What’s Happening in Karachi?

By Anjum Altaf

What’s happening in Karachi is obvious for all to see. Why it’s happening is less obvious and, for that reason, the cause of much speculation.

Karachi’s ills are complex in nature and beyond the stage of simple prescriptions. This article looks at only one dimension of the problem: Why and how have conflicts in the city taken an increasingly religious form? For that, it is necessary to look at events that took place many years ago outside the city itself. It is often the case that the present cannot be explained fully without recourse to seemingly unrelated events that occurred in other places in the past.

An article I came across recently highlights an important link between the small town and the big city that is relevant to explaining the nature of the ongoing conflict in Karachi. The article (The Mulla and the State: Dynamics of Muslim Scholars and their Institutions in Contemporary South Asia) is by Jamal Malik, now a professor at Erfurt University in Germany, the chair of the religious studies programme, and a specialist in Muslim religious and cultural history. It was written in 1997, well before September 11, 2001 triggered a torrent of ex-post analysis. It is a sober, thoughtful, piece aimed at a university audience and not intended to respond to the recent demand for instant analysis of religious extremism.

Professor Malik starts with the basic facts that are reasonably well known. Over the last quarter-century, the number of religious schools in Pakistan increased and the number of religious graduates rose dramatically. The labour market implications of this phenomenon received much less attention than they should have. The fact remains that this supply of manpower was not matched by a demand for economically productive jobs requiring the skills acquired by the graduates. The recognition of this mismatched market was an important observation by the author.

The deeper insight of professor Malik, however, was his identification of a phenomenon he termed ‘religious regionalism’ and the extrapolation of its likely consequences. Professor Malik drew attention to the fact that different schools of religious thought had become predominant in different geographical areas of the country. In a prescient observation, he considered this, in the context of the mismatched labour market, a potential source of great future conflict.

This conflict was subdued in the small town itself. While the emphasis on religion had increased, the local areas remained, by and large, under the influence of one dominant school of religious thought. The potential for future conflicts was in different locations stemming from the lack of local job prospects for the increased number of religious graduates. Like other job seekers, such graduates migrated to the big city in search of employment and Karachi has long been a favoured destination for job-seeking migrants in Pakistan.

What could be the implications of this ‘spatial mobility of young religious scholars?’ It has always been natural for migrants to congregate in sub-groups within the big city in order to preserve their identities in an alien environment. In an earlier era, Karachi was segregated along ethnic lines with different ethnic groups living in different parts of the city. Now this is overlaid with divisions along sectarian affiliations with mosques and seminaries serving as easily identifiable points of reference. The many different schools of thought, not particularly tolerant of deviations from the true faith, are now in much closer proximity sharing one physical space. The fault lines of the big city have thus acquired a religious dimension and ethnic conflicts have been displaced by religious conflicts.

This is an explanation for the religious character of recent conflicts in Karachi, not an explanation for the factors that give rise to the conflicts themselves. There are many contributing causes for the latter. The inability of the city to provide enough employment to its growing population is only one of these. This ability has been eroded further by the influx of religious scholars with non-marketable skills.

Professor Malik’s article raises two important points to consider. The first is the glaring contradiction between hope and reality. The ostensible purpose of the Islamisation policy, and the stated justification for promotion of religion by the state, was to create a sense of national identity. Stressing the commonality of religion was expected to bring citizens of Pakistan closer together overcoming the ethnic hostilities that were the source of earlier conflicts. However, the reality has been quite different with the intensification of new divisions based on differences in religious schools of thought.

Professor Malik was right in 1997 to warn that the Islamisation policy could ‘boomerang’ and would ‘ultimately force the politically dominant sector to rethink its own positions’. He predicted that in the near future ‘the centre may be pushed on the political defensive, something it could overcome only by violence’.

The second important point flows from a comparative assessment of the consequences of state involvement in religion. Professor Malik traces the institutionalisation of these different schools in 19th century India, particularly after 1857, as part of the struggle between modernity and tradition. Different schools (including Deobandis, Barelvis, Ahl-e-Hadith, Nadwat-ul-Ulama, etc.) organised themselves to mobilise specific groups in the population. After 1947, these institutions were left alone by the state in India, whereas, in Pakistan, the state became deeply involved in their affairs. The different trajectory of conflicts within Islamic groups in the two countries suggests that the results of state involvement have yielded negative outcomes.

This analysis will do nothing to resolve the problems of Karachi in the short run. However, it does suggest that a rethinking of the relationship between religion and the state might need to be an important part of the solution.

This Op-Ed appeared in the Daily Times, Lahore, on July, 6 2004 and is reproduced here with the author’s permission. It is a companion piece to an earlier post, What’s Happening in Small Towns?

A synopsis of Professor Malik’s article can be accessed at http://www.unc.edu/mideast/islamsem/970827.shtml.

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Karachi is a Small City

By Anjum Altaf

City size is back in fashion as a variable of interest and this time bigness is being viewed as an advantage. This is quite a change from the perspective that prevailed for years when countries, specially developing ones, were decidedly anti-urban and wished to retard migration to prevent cities from increasing in size. Size was seen as a handicap and served as an excuse to explain away the problems of big cities. How should we see Karachi in this new perspective?

Of course, well-managed big cities have been around for a long time – Tokyo, New York and London are obvious examples. But somehow it was felt that such success could not be replicated in developing countries. The blame was always placed at the door of mismanagement though it was never adequately explained why such mismanagement was so endemic to developing countries and why the ability to manage declined with size. Now, following the East Asian miracle, the emergence of dynamic big cities like Seoul and Shanghai has re-opened the debate about the possibilities and dividends of urban size.

Recent research has in fact suggested that most Chinese cities are still too small from an economic perspective and that it is much more costly to be undersized than to be oversized. The reason is that even after accounting for the negative effects of size like congestion, productivity, or output per worker, increases significantly with size.

We might choose to ignore these potential economic gains if small cities were exceptionally well managed in Pakistan. But given that this is not the case by any stretch of the imagination, there seems no reason to fail to tap the gains available from increases in city size.

To do that, however, calls for a re-examination of the reasons for the poor performance of large cities in many developing countries in the world. Here, I feel, the hand-wringing about mismanagement is an easy cop-out that hinders the search for what might be considerably more significant reasons.

In this perspective I wish to advance the claim that size and effective size are very different things and while Karachi is large in size, is effective size is quite small. And this divergence between size and effective size has serious implications.

The key to understanding this difference is the realization that productivity, or output per worker, increases with city size because of the resulting increase in the size of the labor market. Not only is there a greater diversity in the labor skills available to firms but the greater number of available jobs enables labor to match itself with the job that provides the highest returns.

But, and it is a big but, this requires that it be physically possible for the optimal match to occur. If one resides at one end of Karachi and the best paying job exists at the other, it should be possible to travel to and from the location of the job in a reasonable amount of time and at a reasonable cost. In other words, the benefits of size in effect derive from the existence of an integrated labor market. It is in this sense that Karachi is not a city of 18 million people; it is perhaps akin to six cities of three million people each. It suffers all the social and political disadvantages of a large population without deriving any of the economic benefits.

How can one understand the concept of effective size? It turns out that the indicator is a very simple one which can be illustrated with an example. Let us consider one hour as the maximum feasible time for a home-to-job commute and two hours as the maximum feasible time for firms making just-in-time deliveries to other firms (for example, bakeries delivering fresh products to hotels) . Between 1990 and 2007 the population residing within the one and two hour circles from Shanghai port increased 200 percent (from 4 to 12 million) and 130 percent (form 10 to 23 million), respectively. These improvements came from investments in transport infrastructure that integrated the labor market greatly reducing the divergence between size and effective size. And such investments in China were not confined to Shanghai; smaller cities like Kunshan and Suzhou showed even higher gains. Not surprisingly, the economic output per square kilometer increased between two and three fold within a period of five to ten years.

The bottom line of this argument is that contrary to our belief, Karachi is not a big city; it is an ineffective agglomeration of about half a dozen small cities whose labor markets need to be integrated to avail the benefits that derive from bigness. This requires investments in transport infrastructure, rapid transit, and the sensible utilization of the circular railway that has been criminally neglected over the years.

One of the unremarked advantages of Mumbai is its suburban railway system that transports about 7 million commuters per day. It is not surprising that in 2008 the gross domestic product of Mumbai was $209 billion compared to $78 billion for Karachi. It is not that Mumbai is significantly better managed or has fewer social and political problems. A large part of the difference pertains to the integration of its labor market. In terms of size Mumbai and Karachi are comparable. In terms of effective size, Karachi is much smaller, perhaps one-third the size of Mumbai.

The urban agenda for Karachi and the other major cities in Pakistan couldn’t get much clearer than this. In fact, looking ahead there should be no reason why the labor markets of Hyderabad-Karachi, Gujranwala-Lahore or Islamabad-Rawalpindi should remain unconnected to each other.

This Op-Ed appeared in Dawn, Karachi, on November 15, 2010 and is reproduced here with the author’s permission to facilitate a discussion.

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Lahore – What is to be Done?

By Anjum Altaf

In two earlier posts I had made the point that there are evidence-based methods to resolve the conflict over the proposed construction of an expressway along the Lahore Canal to reduce traffic congestion. In this post I suggest two specific approaches to achieve this objective.

Before proceeding to the concrete suggestions one should note that the judiciary, having intervened in the controversy, has given both sides time to resolve the dispute through mutual discussions. I feel this approach would prove inconclusive because this is not the kind of market transaction that is conducive to negotiations that are aimed at striking a deal, e.g., an agreement to sacrifice a number of trees that lies somewhere in the middle of the range mentioned by the two sides.

In fact, this kind of a negotiated solution might be worse than either alternative – as second-best solutions often are – neither fully relieving the traffic congestion nor leaving an organic greenbelt. The objective should be to make sure that we find the right solution. And to do so, we have to pose the right question. As suggested in the last post, the question that needs to be addressed is the follows:

How do we transport the maximum number of goods and people with the minimum number of vehicles at the lowest economic and environmental cost without reducing the level of economic activity in the city?

This is the type of question that trained professionals are adept at answering. The first suggestion is simply to take the plan proposed by the city authorities and submit it to an independent body of experts acceptable to the representatives of the citizens who have reservations about the proposed construction. I have little doubt that this would lead to a better alternative than buying a few years of congestion-free traffic at the cost of a unique cultural heritage.

The second suggestion is more ambitious. It would involve the city of Lahore initiating an international design competition to determine how best it can leverage its unique asset to trigger the renewal of the city. Many cities have used such competitions or specific events (like the Olympic Games or the World Expo) to anchor their redevelopment using the latest ideas and technologies.

It is reasonable to expect that either approach would emphasize the necessity of initiating Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) simply because it satisfies environmental, economic efficiency and social equity concerns. BRT requires more organizational competence than simply pouring concrete and gravel but it should not be beyond the ability of city administrators in Pakistan or other South Asian countries. It also requires putting the welfare of the citizens and respect for cultural heritage over the short-term infighting for political patronage, something that has held back BRT plans in Karachi for many years (see the column by Ardeshir Cowasjee).

A general point that emerges from this discussion is that citizens need to be protected from the technical incompetence of their political representatives. Subjecting proposals prepared by government agencies to expert groups would significantly reduce this danger and also serve as a spur to improve planning over time in the public sector if only to avoid international humiliation.

In this regard I had made a suggestion along these lines over ten years ago when a ‘new’ education policy was released. It was a very poor policy in my estimation and the ‘new’ new education policy released in 2009 is no better. In the meanwhile we have lost a critical decade and are still floundering.  As long as civil society can exercise no oversight over the quality of plans and proposals prepared by government agencies we would continue to fight rearguard battles most of which we would end up losing.

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Lahore – The Wisdom of Jane Jacobs

By Anjum Altaf

The proposal to transform the greenbelt along the Lahore canal into an expressway in order to relieve the congestion of traffic has predictably divided citizens into two camps. The environmentalists bemoan the damage to nature while the developmentalists consider it the price for progress. Both sides rely on highly emotive sentiments and there seems no prospect of either convincing the other based on refutable evidence or logical argumentation. This outcome would be understandable in the Age of Faith but seems strikingly bizarre in the Age of Reason.

In the previous post I proposed one way to resolve this dilemma. In this post, I use the work of Jane Jacobs, perhaps the wisest urban scholar of the twentieth century, to further advance an analytical approach to the issue. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jacobs, published as far back as 1961, has rightly been described as “perhaps the most influential work in the history of town planning… a work of literature.” It can be considered the Bible of urbanism and is essential reading for all those interested in the evolution of cities. Planners who have not digested her insights are not doing themselves any favors.

In the book Jacobs has a chapter (Erosion of Cities or Attrition of Automobiles) that addresses precisely the issue that has become controversial in Lahore and is equally important for other cities in South Asia. I would urge readers to buy the book (used copies are available for a few dollars on the Internet) but for the moment I will rely on selective quotes to convey the essentials of her perspective.

Jacobs begins by addressing the key concern: “Today everyone who values cities is disturbed by automobiles” but almost immediately goes on to say “But we blame automobiles for too much.” She presents historical evidence to establish that much before automobiles were invented traffic jams were just as bad or worse in the horse-and-buggy days with the additional problem caused by animal droppings. “Automobiles are hardly inherent destroyers of cities… the internal combustion engine… was potentially an excellent instrument… for liberating cities…”

Not only are automotive engines quieter and cleaner than horses but, even more important, fewer engines than horses can do a given amount of work. The power of mechanized vehicles, and their greater speed than horses, can make it easier to reconcile great concentrations of people with efficient movement of people and goods.

So what went wrong?

We went awry by replacing, in effect, each horse on the crowded city streets with half a dozen or so mechanized vehicles, instead of each mechanized vehicle to replace half a dozen or so horses. The mechanical vehicles, in their overabundance, work slothfully and idle much. As one consequence of such low efficiency, the powerful and speedy vehicles, choked by their own redundancy, don’t move much faster than horses.

Trucks, by and large, do accomplish much of what might have been hoped for from mechanical vehicles in cities. They do the work of much greater number of horse-drawn vehicles or of burden-laden men. But because passenger vehicles do not, this congestion, in turn, cuts down on the efficiency of the trucks.

Having created the problem (Jacobs does not go into why the problem was created – that is another very interesting story), the response was not to rectify the original mistake but to attempt to resolve it by increasing road capacity. This initiates the erosion of cities by automobiles because of what Jacobs calls “positive feedback.”

In cases of positive feedback, an action produces a reaction which in turn intensifies the condition responsible for the first action. This intensifies the need for repeating the first action, which in turn intensifies the reaction, and so on, ad infinitum. It is something like the grip of a habit-forming addiction.

This should strike a chord with the citizens of Lahore who witnessed the first expansion of road capacity along the canal some years back.

Jacobs then provides from real life “a striking statement of the positive feedback traffic process” with reference to a 1955 traffic plan for Fort Worth, Texas, that projected the street capacity that would be needed to accommodate the number of vehicles that would be on the street at any one time in 1970.

He [the planner, Victor Gruen] got an outlandish figure of roadbed needed: sixteen million square feet, not including parking. This is in comparison with the five million square feet of roadbed the underdeveloped downtown now possesses.

Now here is the real kicker!

But the instant Gruen had calculated his sixteen million square feet, the figure was already out of date and much too small. To obtain that much roadbed space, the downtown would have to be spread out physically to an enormous extent. A given quantity of economic uses would thereby be spread relatively thin. To use its different elements, people would have to depend much less on walking and much more on driving. This would further increase the need for still more street space, or else there would be a terrific mess of congestion.

As Gruen pointed out here, the more space that is provided cars in cities, the greater becomes the need for use of cars, and hence for still more space for them.

Which leads Jane Jacobs to reiterate the real solution – cut down drastically the absolute number of vehicles using a city without cutting down on the economic activity of the city – and pose the real question: How is that objective to be achieved?

There are two points worth considering here. First, if Victor Gruen working in 1955, before the age of computers, could produce a numerical forecast as an aid to decision-making, why can’t our planners do something similar today when every child can play with SimCity? From the evidence we have seen, it seems they cannot even simulate traffic flow along a single road let alone the entire city. The misaligned underpasses on the Canal Road provide strong evidence that the planning has not progressed beyond the construction of one interchange at a time. It should be reasonable to demand that unless they can produce a credible traffic simulation for a five to ten year period, verified by independent experts, all their claims should be summarily tossed out of court.

Second, when we have repeatedly seen the effect of “positive feedback” in any number of cities, why do we still continue to make the same mistakes? Here Jacobs has an explanation:

In real life, we do not suddenly jump five million square feet of city roadbed to sixteen million square feet, and so the implications of accommodating a few more cars and a few more cars and a few more cars are a little harder to see. But swiftly or slowly, the positive feedback is at work. Swiftly or slowly, greater accessibility by car is inexorably accompanied both by less convenience and efficiency of public transportation, and by thinning-down and smearing-out of uses, and hence the need for more cars.

It is questionable how much of the destruction wrought by automobiles is really a response to transportation and traffic needs, and how much of it is owing to sheer disrespect for other city needs, uses and functions. Like city builders who face a blank when they try to think of what to do instead of renewal projects, because they know of no other respectable principles for city organization, just so, highwaymen, traffic engineers and city rebuilders, again, face a blank when they try to overcome traffic kinks as they occur and apply what foresight they can toward moving and storing more cars in the future. It is impossible for responsible and practical men to discard unfit tactics – even when the results of their own work cause them misgivings – if the alternative is to be left with confusion as to what to try instead and why.

In brief, the poverty of technique married to the poverty of imagination begets nothing but folly.

Jacobs ends with an interesting observation from psychology:

Some men tend to cling to old intellectual excitements [the Mughals, after all, are remembered for their roads], just as some belles, when they are old ladies, still cling to the fashions and coiffures of their exciting youth. But it is harder to understand why this form of arrested mental development should be passed on intact to succeeding generations of planners and designers. It is disturbing to think that men who are young today, men who are being trained now for their careers, should accept on the grounds that they must be “modern” in their thinking, conceptions about cities and traffic which are not only unworkable, but also to which nothing new of any significance has been added since their fathers were children.

One is likely to forget that Jane Jacobs was writing this in 1961. Half a century later nothing much seems to have changed in the city of Lahore.

An earlier post based on insights from Jane Jacobs was Slumland South Asia?

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Lahore – A Canal Runs Through It

By Anjum Altaf

This is an essay about Lahore but it could be about any city in South Asia because it deals with an issue that is common to them all – traffic congestion. How do we propose to deal with traffic congestion that is growing all the time, what do we hope to achieve, what is the price we are willing to pay, and how do we know what we are doing makes sense?

The controversy in Lahore centers round the fate of a branch of the Bambawala-Ravi-Bedian (BRB) Canal (a 37 mile long waterway built by the Mughals and upgraded by the British in 1861) that runs through the city and is more than a cultural heritage for the citizens. The Lahore Canal is a unique linear park that serves as one of the few public green belts and the only free swimming pool for the majority of the city residents as can be seen in this photo essay.

The roads on both sides of the canal have already been widened once to accommodate traffic growth. This has restricted access to the waterway and made it hazardous to reach. Now the city proposes to add more lanes on both sides turning the road into an expressway. This would not only cut off all access to the canal but also mark the end of the green belt. Not surprisingly, this has sparked a conflict between the environmentalists on one side and the developmentalists and the city administration on the other.

The arguments of the environmentalists are the obvious ones and are presented here. The typical response of the developmentalists is along the following lines:

The Canal itself is not threatened. It will stay. So will the trees alongside the canal. It is that some of the trees in the green belt alongside the canal will have to go. This is the price that we have to pay for growth of the city of Lahore. Lahore city is choking and needs to expand… So please think of the future. In 5-10 years time after the road is expanded, the replanted trees would be back in bloom for our future generation to enjoy in a wider expanded Lahore.

Which side is correct and how does one resolve this controversy?

Let us leave aside the issue of whether constructing roads translates directly into development in any way. Let us leave aside the environmental implications of paving over green space and the unique value of linear urban parks that most cities spend money to construct. Let us also leave aside the issue of whether the public needs to be consulted in such decisions. Let us focus solely on the issue of traffic congestion. There is no doubt that the number of vehicles is increasing rapidly in South Asian cities leading to a worsening of traffic congestion. But is increasing road capacity an intelligent response to this challenge?

It would be so if one could show that road capacity can increase faster than the road space required by the number of vehicles added in any given interval of time. Any calculation will show that this cannot be the case which is why even cities like Beijing with very aggressive road construction programs are still choked by traffic. This is a simple calculation for traffic engineers and planners: take the road space required to accommodate one additional vehicle and multiply it by the number of vehicles expected to be added in a given time period. Now compute the cost of adding the required road capacity and see if the available resources can sustain the needed expansion. This simple calculation ignores the fact that each additional private vehicle adds to the need for additional parking space both at the origin and the destination. One only needs to think about the problems of urban parking to realize the significance of this added complexity and the consequences of ignoring it in the planning process.

Building roads is a simple-minded solution that is fated to fall behind the problem in the absence of other measures. Nor does it do anything for the overwhelming majority of people who do not own private vehicles but suffer the consequences of the congestion caused by their proliferation. Think about the situation of an unskilled worker who has to reach one end of the city from the other. How would the increased road capacity help him even if he or she agreed to give up the amenity of a free public park or swimming pool in return?

What are needed are smart initiatives that address the heart of the traffic congestion issue: How do we transport the maximum number of people with the minimum number of vehicles so as to minimize the need for additional road capacity? It should be obvious that public transit is the solution one should be considering. Most cities in South Asia are unable to afford underground metros or even above ground light rail alternatives. But Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is a very feasible option that has worked effectively in many cities. Modern buses running on CNG cut down on urban air pollution at the same time.

In addition to BRT, a much greater reliance on taxis is also a part of the solution for the simple reason that unlike private vehicles that are parked most of the day, taxis remain in circulation. Thus a taxi transports many more persons per day than a private vehicle and needs only half the parking space. Lahore is perhaps unique amongst cities in that it has no public taxis at all and this amazing fact has missed the attention of the city authorities obsessed with constructing new roads.

The bottom line is that it is not the case that there is no need for any new road construction at all. But smart urban growth requires that road construction be integrated into an intelligent plan that is focused on transporting the maximum number of people with the minimum number of vehicles at the lowest economic and environmental cost.

Can we expect our city authorities to show that they understand the nature of the problem?

Ahmedabad is similar in size to Lahore. See here for the BRT planning in Ahmedabad. See here for the waterfront development planning in Ahmedabad.

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Democracy in India – 9: Who Speaks for India?

Every five years there is an election in India and we interpret the results to conclude what we think the majority of Indians want. But what happens between two elections? How do we know where the majority of Indians stand on the various issues that crop up between elections?

Let us take an issue like the relationship of India with any of its neighboring countries that might become salient because of some random incident. What determines the policy response of the Indian government to such an incident?

If we are not Indian and are outside India, all we have to go by is the English language media. How representative is this of the voice of the majority of Indians who are rural?

We know that newspapers in India sell well below the cost of production and are heavily subsidized by revenues from corporate advertisements. It is natural to assume that newspapers would tend to project the perspectives of corporate India. And would it be reasonable to suggest that the views of corporate India are unlikely to be representative of the views of the majority of rural Indians?

Would it be also fair to assume that the urban upper and middle class individuals who comprise the majority of professionals putting together the content of the English language media are not able to reflect the aspirations of the rural majority? This is very much a South Asian phenomenon where the gap between urban and rural worldviews can be very wide. In fact, there may be less distance between urban South Asian and urban North American views on many issues of contemporary relevance.

Indians and those living inside India have the advantage of access to the local language media. One would assume that this would reflect local opinion somewhat more accurately than what one might term the ‘metropolitan’ media. But corporations also control many local language newspapers, at least those operated by major chains. One can assume that Indians in India are more in tune with the views of the majority of Indians but one is not sure of the degree of this closeness.

From the perspective of representative governance, what is of interest is to understand how the views, opinions and preferences of the majority of Indians get reflected in the decisions that are made by the government of India on their behalf.

Is there a process by which such preferences are filtered up that those outside India do not understand? Or is the voice that is reflected in such decisions the one that is presented in the English language media? And, if so, is that an issue that needs some debate and discussion?

One example that comes to mind is the ‘Shining India’ campaign of the BJP in the 2004 elections. It seems that this was very much a reflection of the aspirations of the ‘metropolitan’ elite and must have been both applauded and promoted by the English language media. Were there any projections of the aspirations of rural or urban poor voices? And, if so, why did they not carry more weight in the electoral agendas of the various parties?

Of course, policies related to trade, industry, foreign relations, etc., can present even greater difficulties in being truly representative of all the citizens of India.

Could it be the case that the urban metropolitan elites have a paternalistic attitude towards the rural majority feeling that they know best what needs to be done (or not done) on behalf of the majority? If so, what does it imply for the working of representative governance?

We are fortunate to have received interesting feedback on the previous post in this series covering the election results. Tasveer Ghar has compiled a pictorial essay that goes beyond both the English and local language media and presents posters put up by local community groups. This provides a different window on one aspect of electoral politics.

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Ahmedabad: Life in the City

What is the problem some might ask – Isn’t Ahmedabad still among the most dynamic cities in India growing economically at double-digit rates?

True enough, but there is something special about Ahmedabad; and the city is also changing in ways that warrant watching by those who are interested in the long term.

One person who has wondered about these changes is Professor Vrajlal Sapovadia who teaches in Ahmedabad and who has studied the impact of communal conflict on the life of the city.

The first fact Professor Sapovadia points out is that there are over 3000 urban locations in India but half the deaths in communal riots have occurred in just 8 cities that account for 18 percent of the India’s urban population and 6 percent of its total population. Of these 8 cities, Ahmedabad is among the main contributors. Given that Ahmedabad is the home of Gandhiji, the apostle of non-violence, this is a bit odd, isn’t it?

The conclusion is that communal conflict is not inherent in just the proximity of two communities. There are some places where, as Professor Sapovadia puts it, ‘sparks’ ignite much more readily into ‘fires’. If that is indeed the case, there is a clear need to study the reasons that abet this ignition more readily in some places than in others. Perhaps some useful lessons can come out of such a study.

The second point that Professor Sapovadia notes is that communal riots are changing the shape or the morphology of Ahmedabad: “The Muslims feel safer in their own ghettos and the same in true for the Hindus. The communal divide became more pronounced after each riot, but major riots of 1969, 1985, 1992 and 2002 made the divide much sharper…. There is a constant migration of Hindus and Muslims into the ghettos making the separation more apparent…. Segregation is not confined to the poor and middle classes. Even the elite areas are ghettoized.”

The effect of the communal conflict is reaching even further down to affect urban architecture: “The construction of houses is done in view of providing protection during communal riots. Therefore clashes along communal lines have been accepted and the people of the two communities are now mainly concerned about protecting themselves…. Often, ghettoization is promoted by the fact that Hindu/Muslim landlords simply refuse to rent out their houses to Muslim/Hindu tenants.”

The third impact on the city is the atmosphere of fear. Professor Sapovadia cites a study in Juhapura, now the largest Muslim settlement in Ahmedabad, where 56 percent of the respondents interviewed had been living in the area for less than 10 years: “This indicates a high level of migration or ghettoization in recent years.” Of the in-migrants, 46 percent had moved in from Hindu-dominated localities and 22 percent from areas with a mixed Hindu-Muslim population. “This clearly implies that fear and insecurity was the most important reason for their shifting of residence from one locality to another.”

This relocation has had a negative impact on the life chances of over 10 percent of the city’s population: “Migration and consequent ghettoization seems to have had a particularly deleterious impact on the economic condition of the [interview] respondents in Ahmedabad. Some 52 percent of the respondents in Ahmedabad said that their conditions had markedly declined after migration.” And this has consequences for future generations because “ghettoization of Muslims appears to have extremely deleterious impact on their overall economic and educational conditions.”

So, is the writing on the wall for all but the blind to see? Because, as Professor Sapovadia remarks on the consequences of segregation, “the lack of joint activities among the two communities has reduced the level of tolerance making Ahmedabad more prone to riots…. A large number of Ahmedabad respondents said that while before their migration they had frequent and fairly cordial relations with non-Muslims, this had markedly declined after migration.”

Professor Sapovadia refers to research by Ashutosh Varshney in suggesting that the antidote to communal disputes is an increase in ‘bridging’ capital (ties between ethnic groups) rather than ‘bonding’ capital (ties within ethnic groups). This is the factor that explains the marked difference in the incidence of communal violence across the various cities in India. But the dynamic that has been underway in Ahmedabad continues to erode the bridging capital in the city sapping the ties that hold people together.

So, what is in store for Ahmedabad? Double-digit growth that blinds the authorities to the changes beneath the surface till one day the city burns itself down in flames?

Given a choice, would you wish to live in a city with rapid economic growth but where sizable groups belonging to various communities live in ghettos in fear? Is it acceptable in the twenty-first century to have citizens of a city subjected to the insecurity and uncertainty of terror? Have we learnt nothing from the history of Europe in the twentieth century?

The paper by Professor Vrajlal Sapovadia (A Critical Study on Relations Between Inter-Communal/ Caste Ghettoism and Urbanization Patterns vis-à-vis Spatial Growth and Equity: A Case Study of Ahmedabad, India) is available here.

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Ahmedabad: The Power of Labeling

We turn our attention closer to home and discuss if Ahmedabad is a successful city.

If one looks at the pronouncements of international development agencies there is little to doubt. Ahmedabad is one of the most dynamic cities in India with 5 percent of the national population but 14 percent of its export, an average annual growth rate of 9 percent and industrial growth rate of 15 percent. Every few months there are presentations about the city and visiting delegations extol the multiplication of municipal revenues and the successful launch of municipal bonds. Rating agencies swoon and investors salivate over the prospects.

And yet, within a few miles of the forums where such presentations are made one can also listen to civil rights groups showing photographs and statistics and narrating stories that can churn the stomach and make one sick with despair. One can read announcements from international human rights organizations that can make one lose faith in humanity.

So, is Ahmedabad a successful city?

Clearly, both processes are going on at the same time and one’s verdict would depend on which dimension is given more weight. This, as they say, is a value judgment.

But this also brings us to the power of labeling. The accolades of the international development agencies carry a lot more clout than the protests of civil rights groups and so, to all intents and purposes, Ahmedabad is a successful city. When the leaders of Ahmedabad and India see this global verdict propagated they feel little need to pay attention to that other dimension that is relegated to an inconvenient footnote.

This demonstrates the power of labeling. Imagine that international development agencies were to say that livability conditions would be a factor in lending and rating agencies were to refuse to rate cities with particularly egregious excesses against human rights. What do you think the response of the leaders of a city like Ahmedabad would be if a minimal attainment of human rights became necessary for doing business?

For a concrete example, recall the 1994 plague in Surat, not too far from Ahmedabad.  Because the global tourism industry let its negative ratings of India be made public, there was an immediate response not just by the city and the state but by the national government as well. For a while, Surat was even reputed to have become the cleanest city in India.

Consider also the fact that imposing minimal conditions for doing business is not an impractical or utopian idea. There are industries where consumers have had enough impact to eliminate manufacturing in sweatshops and the use of child labor. And there were instances where college students were able to generate enough awareness of human rights to force global corporations to divest their interests in South Africa under apartheid.

So why does a social plague that repeatedly kills more people in one city than a medical plague in another continue to have no impact? Because the power of labeling that deems Ahmedabad a successful city allows business as usual to continue and because activists have failed to effectively mobilize global attention to their cause.

Rates of economic growth continue to trump fates of human beings.

Does this make sense?

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Singapore: Evidence from Bollywood

Picking up on a story in the New York Times we had suggested a counterintuitive hypothesis about Singapore – that despite the fact that it is considered one of the most successful cities in the world it could have a lot of unhappy citizens whose dissatisfactions were going unregistered and failing to affect its approval ratings.

A reader had asked why, if that were the case, the citizens were not protesting and making their voices heard? We had provided a speculative answer applicable to all cities but kept wondering if there was some real evidence we could bring to support our position.

Such evidence is very hard to find and the frustration was mounting till we had a brainwave – when in doubt, turn to Bollywood. Bollywood captures perfectly the mood and spirit of the times and records the major changes that occur along the way. So, if we were looking for the unhappiness of citizens that does not get captured in measures of urban success, we would have a good chance of finding it in the movies.

Aakar Patel has captured this aspect of Bollywood well in his claim that Indians often discover India through the movies. As late as 1964, the year Nehru died, India made movies in which politicians were noble (e.g., Dilip Kumar’s Leader). By the time of Rajiv Gandhi’s election in 1984, Indian’s believed that India could change but the vile politicians who were standing in the way were the villains of Bollywood. By the turn of the century, the economic optimism generated by Manmohan Singh had led the Indian middle class to disengage from both politics and the state – hence Shahrukh Khan and movies like Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum and Kal Ho Na Ho.

So what did we discover in Bollywood about urban life and the feelings of citizens?

Plenty, it turns out. For example there was the story that when Nehru had given a speech in which he had remarked “I am proud of India”, Guru Dutt asked Sahir to work the line into the refrain of a song. This was the result:

yeh kuuchey, yeh niilaam-ghar dilkashii ke
yeh luTTey huuay karvaan zindagii ke
kahaaN haiN, kahaaN hain, muhaafiz khudii ke
jinheN naaz hai Hind par who kahaan haiN?

these streets, these auction houses of pleasure
these looted caravans of life
where are they, the guardians of self hood?
those who are proud of India, where are they?

This taunt was followed by a harsh indictment of the national leadership:

zara mulk ke rahbaron ko bulaao!
yeh kuuchey, yeh galiyaaN, yeh manzar dikhaao!
jinheN naaz hai Hind par unko laao!
jinheN naaz hai Hind par who kahaaN haiN?

go, fetch the leaders of the nation!
show them these streets, these lanes, these sights!
call them, those who are proud of India!
those who are proud of India, where are they?

What was the response to the expressions of these sentiments?

“This mode of filmmaking soon ran into problems. The censor board, now under the control of the Indian government, kicked into gear, reflecting the government’s hyper-sensitivity towards any reference to people’s struggles, particularly in the cause of socialism…. The lyrics of phir subah hogii were considered so radical that two songs from the film were banned for a while.”

One of them was a parody of the famous Iqbal poem saarey jahan se achchhaa Hindostan hamaaraa (our India is better than the rest of the world):

Cheen-o Arab hamaaraa, Hindostan hamaaraa,
rahney ko gahr nahiiN hai, saaraa jahaN hamaaraa!

China and Arabia are ours, so is India
yet we have no home to live in; the whole world is ours!

jitnii bhii bildingeN theeN, seThoN ne baanT lii haiN
fuTpaath Bambaii ke, haiN ashiiyaaN hamaaraa

the wealthy have distributed all the buildings among themselves,
while we are left to take refuge on the footpaths of Bombay.

“These songs reflect a disenchantment of the urban poor with the state. The ban came into effect around the time of the second parliamentary elections and was not repealed till 1966.”

So here we have it: the proclamation of success by the leaders and the elites, the protests of the poor, and the silencing of their voices.

Case closed.

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The material in the text is from the chapter by Ali Mir (Hindi film songs and the progressive aesthetic) in the book Indian Literature and Popular Cinema edited by Heidi RM Pauwels, Routledge, 2008.

Is Singapore a Successful City?

What a question? Is there any doubt? Singapore is seen as the poster child of successful urban and economic development.

But it is good to revisit such certainties, if only to reassure oneself that the case continues to hold.

The reason for this particular revisit springs from an article in the New York Times published on January 3, 2009 (Singapore Prepares to Gobble Up its Last Village). Readers should look at the short article which describes how Singapore’s last village (Kampong Buangkok – 28 houses in an area the size of three football fields) is being acquired for high-rise development.

Three statements reflecting three perspectives stand out in the article:

The Government: “We will need to optimize land use, whether it is though reclamation, building upwards or using subterranean space.”

The owner: “If there’s a change, I won’t have my friends any more,” she said, but added: “We must not cling on to things. If the government wants to take the land, they will take it.”

The citizen: In modern Singapore, few neighbors know each other, said Sarimah Cokol, 50, who grew up in Kampong Buangkok and now lives in one of the apartments that people here call pigeonholes. “Open door, close door,” she said in the terse speech of no-nonsense Singapore. “After work, go in. Close door.”

These statements provide us the frame for our revisit. What we take away is that the government is focused on optimizing land use, the owner feels helpless against the State, and the citizen is unhappy with the outcome.

So, how do we look at the choices and tradeoffs implicit in this story? First, Singapore is renowned for the efficiency of its land use. But is efficiency everything? Should we forget that we are dealing with human beings in the pursuit of efficiency? Would it be preferable to give up some efficiency for a little bit more happiness? If so, how much?

Could the starting point be wrong? A successful city might not be one with the highest land use efficiency or the highest GDP growth but one with the most satisfied and unafraid citizens. How would we rate Singapore if this became our criterion for urban success?

Let us begin with the owner who is 55 years old. If there is a change, she will not have her friends anymore – she clearly does not wish to sell. Could there be some compromise at the cost of some land use efficiency? Could only part of the village be developed now and the rest after the owner reaches an age when she wishes to move voluntarily or dies? Have we lost the imagination to think in these terms? If so, is that a good thing?

And then look at it from the perspective of the citizens living in what they call pigeonholes. That is not a description of happiness but of resignation – a one-word verdict on the model of development. Should we be listening to these voices? Would they have preferred a slightly less rich Singapore that gave them slightly more room to live?

Suppose, East Asia were to become like the European Union with the choice to live anywhere in the region and suppose there was a rapid transit link between Singapore and Johor Bahru across the strait in Malaysia. How many Singaporeans would prefer to live in Johor Bahru and commute to work in Singapore? Have we tried to elicit that opinion?

This lack of choice, this constrained unhappiness, the feelings of helplessness are not revealed to us by the statistics of GDP per capita that we use to measure success. But these are dimensions we should think about too because, in the end, life is about people. People do not exist to maximize the GDP of cities; cities exist to give people the kind of lives they want for themselves.

If we look at cities through this lens, which cities would you rank as the five most successful cities in the world? Or to make it more concrete, if nothing else in your life changed (you had the same assets, the same education, the same skills), only there was freedom to live in any city of the world, what would be your first five choices in order of preference?

Would these two lists be the same? If not, why not?

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