tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post5454051003885610274..comments2024-03-18T16:01:13.871-07:00Comments on Haq's Musings: Urbanization in Pakistan Highest in South AsiaRiaz Haqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comBlogger68125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-20132024077246730382023-01-04T12:46:20.913-08:002023-01-04T12:46:20.913-08:00Mismanagement complicates Pakistan’s long recovery...Mismanagement complicates Pakistan’s long recovery from deadly floods<br /><br />https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/mismanagement-complicates-pakistans-long-recovery-from-deadly-floods<br /><br /><br />Fred de Sam Lazaro:<br /><br />For decades, Karachi has been a magnet for migrants from conflict and climate disasters. Decades ago, it ran out of room. Dotting the city's outskirts are clusters of ramshackle dwellings. These have stood since the 2010 floods.<br /><br />Less than a mile away, crammed under high-voltage power lines, a 2022 wave of settlers.<br /><br />Sikhandar Chandio, Flood Victim (through translator):<br /><br />When the water came, it came all of a sudden at night. We just managed to get out with whatever we could and had to abandon our animals.<br /><br />Fred de Sam Lazaro:<br /><br />Sikhandar Chandio and his wife, Sughra, were sharecropper farmers. They escaped with their four children, and were able to save one cow. They journeyed here on foot, which took a week.<br /><br />Sughra Chandio, Flood Victim (through translator):<br /><br />Everything was underwater. There were no facilities. There was no help, no food.<br /><br />Fred de Sam Lazaro:<br /><br />Today, they rely on a patchwork of charities, everyone overwhelmed by what U.N. officials describe as one of the worst climate disasters on record, slamming a country that contributes less than 1 percent of the world's greenhouse gases.<br /><br />Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistani Prime Minister (through translator):<br /><br />We have mobilized every available resource towards the national relief effort, and repurposed all budget priorities.<br /><br />Fred de Sam Lazaro:<br /><br />Pakistan took the lead at this year's COP 27 climate conference, helping to secure agreement on a loss and damage fund to help developing nations cope.<br /><br />Just how those funds, if they appear, will be used is a concern.<br /><br />Kaiser Bengali, Former Adviser, Pakistan Ministry of Planning and Development: But there is a fair amount of manmade responsibility for these floods, and politics plays a big part.<br /><br />Fred de Sam Lazaro:<br /><br />Kaiser Bengali was a government adviser during the 2010 floods, Pakistan's worst until 2022.<br /><br />Kaiser Bengali:<br /><br />I think it is also important to see how this fund will be utilized and how it will be implemented and whether the sociopolitical structures and the planning structures that need to be changed, made more effective happens.<br /><br />Fred de Sam Lazaro:<br /><br />The 1,800-mile-long Indus River, lifeblood of Pakistan's agriculture sector, has been extensively engineered with dams and canals, beginning during British colonial times and ramping up in the 1960s with loans and advisers from international lending agencies.<br /><br />Has it been, in terms of food production, a reasonably good investment?<br /><br />Kaiser Bengali:<br /><br />Certainly. Lands where not even a blade of grass grew now produce two crops a year. It's just that one has to manage this better.<br /><br />Ahmed Kamal, Chairman, Pakistan Federal Flood Commission:<br /><br />Governance structure is not good.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-44262424970051360272020-10-05T18:51:31.265-07:002020-10-05T18:51:31.265-07:00#Pakistan has the highest rate of #urbanization in...#Pakistan has the highest rate of #urbanization in #SouthAsia, with 36.4% of the population living in cities. #UN says 2025 nearly half of the country's inhabitants will be living in cities. Is rapid urbanization making Pakistan's cities less livable? https://p.dw.com/p/3jSLX?maca=en-Twitter-sharing<br /><br />For developing countries, urban development is synonymous with economic growth and progress. In Pakistan, however, city planning experts say rapid urbanization is starting to cause more harm than good.<br /><br />Lahore, the capital of Pakistan's Punjab province, is shrouded in plumes of smog from October to February every year as crop burning exacerbates the city's air pollution problem.<br /><br />The monsoon season this year brought the southern city of Karachi, Pakistan's financial hub, to a standstill as the city experienced its heaviest rainfall in a single spell since 1931 and massive flooding. Its poor waste disposal and drainage systems aggravated the problem of water logging in parts of the city, which is home to roughly 15 million people.<br /><br />Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, is a "planned city" that came in to being in the 1960s. Over the years, however, many informal settlements and ad hoc developments have worsened housing and traffic woes for the city's residents.<br /><br />"I couldn't have imagined a few years ago that I would get stuck in traffic but now it is an everyday reality. The authorities keep widening roads as a solution but it's making traffic worse and making this once green city, grey," said Islamabad resident Amir Tariq.<br /><br />Rather than being sites of development, democratization and opportunity, Pakistan's cities are fast becoming hubs of gross inequality and unlivable for many people, particularly as private economic interests outweigh public goods.<br /><br /><br />-------------------------<br /><br />Citizen-led sustainable urban organizations are steadily mushrooming across the country. Mome Saleem, executive director of the Institute of Urbanization, started a campaign called "Reclaim Green Islamabad" in 2015.<br /><br />"In 2016, we successfully rallied against the cutting of 240 very old trees in Islamabad and even though the trees were eventually cut, it was the first time citizens of Islamabad came out in large numbers to demand a greener, cleaner city," Saleem told DW.<br /><br /><br />The Orangi Pilot Project's low-cost sanitation, health, housing and microcredit programs empowered residents to make this slum much more livable for themselves as it was a squatter community, and did not qualify for government aid due to their "unofficial" status.<br /><br />Shehri, meaning "citizen," is an organization that's successful in shaping dialogue and organizing resistance to various government policies and actions that are detrimental to urban prosperity.<br /><br />As urbanization in Pakistan increases rapidly, Saleem underlined, problems are growing, but so is citizen action against them. So there's still hope to turn around Pakistan's urbanization from problem to progress.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-18492054265527862752020-04-23T19:12:30.682-07:002020-04-23T19:12:30.682-07:00Working Paper Series on Rural-Urban Interactions
a...Working Paper Series on Rural-Urban Interactions<br />and Livelihood Strategies<br />WORKING PAPER 15<br />Migration and small towns in Pakistan<br /><br />https://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/10570IIED.pdf<br /><br />Migration has long played a key role in shaping the size and distribution of the population of<br />Pakistan. Since the partition of the British Indian Empire in 1947, and up to recent and<br />ongoing conflicts within the region, Pakistan has been the destination for large numbers of<br />cross-border migrants and refugees. These migrant groups, together with the growing<br />number of rural people displaced by agricultural modernization and mechanization, have<br />contributed to the substantial increase in the levels of urbanization in Pakistan, especially in<br />the more industrialized provinces of Punjab and Sindh. At the same time, like the people of<br />so many low- and middle-income nations, Pakistani citizens have sought work abroad, and<br />in the 1970s large-scale labour migration to the Middle East began in earnest. Remittances<br />have since become an important component of the national economy and of the livelihoods<br />of many households.<br />These complex and substantial movements have resulted in profound changes in settlement<br />patterns, and also in deep socioeconomic and cultural transformations. Smaller urban<br />centres, such as the ones described in this paper, reflect the growing discrepancy between<br />changing values and widening economic opportunities on the one hand, and the persistence<br />of a feudal system of political power often supported by a highly controversial administrative<br />and political devolution plan, on the other hand.<br />This study draws upon secondary sources and census reports of the government of<br />Pakistan. In addition, it draws upon previous work done by the authors, and detailed<br />interviews which have been carried out for this study. A list of the persons interviewed, along<br />with excerpts from their interviews, is given in Appendix 1. These excerpts have been<br />translated from Urdu recordings totalling over 16 hours.<br />------------<br /><br />In 1996 he became responsible for looking after the oil tankers of a private individual from his<br />area. This is what he does now and it has for the first time given him surplus income. He has<br />invested in a plot and house in a katchi abadi in Karachi. His two sons are now living in the city<br />and have both gone to high school. They are also in the transport business and have negotiated<br />informal loans for buying rickshaws which they rent out to people from their own area in the<br />NWFP, while they work as drivers for private companies. All this is the result of the connections<br />Abdul developed while working in Karachi.<br />From 1976 until the time that he got a job that earned him a surplus – 1996 – Abdul could never<br />have even thought of bringing his family to Karachi. He did not earn enough to rent<br />accommodation and the type of jobs that he did required odd working hours. Most of the time he<br />lived in make-shift accommodation near transport and cargo terminals or with co-workers,<br />sometimes seven to eight men in a room, and even more sharing a toilet. He feels that staying<br />away from his family and living the way he did was tough and that nobody should be subjected to<br />such conditions. However, these sacrifices have opened a new world of opportunities for his<br />immediate family and saved them from a life similar to Abdul’s.<br />Source: Interview taken by Arif Hasan in Karachi on 13 December 2007Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-65613159369650737012018-02-08T09:25:48.374-08:002018-02-08T09:25:48.374-08:00Slums could inspire the cities of the future. Here...Slums could inspire the cities of the future. Here's how<br /><br />https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/this-startup-is-turning-slums-into-microcities/<br /><br /><br />Soon, one third of humanity will live in a slum. Our cities are at breaking point. Over 90% of urbanisation this century will be due to the growth of slums. By the end of this century, the top megacities will no longer be London and Tokyo; they will almost all be in Asia and Africa, and they will be far bigger than the metropolises of today. Lagos is projected to have a population of 88 million. Dhaka: 76 million. Kinshasa: 63 million. The world is fundamentally restructuring itself.<br /><br />What if there were a new type of city that is a better fit for this century? One that is more lightweight, light touch and adaptive than we’ve seen before. What if the future of our cities could come from the rethinking of slums?<br /><br />Sustainable. Walkable. Livable. These terms are often used to paint visions of our preferred urban future. Yet the formal notion of a city is quite calcified; it’s heavy and clunky and inflexible. Cities today lack the flexibility to absorb emerging radical possibilities. What good are new solutions if the system can’t absorb them?<br /><br />City leaders across Asia and Africa are looking for solutions for their cities. What if they found them in the most unlikely of places: their slums? The informality of slums creates a white space from which a new vision for urban living could emerge – and that’s where the concept of microcities can begin to take root.<br /><br />Slums don’t have to be a glitch, or a problem. They can be an asset. By considering urban living at the human scale, and from a bird’s eye view, we can redesign slums as more liveable, lightweight and adaptive places. Places that are a better fit for the modern world; places in which a diverse group of citizens can not just survive, but thrive.<br /><br />What is a microcity?<br />A microcity is a framework for urban reform. It has three core elements:<br /><br />1) A microcity is a conversion of an existing slum.<br /><br />2) It is a semi-autonomous, privately owned and operated Special Demonstration Zone (SDZ) for up to 100,000 inhabitants.<br /><br />3) Each microcity is designed using integrated solutions. They are urban laboratories in emerging cities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that will become testbeds for more agile approaches to healthcare, governance, education, energy provision and every other aspect of city life.<br /><br />City governments will have three main roles to play. First, they can help identify the slum area to be converted. Secondly, they have to lay down the main arteries – the main roads into the area, along with the necessary infrastructure. Third, they pass a resolution establishing the microcity as an SDZ – a semi-autonomous area, similar to a Special Economic Zone, which becomes an innovation lab to test new forms of technology and governance.<br /><br />-------------<br /><br /><br />So what will a microcity look like – and what would it be like to live in one? A microcity will be a semi-autonomous area within its city, using a blockchain-based governance system that decentralises and automates much of its administration. It would feature a blockchain-based membership system, for example, that offers access to all key functions through member service hubs that become its inhabitants’ key point of contact for almost everything.<br /><br />As well as connecting citizens, the microcity’s software would also work seamlessly together.<br /><br />Imagine a healthcare system that takes care of 85% of people’s health needs through micro health clinics. Or a school system designed for the modern era, which focuses on project-based education. Or a food system that prioritises lab-grown food and industrial community kitchens, with a financial system that provides branchless banking. And, of course, free and fast wifi that connects everything and everyone.<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-69917625006119828852015-07-28T19:56:42.931-07:002015-07-28T19:56:42.931-07:00Though I am late in reply and going back to the or...Though I am late in reply and going back to the original article while keeping politics aside, good work, balance analysis and nice structure. Simply excellent work Mr. Riaz. Appreciated.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03602353388332151522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-38743943656988423642015-06-12T15:07:27.243-07:002015-06-12T15:07:27.243-07:00Urbanisation is key to why India is so far in Chin...Urbanisation is key to why India is so far in China’s wake<br /><br />Expectations are high that India will finally realise its full economic potential through a combination of Modi magic, its abundant young labour force and a more liberal policy regime. A recent adjustment in the country’s accounting has led to claims that it may already have replaced China as the world’s fastest growing economy. Yet, if India is to achieve the same sustained success as China, it needs to take a hard look at why its urbanisation process has failed so miserably in comparison.<br /><br />----<br /><br />The reason why India has failed and China succeeded can be illustrated by two simple indicators: their respective ratios of urban to rural incomes and the prices of urban property.<br /><br />The ratio of incomes gives a sense of the relative differences in productivity between the cities and countryside. For China, this ratio is 3.2 – the highest in world. On average, urban workers are more than three times as productive as rural workers and are being compensated accordingly. No wonder some 270m migrant workers have flocked to the cities to secure better paying industrial jobs. For India, the same measure gives a ratio of 1.6, one of the lowest for emerging market economies, indicating that urban productivity is only moderately higher than in rural areas, and cities do not offer such a magnet of higher earnings.<br /><br />The other key indicator is the relative difference in property prices in China versus India. China’s mega-cities have seen a five-fold increase in property prices in renminbi terms, or nearly seven-fold in US dollars over the past decade. No wonder concerns about a possible property bubble in China dominate global financial news. Yet despite these astounding increases, property prices in Beijing and Shanghai are still only half those of their Indian counterparts of New Delhi and Mumbai.<br /><br />So because the productivity-related benefits are so much lower in India, the incentive for rural workers to migrate to the cities is much less than in China and this is accentuated by the relatively higher cost of living in Indian cities due to exorbitant property prices. These same inflated property prices coupled with other factors — notably logistical bottlenecks — put Indian manufacturers at a cost disadvantage in competing in global markets despite their lower wages. The net effect is to hobble India’s progress.<br /><br />India’s lower urban-to-rural productivity ratio is partly the result of well-recognised distortions in its investment and pricing regime, as highlighted in studies done by the World Bank and IMF. But less widely understood is the negative impact of urban land-management policies.<br /><br />India’s excessively high property prices reflect a combination of two archaic practices. One is the legacy of its colonial past in reserving large parcels of valuable urban land for government use, including sprawling and wasteful estates for civil servants and military cantonments. The other comes from outdated and overly rigid building codes that discourage concentrated development of commercial activity and housing in the core of its major cities. This pushes development to the outer suburbs, making it difficult to realise the agglomeration benefits that drive productivity gains.<br /><br />Unless these issues are addressed, India cannot realise the growth benefits from a more rapid urbanisation-cum-industrialisation process which has characterised China and much of east Asia over the past four decades.<br /><br />http://blogs.ft.com/the-exchange/2015/06/08/urbanisation-is-key-to-why-india-is-so-far-in-chinas-wake/Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-67366348519745868832014-07-07T09:37:11.878-07:002014-07-07T09:37:11.878-07:00These past movements took three directions. A very...These past movements took three directions. A very large number of people came in from the outside. The country was born in the midst of a demographic convulsion. As many as eight million Muslims left the newly-independent India and headed for the newly-born Pakistan. Six million Hindus and Sikhs moved in the opposite direction. A smaller, but still a significantly large number of people left the country and settled abroad. Millions of people moved within the country. Some of them went looking for work. Others were forced out by natural or man-made disasters. The country is currently dealing with the displacement of half a million people from North Waziristan as a result of Operation Zarb-e-Azb.<br />No firm estimates are available for the number of people involved in these movements so we will have to do with guesstimates. Of Pakistan’s current population of almost 200 million, a third are refugees or their descendants. Their number is probably 60 million. This is by far the highest concentration of refugees in the population of a country comparable to Pakistan’s size. The largest component of this group came from India during Partition; of the eight million Muslim refugees who came to Pakistan, some 5.5 million settled in Punjab. Many of them were accommodated on the properties left by the Hindus and Sikhs. This group was quickly absorbed since they were ethnically similar to those who lived in this area. They also spoke the same language. The descendants of this group now number about 35 million.<br />For most of the remaining 25 million, assimilation was much harder. This is not a homogenous group. It includes the descendants of the refugees from India, those who came later from Bangladesh when that country became independent in 1971, and those who were displaced by natural disasters and other crises. The refugees who came to Pakistan from the Muslim-minority provinces of British India such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi, Bombay, and Gujarat still stand out as a separate community. Their effort to get accommodated created ethnic tensions and associated violence in the country, particularly in Karachi. This composite group now numbers about 15 million, of which about 12 million live in Karachi. The remaining are scattered in other parts of urban Pakistan, mostly in the larger cities of southern Sindh. Of this group, those who call themselves muhajirs number about eight to nine million.<br />The second large-scale movement of people involved job seekers. About 10 million people were involved in this movement. A significant number of these went to Karachi. Some of those who came from Punjab returned home as the pace of economic growth picked up in the province, particularly during the presidency of Ayub Khan. The Pakhtun population stayed, locating itself in the bastis founded on Karachi’s periphery. Once opportunities in the construction industry declined, many of them took up jobs or established businesses in transport and other parts of the service sector. The current size of this population is about three million.<br />Once the Pakhtun areas became established in the city, they attracted the Pakhtun populations displaced by the two wars in Afghanistan. This movement of people probably added another two million, bringing the total to five million. This is equivalent to one-fourth of Karachi’s population.<br />To summarise this arithmetic: 60 million economic and political refugees in Pakistan are divided into four fairly distinct, but large groups and each of these four groups has shaped Pakistan’s history in different ways.<br /><br />http://tribune.com.pk/story/731979/migrations-and-shaping-of-pakistan/Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-69665406085557034612013-08-31T07:22:58.019-07:002013-08-31T07:22:58.019-07:00Here's an excerpt of a Dawn Op Ed on declining...Here's an excerpt of a <a href="http://www.dawn.com/news/1038948/keeping-pakistans-high-fertility-in-check" rel="nofollow">Dawn Op Ed</a> on declining fertility rates in Pakistan:<br /><br /><i>Getting down to two children per family may seem an elusive target, however, Pakistanis have made huge dents in the alarmingly high fertility rates, despite the widespread opposition to family planning. Since 1988, the fertility rate in Pakistan has declined from 6.2 births per woman to 3.5 in 2009. In a country where the religious and other conservatives oppose all forms of family planning, a decline of 44 per cent in fertility rate is nothing short of a miracle.<br /><br />A recent paper explores the impact of family planning programs in Pakistan. The paper uses data from the 2006-07 Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey, which interviewed 10, 023 ever-married women between the ages of 15 and 49 years. The survey revealed that only 30 per cent women used contraceptives in Pakistan. Though the paper in its current draft has several shortcomings, yet it still offers several insights into what contributes to high fertility and what the effective strategies are to check high fertility rates in Pakistan.<br /><br />The survey revealed that the use of contraceptives did not have any significant impact for women who had given birth to six or more children. While 24 per cent women who were not using any contraceptives reported six or more births, 37 per cent of those who used contraceptives reported six or more births. At the same time, 27 per cent of women who were not visited by the family planning staff reported six or more births compared with 22 per cent of women who had a visit with the family planning staff.<br /><br />Meanwhile, demographic and socio-economic factors reported strong correlation with the fertility outcomes. Women who were at least 19 years old at marriage were much less likely to have four or more births than those who were younger at the time of marriage. Similarly, those who gave birth before they turned 19 were much more likely to have four or more births.<br /><br />Education also reported strong correlation with fertility outcomes. Consider that 58 per cent of illiterate women reported four or more births compared to 21 per cent of those who were highly educated. Similarly, 60 per cent of the women married to illiterate men reported four or more births compared to 39 per cent of the women married to highly educated men. The survey revealed that literacy among women mattered more for reducing fertility rates than literacy among their husbands.<br /><br />The underlying variable that defines literacy and the prevalence of contraceptives in Pakistan is the economic status of the households. The survey revealed that 32 per cent of women from poor households reported six or more births compared to 21 per cent of those who were from affluent households.<br /><br />The above results suggest that family planning efforts in Pakistan are likely to succeed if the focus is on educating young women. Educated young women are likely to get married later and will have fewer children. This is also supported by a comprehensive study by the World Bank in which Andaleeb Alam and others observed that cash transfer programs in Punjab to support female education resulted in a nine percentage point increase in female enrollment. At the same time, the authors found that those girls who participated in the program delayed their marriage and had fewer births by the time they turned 19.</i><br /><br />http://www.dawn.com/news/1038948/keeping-pakistans-high-fertility-in-checkRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-65855970184498384212012-09-11T19:34:09.221-07:002012-09-11T19:34:09.221-07:00"Major demographic changes have taken place i..."Major demographic changes have taken place in Pakistan since Independence, with major <br />impact on the political and economic power of small towns. The nature of these changes is <br />detailed in Tables 13–15 in Appendix 3, and also reflected in Maps 4–6. The tables show <br />that an increasing number of Pakistanis now live in the larger cities, of a million or more <br />people. In 1951, 45 per cent of Pakistanis lived in 198 cities of less than 50,000 people, <br />while 18 per cent lived in cities of above one million (of which there was only one). In 1998, <br />50 per cent of Pakistanis lived in million-plus cities (of which there were then six), and only <br />28 per cent lived in the 418 cities of 50,000 or under. This shows that the political and <br />economic power of the smaller cities has declined.<br />However, there are major provincial variations. For instance, in the Punjab, the number of <br />cities of under 25,000 people declined between 1951 and 1998, whereas in Sindh this <br />increased from 23 to 107, and in Balochistan from 15 to 27. These differences are explained <br />by the higher level of industrial spread around the larger towns in the Punjab, as compared <br />to the other provinces"<br /><br />http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/10570IIED.pdfMayrajnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-47742826790207615672012-05-27T23:07:38.712-07:002012-05-27T23:07:38.712-07:00Here's an excerpt from Javed Burki's ET Op...Here's an excerpt from Javed Burki's <a href="http://tribune.com.pk/story/384904/migration-and-economic-backwardness-in-punjab/" rel="nofollow">ET Op Ed</a> on internal migration in Pakistan:<br /><br /><i>One reason for this may be that the rural poor choose to relocate themselves in the urban areas in the expectation that more jobs will be available in the urban economy. Economists call this the ‘push factor’ when poor economic conditions in the place of residence persuades people to move to the areas where there may be better prospects for finding jobs. Opposite to this is the ‘pull factor’ when it is known that better paying jobs are available in a particular geographic space some distance away from the place of residence.<br /><br />The push factor is independent of the amount of distance travelled by those who choose to move out. Short distance migration especially in southern Punjab is an example of the push factor. One result of this is that poverty simply gets exported from one place to the other. Just by moving out, the migrants help those who remain behind. However, they bring down average incomes by moving into the urban areas that don’t have many opportunities to offer. This appears to have happened in the case of the southern districts of Punjab.<br /><br />For some reason, those discouraged by their circumstances in the countryside as are the people in the southern districts of Punjab province, have preferred to relocate in the nearby towns and cities. They seem to avoid long-distance migration. There are, accordingly, relatively few people from these districts in the well-populated Pakistani diasporas in the Middle East, Britain and North America. A good example is out-migration from Gujrat district situated on the border of central and northern Punjab. The people from this district are to be found in many distant places. They constitute the bulk of the Pakistani population now resident permanently in Norway. I was once told by the Norwegian ambassador to Pakistan that one percent of her country’s population was made up of Pakistanis. In Oslo, the country’s capital, Pakistanis accounted for 10 per cent of the population. Most of these people were from Gujrat district.<br /><br />Outmigration from Gujrat to Europe offers some interesting insights not only for understanding why people move but also of the choice of their destinations. Once it was appreciated in the district that migration was an important and effective contributor to poverty alleviation, people began to look actively for the opportunities that were available. The Gujratis took advantage of the path discovered by illegal migrants from North Africa to Spain to join this stream of migration. There is now a fairly large community in Barcelona of the people from this district.<br /><br />Karachi’s growth, on the other hand, is a good example of the pull factor. Millions of people who have left their homes in such poor areas as the tribal regions of Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa (K-P) and the barani areas of north Punjab and Azad Kashmir and moved to Karachi. By doing so, they have generally improved their economic situation. They also help the places from which they come by sending back remittances. These have become important contributors to the incomes of the areas such as North Punjab and K-P. Although in its Punjab study the IPP did not do work on the impact of remittances on economic and social development, there is good reason to argue that this must have been positive.</i><br /><br />http://tribune.com.pk/story/384904/migration-and-economic-backwardness-in-punjab/Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-76522401104369225392012-03-13T22:19:39.771-07:002012-03-13T22:19:39.771-07:00Here are excerpts of David Brooks Op Ed in NY Time...Here are excerpts of David Brooks Op Ed in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/opinion/brooks-the-fertility-implosion.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=david%20brooks&st=cse" rel="nofollow">NY Times</a>:<br /><br /><i>Usually, high religious observance and low income go along with high birthrates. But, according to the United States Census Bureau, Iran now has a similar birth rate to New England — which is the least fertile region in the U.S.<br /><br />The speed of the change is breathtaking. A woman in Oman today has 5.6 fewer babies than a woman in Oman 30 years ago. Morocco, Syria and Saudi Arabia have seen fertility-rate declines of nearly 60 percent, and in Iran it’s more than 70 percent. These are among the fastest declines in recorded history.<br /><br />The Iranian regime is aware of how the rapidly aging population and the lack of young people entering the work force could lead to long-term decline. But there’s not much they have been able to do about it. Maybe Iranians are pessimistic about the future. Maybe Iranian parents just want smaller families.<br />----------<br />If you look around the world, you see many other nations facing demographic headwinds. If the 20th century was the century of the population explosion, the 21st century, as Eberstadt notes, is looking like the century of the fertility implosion.<br /><br />Already, nearly half the world’s population lives in countries with birthrates below the replacement level. According to the Census Bureau, the total increase in global manpower between 2010 and 2030 will be just half the increase we experienced in the two decades that just ended. At the same time, according to work by the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, the growth in educational attainment around the world is slowing.<br /><br />This leads to what the writer Philip Longman has called the gray tsunami — a situation in which huge shares of the population are over 60 and small shares are under 30.<br />-------------<br />Rapidly aging Japan has one of the worst demographic profiles, and most European profiles are famously grim. In China, long-term economic growth could face serious demographic restraints. The number of Chinese senior citizens is soaring by 3.7 percent year after year. By 2030, as Eberstadt notes, there will be many more older workers (ages 50-64) than younger workers (15-29). In 2010, there were almost twice as many younger ones. In a culture where there is low social trust outside the family, a generation of only children is giving birth to another generation of only children, which is bound to lead to deep social change.<br /><br />Even the countries with healthier demographics are facing problems. India, for example, will continue to produce plenty of young workers. By 2030, according to the Vienna Institute of Demography, India will have 100 million relatively educated young men, compared with fewer than 75 million in China.<br /><br />But India faces a regional challenge. Population growth is high in the northern parts of the country, where people tend to be poorer and less educated. Meanwhile, fertility rates in the southern parts of the country, where people are richer and better educated, are already below replacement levels.<br /><br />The U.S. has long had higher birthrates than Japan and most European nations. The U.S. population is increasing at every age level, thanks in part to immigration. America is aging, but not as fast as other countries.<br /><br />But even that is looking fragile. The 2010 census suggested that U.S. population growth is decelerating faster than many expected.....</i><br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/opinion/brooks-the-fertility-implosion.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=david%20brooks&st=cseRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-58898842792464791352012-02-08T17:12:05.952-08:002012-02-08T17:12:05.952-08:00Here are some excerpts of an NPR Fresh Air intervi...Here are some excerpts of an <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/02/08/146575908/finding-life-death-and-hope-in-a-mumbai-slum" rel="nofollow">NPR Fresh Air</a> interview of Katherine Boo, the author of Behind the Beautiful Forevers:<br /><br /><i>.......Some inhabitants (of Mumbai slum Annawadi) lack any shelter and sleep outside. Rats commonly bite sleeping children, and barely a handful of the 3,000 residents have the security of full-time employment. Over the course of her time in Annawadi, Boo learned about the residents' social distinctions, their struggles to escape poverty, and conflicts that sometimes threw them into the clutches of corrupt government officials. Her book reads like a novel, but the characters are real.<br />----------<br />BOO: Well, I'll describe it (the slum) this way. You come into the Mumbai International Airport, you make a turn, and you go past a lavish Hyatt and a beautiful hotel called the Grand Maratha. By the time you get to the Hyatt, which is about three minutes in your car, you've already gone past this place.<br /><br />There's a rocky road that goes into it, and you turn in, and the first thing you notice when you get into this landscape of hand-built, makeshift, crooked huts is one of the borders of the slum - or it was I came in 2008 - was this vast lake of extremely noxious sewage and petrochemicals and things that the people modernizing the glamorous airport had dumped in the lake.<br /><br />And so it was almost beachfront property on this foul, malarial lake, and all around it in this, the single open space in the slum were people cooking and bathing and fighting and flirting. And there were goats and water buffalo. There was a little brothel, and men would line up outside the little brothel. And there was a liquor still.<br /><br />And mainly there were families and children who were trying their best to find a niche in the global market economy. Almost no one in Annawadi had permanent work. Six people out of 3,000 last I checked had permanent work.<br />-------------<br />DAVIES: One of the most remarkable things to read here was that you tell us in the book that no one in Annawadi was actually considered poor by traditional Indian benchmarks. Is that right? I mean, if they're not poor, who is poor?<br /><br />BOO: Go to the village, and you'll see what poor is. No, so officially, the poverty lines in many countries, including India, are set so low that officially the people that I'm writing about look like part of the great success narrative of modern global capitalism. They look like the more than 100 million people who have been freed since liberalization in India in 1991 from poverty.<br /><br />So usually in my work, I'm not looking to write about the poorest and abject. I'm not looking to make you feel sorry for people. I want readers to have a connection more blooded and complex than pity or revulsion. But really, the main point I have to say is that on the books, these men, women and children have succeeded in the global economy. They're the success stories.<br /><br />But I hope what my book shows is that it's a little more complicated than that.<br /><br />DAVIES: Well, I mean, so many of them are just on the edge of losing, you know, food and shelter for the day. I mean, are the truly poor, are they rural poor who sleep out in the open? I mean, who are the...?<br /><br />BOO: Well, many people in Annawadi sleep out in the open, too, but when Asha(ph) - in the book, I follow Asha, the mother, who has used politics and corruption to try to give her daughter a college education, I follow her back home to Vidarbha, a very poor agricultural region.<br /><br />And when Asha walks through the door, everybody can see on her face and the face of her children how good life is in the Mumbai slums. Asha's grandmother walks on all fours, she's so bent from agricultural labor. And when Asha walks in that door, she stands mast straight.,,,</i><br /><br />http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=146575908Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-82172809762671370002012-01-16T22:37:56.180-08:002012-01-16T22:37:56.180-08:00The BBC is reporting that city dwellers in China n...The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-16588851" rel="nofollow">BBC</a> is reporting that city dwellers in China now outnumber rural dwellers for the first time as more people seek better economic opportunities, official figures show:<br /><br />The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said that there were now 690.8m people - 51.3% of China's total 1.3bn population - in urban areas.<br /><br />The 21m who moved to cities in 2011 included a large number of migrant workers, according to the NBS.<br /><br />In comparison, there are 656.6m people living in rural areas.<br /><br />That city dwellers now outnumber the rural population comes as no surprise.<br /><br />When China released the results of its census - conducted once every 10 years - in April 2011, figures showed a dramatic rural to urban shift.<br /><br />It said that the proportion of the population living in the cities had risen by almost 14% in a decade - workers drawn to jobs in China's factories and coastal industrial zones.<br /><br />The census for the first time counted migrant workers where they were living, rather than where they were registered<br /><br />Chinese academics have called for new policies to tackle the population shift, like making better social welfare provision for migrant workers. <br /><br />http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-16588851Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-19067051159415322832011-12-30T10:13:57.833-08:002011-12-30T10:13:57.833-08:00Here's a NY Times story about Dharavi slum tha...Here's a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/world/asia/in-indian-slum-misery-work-politics-and-hope.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ref=global-home" rel="nofollow">NY Times</a> story about Dharavi slum that illustrates entrepreneurship at the bottom:<br /><br /><i>At the edge of India’s greatest slum, Shaikh Mobin’s decrepit shanty is cleaved like a wedding cake, four layers high and sliced down the middle. The missing half has been demolished. What remains appears ready for demolition, too, with temporary walls and a rickety corrugated roof.<br /><br />Yet inside, carpenters are assembling furniture on the ground floor. One floor up, men are busily cutting and stitching blue jeans. Upstairs from them, workers are crouched over sewing machines, making blouses. And at the top, still more workers are fashioning men’s suits and wedding apparel. One crumbling shanty. Four businesses.<br /><br />In the labyrinthine slum known as Dharavi are 60,000 structures, many of them shanties, and as many as one million people living and working on a triangle of land barely two-thirds the size of Central Park in Manhattan. Dharavi is one of the world’s most infamous slums, a cliché of Indian misery. It is also a churning hive of workshops with an annual economic output estimated to be $600 million to more than $1 billion.<br /><br />“This is a parallel economy,” said Mr. Mobin, whose family is involved in several businesses in Dharavi. “In most developed countries, there is only one economy. But in India, there are two.”.....</i><br /><br />Similar to Dharavi, Karachi's Orangi town is an example of undocumented entrepreneurship in the shanties. From garments to leather to furniture, there are many small cottage industries operated by small entrepreneurs in Orangi town.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-57532994208099188802011-12-14T18:00:17.310-08:002011-12-14T18:00:17.310-08:00Here are excerpts of a Washington Post report on f...Here are excerpts of a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/family-planning-is-a-hard-sell-in-pakistan/2011/11/08/gIQANeGcuO_story_1.html" rel="nofollow">Washington Post</a> report on faltering family planning effort in Pakistan:<br /><br /><i>The government says it is committed to slowing population growth, which it referred to in a report last year as a “major impediment to [Pakistan’s] socioeconomic development process.” But public health experts say they have seen little beyond lip service.<br /><br />In rural areas, access to family planning services is limited and hampered by deteriorating security, while government health workers are overburdened. International donors want bang for bucks, and working in the countryside is more expensive, said Mohsina Bilgrami of the Marie Stopes Society in Pakistan, another nongovernmental organization.<br /><br />Greenstar is the country’s largest contraceptive provider, but “we’re a drop in the bucket in a country of 180 million,” said Shirine Mohagheghpour, the technical adviser for Greenstar, an affiliate of the Washington-based Population Services International. “You have to do this community by community.”<br /><br />Shahid keeps her message basic. In one colorful illustration she shows on home visits, grimy children wail in a tattered house. In another, a mother shakes a rattle at a baby, a father frolics with a toddler and a child reads a book in a tidy dwelling. Intrauterine devices can help make the second picture a reality, she says.<br /><br />“You can live tension-free,” she said to a room full of women in Mirwah. “Your husband will be happy. Your mother-in-law will be happy. You can pay attention to the children you already have. If you continue having children year after year, you will get sick.”<br /><br />In urban, middle-class areas, the message is slowly resonating. Two hours away, in the city of Mirpurkhas, a similar discussion with women and a few mothers-in-law sparked boisterous discussion. Several said children were simply too expensive.<br /><br />“If it’s a sin, there shouldn’t be doctors who offer it,” one said of contraception, eliciting nods.<br /><br />At a private clinic in Mirwah, a woman named Buri, 35, said firmly that a small family is best. But it was too late: Married at age 13, she was pregnant 12 times before she opted for tubal ligation, a sterilization procedure. Ten of her children lived. None attends school.<br /><br />“They are uninterested in school,” she said. “Parents are too busy in the fields to pay attention.”<br /><br />Next to Buri lay her sister-in-law, silently shivering under a floral sheet, in labor with her first child. Presiding over the scene was their mother-in-law, a woman in ornate silver jewelry, who matter-of-factly stated that the newborn should be the first of at least eight.</i><br /><br />http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/family-planning-is-a-hard-sell-in-pakistan/2011/11/08/gIQANeGcuO_story_1.htmlRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-20668024435882170822011-12-01T22:06:10.750-08:002011-12-01T22:06:10.750-08:00Rising per capita income and a growing, young popu...Rising per capita income and a growing, young population spending more time online and at Western movies are helping build a mass market in Pakistan, according to <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/pakistans-consumers-flex-their-newfound-muscle-12012011.html" rel="nofollow">Businessweek</a>:<br /><br /><i>One way to take a city’s economic pulse is to check out where locals shop. In Karachi, Pakistan, shoppers are flocking to Port Grand, which opened in May. Built as a promenade by the historic harbor for almost $23 million, the center caters to Pakistanis eager to indulge themselves. This city of 20 million has seen more than 1,500 deaths from political and sectarian violence from January to August. At Port Grand the only hint of the turmoil is the presence of security details and surveillance cameras. “The whole world is going through a new security environment,” says Shahid Firoz, 61, Port Grand’s developer. “We have to be very conscious of security just as any other significant facility anywhere in the world needs to be.”<br /><br />Young people stroll the promenade eating burgers and fries and browsing through 60 stores and stalls that sell everything from high fashion to silver bracelets to ice cream. Ornate benches dot a landscaped area around a 150-year-old banyan tree. “Port Grand is something fresh for the city, very aesthetically pleasing and unique,” says Yasmine Ibrahim, a 25-year-old Lebanese American who is helping set up a student affairs office at a new university in Karachi.<br /><br />One-third of Pakistan’s 170 million people are under the age of 15, which means the leisure business will continue to grow, says Naveed Vakil, head of research at AKD Securities. Per capita income has grown to $1,254 a year in June from $1,073 three years ago.<br /><br />The appetite for things American is strong despite the rise in tensions between the two allies. Hardee’s opened its first Karachi outlet in September: In the first few days customers waited for hours. It plans to open 10 more restaurants in Pakistan in the next two and a half years, says franchisee Imran Ahmed Khan. U.S. movies are attracting crowds to the recently opened Atrium Cinemas, which would not be out of place in suburban Chicago. Current features include The Adventures of Tintin and the latest Twilight Saga installment. Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol is coming soon. Operator Nadeem Mandviwalla says the cinema industry in Pakistan is growing 30 percent a year.<br /><br />Exposure to Western lifestyles through cable television and the Internet is raising demand for these goods and services. Pakistan has 20 million Internet users, compared with 133,900 a decade ago, while 25 foreign channels, such as CNN (TWX) and BBC World News, are now available. And for many Pakistanis, reruns of the U.S. sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond are a regular treat.<br /><br />The bottom line: With per capita income rising quickly, Pakistan is developing a mass market eager for Western goods.</i><br /><br />http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/pakistans-consumers-flex-their-newfound-muscle-12012011.htmlRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-36816111471965414782011-11-30T16:47:20.722-08:002011-11-30T16:47:20.722-08:00Online News: Half of Pakistan’s population may liv...<a href="http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?id=186520" rel="nofollow">Online News</a>: Half of Pakistan’s population may live in cities by 2030<br /><br /><i>ISLAMABAD: More than half of Pakistan’s population is estimated to be living in cities by the year 2030. Both natural increase and net migration are major contributory factors to urban growth.<br /><br />These views were expressed by participants of a seminar on “Business and the Middle Class in Pakistan organized by the Planning Commission of Pakistan which was held here on Wednesday.<br /><br />The seminar included speakers and discussants from some of the largest companies and businesses in Pakistan, coming together to discuss the importance of the evolving middle class in Pakistan.<br /><br />The participants said that current urban growth rate was approximately 3.5 per cent as compare to 2 per cent nationally. More rural people are migrating to urban centers for higher-paying jobs. Upward social mobility creating and expanding the middle class.<br /><br />Given the low median age, Pakistan’s middle class is unusually young as compared to developed economies, meaning that younger population will have the most disposable incomes.The expanding middle class consumers will aim for first world aspirations and greater focus will be on branded retail products. The middle class has been growing in number as well as in importance all over the world, which is why businesses strategize targeting this specific class.<br /><br />The participants said that the middle class is conceptually defined as the class between the rich and the poor; however its boundaries are usually made arbitrarily. It is also important to note the multi-dimensionality of an adequate definition; a person belonging to the middle class needs to be evaluated not only on a monetary basis, other aspects of quality of life and available opportunities need to be encapsulated to arrive at a well rounded definition.<br /><br />They said that studies show a positive relationship between the higher share of income for the middle class and economic growth as well as political aspects like democracy. Other studies indicate the emergence of entrepreneurs from the middle class. It is the middle class that was the driver of success in India and China.<br /><br />They said that the biggest opportunity of the rising middle class, at present and future will be for companies selling mass-consumer goods and services. As incomes rise spending patterns will incorporate discretionary and small luxury items while proportionate expenditure on food, clothing and other necessities tend to shrink.<br /><br />While the basics may decline as a share of consumption, in absolute terms they will continue to grow. Housing, healthcare and educational expenses are expected to register a greater share of the wallet – this spending will be driven by the strong link between education and higher salaries, as well as growing number of options for both higher and vocational education.</i><br /><br />http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?id=186520Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-84524823662843485862011-11-27T22:12:16.795-08:002011-11-27T22:12:16.795-08:00While Pakistan's HDI of 0.504 (2011) ranks it ...While Pakistan's HDI of 0.504 (<a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/" rel="nofollow">2011</a>) ranks it among UNDP's low human development countries, its largest city Karachi's HDI of 0.7885 (<a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR05_HDI1.pdf" rel="nofollow">2005</a>) is closer to the group of nations given high human development rankings.<br /><br />In a <a href="http://www.relooney.info/SI_Expeditionary/Pakistan-Economy_104.pdf" rel="nofollow">regional human development analysis</a> for Pakistan done by Haroon Jamal and Amir Jahan Khan of the Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC), Karachi ranks at the top with HDI of 0.7885, followed by Jhelum district's 0.7698 and Haripur's 0.7339. Lahore has HDI score of 0.6882 and Rawalpindi 0.638. <br /><br />Karachi often makes news for its recurring episodes of violence which claim many innocent lives. Yet, the city continues to be a big draw for large numbers of rural migrants looking for better economic opportunities. In spite of the many problems they face, it's a fact that even the <a href="http://www.riazhaq.com/2009/09/orangi-is-not-dharavi.html" rel="nofollow">slums in Karachi offer them better access to education and health care</a>--basic ingredients for human development. <br /><br />When visitors see a <a href="http://www.riazhaq.com/2009/09/orangi-is-not-dharavi.html" rel="nofollow">squatter city in India or Pakistan</a> or Bangladesh, they observe overwhelming desperation: rickety shelters, <a href="http://www.riazhaq.com/2008/11/pakistani-childrens-plight.html" rel="nofollow">little kids working or begging</a>, absence of sanitation, filthy water and air. However, there are many benefits of rural to urban migration for migrants' lives, including reduction in abject poverty, empowerment of women, increased access to healthcare and education and other services. Historically, cities have been driving forces in economic and social development. As centers of industry and commerce, cities have long been centers of wealth and power. They also account for a disproportionate share of national income. The World Bank estimates that in the developing world, as much as 80 percent of future economic growth will occur in towns and cities. Nor are the benefits of urbanization solely economic. Urbanization is associated with higher incomes, improved health, higher literacy, and improved quality of life. Other benefits of urban life are less tangible but no less real: access to information, diversity, creativity, and innovation. <br /><br />http://www.riazhaq.com/2011/11/karachis-high-human-development-index.htmlRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-50072297901097542282011-11-14T22:39:57.611-08:002011-11-14T22:39:57.611-08:00Here's a NY Times blog by Huma Yusuf about Pak...Here's a <a href="http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/in-pakistan-a-census-count-turns-into-a-body-count/" rel="nofollow">NY Times blog</a> by Huma Yusuf about Pakistan stalled census 2011:<br /><br /><i>Yet Population Year is drawing to a close and no census is in sight. There are many reasons: the precarious security situation, repeated flooding in many parts of the country, lack of resources to train the 225,000 census takers required to conduct the head count in time. But the main reason is politics. The major parties draw their power from rural constituencies, and by highlighting the extent of the country’s urbanization, a census would lead to the creation of new urban constituencies.<br /><br />With an eye toward the national elections slated for 2013, many Pakistani politicians are doing everything in their power to circumvent or delay a count. The country’s largest parties, the governing Pakistan Peoples Party and the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N, are particularly threatened by the prospect of reduced rural constituencies. Newcomers such as the cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, the founder of Tehreek-e-Insaf, which enjoys significant support in Punjabi cities, stand to gain.<br /><br />Gerrymandering is not rare in boisterous democracies. But in Pakistan, it can be a matter of life and death. In Karachi, from where I have been reporting for eight years, many of the political parties are based on ethnic groups, and a revised count would lead to a revised political balance. Fears that this might happen are fanning ethnic violence. More than 2,100 people have been killed in Karachi in political assassinations over the past two years — a death toll not seen since 1995, a year of widespread ethnic and political violence. Muhammad Jalil, a community organizer in Lyari, one of the worst-affected slums of the city, told me in August that everyone — women, teenage footballers — is exposed to the violence. “Political activists and gangsters are not the only ones targeted. Entire communities are vulnerable.”<br /><br />Since the 1980s, ethnic Pashtuns and the Urdu-speaking Mohajirs, migrants from northern India, have clashed over access to property and jobs in Karachi. Criminal gangs with ties to political parties — including the ruling P.P.P. — had been warring over smuggling rackets and extortion rings. But as election year approaches, it is Karachi’s shifting demographics that are driving much of the violence.<br /><br />Until recently, the Mohajirs were the city’s clear majority, accounting for 48 percent of the population, according to the 1998 survey. But military operations against militant groups in northwestern Pakistan since 2007 have increased the flow of Pashto-speaking migrants into Karachi. By some estimates this group now represents 22 percent of the city’s population, up from about 12 percent in 1998. So now the M.Q.M., the Mohajirs’ representative party, fears that a census documenting the expansion of Karachi’s Pashtun population would lead to a redistricting that would favor its local rival, the A.N.P......</i><br /><br />http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/in-pakistan-a-census-count-turns-into-a-body-count/Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-37115516297598552282011-03-28T17:58:34.020-07:002011-03-28T17:58:34.020-07:00Here are some excerpts from a BBC report on violen...Here are some excerpts from a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12850353" rel="nofollow">BBC report</a> on violence in Karachi:<br /><br /><i>According to human rights organisations, 775 people died in political and sectarian shootings and bomb attacks in Karachi in 2010. ...<br />And although thousands are killed every year in the north-west, the impact of the violence in Karachi is arguably no less important. The city is Pakistan's commercial hub.<br />Business losses<br />------<br />Karachi provides 70% of the total annual tax revenue collected by the government.<br />------------<br />The violence has been largely fuelled by antagonism between the local chapters of three political parties: the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), the mostly Pashtun Awami National Party (ANP) and the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM).<br />---------<br />The MQM remains Karachi's dominant political party and represents the city's majority Urdu-speaking community - the descendants of Muslim migrants to India at the time of partition in 1947.<br /><br />In December 2010, Sindh Home Minister Zulfiqar Mirza accused the MQM of being mainly responsible for the extortion and targeted killings prevalent across the city.<br /><br />Within 48 hours, an enraged MQM withdrew its support for the PPP-led coalition in Islamabad.<br /><br />The only reason the government could hold onto power was because opposition parties did not bring a no-confidence motion against the government.<br /><br />The MQM has since been coaxed back into the coalition and now holds the political balance.<br /><br />However, tensions remain with the ANP and the PPP.<br />-------------<br />In Karachi, all three parties have been involved in stoking ethnic passions.<br />-----<br />Thousands were arrested; many were were later killed in what human rights organisations and the Pakistan media said were staged killings by security forces.<br /><br />The MQM fought back - and was held responsible for a number of murders of police and security officials<br /><br />The party said it was targeted by a conservative security establishment for its liberal politics and for fighting for the rights of the Urdu-speaking community.<br /><br />Things changed under the government of President Pervez Musharraf and the party now enjoys excellent relations with the establishment.<br /><br />"The MQM's 'new deal' with the establishment is that its control of Karachi will remain unchallenged by the security establishment," a political analyst, who wished to remain unnamed, told the BBC.<br /><br />"In return, the MQM will support the establishment's policies in the centre."<br /><br />MQM insiders acknowledge this deal, although they insist the party will never vote for "anything against the spirit of its ideology".<br /><br />Obviously, this deal stands as long as the MQM controls Karachi.<br /><br />But since 2006, the party has been increasingly feeling the pressure exerted by the growth of the Pashtun community in the city.<br />Activists of the Labour Party Pakistan in Karachi in march 2011 Karachi is home to a bewildering number of political parties and campaigning groups<br /><br />Arriving here in their thousands, the Pashtun newcomers are in competition for land and jobs with the Urdu-speaking community.<br /><br />MQM leaders say these new arrivals must not be treated as long-term inhabitants of the city - a call at odds with its identity as a party of migrants.<br /><br />They say that there is a link between the growth of the Pashtun community and the "Talibanisation" of parts of the city - the Taliban is predominantly made up of Pashtun people.<br /><br />The MQM say they will resist this at all costs, and this bellicosity has led to violence which has claimed dozens of lives.<br /><br />Some of it has also involved separate turf battles between Karachi's Baloch community - the original inhabitants of the city - and the MQM.<br /><br />"It's a complex political and ethnic problem which needs to be handled with extreme care," says a local human rights activist.<br />---</i>Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-90561851227156819142011-01-06T19:44:34.695-08:002011-01-06T19:44:34.695-08:00The recent tragic assassination of Gov Salman Tase...The recent tragic assassination of Gov Salman Taseer has caused many to rethink whether the South Asian Barelvi or Sufi Islam is really more tolerant than Deobandi or Wahabi Islam imported into Pakistan from Saudi Arabia. <br /><br />Clearly, the followers of Barelvi Islam have not hesitated in supporting blasphemy laws, and they have shamelessly cheered the murder of Salman Taseer who spoke for repeal of such laws. <br /><br />I also think the Barelvi or Sufi Islam in Pakistan has been hijacked by the feudal-politcal class of makhdooms (Yusuf Raza Gilani, Shah Mahmmood Qureshi, Javed Hashmi, Amin Fahim, etc) to exploit their self-proclaimed lineage from Prophet Mohammad (their so-called Syed status) as a way to maintain their feudal-cum-spiritual power over the poor peasants in Sind and Southern Panjab. <br /><br />This feudal domination of politics has badly hurt the emergence of real democracy and any advancement of the poor, illiterate rural folks in Pakistan, and contributed to the growth of religious extremism particularly in rural Punjab.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-74454295571684549662010-06-12T18:24:00.055-07:002010-06-12T18:24:00.055-07:00Here is a Times Online report about slum populatio...Here is a Times Online <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1805596.ece" rel="nofollow">report</a> about slum population swelling in India:<br /><br />The number of people living in slums in India has more than doubled in the past two decades and now exceeds the entire population of Britain, the Indian Government has announced.<br /><br />India’s slum-dwelling population had risen from 27.9 million in 1981 to 61.8 million in 2001, when the last census was done, Kumari Selja, the Minister for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, said.<br /><br />The figure is the latest illustration of how India’s recent economic boom has left behind millions of the country’s poorest people, raising fears that social unrest could undermine further growth.<br /><br />India’s economy has grown by an average of 8 per cent annually over the past four years, and yet a quarter of its population of 1.1 billion still lives on less than $1 (50p) a day.<br /><br />The expansion of India’s slums is partly due to the rise in India’s total population, which increased from 683 million in 1981 to 1.03 billion in 2001.<br /><br />That has been exacerbated by mass migration from the countryside as millions of farmers have forsaken the diminishing returns of small-scale agriculture to seek the relatively high wages of manual labourers in India’s cities.<br /><br />But the ballooning slum population is also evidence of the Government’s failure to build enough housing and other basic infrastructure for its urban poor, many of whom live without electricity, gas or running water.<br /><br />India’s largest slum population is in Bombay, the country’s financial and film capital, where an estimated 6.5 million people – at least half the city’s residents – live in tiny makeshift shacks surrounded by open sewers. Bombay is also home to Dharavi, Asia’s biggest single slum, which is estimated to house more than a million people.<br /><br />Delhi, the national capital, has the country’s second-largest slum population, totalling about 1.8 million people, followed by Calcutta with about 1.5 million.<br /><br />Mrs Selja says that it will cost India four trillion rupees (£49 billion) to build the estimated 24 million housing units needed to accommodate India’s slum-dwellers. She has called for the Government and the private sector to address the problem jointly and has launched several schemes to provide basic public services to slum-dwellers. But civil rights activists accuse the Government of willfully neglecting India’s slums, while favouring commercial property developers who often bribe local officials and fund politicians’ election campaigns.<br /><br />“The rise in slums is due to the lack of affordable housing provided by the Government,” said Maju Varghese, of YUVA Urban, a nongovernmental organisation that has been working with the urban poor for more than 20 years. “The Government has withdrawn from the whole area of housing and land prices have gone to such heights that people can’t afford proper housing,” he said. <br /><br />http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1805596.eceRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-88391864373712131542010-05-04T20:31:07.974-07:002010-05-04T20:31:07.974-07:00Here's a recent excerpt from a piece by Dawn c...Here's a recent excerpt from a piece by <a href="http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/irfan-husain-the-rise-of-mehran-man-740" rel="nofollow">Dawn</a> columnist Irfan Husain about Pakistan's middle class influencing nation's politics:<br /><br /><i>While external debt increased from $39bn in 1999 to $50bn in 2009, poverty levels have fallen by over 10 per cent since 2001. Indeed, there are now around 30 million Pakistanis who are considered to be in the middle class with an average income of $10,000 annually, while some 17 million are now bracketed with the upper and upper-middle classes.<br /><br />Even though this does not approach China’s and India’s spectacular progress in this period, it does represent a solid advance. If one factors in the political turmoil the country has gone through, together with its ongoing insurgencies in the tribal areas and Balochistan, Pakistan’s progress has been impressive by any standard.<br /><br />How do these numbers translate into day-to-day life in Pakistan? To examine the social transformation the country is undergoing, Jason Burke uses the Suzuki Mehran as a yardstick to measure change. In his ‘Letter from Karachi’ published in the current issue of Prospect, the Guardian reporter writes:<br /><br />“In Pakistan, the hierarchy on the roads reflects that of society. If you are poor, you use the overcrowded buses or a bicycle. Small shopkeepers, rural teachers and better-off farmers are likely to have a $1,500 Chinese or Japanese motorbike…. Then come the Mehran drivers. A rank above them, in air-conditioned Toyota Corolla saloons, are the small businessmen, smaller landlords, more senior army officers and bureaucrats. Finally, there are the luxury four-wheel drives of ‘feudal’ landlords, big businessmen, expats, drug dealers, generals, ministers and elite bureaucrats. The latter may be superior in status, power and wealth, but it is the Mehrans which, by dint of numbers, dominate the roads.”<br /><br />This growing affluence has already caused a major power shift, with the urban population now having a bigger say after years of being ruled by feudal landowners. As urbanisation gathers pace, Pakistan’s traditional power elite will increasingly come from the cities, and not from the rural hinterland. This will have a profound impact not just on politics, but on society as a whole. As Burke observes in his Prospect article:<br /><br />“Politically, the Bhutto dynasty’s Pakistan People’s Party, mostly based in rural constituencies and led by feudal landowners, will lose out to the Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif with its industrial, commercial, urban constituency. Culturally, the traditional, folksy, tolerant practices in rural areas will decline in favour of more modernised, politicised Islamic strands and identities. And as power and influence shifts away from rural elites once co-opted by colonialism, the few elements of British influence to have survived will fade faster.”<br /><br />Often, perceptive foreigners spot social trends that escape us because we are too close to them to see the changes going on around us. For instance, Burke identifies the shift away from English, and sees ‘Mehran man’ as urban, middle class and educated outside the elite English-medium system. He sees Muslims being under attack from the West, and genuinely believes that the 9/11 attacks were a part of a CIA/Zionist plot. Actually, my experience is that many highly educated and sophisticated people share this theory.<br /><br />Burke continues his dissection of the rising Pakistani middle class: “Mehran man is deeply proud of his country. A new identification with the ummah, or the global community of Muslims, paradoxically reinforces rather than degrades his nationalism. For him, Pakistan was founded as an Islamic state, not a state for South Asian Muslims. Mehran man is an ‘Islamo-nationalist’. His country possesses a nuclear bomb….”<br /></i>Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-10726176875777674242009-12-22T09:28:06.844-08:002009-12-22T09:28:06.844-08:00Here's an interesting analysis of how Pakistan...Here's an interesting analysis of how Pakistan has changed in this decade by a Ahsan, a blogger on <a href="http://fiverupees.blogspot.com/2009/12/most-important-sociopolitical-trend-in_22.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FiveRupees+(Five+Rupees)" rel="nofollow">Five Rupees</a>:<br /><br />In the last decade, this picture has changed dramatically due to three central factors.<br /><br />The first and most important factor is the explosion of private electronic media. In the 1990s, it was difficult for most Pakistanis -- the vast majority of which cannot or do not read newspapers -- to get information that was not government-sponsored or, less mildly, propagandistic. ....<br /><br />This picture has changed drastically, as anyone with even a cursory interest in Pakistan will be able to tell you. There are now dozens of news channels in Pakistan, each with their own ideological and partisan bent. Some are national-level, others more regionally and ethnically focused. The trend began in the early part of this decade and has plateaued only recently, as the market gets sated. And while few of these channels will win awards for calm understatement or presciently sedate analysis, the fact remains that the media -- if it can be spoken of as a collective -- has given voice to a mass of the population previously unheard from. It has become a player of truly monumental importance for its ability to shape, mold, and excite the public. It is, at once, sensationalistic, blood-thirsty, xenophobic, conspiratorial, humorous, investigative, and anti-government. And yet its arrival on the scene is more than welcome, first for providing the venue for disenfranchised interests to make themselves known and second because the alternative is much worse.<br /><br />The second significant factor, related to but distinct from the first, is the rise of communication technologies in Pakistan, particularly cellular phones. In 2002, there were 1.2 million cell-phone subscriptions in the country. By 2008, this number had risen to 88 million -- an increase of more than seven thousand percent. In addition, more than one in ten Pakistanis had access to the internet by the end of the decade; low by advanced countries' standards but an astronomical rise by Pakistan's. These developments in communications meant that political narratives became congealed and disseminated at speeds never heard of before, and that information and the wider "war" for public opinion became incredibly hard to win if a battle was lost at any stage.<br /><br />The third major factor is the economic growth that took place in Pakistan in the first half of the 2000s. Pakistan's GDP doubled between 1999 and 2007, and more than kept pace with population growth, as GDP per capita increased by almost sixty percent between 2000 and 2008. More to the point, this growth was overwhelmingly powered by expansion of the service sector, which is concentrated, quite naturally, in the urban centers of the country. For the first time since independence, the term "Pakistani urban middle class" was not a contradiction in terms.<br /><br />This development had two effects. First, and more trivially, the urban middle class did what urban middle classes do: they bought televisions and computers. In turn, that allowed them to plug into the private media explosion in ways simply unimaginable previously. Second, it shattered the elite-only edifice of Pakistani politics, and made challenges to government based on Main Street issues -- the price of flour, the lack of electricity, the selective application of the rule of law -- a viable process. Fifty years ago, Seymour Lipset wrote one of the canonical articles in Political Science on the process of democratization, its relationship to urbanized middle classes, and how the demands and values of the latter lead almost inexorably to support for the former. Here was living proof of Lipset's analysis.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-60143995396878239412009-12-19T20:39:43.899-08:002009-12-19T20:39:43.899-08:00Here's traveler-blogger Sean-Paul Kelly talkin...Here's traveler-blogger <a href="http://open.salon.com/blog/sean_paul_kelley/2009/03/26/reflections_on_india" rel="nofollow">Sean-Paul Kelly</a> talking about lack of sanitation in India:<br /><br />In my opinion the filth, squalor and all around pollution indicates a marked lack of respect for India by Indians. I don't know how cultural the filth is, but it's really beyond anything I have ever encountered. At times the smells, trash, refuse and excrement are like a garbage dump. Right next door to the Taj Mahal was a pile of trash that smelled so bad, was so foul as to almost ruin the entire Taj experience. Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai to a lesser degree were so very polluted as to make me physically ill. Sinus infections, ear infection, bowels churning was an all to common experience in India. Dung, be it goat, cow or human fecal matter was common on the streets. In major tourist areas filth was everywhere, littering the sidewalks, the roadways, you name it. Toilets in the middle of the road, men urinating and defecating anywhere, in broad daylight. Whole villages are plastic bag wastelands. Roadsides are choked by it. Air quality that can hardly be called quality. Far too much coal and far to few unleaded vehicles on the road. The measure should be how dangerous the air is for one's health, not how good it is. People casually throw trash in the streets, on the roads. The only two cities that could be considered sanitary in my journey were Trivandrum--the capital of Kerala--and Calicut. I don't know why this is. But I can assure you that at some point this pollution will cut into India's productivity, if it already hasn't. The pollution will hobble India's growth path, if that indeed is what the country wants. (Which I personally doubt, as India is far too conservative a country, in the small 'c' sense.)Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.com