What should be Karachi’s economic vision statement? That is the question the Islamabad-based think tank Prime Institute and Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) sought to answer with the help of a multi-stakeholder consultation forum held yesterday. It’s a much-appreciated effort, and at the very least it can kick start the right kind of conversations and force Karachiites to think; for a change!

The first question they need to answer is whether any city’s economic vision can ever be separated from non-economic aspects of human life, including environment.

This is a big think question. But so is vision making; unless of course the two organisations want to make a vision for the sake of having a vision statement, as do more than 500 listed companies on Pakistan Stock Exchange.

Their passion to make a change suggested that they are serious. But it’s too early to place a bet, especially considering that Karachi’s mayor didn’t even show up at the event.

A pitfall these vision producers will have to avoid, as Furqan Kidwai, a tech entrepreneur, founder and CEO of dawaai.pk, put it at the forum is using a 19th century mindset to imagine a 21st century future.

By the time we imagine and set up state-of-art special economic zones, they won’t be needed for some sectors because the world would have moved to 3D printing that a child can do at home. Poof!

An equally important question is whose vision we are talking about. This was raised by one of the participants of the forum, Sadaf Mahmood, a partner at SEED – a Social Entrepreneurship & Equity Development organization.

She flagged that Karachi has about three non-profit organisations are already working on their vision of Karachi. Around the same time last year, the Islamabad-based non-profit Agahi had also held workshops on imagining Karachi’s futures in collaboration with Dadabhoy Institute Higher Education. All these organisations should consider ways and means to combine their intellectual faculties and their resources for a more effective action.

The bigger question, however, is how inclusive this vision making exercise is across class and ethnicities that dot Karachi.

Also, can a city really follow its vision when in fact significant portions of land are in fact cantonments – some in the middle of the city – that have a mind of their own. KMC is too small a fish for them!

One question that was raised by many is who will own the vision, and the city. Well we have got news. There is no legal paper that proves ownership of a city; citizen ownership of a city manifests itself through civic engagement, and there are hardly any avenues of civic engagement in Karachi.

Compared to Lahore that still boasts a bigger number of policy research institutes, think tanks, clusters of research, prominent centres of various studies in universities, Karachi does not any relatively speaking. There is the SPDC, but it does not provide a vibrant platform to engage the citizens, nor advocacy. There is the AERC, but it’s a has-been. There is the PBC but it’s a clique of big boys. Absence of think tanks and other civil society forums means there are few platforms for civic engagement.

A related part of the problem is awareness of political and civic engagement at local level. Young men and women don’t stop discussing national level he-said-she-said politics in their homes. But they will not move a limb to go to their local government official who can fix the overflowing gutters in the very street they live in. Nor does the mainstream media focus on sub-national issues to the extent it is needed. (See also BR Research’s ‘Role of media in curbing corruption’ published September 28, 2018)

To fix the media mismatch problem, the business community in Karachi should support district level magazines and local FM radio through advertisements, and these district level media could in turn focus on developmental and governance agenda for that district.

Even a simple awareness exercise of which provincial or local government department is responsible for which public delivery functions could go a long way in creating a sense of ownership and hopefully force the political bosses of the province, and their civil servants to stop giving this city a step-child treatment. Touchwood!