SENIOR citizens of Lahore would be captive to the nostalgia associated with memories of a pollution free city, where citizens would sit in the open, during winter afternoons, basking in the sunlight and enjoying the weather of this city of gardens. There used to be an “Open-Air Theatre” in Lahore’s Lawrence Garden, where local and foreign artistes of repute performed. I still remember Shakespeare Theatre conducting a series of plays there. Numerous other renowned plays, organized by internationally renowned and local artistes, preferred this location. Unfortunately, the unchecked urban expansion and compromises by state and city governments and bureaucracy has destroyed the beauty and glamour of not just Lahore, but almost every major city, including Karachi. Given the toxic SMOG, these Open-Air Theatres can no longer function.
Come October every year, for the past four to five decades, Lahore gets encompassed by toxic “Smog” that inflicts upon citizens miseries and ailments associated with the pulmonary, respiratory tract, heart, kidney, skin and eye infections. These pollutants have contributed to a rise in cancer as well. Some environmentalists blame this on our geographical location, near the Himalayan Range. During the onset of winter, the wind speed decreases, facilitating the accumulation of compressed pollutants across South Asia. While this is scientifically valid, the fact remains that this phenomenon has existed for centuries near the Himalayas. However, the intensity of smog that engulfs cities like Lahore, Delhi and Multan has worsened due to neglect by city and provincial governments, whose failure to regulate unchecked urban expansion has made life there an ordeal. The rapid replacement of green spaces and encroachment by the Land Mafia, enabled by a corrupt bureaucracy, has disrupted the natural equilibrium, polluting the air. Those granting NOCs to polluting industries are equally responsible for this crisis.
It was the responsibility of the state and bureaucracy to regulate industries located on the periphery of congested cities. Even the Margalla Hills in Islamabad, declared a natural reserve park, have been encroached upon by a commercialization mania that seems to have blinded those at the helm. The judiciary, both superior and lower, have used Suo-Motto powers on the slightest pretext but rarely intervene in collective public interest. Powerful groups within the lawyer community, engaged by Land Developers who have illegally occupied land belonging to poor farmers and even state or forest lands, manage to seek endless hearing extensions, lasting years. In the interim, these land tycoons have either sold the plots carved from illegally occupied land or built houses on it, sold to innocent citizens or investors. It has become standard practice to seek regularization based on Third Party Interest. We have seen how an irregularly constructed project on Avenue-One in Islamabad was regularized based on Third Party Interest because it was owned by the country’s powerful elite, while Nasla Towers in Karachi was demolished, despite hundreds of lower middle-class families living there for years, losing their lifelong savings.
This is what happens when few members of superior judiciary, become beneficiaries of plots allotted to them by regulatory agencies like CDA etc. This Conflict of Interest seems to have infected almost every cadre of public office holders. Almost all our civil airports, have been declared Red, due to bird hazards, which has the potential to cause fatal accidents and crashes because of FOD (Foreign Object Damage). Housing societies, marriage halls and eateries have been built in what was supposed to be a sterile zone around the periphery of these airports, under garb of welfare. These housing societies were given NOC and permission, despite ICAO recommendations of a mandatory sterile zone, free of constructed area, inhabited by residents. The waste dumped by residents, clubs etc. attract birds. This insatiable greed infected mindset, has created a problem, which threatens lives of innocent citizens who live in these cities. The Colonial Raj built cantons on periphery of every major city to control and suppress any uprising by the natives. The Raj left in 1947, but ever since 1958, onwards these cantons have been replaced by housing societies and there seems to be no end in sight.
Pakistan with an agro-based economy has suffered both economically and in terms of toxic polluted air breathed by its citizens. It is a Double Jeopardy and yet there seems to be no realization in corridors of power. Alarm bells should have been sounded, calling for urgent remedial measures and reversal of this greed infected madness. Green agricultural pastures which spread as far as the eye could see, in our rural areas and around the periphery of all our cities, have disappeared. They have been replaced by concrete jungles, built by Land Mafia tycoons, or segments within the paid/political elite, totally oblivious of the dangers that confront this country. Even Karachi located next to seashore has Smog. All the black money is parked in these non-productive and non-generative residential schemes, most of them unoccupied or unbuilt. Even fruit orchards have been wiped out, while the state, whose obligation was to regulate this unchecked urban expansion, remained oblivious to their responsibility. Pakistan which was self- sufficient to meet its basic agriculture-based food produce, and export surplus, today has to import most of them. This has become a burden on the national economy, which is already facing an economic crisis that threatens national security and sovereignty. The Debt to GDP ratio has already gone haywire and this state of affairs has become a burden which can destabilize the country from within.
—The writer is contributing columnist, based in Lahore.
