More
than 60 percent of Karachi’s population lives in katchi abadis or informal
settlements
When Ilyas Goth, a settlement of 150 to 200 jhuggies near
Teen Hatti, was ablaze on the night of January 21, distressing videos of the
entire area on fire went viral on the social media with people expressing
grief, sympathy and horror. Some went as far as to call on the government to
expedite help and rescue operations.
While these feelings
might have been heartfelt and sincere, they seemed to miss the point; this
tragedy was not borne out of a mistake or simple circumstance, but is rather
part of a larger recurring trend in Karachi’s urban housing landscape. Any
possible solutions then need to first interrogate the historical context of
similar incidents in Karachi, before advocating reforms that are both
substantive and broad.
Formal housing in Karachi
has been a highly coveted but largely unavailable commodity for decades now. As
early as 1978, 55 percent of the city’s population was already living in katchi
abadis and slums because the city government simply could not keep up with
the housing demand of incoming migrants. Even today, according to a report
titled, Pakistan’s Urban Issues published by Arif Hasan, more
than 60 percent of Karachi’s population lives in katchi abadis or
informal settlements. By numbers alone, this is in fact Karachi’s vast
majority.
According to statistics,
the yearly demand for formal urban housing all over Pakistan is 350,000 units,
while the actual supply lags at a mere 150,000 units built. This discrepancy in
housing supply and demand has existed for decades now and building katchi
abadis or informal settlements is one of the major ways citizens make
up for the difference. Even all katchi abadis themselves
should not simply be grouped together since they exist on a wide scale, from
settlements with well-built, reinforced cement-concrete (RCC) structures which
pay for and source their amenities from the municipal government, to
settlements with semi-permanent houses made from simple plaster and concrete,
which may or may not have access to amenities, and finally to communities which
consist of simple shacks with no access to resources, typically called jhuggies,
made out of cloth, wood, plastics and other easily scavenged materials, like
Ilyas Goth.
Ilyas Goth is a
relatively new jhuggi settlement, which was re-built just 14
years ago after the original settlement was decimated during the construction
of the Lyari Expressway and is almost entirely populated by those dispossessed
people.
Specifically, three
different communities are living in Ilyas Goth: around 150 families of Marvari
Rajput Hindus who work as florists and have lived besides the Lyari River for
nearly 25 years, 25 families of Bagri Hindus who sell fish at the Dakh Khana
Market and moved into the settlement from Mirpurkhas following the flash floods
of 2010 wrought by climate change, and finally a few Muslim families that have
migrated to Karachi from various parts of Sindh, looking for better jobs and
infrastructure.
Ironically, one of the
justifications given by the National Highway Authority for demolishing the
original Ilyas Goth, among several other settlements all over Karachi, was that
the annual flooding of the Lyari river was a threat to those living nearby and
that they had to be resettled elsewhere. Yet, this promise of resettlement was
left unfulfilled for many thousands of displaced families all over Karachi and
pushed all those people into living in katchi abadis and jhuggies,
which are even more vulnerable to environmental hazards like the fire that
engulfed Ilyas Goth.
Yet, Ilyas Goth is not
exceptional in the tragedy it has faced; data from the Urban Resource Centre,
which has collected news clippings of such fires in Karachi’s urban slums from
January 1997 till January 2010, show that a total of 2,704 housing structures
have been reduced to ashes over this period, rendering more than 17,846 people
homeless and leading to the death of 35 adults and 50 minors.
Most jhuggies are
made from easily scavenged materials such as cheap plastic or cloth that are
piled atop simple bamboo or wooden structures. Hence, they are quite flammable
and also too weak to stand extreme weather.
These are the basest of
damages which do not even account for the severe physical and emotional trauma
survivors need to cope with, and loss of assets and livelihoods sustained
during the fires. Admittedly, not all these incidents were entirely natural;
many documented cases have shown that sometimes jhuggies are
victims of arson in attempts to claim land or resources, but the precarious
nature of these dwellings is still worrisome.
Add to this the fact that
the Karachi Municipal Corporation seems seriously under-equipped to deal with
fire outbreaks; with just 22 fire stations spread across Karachi which is a
tenth of the recommended 1 fire station per 100,000 population standard.
Most jhuggies are
made from easily scavenged materials such as cheap plastic or cloth that are
piled atop simple bamboo or wooden structures. Hence, they are quite flammable
and also too weak to stand extreme weather (such as heavy rains, heatwaves or
biting cold spells, which themselves are becoming increasingly deadlier due to
climate change.)
The government’s response
to these tragedies has been lacklustre, to say the least. On-ground relief has
been limited to offering families new sheets, clothes and food for the victims.
In fact, residents of Ilyas Goth say that the government’s relief effort was
matched by NGOs like the JDC Welfare Organisation and the Seylani Welfare
Trust, who also chipped in with similar donated materials. There still exists
no comprehensive plan or policy to tackle the question of climate vulnerability
faced by similar existing and future settlements that are spread all over
Karachi.
The question that we
should then ask is what are the possible futures of land, housing and the
people of Karachi under the shadow of worsening climate change? And Ilyas Goth
emerges as an interesting site to consider these questions because it is
demonstrative of the complex nature of all these components.
Gaining rights to land,
and housing by extension, remains a highly contentious process which has
remained inaccessible to most Karachiites for decades now and has pushed scores
of people into vulnerable informal housing arrangements.
This process of
disenfranchisement is then exacerbated by development projects in Karachi, such
as the Lyari Expressway and the Karachi Circular Railway, which sometimes
destroy even those informal arrangements and push people into further
precarity. This then becomes a cycle of repeated dispossession; first by
climate induced natural disasters, then evictions by brutal planning regimes,
leading to a lack of resources, increasing susceptibility to climate again,
each iteration compounding their vulnerability.
Housing is set to become
an ever rarer commodity with each passing day, and more and more people will be
pushed into buying land or houses that are environmentally unsound.
While today, most people
of Karachi live in various forms of informal settlements, some more
infrastructurally sound than others, these trends indicate that future housing
practices might be even worse. This is a problem not just for some poor and
disenfranchised pockets of the city’s populace but will become our common bane.
Our future is only going to be as strong as the foundations of the houses it is
built on, and as of right now, it’s hard to have faith in them.
Tags:
Housing