Urban legends

Karachi was once the future, a window to the soul of what Pakistan could be; thriving at the epicentre of trade and commerce. It was the city of the lights, romantically resilience, stubbornly tenacious in that it always bounced back. It was the haven for a modern growing educated middle class. That was aspiring. But what terrorism, rampant corruption, poor governance, dismal regulation and political warfare left in their wake has made it a ghost of what it used to be. Karachi is what urban nightmares are made.

Pakistan is urbanizing at an annual rate of 3 percent, fastest in South Asia (2.7%) and compared to the world's 2.3 percent, and already a third of Pakistan's population lives in cities. By some estimates, in the next decade, more than 50 percent of the population will be urbanized.

Karachi's population will reach 20 million and Lahore's will go up to 10 million. So are we working toward catering to this massive expansion? The short answer is no; the long answer is that the sorry states of cities today, sans Lahore; this demographic shift along with a rising middle class will make lives of people worse not better. The middle class will be left disillusioned and overall livelihood would go down.

There are already many troubling issues we haven't resolved for decades in Pakistan - energy, power, water and sanitation woes; infrastructure, transport and transit; unemployment; housing shortage; healthcare access and malnutrition; income inequality and informality, to name the big ones. As population grows; and urbanization increases, Pakistan will face a massive crisis it doesn't have the resources to handle.

Let's talk some hard statistics from UNhabitat's latest report: 45.5 percent of Pakistan's urban population lives in slums (India: 24%); only 50 percent of the urban population has access to piped water, meanwhile 30 percent of the urban population does not have connection to sewage. By 2025, Karachi will hold 23 percent of the urban population in Pakistan, Lahore 12 percent.

Even if the economy grows, and poverty levels come down; there is virtually no discussion on the widening disparity between regions in Pakistan where the already rich are growing faster (read our stories "Poverty: The great divide", part I and II). The non-transparency of CPEC-led growth is such that, it is unclear how it would contribute to increasing employment and bringing more people into the labour force, and how much of that would be Chinese coming in, building infrastructure and using the route for its own big agendas.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is sinking into a water crisis. According to some estimates, Pakistan will become water-scarce by 2035, and some experts project this may happen as soon as 2020, if not earlier. What happens to the entire agricultural sector which still runs the economy?

Though the government has time and again claimed the energy crisis will be resolve by 2018 as many projects have been kicked off, the issues of regulation and inefficiencies existing in the energy supply network will persist.

Access to healthcare in terms of hospitals, doctors and medicines is deplorable to say the least. Meanwhile, Pakistan's malnutrition and stunting numbers are dangerously low. Over 40 percent of Pakistan's children are stunted; 22 percent of the entire population is undernourished compared to 15-16 percent in India and Bangladesh.

Poorly architecture buildings, dilapidating infrastructure; and transport system are the bane of large cities especially Karachi where most sea borne trade is routed through.

The influx of cars and motorcycles while a sign of improving incomes of people also causes the city to stop functioning. There is a new expensive mass transit system that is in the works but the return and efficiency of this investment can only be determined once the project kicks off. One must recall that many a green buses were introduced through the years but none could be sustained because public goods; like roads, highways and transport systems are never maintained.

While many would choose to focus on the so-called development we are seeing, these big projects where the government is the primary handler will not cut it. There are deep structural issues that need to be dealt with; provinces should stop shirking their responsibility of serving their people after devolution in areas of education and health; local governments should be mobilized and empowered to focus on the less media-grabbing work, like sanitation, water and waste management, overcrowding etc.

Most of all, for many of these areas that are mentioned here, some level of private sector involvement will not only help bring capital, but also efficiency in the system, and eventually, overall consumer welfare.

With demographic shifts, there ought to be some paradigms shifts also in how the government approaches many of these issues and involving local civil society and the private sector more and making them patrons to their own growth is one way to do it. Until such a time, CPEC will just be a loan; new green line will come and go; and prosperity and growth in Pakistan will be an urban legend.