The failure of the Greater Karachi Resettlement Plan (GKRP) forced the government in the mid to late sixties to seek alternative solutions to the housing and infrastructure problems of the city. For housing they developed displaced persons’ townships some distance from the city where people from inner city squatter settlements or katchi abadis were relocated. These settlements had no infrastructure but the state provided government transport and water supply by tankers. Most of these settlements were to the north and west of the city. Around them, squatter settlements developed, making use of the facilities that were being offered to the formal settlements. Soon these squatter settlements became much larger than their neighbouring formal settlements. The state tolerated these settlements as they were far away from the city.

Most of the city transport activities at that time were either owned by the state or by a private sector that was effectively regulated by the state. However, they were inadequate and the state did not develop policies that provided support to the private sector in transport and nor did it have the finances to build an effective public sector owned transportation system. Port facilities, especially related to cargo handling and warehousing, were also insufficient. Meanwhile, the wholesale markets in the old city were expanding and facing problems of access as the old city consisted of narrow winding roads. Storage facilities for them were insufficient. In addition, bulk water supply, sewage and drainage facilities, transport terminals, mass transit systems and social sector infrastructure were required if the city’s increasing needs were to be serviced. Against this backdrop, the government of Pakistan in 1968 asked for UNDP assistance for preparing a master plan for the city of Karachi.

The Karachi Master Plan 1975-85 was a landmark in the planning history of Karachi. By hindsight, one can say that it identified Karachi’s problems and growth with remarkable accuracy. It made plans for a rational road network; housing, consisting of sites and services and the upgrading of katchi abadis (then a radical step); bulk water supply; transport terminals and warehousing; land management; bye-passes to the city; mass transit and ecological issues.

In the plan period only the road networks were built and these too in a substandard manner. However, they have eased and rationalised movement between different areas of the city. The very ambitious housing programme which developed over 230,000 sites, mostly for low income residents, was a complete failure. This is because the plots were too expensive for the target groups; the process of acquiring them was long and cumbersome; one had to wait many years before they were developed; and complex bye-laws and procedures had to be followed to construct on them. In addition, loans for house building were not available to non-loanworthy applicants and most of the poor were non-loanworthy. Thus, the vast majority of these sites have remained vacant. In almost all cases they have been purchased by the middle classes for speculation and their infrastructure has collapsed due to non use. Bulk water supply was also developed but its construction quality was frequently substandard, as a result of which there are more than 30 per cent losses in transmission due to leakages in the system.

The other components of the plan could not be implemented and nor could the institutional arrangements developed by the plan for the management of the city. Legal cover was not given to the plan either, perhaps because that would deprive the Karachi Development Authority (KDA) Director General, the Chief Minister and/or other ministers of the discretionary powers that they now enjoy and through which they can bye-pass rules and regulations. These discretionary powers are essential to buy and reward political support, raise money for election purposes by sale of government land and promote corruption.

Because of the non-implementation of the 1975-85 Karachi Master Plan, the physical and social sector needs of the city could not be met. The demands increased and the administration became increasingly helpless and as such, inefficient and corrupt. As a result, the informal sector expanded and its various interest groups came to be major suppliers of the physical, social and financial requirements of the citizens of Karachi. In addition, the 1977 military take over added a new dimension to the politics of the city of Karachi which is discussed latter.

During the Bhutto era, a number of physical, social and political trends developed that have persisted. First, the prime minister was a great supporter of the poor and derived a lot of his political strength from the katchi abadis. Thus, using regularisation and upgrading of katchi abadis as a political gimmick became a part and parcel of Pakistani politics. This gave fresh impetus to the development of katchi abadis and political power to their muscle men and activists, who became members of his People’s Party. Second, the Bhutto era introduced populism in the politics of Pakistan and this led to the development of a pop culture closely linked to Pakistani folklore. Sindhi saints (those from other provinces also) were officially glorified and the prime minister and his party members visited their tombs and attended their urs (birthday celebration of holly men). Regional cultures were also promoted and regional languages, at least symbolically, made a big comeback. Karachi, for the first time since 1947, became the capital of the re-created province of Sindh whose rural representatives dominated its Assembly. In addition, they patronised the people from their constituency in getting jobs and admissions to educational institutions. A rural-urban quota for admissions to colleges and for government service was also introduced in Sindh to support the “backward” Sindhi speaking population. All these steps created a distance between Karachi’s refugee population and the Sindhi speaking population of the province. Third, the prime minister had a vision for Karachi. He saw Karachi as a cosmopolitan international city whose economic interests could be served if it could cater to the entertainment and business needs of the newly independent Gulf states. To this end, five star hotels, cabarets, casinos, an active race course and similar activities were planned and some of them were executed. In addition, high income areas and posh neighbourhoods were also developed with plans for golf courses, surfing and boating. All this, further divided the city in physical terms between the rich and the poor and was responsible to some extent for the 1977 upheaval that forced Bhutto out of power and brought in the army.

The Bhutto government also promoted high rise residential buildings and gave plots at subsidised prices to the developers so that they could build apartments. Bridge financing was also provided through the recently nationalised banks to building firms. Building bye-laws were changed so as to increase building heights and covered areas. These policies led to the creation of a powerful developer’s lobby in Karachi which over the years, has become a very important and wealthy interest group. These policies also changed Karachi’s skyline, densified the old city and over-loaded its already fragile infrastructure, and created vertical slums in the middle and lower middle income suburbs. It also led to the creation of a “flat culture” which is now asserting itself against the substandard work being done by developers.

The above mentioned policies of the Bhutto government coincided with the migration of Pakistani labour, professionals and entrepreneurs to the Gulf States. The money that they sent back helped in supporting the new real estate industry since most of it was invested in urban land and house and/or flat building. Also, a large consumer class developed as a result of Gulf money and wholesale and retail markets for consumer goods were required. These were not provided and they developed in an ad-hoc manner wherever open space was available and could be encroached upon. Alternatively, they were built in the already congested “native” city or on the sites of demolished buildings in and around Saddar Bazaar.

The Army took over in 1977 and during the 1977-87 decade the military dictatorship’s main concern was to keep Sindh divided so that no major movement against it could take place in the province. To this end, it supported all ethnic organisations with money, arms and establishment support so that they could fight each other, or when necessary come together to oppose the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy, the dictatorship’s main political rival. Officials were appointed to important positions only if they were willing to give support to this game. The provisions of the Karachi Master Plan were violated to provide land at throw-away prices to political opponents so as to purchase their loyalties; encroachments on amenity plots were encouraged for the same reason; building contracts and permits were given in exchange for support for the regime’s policies and political loyalties mattered more than the sanctity of law and institutions. Political opponents of the regime were arrested and detained illegally and the police force also became subservient to the political objectives of the regime. No development activity was initiated during this period and the sense of deprivation in Karachi and in rural Sindh increased, pulling these Siamese twins in two different directions.

These trends were further complicated as they were accompanied by the influx of cheap arms and drugs into Karachi. The drug money financed the Afghan War and the arms, also the result of the war, were used to build up the strength of rival ethnic groups in Sindh. The city administration has never made any attempts to curb the drug and arms trade. On the contrary, the police killed a number of anti-drug activists in the city in the eighties and still protects drug suppliers and persecutes the anti-drug activists.

This state of affairs led to a collapse of institutions and the emergence of powerful interest lobbies that provide services and also determine government policies or make those that counter their interests, inoperable. Huge investments have been made by these lobbies, the source of which cannot be determined. The growth of katchi abadis has increased; formal developer built housing has also increased with huge initial investments from the developers; a large tanker mafia supplies water to the city; an informal but sophisticated recycling industry has emerged; and the informal job market has expanded. In addition, transport is now entirely controlled by the financiers who give credit to individuals for purchasing vehicles. All these issues are examined later in the text.

It was during this period that the second generation of Karachi city dwellers came of age. They rejected the politics of their parents who believed in a strong centre and also identified themselves strongly with the religious parties. This younger generation has distanced itself from the politics of Sindh and Pakistan as a whole since they cannot identify with them and consider them to be feudal in nature. In addition, this younger generation is contemporary in its thinking and outlook and its culture has conflicted with the official “Islamic” culture of the Zia era and of the post-Zia governments. These trends have increased the gap between this generation and the establishment.

Most of this generation lives in the vast lower and middle-middle income suburbs to the north and north-east of the city. These suburbs are densifying rapidly. In addition, the younger educated generation of the katchi abadis is not dissimilar in cultural terms from the younger residents of the lower and middle-middle income suburbs.

This period is dominated by the rise of the Mohajir Quami Movement (MQM) which has dominated the politics of Karachi and won all the local, provincial and national elections from the city. This has made the MQM the king-maker at the provincial level and an important player in national politics. This has brought it into conflict with the Sindhi nationalists at one level and forced it to collaborate with them at another.

This decade has also brought back some form of democracy to Pakistan. However, the administration that the political parties inherited, had little or no experience left of dealing with elected political governments. In addition, most of the members of the political governments too, had little or no administrative experience. Many of them were the leftovers of the Zia era and many more represented constituencies that had suffered under the long years of dictatorship. The former behaved as if the dictatorship still existed and the latter tried to compensate, at all costs, their constituencies for the sufferings they had been subjected to in the Zia era. These factors, along with the controversy and conflict around Zia’s legacy and an absence of a national political consensus, have been responsible for a further collapse of state institutions and the promotion of corruption, nepotism and the purchasing of political support.

As a result of what has been described above, government jobs, contracts (even small ones), consultancies, admissions to educational institutions and permits for businesses are all given on the basis of political patronage. Since politics has been ethnicised, this means that they are given on an ethnic basis. Also, to win loyalties, in the 1987-97 period, thousands of jobs have been created in government line departments that were not really required. For example, in 1996 there were 14,500 employees in the Karachi Water and Sewage Board (KWSB), whereas only about 6,000 were required. Under pressure from the World Bank 5,100 were removed through a Golden Hand Shake3. KDA staff strength is around 7,000 plus and its Director General is on record as saying that he requires no more than 2,000 staff to run the organisation. Similar figures can be quoted for the KMC and in the Pakistan Steel Mills the surplus staff is much higher. Each party in power recruits people from the ethnic groups that supported it. This excessive over-staffing is one of the main reasons why all these organisations, except the KMC, are on the verge of bankruptcy.

The domination of the MQM in Karachi has been seen by the Sindhi nationalists as a threat to the physical unity of Sindh. This domination has also isolated the Pakhtun and the powerful Punjabi business community in the city. As a result, in the election process the Mohajirs vote for the MQM, the Sindhis and Baloch for the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), the Pakhtuns for the Awami National Party (ANP) and the large Punjabi business community and its allies for the Muslim League. The MQM has also split into two (the splinter group is supported by the establishment) and there is considerable in-fighting between the two groups and between other political groupings for turf. The drugs and guns syndrome is a part and parcel of this struggle for “turf” and is accompanied by extorting protection money from the areas that are under the control of each group. Law enforcing agencies support this extortion and in many areas they have a share in it. Newspaper reports seem to suggest that the political leadership does not have control on the extorters, who it has disowned repeatedly, and who claim to be their members at the street level.

During the 1987-97 decade a number of ad-hoc institutional experiments have also been carried out. The KMC was divided into four zonal councils which were re-grouped again since nothing was done to make the zonal councils effective and financially autonomous of the KMC. Again, the KMC has now been subdivided into urban district councils. During the last Peoples Party regime, the KDA was subdivided into the KDA, the Malir Development Authority (MDA), and the Lyari Development Authority (LDA). Opponents of this division claim that it was done because Malir and Lyari were both strongholds of the Peoples Party and consisted of Sindhi speaking populations. These ad-hoc changes have further weakened local government and development institutions and further consolidated the politics of ethnicity.

From 1997 onwards, and especially since 1987, the planning, development and maintenance agencies have not been able to function for reasons explained above. Although they have adequate staff, they now work entirely through consultants. Also, their revenue per capita has fallen in real terms and they increasingly rely on foreign loans, which come with foreign consultants, for financing their planning and development projects. It can be safely said that the consultant and contractor lobbies now determine Karachi’s needs and development plans and as such these plans are grandiose and have very little to do with the reality of the city.

The last decade has also seen the rise of advocacy NGOs, pressure groups and community activists. Their activity has led to a dialogue between the ineffective state organisations and the people. It has also given the opportunity to concerned civil servants and technocrats to support the NGOs and pressure groups.

On the expiry of the 1975-85 Karachi Master Plan period, work on the Karachi Development Plan 2000 was begun by the KDA with UNDP assistance. The plan document was completed in 1990. Rs 470 million were spent on the plan preparation and the hardware (computers, digital mapping equipment) that accompanied it. Essentially the plan consisted of a computer model that would monitor developments in Karachi so that investments could be directed appropriately. It also contained important recommendations for planning and a related institutional set-up which included the setting up of an independent Karachi Division Physical Planning Agency (KDPPA) supported by a steering committee and an implementation board. Building control in this arrangement was to be subservient to the KDPPA.

However, the monitoring and related planning exercise could not be carried out without a constant supply of data for which no system was proposed by the Plan. In addition, the plan was prepared at a stage when much of Karachi’s civic needs were being taken care of by powerful interest groups rather than by the civic agencies. A study of the role of these interest groups was never undertaken and nor were they consulted during the planning process, except at a superficial level. Due to these reasons, the entire set-up created for the Karachi Development Plan 2000 is now ineffective. In addition, the plan was never given legal cover as its Steering Committee could not meet to approve it. Many of its important provisions (such as, not developing any more land till the over 200,000 vacant plots are built upon) are being violated.

Giving legal cover to the Karachi Development Plan 2000 would have meant the creation of institutional arrangements that would have make it difficult, if not impossible, to use Karachi’s land and real estate resources for political patronage and corruption. It would also have eliminated the discretionary powers that ministers and senior bureaucrats enjoy in interpreting certain aspects related to rules and regulations on urban development issues. Maybe that is why the approval of the Plan was not a priority with the successive governments that have followed each other in quick succession after the Plan was completed in 1990.

Since the Plan has not been given legal cover and relevant institutional arrangements have not been made, development proposals for the city are constantly made and implemented by various line departments without referring them to the Master Plan Department for approval or comments. As a result, fragmented development takes place as there is no co-ordination among the agencies making and implementing these development proposals. In addition, the Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA) has taken over the function of determining land use, something that the Karachi Master Plan Department should do. These changes, often involving high-rise commercial development, are made without any urban design exercises. Much of Karachi’s environmental degradation is a result of this ad-hocism.

1. Government of Pakistan Census Reports, 1951.

2. H. Meyerink: Karachi’s Growth in the Historical Perspective. Paper in “Between Basti Dwellers and Bureaucrats”, Pergamon Press, 1983.

3. Source: URC from KWSB Reports.

Source Understanding Karachi by Arif Hasan, Muhammad Younus and Akbar Zaidi