Karachi thrives in a kind of controlled chaos which separates it from most cities in the world, though some parallels can be drawn with contest. In the past few years though, the city has become a shell of its former self, a literal wasteland with overcrowded roads, garbage ridden streets and mushrooming informal domestic and commercial settlements further boosted by ‘China-cutting’, a term fondly used for the illegal occupation of land by dividing it into smaller plots. There are no two opinions on the destination; the city needs fixing. How to go about it is where the roads dramatically diverge.
To review: on the orders of the highest court, over 2500 shops have been demolished together with concrete buildings and other constructions across the city in the past four days. This is not the first time the Supreme Court has made such an order—similar orders to eliminate encroachment and recover amenity plots in the city were issued in 2016, 2017 and as recent as Feb of this year—but this time action has been taken with resolve. It has also been suggested that instead of merely going after encroachers, the administrators are going after concrete constructions and land that has been illegally grabbed by land mafias.
On the flip side, news reports suggest no notices of the impending anti-encroachment drive were issued either directly to the encroachers or in newspapers, while there is no evidence that a survey was conducted prior to the exercise, or an actual plan was in place.
One school of thought believes that it had to start somewhere and this cleaning drive will lead to freeing swathes of land from land mafias and put it to use. The second school of thought believes it is barbaric since the demolition targeted the poor working class who have had no choice but to rent out properties from these mafia groups. The Empress Market and adjoining areas are mostly occupied by hawkers, wholesalers and traders who are part of the informal economy supplying to the middle and lower income households. The cost of this move is entirely borne by the already marginalized poor and lower income section of the population.
There is no doubt, land grabbers and mafias have flourished for decades on the back of influential political parties that have long controlled the city and its administrators. Together with formal and informal developers, land grabbing and conversion of these lands (many of these amenity plots and old expired leases), into commercial enterprises is an unfortunate story as old as the city itself. The grabbed land is informally sold to the lower and middle income populace for commercial and domestic purposes leading to informal settlements, and mushrooming of poorly constructed shops, houses and kacchi abaadi. Research suggests land mafia move garbage to vacant lands and populate these with squatters.
This illegal machinery has been supported by the so-called regulators and law enforcers because of the political affiliations of the former, and research suggests that resistance to land encroachment or conversion has been met with violence. Often, the land owning agencies have themselves been complicit with land mafias. Meanwhile, the real estate market does not provide a lot of options for the lower and middle income property buyers as prices continue to skyrocket, and access to mortgage is paltry.
The problem of land administration are many. To date, there is no single registry for land in Karachi while existing digital data is only available till 2000. KMC is currently in the process of establishing ‘Land Record Digital Archiving and Management System’ (KLRDAMS) which needs to be completed post-haste so the land can be tracked and protected without being misused or illegally occupied again. Land title disputes stuck in court need to be resolved.
A real estate regulator is important that oversees land administration and land records through a proper coordination with land owning agencies, brings transparency into land acquisition and allotment, and most of all, holds real estate developers to task who create the speculative interest in the market, leading to soaring prices and rendering land out of the reach of the middle class and the poor. Without these, the scales will always tip toward the affluent, and create opportunities for the miscreants.
The challenge for Karachi is to maintain its unique vibrancy and verve without killing its spirit. Make-shift stalls, shops, carts and hawkers selling food, produce, and wholesale goods are characteristic of emerging economies like Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Thailand. It would be a mistake to clean sweep these. Hawking is a cultural fixture of burgeoning cities which supports and provides for the working class. What they need is organization. They can be issued licenses against which they can pay a fee and operate without fear of these communities being gentrified.
Which is where we come to the most important point: planning. Anti-encroachment drives, and demolition of illegally occupied land must be planned along the lines of the city’s larger Master plan prior to the exercise—while determining reutilization of land, and relocation and compensation for the uprooted as well. There also must be some penance for those who have allowed this illegal machinery to operate and grow into a market of its own.
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