Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://www.southasiainvestor.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ
Recently released HIES 2024-25 household integrated economic survey by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) raises more questions than it answers. For example, it shows that Pakistani households are buying lower amounts of basic food ingredients like wheat, meat and eggs in the last four years, implying that people are eating less to cover other expenses, like electricity and gas. But it doesn't explain why the households have reported significantly lower purchases of these items than production reported recently by the PBS. What is the source of this discrepancy? Is the data flawed? Or, is it missing a new trend toward less home cooking? Is the young urbanized population buying more prepared foods? Are they ordering out more often using ubiquitous food delivery services? Let us try and understand it in more detail.
There is a significant discrepancy in household data for per capita monthly consumption of basic food ingredients like wheat, meat and eggs. For example, the HIES 2024-25 reports 6.59 Kg of wheat consumption per capita per month, which translates into 79 Kg per person per year. The wheat production data from PBS shows 30 million tons or 120 Kg per capita in 2025. We know that Pakistan did not export wheat last year. So what happened to the 41 Kg per capita difference? It is 30% of the total production reported, too large to be explained away as waste in the system. It was most probably bought by food businesses and eventually consumed by Pakistani households. There are similar discrepancies in meat, eggs and other food data, with reported household consumption being far below production.
A 2025 Gallup survey revealed that 21% of Pakistanis buy tandoori naan. Pakistan's prepared food market is experiencing robust growth, with the Convenience Food sector valued at $6.91 billion in 2025, projected to grow at 5% annually, driven by Ready-to-Eat (RTE) meals and frozen foods, especially RTE/RTC (Ready-to-Cook) products like frozen snacks. Key trends include rising demand for time-saving, convenient options due to urbanization, growing health consciousness (organic/natural), and dominance by flexible packaging, with online delivery also expanding rapidly.
The World Bank researchers have recently concluded that 88% live in urban areas. Their conclusion is based on satellite imagery and the Degree of Urbanization (DoU) methodology. The official Pakistani figures released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) put the current level of urbanization at 39%. The source of this massive discrepancy is the government's reliance on administrative boundaries rather than population density and settlement patterns, according to the World Bank working research paper titled "When Does a Village Become a Town?".
Ultra-Processed Foods:
Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) like biscuits, sugary drinks, chips, and packaged snacks, are a growing concern in Pakistan. Such foods are contributing to rising obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Obesity causes non-communicable diseases (NCD) which are now among the leading causes of death in Pakistan.
To deal with the obeseity crisis, several Pakistani pharmaceutical companies have started domestic production of generic versions of GLP-1 (Glucagon-Like Peptide-1) drugs Ozempic/Wegovy (Semaglutide) and Mounjaro/Zeptide (Tirzepatide).
Food Delivery Services:
Pakistan's food delivery market is experiencing rapid growth, projected to hit $2.35 billion in 2025, driven by high smartphone penetration, a young urban population, and increased convenience-seeking, with Foodpanda dominating but facing a growing trend of direct restaurant ordering and a demand for diverse, tech-enabled options despite past economic challenges.
Street Food Growth:
With rising urbanization, the street food sector in Pakistan is vibrant and growing. It is crucial for livelihoods and affordable food. Deeply embedded in culture, choices range from savory samosas and chaat to bun kebabs, pakoras, pani puri, and biryani, popular for convenience and taste.
Fast Food Boom:
Pakistan’s fast food industry is experiencing rapid growth, making it the 8th largest fast food market globally. With a large consumer base, the demand for fast food continues to grow, contributing to the economy in significantly. The industry’s annual growth rate stands at 20%, highlighting its rapid expansion and increasing consumer preference for quick-serve meals.
Summary:
The HIES 2024-25 report recently issued by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics implies that Pakistani households are eating less to save money to pay for rising energy bills. I think this is misleading for two reasons: 1. It does not explain why reported household consumption figures are significantly lower than per capita production of these food items and 2. It completely ignores the impact of rapid urbanization that is causing Pakistanis to change their eating habits, such as consuming increasing amounts of prepared foods.
The World Bank researchers have recently concluded that 88 per cent live in urban areas. Their conclusion is based on satellite imagery and the Degree of Urbanization (DoU) methodology. The official Pakistani figures released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) put the current level of urbanization at 39%. The source of this massive discrepancy is the government's reliance on administrative boundaries rather than population density and settlement patterns, according to the World Bank working research paper titled "When Does a Village Become a Town?".
Urban areas are characterized by high population density, while rural areas are sparsely populated with more open space. Major differences include urban areas having more commercial development, diverse job opportunities, and a faster pace of life, while rural areas often focus on agriculture and have a slower pace of life with closer-knit communities but may face challenges with limited access to services.
The World Bank’s Paper suggests that secondary cities and peri-urban areas — rather than megacities — are the primary drivers of recent urban expansion which are systematically overlooked in official Pakistani classifications. This discrepancy between functional and administrative classifications has significant fiscal and planning implications.
Pakistan's official data grossly underestimates urbanization, with Islamabad showing only 47% urban population compared to 90% under the DoU, while figures in Balochistan, Punjab, and Sindh are more closely aligned. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the DoU estimates the urban population at nearly three times the official 15%, while Islamabad is mostly dense urban, and other provinces show mixed suburban and peri-urban growth. The report finds that Pakistan’s urban landscape has transformed dramatically over the past two decades. Since the early 2000s, a growing share of the rural population has left agriculture, transforming previously rural settlements into new and vibrant urban centers. Unlike Afghanistan, India and sub-Saharan Africa, the agriculture sector is no longer the top employer in Pakistan. Services sector is now the top employment sector in the country.
The policy research paper finds that misclassified areas reduce property tax revenues and undermine the planning and provision of critical public services. It also distorts spatial socioeconomic indicators, masking the true extent of urban-rural disparities and complicating the design of effective, evidence-based public policy.
The DoU method facilitates cross-national comparisons, as it provides a consistent criteria. Application of the DoU reveals that, despite variation across urban typologies, the proportion of the population residing in urban areas exceeds 70 percent in all examined countries. The list (fig 2) includes Brazil and Pakistan (98% each). Bangladesh (79%), Egypt (83%), India (77%) and Mexico (82%).
The paper finds that Pakistan is among only a minority of countries that use purely administrative definitions to identify urban areas. Changing how the country determines urban areas to include population density, service access, and other urban characteristics will allow it, as the DoU shows, to account for a varied urban landscape. Recognizing the existence of areas between dense cities and rural villages can help to establish a staggered expansion of the areas subject to property taxes. Updating the urban classification could increase property taxes sevenfold, and new technologies can help modernize cadaster systems. Besides supporting the reclassification of what areas are urban, satellite data offers additional possibilities to identify properties and update the cadasters.
Karachi's Bahria Town being built on the outskirts of Pakistan's financial capital is among the world's largest privately developed and managed cities. It is spread over an area of a little over 70 square miles, larger than the 49 square miles area of San Francisco. When completed, Bahria Town will house over a million people, more than the entire population of San Francisco.
Bahria Town Karachi
The city comes complete with private roads, community parks, mosques, schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, libraries, business parks, restaurants, recreation facilities, sports grounds, shopping malls etc. It has been the subject of litigation by local villagers who claim that their land was unlawfully taken away from them to build this new city. Pakistan Supreme Court recently reviewed their cases and forced a settlement worth Rs. 406 billion to be paid by Bahria Town developer named Malik Riaz Hussain.
Karachi: Bahria Town Square
Bahria Town and other similar private cities and gated communities are popular with Pakistan's rising middle class. They are looking to escape the chaos of the nation's burgeoning cities unable to cope with the massive and uncontrolled waves of urbanization. The issues facing Pakistani cities range from lack of basic services to rising urban crime.
Karachi: Bahria Town Housing
The private city promises to “turn the vision of modern Pakistan into a reality”, with private and secure supplies of water, gas and electricity, garbage collection as well as private security and well maintained wide tree-lined roads.
Karachi: Bahria Town Nature Recreation Area
In a recent article published by India's Scroll.in, Samira Shackle argues that "the reason a privatized city is so much quicker and easier to build is not down to the inherent superiority of the free market, but because it removes power from people and communities and centralizes it into the hands of one person or corporation". "This is the same dynamic at play in China, for example, where the nominally communist government has been able to build vast new towns and cities from scratch because it doesn’t have to worry about eminent domain or democratic accountability", Shackle explains.
As of 2016, the real estate developers had built over 250 gated communities across Pakistan. Hundreds more are being developed in response to rising demand from upwardly mobile Pakistanis.
Eden Housing Gated Community in Lahore, Pakistan
These communities cater to insatiable demand for world-class and well-appointed housing with modern infrastructure including well-built wide roads and reliable supply of water and electricity. Additionally, they offer various state-of-the-art amenities such as schools, hospitals, mosques, restaurants, theaters, shopping malls and parks located within secure communities, according to a report by Adrian Bishop, editor of Opp.Today.
Gated communities are being offered at multiple price points and payment plans that suit not just the rich but the middle class buyers as well. They offer condos (flats), townhouses and single-family homes on lot sizes ranging from 125 square yards to 2000 square yards. These communities are fueling a construction boom in Pakistan.
Defense Housing Authority (DHA), Bahria Town (Malik Riaz), Eden Housing (Aleem Khan), Emaar Properties (of UAE) and Ghurair-Giga (of UAE) are among the biggest developers of gated communities in Pakistan.
Bahria Town Islamabad
In addition to major Pakistani cities of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, new gated communities are being developed in second and third tier cities as well. Recently, Bahria Town announced its newest development of a gated community in Nawabshah, a city of just over a million residents in southern Sindh province.
Here's an excerpt of a 2013 AFP report on Bahria Town gated community in Islamabad:
Cars glide softly over the smooth tarmac carpeting the gentle hills of Pakistan’s largest gated community, past immaculate green verges dotted with statues of cattle — which, unlike their real counterparts elsewhere in the country, pose no threat to traffic. There’s a horse riding centre, a golf course, a posh cinema, an immaculately air-conditioned café and a mini zoo with “the only black panther in Pakistan”, whose growling excites young couples taking a walk. Elsewhere 20 metre models of the Eiffel Tower and Nelson’s Column — complete with lions — watch over this vision of suburbia which seems a world away from the rest of Pakistan’s seething, traffic-choked and crumbling cities.
Work started today to build a 21st Century eco-friendly model city about 50 km north east of downtown Karachi, Pakistan.
Named DHA City Karachi or DCK, the project has been planned by Doxiadis and Osmani Associates along with Professor Spiro Pollalis as its chief planner on an 11,640 acre rural site. Constantine Doxiadis (1914-1975) was a Greek architect and urban planner who planned Pakistan's capital Islamabad and several Karachi communities, including Korangi, Landhi and New Karachi, in 1960s. Pollalis, also of Greek ancestry, is a professor of design, technology and management at the Harvard Design School in Cambridge, Mass.
The DCK masterplan envisions a self-contained sustainable city with 50,000 residential and commercial lots, healthcare and education facilities, theme parks, a convention center, informal and formal sports and recreational facilities and resorts, retail and restaurants, along with all necessary community facilities such as theaters and civic centers.
At the heart of the new city lies the City Gateway and Downtown district that house the Central Business, Culture & Arts, Education, Central Market and Mixed-use Sub Districts. Careful consideration has been given to the distribution of land uses within this area in order to provide a vital economic and cultural heart that will support the city as it grows.
The downtown district will be defined by an automobile-free pedestrian zone with tree-lined walking paths, landscaping, water features, and piazza’s. The idea is to encourage pedestrian movement to improve the quality of life for the downtown employees, visitors and residents. An efficient public transportation system will help support this.
Based on the latest research done under Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, sustainable design principles have been implemented across the entire community. A strategy has been used to maintain the ecological integrity of the site through the preservation and incorporation of prominent natural features that are integrated as creeks, green fingers and wind corridors, according to e-architect.com.
There's great emphasis on energy, waste and water management throughout the plan. There will be passive cooling and shades to reduce the need for air-conditioning in summers, extensive use of renewable energy from wind, solar and biomass, and energy-efficient LED lighting. There will be storm water collection through natural drains into lakes, and the community bylaws will require waste recycling as well as the use of grey water to irrigate drought-resistant native plants and shrubs.
DCK is an ambitious but necessary effort to promote eco-friendly and sustainable urban development as Pakistan undergoes rapid urbanization. But the past experience has shown that the actual implementation of such a plan will be quite challenging without the cooperation of its residents.
An even bigger challenge is the uncontrolled expansion of big cities like Karachi which are drawing more and more rural migrants every day without building appropriate new low-cost legal housing and infrastructure for them. The result is the mushroom growth of illegal settlements created by unscrupulous land-grabbing politicians and their cronies who profit from it. In the absence of official urban planning to settle migrant laborers, a burgeoning informal industry has emerged to fill the vacuum to build what are described as "Self-service Levittowns" by an American journalist Steve Inskeep in his 2011 book about Karachi titled "Instant City". With the active connivance of corrupt local police and other government officials and protected by politicians, the so-called "land mafias" grab and sell large swathes of vacant government land, subdivide it into plots, build shoddy roads and pilfered service connections for gas, water and electricity.
Here's how Inskeep describes one such illegal settlement in areas opened up and made accessible by a new expressway called "Northern Bypass":
"My driver steered the car to a section known as Tasier Town, which stood within a couple of miles of the new highway. It was in the farther northeastern reaches of the city, a bit farther than Doxoiadis's "ruined" old suburb in North Karachi. We stopped in a settled area to ask directions, and were pointed down a two-lane road. A market appeared to the right. A wide expanse of land stretched off to the left. Someone had posted a little sign on a little roadside building there, 2007 order from the High Court of Sindh directing that nothing should be built on that property. Behind it, on the vacant land, we saw homes under construction.....The local Home Depot was called a thalla, and Wahab, the boss of it, was thallawala. Like his workers-a so many newcomers to Karachi-he was a Pashtun from Pakistan's war-torn far northwest. On his lot, he sold most of the basic materials to make a simple house. Concrete blocks and roofing materials were cheap. Human beings were even cheaper. Wahab's laborers lived under a thatched roof near the concrete mixer.
Wahab said that there were certain expenses. Police sometimes came by and declared themselves to be shocked-shocked-that illegal construction was underway. The cops could not possibly overlook such an obvious violation unless they were paid.......I said goodbye to Wahab and went back into the illegal development, along narrow and straight dirt lane. Little ridges of dirt marked out the future home lots on either side. I chatted with several men who were laying PVC pipe in a trench, building a sewer line that would dump into the seasonal stream....Who was paying the men to dig the sewers? "A rich man", was all one said."
While Defense Housing Association (DHA) is known for developing upscale communities in major cities, Pakistani military governments have also taken low-cost initiatives to house the poor beginning with the urban planning and development of Landhi, Korangi and New Karachi in 1960s. Unfortunately, there has been little interest on a similar scale by the civilian governments to follow through on their promises of roti, kapra aur makan (food, clothing and shelter) for the poor.
Even though boosting legal housing construction in planned communities offers tremendous potential to stimulate and grow the formal economy, it is not being taken seriously today. It's much more lucrative for the politicians and bureaucrats to continue the current system of illegal settlements.
While critics jump at every opportunity to lambaste the Pakistani military for its various business enterprises, they pay no attention to the fact that Pakistan's economy has also been managed significantly better under military rule. It's not just the venality of the politicians, but also their gross incompetence that gets in the way. One need only look at the differences between Cantonments and civilian communities in South Asia to get a sense of who provides more competent governance.
Prof Anatol Lieven in his book "Pakistan: A Hard Country", describes Pakistan Army as follows:
"For the military, the image of paradise is the cantonment, with its clean, swept, neatly signposted streets dotted with antique, gleaming artillery pieces, and shaded trees....In the poorer parts of Pakistan, the contrast with civilian institutions-including those of government-is that between developed and the barely developed worlds....In the military headquarters, every staff officer has a computer. In the government offices, most ministers do not (and in many cases would not know how to use it if they did). "
British legacy of competence lives on in the Indian military as well. Here's a similar excerpt from a piece by Indian journalist Vir Sanghvi describing Indian military:
".... the (Indian) army sometimes appears to live in a state within a state. Visit a cantonment and you will be struck by the contrast with the civilian part of the town or city where it is located. The roads will be broad and well-maintained, the buildings will be freshly painted, the surroundings will be clean, and an air of good manners and civility will prevail. Visit an army town (Wellington, for instance) and the contrast will be even more striking. The order and cleanliness of the cantonments serves as a contrast to the chaos and filth of modern India."
I welcome the DCK plan with the hope that the green city will serve as a model for the 21st century and inspire private-sector developers to build similar project in the future.
The simplest definition of the middle class is a group of people in a society who are neither rich nor poor. The middle class has always been considered vital to a country's stability and growth. The rich and the poor simply distrust each other too much to let the other govern. Nations with large middle class populations find it easier to sustain good, democratic governance.
Unfortunately for Pakistan, the size of the middle class was very small when it came into existence, and the country was dominated by a small powerful feudal elite created by the British rulers to sustain their colonial rule. And the urban middle class remained small for decades. The situation has, however, finally begun to change in the the last decade of 1999-2009 with a combination of increasing urbanization and faster economic expansion that fueled significant job creation in the industrial and services sectors to enable middle class growth.
Pakistan is now more urbanized with a larger middle class than India as percentage of the population. In 2007, Standard Chartered Bank analysts and State Bank governor Dr. Ishrat Husain estimated there were 30 to 35 million Pakistanis earning an average of $10,000 a year. Of these, about 17 million are in the upper and upper middle class, according to a recent report.
Urbanization is not just a side effect of economic growth; it is an integral part of the process, according to the World Bank. With the robust economic growth averaging 7 percent and availability of millions of new jobs created between 2000 and 2008, there has been increased rural to urban migration in Pakistan to fill the jobs in growing manufacturing and service sectors. The level of urbanization in Pakistan is now the highest in South Asia, and its urban population is likely to equal its rural population by 2030, according to a report titled ‘Life in the City: Pakistan in Focus’, released by the United Nations Population Fund. Pakistan ranks 163 and India at 174 on a list of over 200 countries compiled by Nationmaster.
Pakistan has and continues to urbanize at a faster pace than India. From 1975-1995, Pakistan grew 10% from 25% to 35% urbanized, while India grew 6% from 20% to 26%. From 1995-2025, the UN forecast says Pakistan urbanizing from 35% to 60%, while India's forecast is 26% to 45%. For this year, a little over 40% of Pakistan's population lives in the cities.
The urban population now contributes about three quarters of Pakistan's gross domestic product and almost all of the government revenue. The industrial sector contributes over 27% of the GDP, higher than the 19% contributed by agriculture, with services accounting for the rest of the GDP.
A 2008 report by UN Population Fund says the share of the urban population in Pakistan almost doubled from 17.4 percent in 1951 to 32.5 percent in 1998. The estimated data for 2005 shows the level of urbanization as 35 per cent, and CIA Factbook puts it at 36% in 2008, and it is increasing with 3% of the nation's population migrating to cities every year. With over 5 million rural migrants each year, the population of Pakistani cities in exploding, and Karachi has now become the world's largest city, according to Citymayors.com.
India's urban residents in 2008 residents accounts for 29% of its population, and the CIA Fact Book estimates it growing at 2.4% of the total population every year.
As to India's much hyped middle class, a new report by Nancy Birdsall of Center for Global Development says it is a myth. She has proposed a new definition of the middle class for developing countries in a forthcoming World Bank publication, Equity in a Globalizing World. Birdsall defines the middle class in the developing world to include people with an income above $10 day or $3,650 a year, but excluding the top 5% of that country. By this definition, India, even urban India alone, has no middle class; everyone at over $10 a day is in the top 5% of the country.
India Poverty Estimates
Unlike poverty which is defined by the World Bank as people living on less than $1.25 or $2 a day, there is no widely accepted definition of who counts as a member of the middle class in the developing world.
In India, for example, a scooter company aims ads at a schoolteacher who earns $2,500 a year and lives in a tiny brick house with no running water. Why? Because that teacher is counted as middle class by Indian marketers, according to MSN Money.
Economist Nancy Birdsall of the Center for Global Development (CDG) is attempting to establish a $10 a day minimum limit in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) as the low end of the middle class, while excluding the top 5% of the population in a country from the middle class. "An upper limit of the 95th percentile, while on the high side, is just about sufficient to exclude the country's richest," Birdsall adds.
In India's case, everyone who makes $3,650 a year is in the top 5% (about 55 million people) of the nation's population. It is on this basis that economist Birdsall concludes that India has no middle class. Over 75% of India's population (versus 60% in Pakistan) lives on less than $2 a day, or $750 a year, according to Human Development Report 2009. The rest of about 20% of India's people falls between $2 and $10 a day.
It is interesting to note, however, that India has been much more successful in sustaining democracy than Pakistan. Perhaps it is attributable to early land reform in India that significantly tamed the power of the feudal class.
Using Birdsall's proposed definition, Pakistan now does have a middle class of tens of millions (at least 10% of the population), as its 30 to 35 million people earning an average of $10,000 a year (well above Birdsall's lower limit of $3,650.00 a year) account for about 17% of Pakistan's population. Another 60% of Pakistanis (vs 75% of Indians) live on less than $2 a day, according to UN Human Development Report 2009. The rest of 23% of the people have incomes between $730 a year ($2 a day) and $10,000 a year, and a significant percentage of them could be classified as lower middle class.
India's official poverty measure has long been based solely upon the ability to purchase a minimum recommended daily diet of 2,400 kilocalories (kcal) in rural areas where about 70 percent of people live, and 2,100 kcal in urban areas. Rural areas usually have higher kcal requirements because of greater physical activity among rural residents. The National Planning Commission, which is responsible for the estimate, currently estimates that a monthly income of about Rs. 356 (about US$7.74) per person is needed to provide the required diet in rural areas and Rs. 539 in urban areas. Factors such as housing, health care, and transportation are not taken into account in the poverty estimates, according to demographers Carl Haub and O.P Sharma.
According to development economist Lant Pritchett, fewer than 25% of the people in the richest quintile in India complete 9 grades of school.
This is a combination both of the depth of India's p overty and its inequality. China had no middle class in 1990, but by 2005, had a small urban middle class (3% of the population). South Africa (7%), Russia (30%) and Brazil (19%) all had sizable middle classes in 2005.
Contrary to popular myths about rich-poor gap often expressed in Pakistani and Western media, Pakistan is more egalitarian than most countries of the world, including nations of South Asia region. According to UNDP HDR report 2009, Pakistan's ratio of expenditures of the top and bottom 10% of the population is 6.7 versus India's 8.6 and China's 13.2. The resource consumption by the lowest 10% of the Pakistani population is 3.9% and highest 10% consumes 26.5%. This compares favorably with 3.6% consumption by the bottom 10% in India and 31.1% by the top 10%.
In spite of the recent growth in Pakistan's middle class, it is still not strong enough to seize power. However, with the recent growth of independent mass media and greater political activism, the Pakistani middle class has begun to exert more influence on how the nation is governed. And the power of the current ruling feudal zamindars' party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, appears to be waning in the face of the new assertive middle class.
Unlike the more urban and middle class voters of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the PPP's voter lives in a different world, a world that has been dominant for decades. It is a feudal world controlled by the rural elite that is much more rural, more deferential, more rooted in tradition. Its nationalism is less marked and its Islam less influenced by the international trends of the last 30 years and thus much less politicized and much more based in centuries-old Sufi traditions. Describing this situation, Jason Burke of the Guardian has argued that "This is a Pakistan that is disappearing". Burke has quoted an unnamed 2008 PPP electoral candidate in rural Punjab who recognized and reportedly said that his party needed to "re-invent itself".
While many rural residents in Sindh and Southern Punjab who voted for the PPP have remained relatively isolated from major developments in Pakistan in the last decade, the urban middle class has grown dramatically in numbers and influence during the military rule of President Musharraf. The New York Times reported on this expansion of Pakistani middle class in November 2007 in these words: "As he fights to hold on to power, General Musharraf finds himself opposed by the expanded middle class that is among his greatest achievements, and using his emergency powers to rein in another major advance he set in motion, a vibrant, independent news media". Acknowledging this fact, William Dalrymple, a British journalist/author considered knowledgeable about India and Pakistan, recently wrote as follows: "It was this newly enriched and empowered urban middle class that showed its political muscle for the first time with the organization of a lawyers' movement, whose protests against the dismissal of the chief justice soon swelled into a full-scale pro-democracy campaign, despite Musharraf's harassment and arrest of many lawyers. The movement represented a huge shift in Pakistani civil society's participation in politics. The middle class were at last moving from their living rooms onto the streets, from dinner parties into political parties."
The future of Pakistan clearly belongs to its urban middle class. The behavior of the members of this rising urban middle class will largely determine if and when Pakistan grows out of the current crises to face the future with greater confidence.
In the past two years I have visited Dhaka, Karachi, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. I have lived in New York, San Francisco and Seattle and have spent my vacations in London, Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich and Tokyo at one time or another. Therefore, I believe I can to some degree consider myself qualified to talk on the subject of traveling in urban cities of the developing countries. I will not delve into the technical aspects of urbanization as others have amply expounded upon it in other blogs. My goal is to try to shed some light on a few cities by comparing some similarities and differences. Though my comments are mostly subjective they are meant to provide insight to future travelers visiting these exotic areas.
Definitions
I define urbanization as the adoption of technological structures in an attempt to improve the life of a people. Urbanization is not to be confused with civility and civic sense as they are distinctly exclusive and independent of each other. Civility in my mind is showing respect for other human beings in the day-to-day course of life. Civic sense on the other hand, is possessing a deep sense of preservation of one’s heritage and culture and awareness of the environment we live in. A city or town does not have to be urbanized to display characteristics of civility and civic sense in its population and like wise it is possible for a highly urbanized city to have a population lacking civility and civic sense.
Appreciation and Preservation of Cultural Heritage
In Eastern Europe, even when it was behind the Iron Curtain, the people of these cities and towns displayed a great amount of civic sense. They rebuilt the cities that were totally destroyed in WW ll. Instances of looting of the historic artifacts or furniture from the government and military buildings that were destroyed were rare. If you visit any of these cities now, Prague, East Berlin, Warsaw etc you will not believe that these were the same places that were destroyed by the ravages of WW ll. They have completely rebuilt their cities. They have even restored their old Plazas and market squares to their former glory. Possessions of their former Monarchs (who they hated) have also been preserved (not destroyed and looted) and put in Museums. Even the officials who were corrupt stole only money but did not steal and plunder what belonged to the city and its people as they considered it as part of their history and culture. Paintings and sculptures of the hated tyrants and rulers were also preserved and or restored with great care. As a result of the efforts of its citizens these highly urbanized centers have become a showcase of their glorious past-where the ancient and the modern live side by side in complete harmony.
Civil Etiquette
The polite mannerisms of the royal courts in Europe got transferred to the general population when education became open to the public. This is why we find the Western societies, in general, to be civil and polite in their day-to-day interactions with others. The same thing happened to the people living around the Moghul capital of Delhi. Even to this day they are very polite with each other and there is a lot of ‘aap’, ‘janab’ and ‘pehley aap’ in their language. With the exception of North India most of India escaped the direct exposure of the Moghul Courts. Lahore was basically a distant outpost remotely managed from Delhi. This is the reason, regrettably, even the highly educated people in many parts of Pakistan and India do not possess the basic civil etiquette that is inherent in most other societies outside of the Sub Continent.
Hybrid Cities
Both Dhaka and Kula Lumpur have a population that is not only civil in their manner but display a lot of civic sense. Yes, there are dirty and filthy areas in both cities but that is due to the inability of its local governments to handle the exploding sanitation issues due to a meteoric rise in population in the past two decades. What has happened is that parts of Dhaka and Kuala Lumpur (Downtowns, business centers, areas surrounding government buildings etc) are urbanized in the sense that they have roads, train stations, bus stations, mono rails, malls, hi rise office and apartment buildings etc. but a few miles from these locations vast areas exist that cannot be classified as urban.
So, these are hybrid cities consisting of rural and urban patches where majority of the people work in urban centers and enjoy the urbanization of their cities and come home to a lazy sleepy village-like locality where they actually live.
Psyche of the People Makes a Difference
Both in Dhaka and Kuala Lumpur the people are very mild in nature, generally, and deal with life’s issues with a sense of stoic understanding. Kula Lumpur, due to its affluence, is cleaner than Dhaka. I saw in Kuala Lumpur scores of sanitation workers who show up early in the morning in each neighborhood and sweep and clean all the public areas including roads. And take the trash away in trucks. (Just like it was done in Karachi when I was in school and Karachi was very clean then) Even though a great majority of the people in Kuala Lumpur is Muslim the Hindu and the Buddhist minorities enjoy the same amount of freedom and are considered equal as citizens. The Hindu minority in Dhaka is treated similarly and holds many respectable positions in private and public offices.
My Impression of Dhaka
Dhaka, on the other hand has its shortfall in its weather. It is at the mercy of nature every year. Numerous hurricanes rip up entire neighborhoods and shantytowns and floods wipe out large chunks of the city each year. All is quickly cleaned up and rebuilt after each destruction. People are forced to live in the low-lying delta areas only a foot or so above sea level because they have nowhere else to go. For these people who live on a season-to-season basis sanitation is not an issue or a priority. They live off the river. They wash in it. They bathe in it. They do their laundry in it. They eat from it. They dispose of their garbage in it. You have to see it to believe it. These people are so intertwined with the water that surrounds them that it has become part of their daily environment and they are like fish out of water without it. To an urban dweller they may appear primitive and perhaps they are in an economic sense. But educated or uneducated I found them to have a great sense of appreciation for art, music and crafts. In their spare time a lot of them paint, practice music and dance, read poetry and attend local theatrical shows and performances. Generally, men and women are treated equally. And the practice of purdah is not common. However, respect for women and girls, by men and boys, far exceeds anything I have seen in Pakistan. In a textile factory that I visited men and women worked together just like you would see in any office in USA. And I guess the number of men and women in this particular factory were nearly equal. I also visited a slum and an industrial area in Dhaka. I found the slum to be fairly cleaner than I expected. Sure there was some filth and flies etc. But the residents themselves had relatively clean clothes and were very well behaved. As camera toting tourists we were not surrounded by a mob that would be following us had we been in the slums of Karachi or Bombay. No one begged for money or food. They went about their daily chores of cooking, cleaning etc while we walked around and took pictures. I was surprised to learn that they had pooled in money and installed two tube wells for their clean water supply. With the help of a local charity they had also built some shared squat toilets. Separate ones for men and women. I was told that community hygienists regularly visited them to teach them cleanliness and hygiene. The open mindedness of these poor people to learn new things and a desire to better their environment amazed me. As we were leaving a woman jokingly asked us, “When are you going to give us electricity?” When our guide angrily responded, “What are you going to do with electricity?” she quickly responded, “I will cook rice with it. I do not want to use wood for fire. It causes too much smoke. Electricity is better, right?”
Even areas where factories and industries exist conscious consideration to the environment have been given and a heightened awareness of the surroundings is apparent. Several of the factories have wastewater treatment plants, flower gardens and shade trees to soften the industrial setting and workers are encouraged to plant vegetable gardens on the factory grounds. Material was kept in organized piles and scraps and waste were quickly disposed off for recycling. Generally, the factory workers appeared to be in good health and I did not see signs of abuse or harsh labor.
One textile factory I visited was immaculately clean, had fire extinguishers, proper signage, child care facility for working mothers, an infirmary and adequate lighting on the work floors. This factory could easily serve as a model for many US and European cities.
Karachi
My 2008 visit to Karachi did not impress me with any kind of a positive feeling. It did not appear to have changed much in character (despite the flyovers and new roads) from my 2003 and 1989 visits. On the contrary, it appeared to have gotten much dirtier. Clearly the meager resources of the Sanitation Department were unable to cope with the tons of garbage generated daily by the citizens of Karachi. Streets and back alleys were littered with piles of debris and garbage surrounded by swarms of flies.
Residents of Karachi are rough, impolite, and ready to cheat and hustle. I had to be cautious and wary all the time. It does not have the characteristics that would attract the tourists and foreigners. Safety is a big issue here. In the 70’s lots of tourists from the Middle East used to visit Karachi and would send their children to study in the schools and colleges there. Now, for tourism and education, they are bypassing Karachi and going to New Delhi, Bangkok, and Kuala Lumpur etc. Also in the 70s it was very common for people from the Middle East to come to Karachi for medical treatment. Now, they too are going to India, Thailand and Malaysia bypassing Pakistan altogether.
Communication is another issue. Most people in Karachi do not even have the ability to help someone needing directions. They have a tough time being polite and patient guiding someone from out of town. Most will try to avoid conversation with a stranger (or a tourist) and say they cannot help them even if they can. I do not know if it is out of shyness or fear. Even storekeepers are short and would rudely say, “Go to the next store and ask there.” Perhaps, one would have greater success if they spoke in English. Language of the Farangis, I found commands a lot of respect and attention, especially with government officials. Speaking in Urdu puts one at a lower rank in their minds. Speaking in English at the expense of Urdu tells these officials that you are at a much higher social status than them and they have been trained for decades to be subservient to people of higher social class than themselves.
Singapore
Singapore is the jewel of S.E. Asia. It beats any N. American or European city hands down in technology, education, civic and civil sense, and urbanization. Among the top 10 most attractive cities of the World it ranks as #8 or #9 in my mind. I did not give it a 10 because of the year-round hot weather, which I do not like.
Essential Ingredients
In summary, if certain key ingredients are missing any one would be hard pressed to call a city civilized no matter how urbanized it may get. The main ingredients of a civilized urban center being: safety, communication, respect for other people and other cultures, good public transportation, proper sanitation and a passion for its cultural heritage.
In the Developed countries the cities became urbanized over a long span and had the advantage of growing with and around new technologies as they came about. However, in the Developing countries urbanization in several cities is taking place at a break neck speed and often without much planning and consideration to infrastructure necessary to support such a change. With the exception of Singapore, the cities that I recently visited, Dhaka, Kula Lumpur and Karachi, were missing some or all of the essential ingredients cited above.
You can take the Paindoo out of Pind but you cannot take the Pind out of a Paindoo
I tend to think that Pakistan’s cities in particular are nothing but large villages as the people choose to live like villagers in them. I have personally witnessed residents of fancy hi-rise apartments throwing trash out of their windows and beetle leaf chewing men regularly spitting the brown colored liquid in corners of stairwells and elevators. Let us not forget that Karachi was always a haven for tourists and out-of-towners. Yes, these were and always will be the people from NWFP, Punjab, Baluchistan and interior Sind. Why does it need tourists from anywhere else?
Future of these New Urban Centers
Emulating its Southern neighbor, Singapore, I do not see any hindrances in the way of Kuala Lumpur becoming a successful Urban Center in the near future. But I have my doubts about Dhaka. The love of its people for their village life, the annual toll taken by nature on this city and the political instability that has dogged Bangla Desh since its independence may all keep it from getting fully urbanized for few more decades. This may surprisingly turn out to be a good thing for Dhaka as it will help it preserve its original character for much longer. Karachi on the other hand being a near 100% immigrant city is embarking on an urbanization experiment of its own. Its multi lingual and multi cultural population of about 15 Million, consisting of 9 Million original immigrant families whose parents came to Karachi from India after Pakistan’s independence, and its 6 Million migrants from other Provinces that have settled there for better economic prospects, gives it a unique blend of chaos and confusion not found in any other city. Ten years from now, assuming it can solve its infrastructure problems, Karachi may become a nice gleaming metropolis of S.E. Asia with a grid of criss-crossing highways and freeways, ritzy hotels, and tall glass and metal hi-rise towers vying Dubai where it will not be out of the ordinary and even considered acceptable to see in the financial district a Lala Bhai urinating on the façade of Al Burj Karachi.
There is a growing wave of urbanization in the developing world as the cities are drawing people away from subsistence farming to jobs in the industrial and service sectors. This rapid migration of people from rural to urban areas is causing massive increases in urban populations, creating more and larger urban slums, increasing the potential for environmental deterioration, and bringing tremendous pressures on city services already strained beyond limits. Take sanitation, for example, and it is no surprise that three major South Asian cities, Dhaka, Mumbai and New Delhi, show up on Mercer's list of the world's dirtiest cities.
United Nations Habitat estimates that roughly 1 billion people -- or 33 percent of the world's urban population lives in slums. By 2030, according to the UN's human settlement program, that number is likely to double.
The slum dwellers struggle to survive with little clean water and sometimes no electricity around metropolises like Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Mumbai, India; Lima, Peru; and Istanbul, Turkey. Their shantytowns are usually vast in expanse and dense in population. In Kibera, a slum near Nairobi, Kenya, for example, more than a million people live in an area about the size of New York's Central Park.
When visitors see a squatter city in India or Pakistan or Bangladesh, they observe overwhelming desperation: rickety shelters, little kids working or begging, 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.
In a recent interview published by Wired Magazine, Stewart Brand, "the pioneering environmentalist, technology thinker", and founder of the Whole Earth Catalog focuses on the positive aspects of urban slums. Brand also makes a counterintuitive case that the booming slums and squatter cities in and around Mumbai, Nairobi, and Rio de Janeiro are net positives for poor people and the environment. Wired asked him to elaborate.
Wired: What makes squatter cities so important?
Stewart Brand: That's where vast numbers of humans—slum dwellers—are doing urban stuff in new and amazing ways. And hell's bells, there are a billion of them! People are trying desperately to get out of poverty, so there's a lot of creativity; they collaborate in ways that we've completely forgotten how to do in regular cities. And there's a transition: People come in from the countryside, enter the rickshaw economy, and work for almost nothing. But after a while, they move uptown, into the formal economy. The United Nations did extensive field research and flipped from seeing squatter cities as the world's great problem to realizing these slums are actually the world's great solution to poverty.
Wired: Why are they good for the environment? Brand: Cities draw people away from subsistence farming, which is ecologically devastating, and they defuse the population bomb. In the villages, women spend their time doing agricultural stuff, for no pay, or having lots and lots of kids. When women move to town, it's better to have fewer kids, bear down, and get them some education, some economic opportunity. Women become important, powerful creatures in the slums. They're often the ones running the community-based organizations, and they're considered the most reliable recipients of microfinance loans.
Wired: How can governments help nurture these positives? Brand: The suffering is great, and crime is rampant. We made the mistake of romanticizing villages, and we don't need to make that mistake again. But the main thing is not to bulldoze the slums. Treat the people as pioneers. Get them some grid electricity, water, sanitation, crime prevention. All that makes a huge difference.
The effect of urbanization in defusing the "population bomb" mentioned by Stewart Brand does make sense in Pakistan's context. With increasing urbanization, Pakistan's population growth rate has declined from 2.17% in 2000 to 1.9% in 2008. Based on PAI Research Commentary by Karen Hardee and Elizabeth Leahy, the total fertility rate (TFR) in Pakistan is still the highest in South Asia at 4.1 children per woman. Women in urban areas have an average of 3.3 children compared to their rural counterparts, who have an average of 4.5 children. The overall fertility rate has been cut in half from about 8 children per woman in 1960s to about less than 4 this decade, according to a study published in 2009.
Dramatic declines in fertility are not necessarily good for society. In a book titled "The Empty Cradle", the author Philip Longman warns that the declining birth rates around the world will cause many social and economic problems. As a consequence of declining fertility, by 2050 the population of Europe will have fallen to what it was in 1950. Mr. Longman says this is happening all around the world: Women are having fewer children. It's happening in Brazil, it's happening in China, India and Japan. It's even happening in the Middle East. Wherever there is rapid urbanization, education for women and visions of urban affluence, birthrates are falling. Having and raising children is seen as an expense and a burden.
"So we have a "free rider" problem. You don't need to have children to provide for your old age -- but the pension systems need them." Says Longman, referring to the coming Social Security crunch as the number of retired people rises faster than the number of workers.
In a recent interview with Wall Street Journal, Pakistan's former finance minister Salman Shah explained that "Pakistan has to be part of globalization or you end up with Talibanization". "Until we put these young people into industrialization and services, and off-farm work, they will drift into this negative extremism; there is nothing worse than not having a job," Shah elaborated. But increasing urbanization in South Asia represents both a challenge and an opportunity for India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is a challenge because it imposes a rapidly growing burden on the already overcrowded megacities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Dhaka and Karachi. Such a massive challenge will require a tremendous focus on providing housing, transportation, schooling, healthcare, water, power, sanitation and other services at an accelerated pace. But if this challenge can be successfully met, there will be an opportunity to develop the human potential of the rural poor and employ them more productively in the growing industrial and services sectors in the cities. In the case of Pakistan, if the level of robust economic growth, human development and increased urbanization can be sustained to significantly enlarge the South Asian nation's middle class, then there can be hope for genuine and durable democracy to thrive.
