FOR a city this dynamic — it is the hub of commercial and business activity in the country — and for a city this size, Karachi’s infrastructure is poor. This is not just a problem for the people of Karachi; it should be of concern to every citizen in the country as Karachi generates a lot of business and commercial activity that fuels the rest of Pakistan too. The road network is quite broken, the transport infrastructure is not good or adequate, the water supply is poor, and water drainage is bad. A spell of rainfall of six to eight millimetres was enough to cause major hurdles for transportation for a good 24 hours and some parts of the city were flooded.

But the people of Karachi are extremely enterprising. They get on with doing what they need to and find ways and means to get by. The city keeps moving. Whether it is because they are self-reliant or whether they have given up on the government, or both, or one because of the other, they move on, and the dynamism of the city and its people clearly comes through.

I have lived in Islamabad and mainly Lahore for most of my working life. Recently, I got a chance to spend a month in Karachi thanks to an invitation to be visiting faculty in February at the AKU-IED. A month was enough to fall for Karachi’s charms.

Karachi is definitely more diverse in ethnic, religious and linguistic terms than Lahore. Maybe this explains why people are less interested in finding out........

© Dawn