Choking to Death

JANUARY 2004 - Summer colds are now commonplace in Pakistan. Obviously it’s not the chill factor that causes people to collapse with high temperatures, sore throats, hacking coughs and stuffy heads, since you can fry an egg on any sidewalk in the city. Colds were once confined to winters when the occasional exposure to the weather brought one down with a runny nose and mild temperature. Now, severe cold, full-blown influenza attacks healthy and weak alike and it is a regular event that starts from end of the year and continues right through. Any amount of medication, the high potency antibiotics included, sustained bed rest and all the herbal concoctions put together, do not make the slightest difference. The attack continues unabated till it gives up and tottering patients wonder what really hit them.

Lahore as a case in point is so polluted that it is impossible to live here and not suffer throughout the year from one infection to another. Reportedly only two thirds of the enormous amount of garbage the city produces is removed only to be dumped on the city’s polluted outer limits from where it floats back to its home and the remaining one third simply remains where it was, swept here and there by passing vehicles, the occasional gusts of wind and the erratic, wandering sweeper. Sooner than later, it finds its way into your polluted system and brings you down with high fever and accompanying desserts. This winter, when winter finally appeared, brought with it, no rain but a great deal of romanticised fog, which is actually smog thinly disguised to look like fog. In the few days that the smog was amongst us, it immediately suspended and delayed all flights, making all wonder that with so much technology available worldwide, why were we still able to have a functional airport only if the sun was blazing down from clear blue skies? The smog is a permanent feature of Lahore-life. Only the Lahoris are unable to see it. Anyone arriving from less polluted environs can see it suspended over the city like an ugly, dark and thick cover that shows no sign of disappearing. With thousands of cars pouring onto the roads, thanks to banks rolling about with far too much liquidity to manage, the system for that is what one would call it although there is no resemblance between the two, has collapsed all of a sudden. At the best of times, Lahore was an unmanageable city, but now it has suffered a severe breakdown that threatens its very existence.

Getting from anywhere to anywhere is now a major expedition. Journeys that took less than ten minutes last year now last as much as forty minutes. During the late mornings, afternoons and early evenings, traffic snarls abound and vehicles are gridlocked endlessly. Tempers fly, cars get nicked, motorcyclists perform Houdini-style stunts weaving in and out of trapped vehicles and everyone breaks every rule in the book. The cops, who must all be TB patients by now, are lost and bewildered, not knowing what they can do to make the traffic flow. Every educational institution is a curse on the neighbourhood where it is located and as any Lahori will vouch, they are located everywhere because it is such a lucrative and completely unregulated business. One child, one momma and traffic jams that stretch in all four directions. An unruly city at the best of times, the worst traits of Lahore come flying to the surface much like the black river of stinking garbage and foul waste that transverses across the city in most localities, including one might add, the ‘posh’ localities as well.

The answer to Lahore’s totally unmanageable traffic chaos is found in the city planners’ highly creative solutions. A few years ago, the ruling logic was that to ease traffic flows, widen the roads and a highly advertised, expensive and in the end, futile exercise was enacted with all the fanfare that such farces produce. Instead of chaos and disorder at 20 mph you now had it at 60 mph. Instead of creating mayhem on a fifteen-foot wide road, you played it out on a sixty-foot wide boulevard. We simply up-scaled the disorder to a higher level. Now, the sweeping boulevards, concrete examples of bad planning and bloated egos of the province’s rulers, are living testimony to the craze which infects all who have to move across the city. With a new Chief Minister in power, the flavour of the times is underpasses and while one has been built, another is under construction. To the dismay of those who can tell the difference between an elephant and a turnip, two more are planned and all that they will do is create more mess and solve even less of the traffic jungle that spreads even as we speak. As usual, priorities are misplaced and good advice is in very short supply. Those that wish to speak sense are shown the door and an army of willing, groveling sycophants are always at hand to applaud the most loony schemes that come floating from those who advise the rulers. A hundred underpasses will not solve Lahore’s traffic mess. Education, fines, accountability will clear many potential snarls, but all that requires smart planning and thorough execution without exception. That, we all know, does not happen here. What kind of rule of law can we even hope for, when everyone who descends from his palace, rightly believes he is far above any puny laws that might be tossed in his direction. There can be no hope because there is no law. Someone who bumped into a Major’s car – heavens must have caved in at that moment in time, had to rough it out in a jail for two nights. The major had the clout; the civilian could only beg for mercy. Those who ask for a citywide train network, a sky train like the one that’s rescued Bangkok’s millions are laughed away. Those who might be mad enough to suggest restricting vehicles from entering certain city zones at certain times are regarded as stupid pumpkins. Jakarta solved its city traffic problems by a set of innovative and workable laws but then what laws ever applied to us?

There was an editorial the other day moaning about pedestrians having no footpaths to walk on anymore. Firstly it seems making or maintenance of footpaths is a taboo subject. Those few that exist somehow have become permanent sites for sellers of wares, fruit vendors and other assorted tradesmen. Yet others are permanently encroached upon by shops, business houses and anyone wishing to display his goods to the public. This exploding takeover of the few city pavements that still exist has in turn added to the traffic jams but no one is looking that way. In cities like Karachi, renting footpaths is now a thriving and growing industry. I suppose the only solution would lie in banning all pedestrian traffic. And since the people of Lahore are so fond of their river Ravi, the good news is that at last count, no less than 200 industrial units were draining their untreated effluents into the river and of the Punjab’s 6,600 industries, only 41 had waste water treatment plants. There are solutions of course but these require hard work, dedication and the desire to make a difference. They unfortunately lack the glamour and glitz that an underpass provides. In the end, the photo op is by far the thing that must be done and as for the most fundamental of problems that is choking city after city and seriously affecting the health of the tax payers and the common folk – well that is hardly a priority in these cosmetic times. Cough, splutter, choke, cough. That’s your heritage.