When I started my facebook page “Citizens of Garden East” back in July 2023, I thought running a facebook page would be just about putting photos and a few words. I had a wealth of photos and I am fairly good with words too. But I struggled to find the issue with anything. For eg, if there is an image of a mobility challenged citizen of Garden East slowly walking to the jammat khana, but choosing to walk on the road rather than on the footpath, then what exactly is wrong with that? Or if the census report says that the population of Garden has increased from 325,716 in 1998 to 363,967 in 2017 to a whooping 502,819 people in 2023, then what is the problem here? After all, the population of the entire city has increased. And a mobility challenged citizen has the right to choose wherever she/he wants to walk.
I took a break and start reading. I also started consulting legal and urban experts. Moreover, I also started “experiencing”, meaning I started consciously engaging with what I was seeing and interacting with. What do I feel when I walk on the streets of Garden East, or on Britto Road? How motivated do I feel about driving back home after a long day’s work? How do I feel about my home which is situated on main the Britto Road? Growing up here, I used to carelessly wander on streets (to Machi Bazar for Gola Ganda, to Aga Khan Park, to Jammat Khana, to Salim Cold Drinks Store, to Mauji Corn Soup, to Al Jalal where my Khalas lived) several times in a day. My friends and I would play endlessly on Britto Road and Nusserwanji Road. We seldom felt unsafe. The community would watch out for us and if we messed up or somebody messed up with us, the news would reach our parents before we got back home. And there were no mobile phones at that time either.
Do children today get to enjoy this environment of safety and hassle free mobility? Do people get to visit their neighbours the same way as they used to do in the past (by walk, with a feeling of safety)? Do our elderlies get to access fresh air and sunlight to keep them healthy? Does Garden East close down at 10-11ish at night, and is it quiet enough for people to have a peaceful sleep?
I have used the word safety in the context of mobility more than once in the above paras. We, in Karachi, associate safety with avoiding/preventing street crime. However, safety is essentially about protection from threat. And in so far that is concerned, in terms of mobility, far greater number of pedestrians are at risk of being hit by moving vehicles in the city than street crimes. I agree that comparing the two are like comparing apples and oranges. However, both street crimes and moving vehicles lead pedestrians to adopt safety measures. While we need data to identify what pedestrians do to protect themselves from being hit by moving vehicles – and how successful their efforts are – we are very well aware what citizens do to protect themselves from street crimes. (They don’t carry expensive belongings, they don’t resist snatching attempts, they avoid going at quiet and dark streets). However, I do have very tiny data on the possible experience of pedestrians with moving vehicles in Garden East. In March 2023, I inquired from the local Aga Khan clinic about the number of reported cases of accidents in the Garden East area. Without a breakdown of whether the victim is a biker or a pedestrian, I was told that the local Aga Khan Clinic receives ONE TO THREE CASES OF ROAD ACCIDENTS IN GARDEN EAST EVERY WEEK. This is huge!
There is no reason to believe that living in an unsafe, unhygienic, undemocratic, corrupt system is our fate. It is not. And the distance between the two states of being is our voice.
What I am trying to say is that the experience of living in Garden East can be clearly defined by way of some very clear patterns. The feeling of unsafety, inability to walk due to constant obstruction by moving vehicles, noise pollution, light pollution, lack of cleanliness on the streets, inadequate waste disposal, disputes over shared resources and responsibilities in the neighbourhood, unpleasant interactions on the streets, and lack of safe public spaces for the locals to access fresh air, cooling and sunlight, among others.
I think I found my answer about the issue in my observation, and conscious experience of living and monitoring my and my family’s wellbeing living in Garden East. The issue with the senior citizen walking on the road instead of footpath while going to Jammat Khana is because all the footpaths have been encroached upon by builders who have extended the building space to the pedestrian walk ways. The reason why the increase in the population of Garden is a cause of concern is because the presence of over 5 lakh residents in this area means we have the highest per sq km density in the entire city. Garden area has 125,705/km living in a space of 4sq km. No other area in the city has this high a population per sqkm.
Talking about the impact of these issues on the lives of the locals, I can begin by speaking about myself. In the past one year, we have had three incidents of theft at home (our vehicles batteries have been stolen), one incident of snatching from our domestic staff, a steady build up of garbage outside our house at the main Britto Road, constant complaints by my family members of inability to sleep because of increase in noise, increase in dust pollution, three outbreaks of gutters overflow, and at least 15 incidents of us getting stuck in traffic jam at Fatimid, Soldier Bazar, Guru Mandir, Teen Hatti, while attempting to return from office.
I have also been monitoring news and there are at least two cases of deaths reported from the buildings which should never have been built but were happily sanctioned by the Sindh Building Control Authority. I will be sharing the details in future posts.
I know people don’t read long texts any longer. But it is important to communicate the objective of this page. We may come from a developing country which has issues of overpopulation, resource scarcity and corruption among other things. However, we as the citizens of Pakistan have done nothing to be cursed to live in a state of distress every single minute of our lives. For far too long, we have been made to believe that our job is just to survive on a day to day basis. To live is to thrive and not just to survive. We cannot thrive if we are constantly battling for sanity, fighting against congestion, encroachment, denial of healthy activities, walkability, peace and sanity. Garden East is our home and home is where safety and wellbeing is. And if it is not there, then it needs to be fought for. We are the second and third generation since Pakistan came into being. It was not this bad when it all started. It has been made bad because of our silence.
There is no reason to believe that living in an unsafe, unhygienic, undemocratic, corrupt system is our fate. It is not. And the distance between the two states is our voice. This page will be the voice for a future where Garden East is a sane area, freed from the clutches of greedy developers, irresponsible citizenship, corrupt and disinterested government and policy makers and, sorry to say, non-caring Aga Khan institutions.
I will conclude by repeating the famous Margaret Mead statement you all might have heard a hundred times, but nothing rings truer than this: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”