you nothing. The land is public commons, the money is from the financing agents, it will create money, jobs, progress, development.

The key component is to use the public commons as a free equity. The government says we are getting foreign exchange from outside and we are going to generate money. The taxpayer doesn’t have to pay anything. The income from the project will pay for itself. It’s presented as a win-win situation.

TNS: But the mass transit projects are no income-generating enterprises. There may be people getting or making money in as far as laying down the infrastructure is concerned but after that it is the liability of the government and the taxpayer?

KKM: All of these projects are liabilities. Generations will pay for them. It’s the famous debt trap. That’s what the financing companies make their money out of.

TNS: So, what should ideally have been done to solve the transport problem of Lahore?

KKM: There is a genuine problem of urban transportation and as a result we have a ridiculous situation of traffic. The solution is to reduce private vehicles and, at the same time, provide good public transport. This is what is immediately required. Now a great thing about a city like Lahore is that we are blessed with rights of way on our major arteries which very few cities enjoy. Mall Road, Jail Road, Ferozepur Road, Main Boulevard, the right of way is not a problem. All you need is to run buses on them. With a little more money, still more efficient would be trams. Use the same roads for track -- yes our roads are wide enough -- and run the trams.

When they were widening the canal, we screamed that we should have public transport; we are encouraging more motor cars. So, they finally got the message and built this structure for Metro bus in the air that could have paid for buses for not only Lahore but for the whole of Punjab.

Again, with the traffic issue getting from bad to worse, there is rail plan and instead of running that train on the grade, they are mostly running it in the air and may be at some places it goes underground. But just running buses on the same roads would have been so much cheaper.

TNS: What about the plan that you gave?

KKM: I was the leading consultant in the Lahore Urban Development and Traffic Study (LUDTS) in 1977. The study was published in 1981. One whole volume out of four was on transport and traffic. There was a whole series of projects that we had identified. A year or two afterwards, we went to meet the traffic engineer planner and asked him why was it not implemented? He said that nobody agreed to it; they said it does not require any money, it’s so cheap. Tell us some overhead or underground to be made, something visible which should be visible to the chief saab. These were his words. They don’t want pedestrian footpaths, crossing islands or bus ways or anything like that. When there is money spent, only that makes everybody happy.

So, this is what these mega projects are about and it is by design. There are government agencies like Nespak, Tepa and LDA. When you have finished local democracy, the source of revenue for the local government is not there anymore, how do these agencies work? They are left with charging fees for billboards, commercialisation, illegal construction, etc. Now the only way they can survive is to encourage people to put up billboards, to break building regulations, so that they can survive. To survive, Nespak needs these big projects. So it’s not out of malice necessarily. It’s just the way everything is structured that there is no other way that they can work.

TNS: In a democratic polity what should be the ideal mechanism or forum of decision-making. There is a sense among people of the city of Lahore that they are not consulted in any major decision about their city? They are fast losing that sense of belonging to the city?

KKM: A lot of these sentiments are the problem of the liberal intellectual. We are worried about transparency, democracy, consultative politics, history, culture and so on. When we were protesting against the widening of the canal, people with push carts objected and said that you ride in your cars, now it’s our turn to ride cars and you object to roads. People have aspirations. This is the success of years of propaganda which has sold the material paradise dream to the man in the street. That’s what he aspires for.

This is happening with the most advanced countries. The governments are identifying with the Wall Street and think that the people who are trying to occupy Wall Street are losers. It was a great expression of public sentiment but was diffused by the media that made them look so ridiculous. It was a great coup by the media.

TNS: So, is it a failure of the liberal intellectual as you say?

KKM: Yes, it is but can you compete with them? The power of global capital is what you are up against.

TNS: But shouldn’t there be a window of opportunity within democratic politics? Shouldn’t there have been engagement with the opposition?

KKM: There was a real rallying cry. People are fed up with corruption all over the world, in India too. But the dream of a shining future is too hard to resist.

TNS: Should we not be concerned about the heritage that we are losing in the name of development, monuments losing a sense of perspective with the monstrosities constructed all around them? Do we have enough laws?

KKM: We have plenty of laws. But you see the way they are trampled, they are made a mockery of, and they say it too that okay there is a law, let’s change it. The Walled City Authority is made by an act of parliament. The parliamentarians have chopped their own arms and legs.

TNS: How do you see the problems in the walled city and how can the WCA rectify those?

KKM: There is a horror story going on in the walled city of a magnitude and proportion that you can never imagine. When we did our LUDTS project in 1977, we did a socio-economic survey of the walled city. The population was 500,000, very dense, about 1200 persons per hectare. Now Aga Khan Trust, which is working in collaboration with the WCA, decided to have a fresh socio-economic survey. The population now has gone down to 250,000. Why? What has happened? You look at the map and realise that literally 50 per cent of the city is commercialised -- it has spread like a cancer.

A couple of months back, a resident went to the Lahore High Court and filed a writ against the Punjab government and the Walled City Authority. He has a family house which is 150 years old and also has an imam bargah. He claims that all around his house, the entire property has been demolished. Somebody bought it systematically and they are building plazas, multistoreyed buildings, bringing cracks to his house and it might collapse. In the petition, he has questioned the role of WCA which was set up to conserve the culture of the city and to control commercialisation.

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The high court appointed us as amici curiae so we had to go in and investigate. We found that the property dealers and market traders are making unimaginable amounts of money. When we asked the WCA, they said they were helpless. When the Authority challans the dealers and traders in the magistrate’s court, they bribe them. When they go to seal the premises, they take out kalashnikovs. If their officer goes, he gets life threats. When we talked to the residents, they said their peace and privacy was shattered, their houses were vulnerable, and they were bothered by traffic.

What the land mafia does is deliberately make sure the property is degenerating and is of no value, then they buy it cheap, and systematically they buy a whole block, then pull it all down and build a concrete structure.

The property dealers and traders have contacts right up to the top; they get orders from the top and they are implemented. This is what is happening in the walled city; it is of colossal scale. There is transformation of a whole historic city. The population has left, the buildings have gone, so what is the Authority going to conserve and for whom? They say they will do it for tourists. As soon as this project was announced, foreign ambassadors and big hoteliers bought property near the Lahore Fort. The people have gone, the heritage is gone and now you are going to make a fake historic city -- for big tour operators, airlines and hotels.

TNS: How do you look at Lahore Bachao retrospectively? What could it have done -- to bring more people out on the streets, make alliances with political parties?

KKM: All this needed to be done and we tried all this. We did lobbying, talked to the media, went to the courts, up to the Supreme Court. The result is before you. The courts have de facto permitted them to go ahead with the projects. It shows what you can and cannot do.

From the experience of Lahore Bachao and our networks and organisations, we thought that let’s sit down and try to understand what’s going on. What is this development that we are constantly confronting? What is sustainable urbanisation? So emerged the Lahore Project. And now it’s more than three years that we have been working on that, collecting data, etc. It’s not flashy or in the news, we are doing it quietly. Lahore Project is a citizens’ initiative.

We have now a much better understanding of what is development and urbanisation, and what is going on.

TNS: But what about what needs to be done?

KKM: If you have correctly identified the problems, you have half the answers. So what needs to be done is very clear. But what is also clear is that it will not be done.

TNS: Isn’t that a defeatist position to have? Can we not empower people through activism?

KKM: It is a realistic position. What power to the people? It is an imagined fantasy that we all go around with. Power went from the tribal chief to the feudal to the bourgeoisie and now the power rests with the global capital.

What needs to be done is to discern between right and wrong. Right now there is no distinction. This is a philosophical position of the post-modern society that there is no absolute truth, no right and wrong, you can only have nuanced shades of grey. So, we deny the very possibility or the existence of right and wrong. In the Lahore Project, we say that once you know the right from the wrong, then at your level do what you think is right. Not because you expect to change the world, but because it’s the right thing to do.

TNS: Lastly, while we see this crass model of development in the cities of the developing world, the developed world seemed to have saved their London and their Paris very well. How did they have this sense of right and wrong in the presence of global capital?

KKM: Yes, indeed, they have saved their London and Paris. But remember these are the centres of global capital power and, thus, the leading factor in the destruction of this planet. They are the main beneficiaries of this global capitalism.