Qaiser Akram, who works in the garment business, has been living in Kasera Bazaar inside Lahore’s Walled City since he was five years old. Today, his son is as old as Akram was when he moved into his three-storey house.

Akram says that while he does feel an emotional attachment to his house and to the neighbourhood in general, if someone was to offer him a good price for the house, he would sell it off regardless of the buyer.

"My uncle lives a few streets away and his house was valued at Rs0.3 million," says Akram. "But eventually he sold it to a developer, or so called ‘plaza mafia,’ for Rs0.8 million."

Of late, Akram’s uncle is not the only Walled City resident who sold their home to developers who will most likely raze the old building and instead raise a mini plaza or a go-down to store wholesale items. Commercialisation is one of the biggest problems faced by the Walled City Lahore Authority (WCLA), the organisation in charge of preserving the city’s heritage.

According to WCLA Director General Kamran Lashari, "It’s a disease which spread inside the Walled City in the last few years. We need to control it before it plunders away the remaining heritage and glory."

Lahore’s Walled City is no stranger to plunder. After it was built by the Sultans of Delhi in the 11th century, it was repeatedly invaded by the Mughals. Once in power, the Mughals rebuilt the city but the large chunks of the city, including its many ‘walls,’ were destroyed by the British in 1857. A little under a century later, in 1947, much of the Walled City was plundered and destroyed.

That was around the time that the in-laws of Khawar Khursheed, one of the city’s residents, moved into Dina Nath Haveli in the Walled City. She herself moved there from Gawalmandi in 1972 after she was married. She has now outlived her husband and her in-laws both and, lately, is finding it difficult to take care of the large haveli, with only her son.

Khursheed says the haveli, which is located near Delhi Gate, across the Phoolon Wali Gali, is under two kinds of pressures: that of local land mafias and of dilapidation. The latter problem, she claims, was easy to deal with. The WCLA issued her a notice two years ago, stating that her house was "dangerous". Unless she repaired it, it would have to be vacated and sealed. Luckily for Khursheed, just last year the WCLA was able to wrangle Rs2 crores from the Punjab government with which they repaired 19 endangered buildings -- her haveli was one of them.

Although the residents of the Walled City are delighted with these free-of-cost repairs, Lashari does not think the method is sustainable. He is hoping for another Rs2 crores this year for repairing the remaining endangered buildings. But this time around he wants the residents to meet at least 20 per cent of the cost.

"Free lunches are never sustainable," he explains, as the locals then start making unreasonable construction demands that have no link to preservation.

Khursheed says that in the last five years two different sets of "thugs" (as she describes them) have tried to take over the Dina Nath Haveli, named after Diwan Dina Nath, a Hindu courtier during Ranjit Singh’s reign.

One of the attempts at taking over her house involved a group of men, allegedly associated with an influential political party in the neighbourhood, holding her son at gunpoint and forcing him to sign over the haveli and accept half a million rupees as advance payment. After a prolonged court case, Khursheed was allowed to stay in the haveli.

A source at WCLA says that since the haveli is a heritage site, the thugs probably reevaluated and decided to take their advance back.

"The land mafia in the Walled City is composed of vultures," says Kamil Khan Mumtaz, a renowned architect who has served as amicus curiae in the Lahore High Court pertaining to a case filed by a resident of the area against the Punjab government and the WCLA.

The petitioner had cracks in his house because developers had raised plazas all around his building and he was concerned with the fact that commercialisation was thriving even under the WCLA’s watch. "The WCLA is doing good work but the problem is that it has no power against the land mafia, the developers and traders, and all those who want to build commercial plazas and warehouses in the Walled City," he said.

"The WCLA cannot compete with the amount of money the developers bring to the table, nor can they face the kalashnikovs that will be pointed at them if they persist."

Lashari agrees with the sentiment that the commercial mafia in the area are the WCLA’s greatest challenge. "The Walled City is like a mini FATA," he declares. "The area is governed by its own laws and customs and its very tricky to implement regular laws there."

He explains that the more you move towards the peripheries of the Walled City and the closer you get to main thoroughfares of Lahore, the mafia has more land and power.

It is this fact that has attuned the WCLA to the fact that one possible solution to the mafia problem is to drive the Walled City into residential and commercial zones. Lashari understands that it is not an ideal solution but at least it shall preserve some degree of heritage since no one will be allowed to build commercial buildings in residential areas. This proposed plan is complete in theory, areas have been zoned off and maps drawn, but implementation is yet to be undertaken.

As things stand now, "the developers are drooling over the buildings," says architect Mumtaz.

He explains that the developers hunt around for buildings that are dilapidated or marked dangerous, and hence if of very little value, then they swoop in and convince the owners to sell them their buildings. "The developers systematically buy off the whole block, pull all the buildings down and erect their plazas."

Shehnaz Bibi, a woman who has spent her entire life within the Walled City and now lives near the Rang Mahal, agrees. She says that the moment her house was declared "dangerous," she began receiving very tempting offers for the house from commercial developers.

"Many of the buildings in our block are already sold off and I think they just want the whole block," she says. "But the WCLA jumped in and helped me fix my house so now it’s no longer dangerous and I don’t think I want to sell. Not yet at least."

An anonymous source within the WCLA says that the Authority needs to spend more funds on preserving buildings rather than placing colourful rickshaws around the city to attract tourists. "If nothing will be left of the city in another 10 or 20 years, then these rickshaws will be good for nothing," he says. "But investing in the buildings shall preserve the city for a longer period of time and hence bring in a sustained number of tourists."

A lack of resources, faced by the WCLA as well as the locals, is an issue that is intricately tied to the land mafia problem. Najam Saqib, the WCLA’s Director Conservation, explains that without dealing with poverty within the Walled City, no problem can be fixed. "Until and unless people have better and more sustained incomes, they will always be tempted to sell their property to commercial developers," he tells TNS.

"We cannot stop them from selling to whomsoever they like; we can try and prevent the developers from building but they can own as much land as people are willing to sell to them."

Another lament the WCLA presents is that often when they announce that they will demolish an "illegal" structure, the media paints the news in such a way that it appears that the Authority is razing down heritage houses.

"It is very rare for us to bring down someone’s home, and when we do so it is only because it is beyond repair," says Saqib. "If we do not have the funds to repair a house we simply serve a notice asking the residents to vacate for their own safety. But that doesn’t mean we will demolish the building."

One solution to the problem of commercialisation could be to awaken a sense of ownership and pride about their neighbourhood in the minds of the residents.

To some degree, this does exist. As Qaiser Akram of Kasera Bazaar puts it, "No neighbourhood in Lahore is as peaceful or loving as the Walled City. Neighbours look after each other here."

However, he goes on to add that things are changing fast. Already, there is a plaza in the main street that his alley leads out of. The workers in the plaza are strangers, newcomers to the Walled City, and this makes him and his family feel uncomfortable while stepping out or even while enjoying a breeze on their rooftop.

When asked if he cared about retaining the heritage and glory of his neighbourhood, by ensuring that he doesn’t eventually sell the place to developers, Akram scoffs. "Why should locals, such as myself, care about heritage or something when the government has never cared for us?

"I have to give my children the best possible life and that comes with money. I don’t care about anything else," he states.