The city broken by design |
THE fire at Gul Plaza was not merely a tragedy, it was a mirror.
Once again, Karachi was forced to look at itself and what stared back was not just charred concrete or lost lives, but decades of political abdication disguised as governance. Predictably, the aftermath produced a familiar spectacle, a war of words between the MQM and the PPP, two coalition partners at the federal level, trading accusations over who ruined Pakistan’s largest city. The blame game may be loud, but it is also deeply dishonest.
Karachi is home to an estimated 24 million people, making it one of the largest urban agglomerations in the world, larger than Istanbul, Paris or London. It generates over 20 percent of Pakistan’s GDP, accounts for nearly 55 percent of federal tax revenue, and handles 90 percent of the country’s maritime trade. And yet, by almost every global urban metric, safety, liveability, transport, housing, governance, it performs like a forgotten provincial town.This contradiction is not accidental but structural.
In the immediate aftermath of the Gul Plaza fire, the MQM accused the PPP of ‘chronic misgovernance’, pointing to Sindh’s long rule as evidence. The PPP responded by invoking MQM’s violent past in Karachi. Both arguments are true and therefore meaningless. Karachi’s decay is not the failure of one party, but the cumulative outcome of shared irresponsibility by every major political actor that has held power at the centre or in Sindh over the last three decades. The PPP........