Resilience, Sustainability and Development: Some as Yet Undefined Issues

Jill Simone Gross’ Paper:

Jill Simone’s paper is a critique of development paradigms and projects. Many of the issues she has raised have been discussed at length over the years but their relationship to resilience, has to my knowledge, never been raised. The strength communities derive from being organised, community-government relationships, the power of networks, lessons from successful projects etc. have all been documented and so I will not discuss them. But somehow, the changing nature of society and value systems do not figure in this literature nor do they seem to determine the nature of new programmes and projects. It is important to understand what these changes are. What I have observed and documented for Karachi are summarised below.

1. Akhtar Hameed Khan, the founder of the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) stated in his concept note on the project; “We are all living through a period of social dislocation. Where people have been uprooted from their familiar environment, this dislocation is especially acute. They have to re-establish a sense of belonging, community feeling, and the convention of mutual help and cooperative action. This can be done chiefly through the creation of local level social and economic organisations. Without these organisations, chaos and confusion will prevail. On the other hand, if social and economic organisations grow and become strong, services and material conditions, sanitation, schools, clinics, training, and employment will also begin to improve. ¹” On the basis of this thinking, the OPP’s programmes have all been about improving physical and social conditions by supporting the development of community organisations. However, Orangi Town is not the same in social and physical terms as it was in 1980 when Akhtar Hameed Khan established the OPP. Then it was an entirely working class area; the informal businesses were small and at a subsistence level; and social indicators were poor. Its leadership consisted of older men who had helped in establishing the settlement and who for the most part were “uneducated”. Women did not out to work. Today, Orangi Township is not a purely working class settlement. Among its residents are college teachers, bank managers, white-collar workers in the IT industry, engineering and medical practitioners and other professionals and qualified technicians. Its new leaderships is young, uses a different vocabulary from its elders, and is formally educated ². Women meanwhile go out to work in larger numbers and on special occasions visit beauty parlours run by young Orangi women ³. Before much of the physical development work was done by community members themselves. Today, it is increasingly done by hiring contractors. In spite of these changes, there have been no changes in the design of government, IFI and donor programmes for Orangi or other low income settlements of Karachi in the last three decades. An important question that emerges from this is how the concept of resilience relates to these changes.
2. Other major changes that do not figure in Karachi related government, donor and/or NGO programmes are given below.
   1. In the age group of 15 – 24 years married women in 1981 were 37.92 per cent and married men were 13.39 per cent. Male literacy was 66.7 and female literacy was 62.32 per cent in this age group ⁴. Today, married women in this age group are less than 20 per cent and married men less than 7 per cent. Literacy in this age group today is 79 per cent with almost no difference between male and female literacy ⁵. For the first time in Karachi’s history we have an overwhelming majority of unmarried adolescents. This has created a major change in the use of public space which in parks is now dominated by unmarried couples showing affection to each other in public, something unheard of before. But what is even more important is that no one seems to mind ⁶. It has also led to a demand for a better physical environment and for recreation and entertainment facilities ⁷. This very important issue does not figure even in the Karachi Strategic Development Plan (KSDP) 2020.
   2. The demographic change mentioned above has resulted in the death of the extended family. According to the 1989 survey for the Karachi Development Plan 2000, 47 per cent of Karachi families were nuclear. In the 2006 survey for the KSDP 2020, this figure increased to 89 per cent. The reasons for the change are more than one earning members in the family, working women, marriage outside the clan or extended family, money from remittances abroad and over-crowding ⁸.
   3. Over-crowding, the result of an absence of social housing programme since 1982, has also resulted in greater freedom for both male and female adolescents and young people. Over-crowding means that the father spends most of his time outside of the house and if the siblings stay away the mother heaves a sigh of relief ⁹.
   4. The result of the above is that an increasing number of young people are deciding on their marriage partners themselves and often in violation of parental wishes. Due to this court marriages (whereby protection from family violence against the marriage is assured), and honour killings have increased ¹⁰. Civil society support for the new freedoms and against old traditions is also now openly voiced and is increasing.
   5. The gender and youth related issues are a major change that go unnoticed in much of social sector programmes. The change in the complexion of university students is extremely important. 68 per cent of the students at the University of Karachi, 87 per cent of all medical students, 50 per cent students at the Engineering University and 92 per cent of architecture and planning students are women. This change (except for medical students) has taken place in the last decade.
3. My work has dealt with supporting communities and promoting their interests in the urban and rural planning process with government and civil society. But the changes I have mentioned above are enormous and are creating a new society which in ten year’s time will be in a position to consolidate itself with new societal values if a political revolution to arrest this change does not take place. I increasingly ask myself as to how these changes can support new approaches to development projects and programmes. I do not know how they relate to the issue of resilience. Maybe this too needs to be discussed. But then, in the case of Karachi (and other Asian cities), there is also the new urban development paradigm that one has to relate all this to.