Erich Fromm, German psychoanalyst and social philosopher, in his small but highly stimulating book “The Art of Loving” enlightens us on the difference between love and obsession/possessiveness. He drives the point home with an example drawn from everyday life which we all are familiar with. A man claims he loves flowers. And this is how he displays his love: he plucks a flower and tucks it in the breast pocket of his coat. His love for flower means its death. He kills what he claims he loves. Is it his love or possessiveness that causes the death of the object of his love? One needs to reiterate the obvious: love is not life destroying experience. It’s on the contrary life-enhancing and enriching.
Lords and masters of Lahore, please pause for a moment and think: does your love for Lahore enrich it or unbeknown to you, impoverish it? One feels compelled to ask this question for the reason that the more you spend on solving the problems of the metropolis, the more it seems to be beset by the newer ones. You widen roads and make them signal-free but in no time we encounter congestion as before, slowing the speed as if nothing was ever done to facilitate mobility. You, along with private sector, establish new clinics, medical labs and hospitals but the poor die unattended on the cold floors of the government hospitals or perish silently being unable to afford the exorbitant service charges for the health facilities offered by commercially-driven private sector that has insatiable lust for money. You upgrade government colleges and set up new universities. We see a mushroom growth of so-called institutions of higher learning but there is no check on the quality of education they impart. Education is entirely job-oriented and thus has little to do with knowledge. You can find “professors/doctors” a dime a dozen that are in no way connected with knowledge generation. With all this seemingly feverish academic development we witness that thousands of students fail to get admission every year to the utter disappointment of parents making the future bleak for families.
Unmanageable mess on the Lahore’s roads, collapse of health facilities, rot in education and sharp spike in the prices of urban lands are inter-connected. One doesn’t need Einstein’s intuition or arcane knowledge to unearth the root cause of the malaise which lies in the egregiously flawed policies pursued by our elected politicians and non-elected bureaucrats.
Karachi’s experience, which mirrors all the ills caused by the shenanigans of indifferent provincial and federal administration, can be a salutary lesson for the talking heads in Lahore if they don’t treat the recent past in a desultory fashion. Karachi moans and groans as it sits disowned and neglected by landowning philistine elite from the rural areas that is at the helm while in the case of Lahore, sentimental stupidity bordering on obsession makes the development lose its direction and purpose. Policymakers commit the folly of reifying their airy-fairy concepts of modernity and progress at the expense of the exchequer.
Lahore, in no way, can cope with the steady inflow of population from the other districts even if you spend the entire annual financial budget of the Punjab on it. Not all the people come or migrate to Lahore of their own free will; they are forced by a host of reasons to do so. One, they come to seek jobs which they somehow manage to find. Job market at district level is as good as non-existent. Two, people bring their seriously ill patients to avail the advanced medical facilities as the healthcare at district level is horribly inadequate. Three, people who have some means are compelled to settle in Lahore, at least, temporarily for the higher education of their children because hardly a university worth the name exists at district level. Four, people have to come to Lahore for the resolution of issues which can only be sought at the provincial headquarters. All these factors together put an unbearable stress on the civic life, amenities and infrastructure of the city apart from adding to untold misery of incoming people.
The problems districts and Lahore face are in no way insoluble. These are simple problems and simple problems need simple solutions if we disregard the political and bureaucratic blather that muddies the waters. Lahore, our beloved city, must not be allowed to be a poster child for uncaring government that has a blinkered vision of Punjab, which has thirty six districts, Lahore being one of them. Punjab has over hundred and twenty million population while Lahore has just twelve million inhabitants.
First step in rectifying the situation will naturally be devolution of financial and administrative powers to the grassroots i.e. districts. Local bodies despite the government’s dalliance are now in place as a result of the supreme court’s much appreciated intervention. So if you really want to alleviate people’s suffering, empower local bodies by allocating generous funds to kick-start development in education and health sectors so that people in the districts are not forced to move to Lahore for getting education and healthcare. Such an investment will create jobs close to home reducing pressure on Lahore. Additionally, it will spare people inconvenience and money. Bringing children to Lahore for education and patients for treatment must end soon as such an ordeal tests one’s physical energy and causes depletion of financial resources. Devolution will help tackle problems at local level.
To cut a long story short, the development of Lahore is organically linked with what happens in the other districts of Punjab. If the districts remain underdeveloped, Lahore will continue to attract people from the less developed regions of the province putting immense pressure on its modern facilities, material infrastructure and civic life. Lahore-centric development policy will not only be ineffective in solving the myriad problems of contemporary life but will also have political fallout for the policymakers in the wan sunlight of coming days. The best policy one can envisage must be humanely simple: “all or none”. — soofi01@hotmail.com
Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2017