If metro-buses could transform society

Ayaz Amir
The News, Friday, May 30, 2014
From Print Edition


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Islamabad diary

Trams ran in Petrograd which was a grand metropolis before the Bolshevik Revolution. Shanghai was a
great city before the Chinese Revolution. But it took Lenin and his legacy to transform Russia; and
Mao and the Chinese Communist Party to pull China from the past and into the modern age. And it
took Castro to transform the fleshpots of Havana into something less gay and spectacular.

Lahore has swanky boulevards in the right places and now a metro-bus which is the pride and joy of
its rulers. But in the majestic confines of the Lahore High Court a young girl is assaulted with bricks by
her outraged parents because she had married a man of her choice. Killing in the name of honour
remains a widespread practice in our society.

This was in full public view. The Lahore High Court is a bustling place. Policemen standing nearby
thought it best not to come to her aid. Lawyers get easily provoked these days and are not above
thrashing policemen. But no lawyer rushed to the girls defence. The bar association, never slow in
passing resolutions, has not said a word. What the reaction of their lordships may have been is not
known.

So on one hand we have the Lahore metro-bus, on the other the doomed world of that poor girl now
pushed into the everlasting shades. And apart from a few snippets in the press and a few words of
editorial outrage, it is, for the most part, business as usual.

Rural Pakistan has its own warped code of honour, fathers and brothers feeling not the slightest
compunction in doing their womenfolk to death at the altar of honour. But this was not a remote
village. It was the Lahore High Court. Where had the majesty of the law, and authority, disappeared?

Theres something seriously wrong here and we should think about it. Police culture is a
shamblesbribery, extortion and beatings still defining the workings of the police force across the
country. But do we care? The incident related above happens in Lahore, the same city where when the
chief minister is on the move more than a thousand policemen are deployed on his route, besides the
Mughal cavalcade accompanying him. An army of policemen is deployed at Raiwind and other
residences. Not that the Sharifs are the only ones to blame in this respect, protocol and security a
serious disease across the Republic. But doesnt the obscenity of this strike us or have we lost all
sense of outrage?

Over trifles we get worked up. Then our rage has to be seen. But over something like this our
indifference is something to marvel at.

No one writes with more knowledge about the condition of healthcare in Punjab than Adnan Adil. His
article in this paper yesterday Healthcare in ruin should be an eye-opener for everyone the health
budget slashed and the money diverted to civil works like the metro-bus and flyovers, doctor
vacancies not filled throughout the province, senior posts lying vacant at Mayo Hospital, no money for
emergency medicines, conditions appalling all around, the wait for operations at the Punjab Institute
of Cardiology stretching to a year, not enough money to regularise the services of nurses, even beds
and mattresses not readily availablethe list is long.

For the last 6-7 years a surgical block in Mayo Hospital meant for 500 patients is lying unfinished. It
began under Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi. How can money be made available for something he started?

The government education sector is another picture of neglect. The taxation system has lost its teeth.
Nawaz Sharif, in any case, is not in favour of taxing the rich. A 10 percent income tax slab for
everyone is his oft-repeated remedy to kick-start the economy.

Expensive metro-bus services, flyovers and underpasses are fine provided you have the money. A
hundred local buses for Lahore, a hundred for Rawalpindi and Islamabad, would have addressed the
problem. But where would have been the show in this? So something eye-catching had to be done,
even if the money was begged or borrowed from abroad.

Stalin constructed the Moscow underground in 1935 and even today it remains a technological and
architectural marvel. But by that time healthcare and education had been revolutionised and made
free for everyone. A loaf of white bread in Stalins time sold for 13 kopecks, roughly equal to our 13
paisas. When I was in Moscow in the mid-seventies it was still selling at the same price. The standard
fare, for routes short and long, on the underground was five kopecks. In 1977 it was still the same.

The Motorway is a boon for the motorcar. What else is its benefit to the economy apart from opening
up the Salt Range to the greed and destructiveness of the cement mafia whose huge plants are
ravaging the timeless beauty of those hills? But the present leadership takes endless pride in the
Motorway as it takes pride in the Lahore metro-bus and the one whose construction is playing havoc
with Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

The Punjab government has signed an agreement with a Turkish company for solid waste disposal in
Rawalpindi and Murree. This is the true condition of our society we may have cracked the nuclear
code but solid waste disposal is beyond our capacity. How did the British manage these things? How
did they organise municipal services? Did the Karachi and Lahore and Murree of old contract with
foreign countries for garbage disposal?

Islamabad has no waste-disposal mechanism apart from dumping it in the open wherever convenient.
But never mind, approval has been accorded for the construction of a signal-free 8-10 lane corridor
from Zero Point to Rawat. I was in Islamabad two days ago and saw in front of the main hospital
PIMS, on the median dividing the road, a row of beds on which sat or reclined attendants of patients in
the hospital. And right in front was the gleaming structure of the Centaurus Mall.

This is the society we have created, marked by such sharp social divisions and everything that we
are doing, all our crazy schemes of showpiece, eye-catching development, is accentuating this divide.

More than a crisis of the imagination, this is a problem of aesthetics. The Dubai model of development
long signal-free boulevards and the skyline thick with high-rises is what our leaders take
development to be. And they want to replicate it here minus of course the Dubai social safety nets
and the Dubai spending on health and education. They want to be Sheikhs on the Dubai scale without
being Prince Muhammad, the ruler of Dubai. The spectacle of wealth concentrated fascinates them
endlessly. The idea of wealth distributed leaves them less enthusiastic.

So a mass hoodwinking campaign goes on full-blast, metro-buses and agreements with Turkish and
Chinese companies lending the illusion of developmenteven as Pakistans social sectors, the law and
order machinery, the taxation system, become more dysfunctional by the day. Prosperity for the few,
deprivation for the many, but no cause for concern as long as the sound and light show continues.

So a young girl done to death in the Lahore High Courta sad affair but these things happen, our
people are so uneducated and their notions of honour are so perverted. This will pass. There are so
many other things to celebrate.

Tailpiece: I hear the old Rawalpindi Club is being pulled down to make way for some kind of a
shopping mall. Shopping malls and shaadi halls will be the death of this country. Shouldnt the army
have a better sense of aesthetics? Already Ayub National Park has been turned into a joke (whats a
shaadi hall doing there?) and now this is the fate awaiting what should be preserved as a heritage
site. What ghosts from the past dont walk those rooms? We should let them be. Can Gen Raheel
Sharif, when he has the time, please look into this? While on this subject, please also preserve the old
Odeon and Plaza cinemas. Tear them down and a slice of the past will be gone forever.