Harking Back: Machiavelli proven true as the poor continue to suffer

Last week as I sat on the steps of Masjid Wazir Khan with its tilting minaret behind me, and pondered over just what has gone wrong with ‘old Lahore’, the name of Machiavelli came to mind and his saying that “when a trader becomes Prince, all he can do is sell the State”.

To understand just why the poor areas of the walled city have been ignored as compared to the ‘monuments of interest’, mostly inside the Lahore Fort, one tries to understand the silent ‘communication campaign’ of those in power to fool the rulers of the day. It is subtle, but it does the job. The traders in position prosper as do their hirelings. We need to understand the broader picture over the last 30 years to understand what is happening today. The bureaucrat-trader alliance was in position then, and it continues to prosper still.

Let us consider three scenarios, firstly, the walled city, then the fate of Gulberg, and, lastly, the unfolding fate of the Ravi and the Walton Airport. They provide a fairly accurate picture of the trend, and the mindset as it unfolds, with sharp pointers to what the future will most likely be. In the end the traders backed by political bureaucrats will prosper. Machiavelli remains in full swing.

The year 1947 saw the ‘Greatest Exodus in Human History’, one we still do not tell our young about its horrors. The result was a large trading ‘47ers’ move in with totally false claims. It was the fraud of the century. They took over a huge residential area and set up various markets. From then onwards with political support they spread over the walled city, violating every law and today they own over 65 per cent of the walled city. Their official political supporters can count on them.

Then the three Afghan invasions took place, and each time thousands of Afghans, cheap homeless labour that they were then, were hired and housed. The traders started knocking down traditional historic houses to replace them with ugly concrete plazas. That process continues. The newly-created authority, silently, supports them by remaining quiet. Today those plazas stand with dangerous chemicals and goods stored in them - a serious threat to human existence. The authorities in place are, allegedly, helpless to force them to retreat. Almost every traditional ‘baithak’ has become a shop and the very cultural foundation of the walled city is no more. It is a pessimistic scenario, but that is what it is.

Let us skip on to the Gulberg saga. There was a time when Lahore was growing at a ferocious pace and the then top bureaucrat Mr Zafarul Ahsan got designed Gulberg, with the legal limit of 15 per cent for commercial purposes. Gulberg was a residential paradise, and so, slowly, it filled up. Then comes the Sharif era, both of them, and a time soon arrived that a lot of residential houses became offices and shops.

Suddenly, instead of halting the illegal commercialisation, out of the blue the younger Sharif announced that the entire Gulberg was a notified ‘Commercial Area’. Imagine. The ‘47ers’ were delighted and also shared in the loot. Anyone could set up a commercial office or ‘working area’ anywhere in Gulberg. Protests by residents fell on deaf ears and within no time all the huge houses on the Main Boulevard were commercial, as was Mini-Market and then M.M. Alam Road as well as any road of any consequence.

A leading legal mind of Lahore tells me that it still is an ‘illegal’ step, as is most of what has happened inside the walled city. Our wonderful courts were never moved, which is understandable. The clever bureaucrats, now richer by many a time, keep the summaries moving.

As you drive through Lahore and its faraway residential colonies, we see, for example even Model Town, that once green haven, is today full of offices and commercial spaces. The traditional green hedges are no more and walls as high as ten feet are common. The tragedy is that even ‘military-run’ housing colonies have a creeping commercial touch coming to them. Money moves the mare just as opposite the Corps Commanders House we have a massive multi-storey commercial building. Oh yes, it was all legal. To hell with Machiavelli.

But then this ailment has emerged strongly in the shape of two highly dubious schemes in Lahore, namely the Ravi Riverside Scheme and the Walton Airport Business Park. Let us examine both these ‘property dealers paradise’ for what they are.

The Ravi Riverside scheme basically consists of forcing poor farmers, using a legal ‘instrument’, to sell their fertile lands to commercial ‘schemers’ who are to further sell it to business or residential persons and companies for a grand Dubai-like plan. Nothing like a dream. That fertile land is lost and it has never bothered bureaucrats who surround those in power. No one is bothered just where will these farmers go? Most will give up farming, while a few will move on to smaller tracts of land. The probable vegetable shortage is not in anyone’s mind.

Add to this the fact that the legendary river is no longer what it used to be. The sell-out of our two major rivers under the Indus Basin Treaty continues to affect Pakistan’s agricultural policies. It was a bureaucratic sell-out even then. India was the gainer. Water shortage is today a growing problem, but to imagine that the riverside scheme will have blue water flowing past it is like, deliberately, living in a fool’s paradise. The State continues to be sold. Machiavelli was not wrong.

Let us move on to the Walton Airport ‘business scheme’. It goes without saying that no country on earth would close a historic airport, the first place where Jinnah landed in a ‘free’ Pakistan, to build business buildings in the middle of a residential area. Even London with its five airports outside the main city continues to operate the London City Airport. Just why destroy one of the few open spaces in Lahore? Money and the urge to be rich by property magnates have greased the right persons. But then this is what happened in the old walled city, this is what happened to Gulberg, this is what happened across the river and also in Walton. Machiavelli was not wrong.

Every time in these columns a mention of the poor being cheated in the walled city is made, the ‘official’ communication persons indirectly produce a lovely story or a picture of work on some historic monument. The rulers smile at the progress. It should be visible they believe, because the damage is slow and almost invisible. Those who walk the streets of the old walled city know the true state of affairs. The trader-prince delights in yet another brick of the State being sold.

From the steps of the mosque one moves into the walled city, full of old crumbling historic buildings and a legendary water disposal system all gone wrong. One assumes very soon the poor will stop dreaming of a better future. Machiavelli’s word will stand vindicated. At least someone has been proven true.