The Neo-Liberal Urban Development Paradigm and Civil Society Responses in Karachi, Pakistan

However, the city case studies also bring out a number of positive changes and trends that have taken or are taking place. The more important changes are given below:

• Over the last two decades urban poor organisations have emerged in most Asian cities. These organisations are backed by professionals and/or NGOs. Where they are powerful, governments are forced to negotiate with them. Their involvement in the planning and decision-making process is increasing.
• Civil society organisations have successfully come together in a number of cities so as to put pressure on governments for the development of more equitable development policies and/or to oppose insensitive government projects.
• There are now a number of government-NGO-community projects and programmes. It is true that the lessons from these programmes have yet to become policies in most countries but the lessons learnt from them have been understood and appreciated by politicians and city planners whose attitudes to the disadvantaged sections have changed considerably since 1987 when the ACHR was conceived.
• In all the case study cities, there has been a process of decentralisation. This has opened up new opportunities for decision-making at the local level and for the involvement of local communities and interest groups in the decision-making process. In some cases, this has also meant a weakening of the community process in the face of formal institutions at the local level. In this regard the synthesis paper asks two important questions “Does decentralisation give city governments more power and resources and thus capacity to act?” and “If city government does get more capacity to act does this actually bring benefits to urban poor groups?”

The Current Karachi Context

In the last decades, the whole approach to planning has undergone a change in Karachi. The local government is obsessed by making Karachi “beautiful” to visitors and investors. As a result, it has adopted the following thinking.

• Karachi has to be a “world class city”. What this actually means has never been explained but it is one of the objectives of the Karachi Master Plan 2020.
• The city has to have “investment friendly infrastructure”. Again, what this means has not been clearly defined. However, it seems from the programmes of the local government that this means the following.
  • Flyovers and elevated expressways as opposed to Traffic Management and Planning
  • High-rise apartments as opposed to upgraded settlements
  • Malls as opposed to traditional markets (which are being removed)
  • Removing poverty from the centre of the city to the periphery to improve the image of the city so as to promote direct foreign investment
  • Catering to tourism rather than supporting local commerce
• Seeking the support of the international corporate sector (developers, banks, suppliers of technologies and the IFIs) for the above

The above agenda is an expensive one. For this, sizeable loans have been negotiated with the IFIs on a scale unthinkable before¹. Projects designed and funded through previous loans for Karachi have all been failures². Given this fact and the fact that local government institutions are much weaker in technical terms than they were in previous decades, it is unlikely that the new projects will be successful. Also, it is quite clear from the nature of projects being funded that they are not a part of a larger planning exercise. In addition, there are also projects that are being floated on a BOT process. They are also not a part of any plan. It is obvious those projects have replaced planning and that the shape of the city is being determined increasingly by foreign capital and its promoters and supporters. This agenda is also anti-people and has resulted in increased evictions both of settlements and hawkers and the creation of conditions which make it difficult for working class people to access previously accessible public space. As a result, multi-class public space for entertainment and recreation is rapidly disappearing in Karachi.

Civil Society Response in Karachi to the New Development Paradigm

Two civil society organisations in Karachi have been involved, along with a network of community organisations and NGOs, in dealing with the issues described above that adversely effect poor communities and society as a whole. One of these organisations is the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) and the other is the Urban Resource Centre (URC), both in Karachi. This paper will not describe the work of the OPP in detail since it has been presented at many international forums and is well-known. However, a brief synopsis is given below.  The OPP:

• Promotes the upgrading of informal settlements through community mobilisation, finance and management by providing technical advice and managerial guidance to communities;
• Establishes partnerships with government agencies whereby they develop the off-site infrastructure and the communities finance develop, manage and maintain the on-site infrastructure;
• Runs an education programme which encourages educated young women and men to open informal schools in low income settlements which become formal schools through a process of teachers’ training and upgradation;
• Operates a savings and credit programme for establishing rural and urban cooperatives;
• Reaches out to over two million population at 248 locations in Pakistan in 11 Pakistan cities. The OPP is being replicated in Nepal, Sri Lanka, India, South Africa and Kazakistan.

The Urban Resource Centre:

The Urban Resource Centre (URC) was set up by teachers of architecture and planning, NGO activists and community leaders. It has a five member full-time staff supported by six to seven interns at any given time. The community organisations and networks developed by the OPP have become an integral part of it.  The objectives of the URC are:

• To collect information regarding the city and its plans and to disseminate it to the media, NGOs, CBOs, concerned citizens and formal and informal interest groups;
• To analyse local and federal government plans for the city from the point of view of communities (especially poor ones), interest groups, academia and NGOs;
• On the basis of these analyses to hold forums in which all interest groups are present so that a broad consensus may be arrived at;
• To identify and promote research and documentation on major issues in Karachi and to monitor developments and processes related to them;
• To create professionals and activists in the NGO/CBO and government sector who understand planning issues from the point of view of local communities, especially poor ones.

The activities of the URC are given below: It

•  Keeps files of news clippings on all major Karachi issues and these are available to researchers, students and the media;
• Analyses government plans for the development of Karachi with the involvement of interest groups and low and lower middle income communities. This is done through a process of public forums in which government planners and representatives of development agencies are invited along with media persons. The forums are documented, published in the media and become a basis for public debate and discussion. The more important issues are developed into promotional and advocacy literature;
• Arranges lectures by eminent professionals and experts on national and international development related issues which are attended by grass root activists, NGOs, government officials, academia and representatives of interest groups. This helps organisations and individuals to relate their work to larger national and international issues;
• Operates a Youth Training Programme whereby it gives one-year fellowships to young university graduates and community activists who help it in research, documentation and interaction with communities and interest groups. Through these fellowships the URC seeks to broaden its base in society as a whole;
• Promotes and supports a network of CBOs and NGOs for networking on major Karachi related development issues and projects;
• Monitors and documents evictions, identifies vulnerable communities and informs them of possible threats to them, and publishes on eviction issues which in turn get taken up by the print and electronic media.