MONUMENTS ON WHEELS

The buzz is probably not true but just a joke that the Oil tankers parked in a maze around the hospital in Clifton which belongs to the family of the Minister for Petroleum, Dr Asim Husain, are there because of the good doctor's two predilections, medicine and oil - the hospital fills one, and the Oil tankers the other.
True or not, for the residents of the numerous high-rise complexes in the area, the Oil tankers have been a blight that has ruined the ambience of the once quiet residential area, its ecosystem, and peace. The residents have to run the gauntlet of giant Oil tankers parked on both sides of the roads. All this despite a new area being allocated for the tankers to park, but which the oil tanker owners, who are backed by the ANP, find less 'well' situated.
The writ of city's governance does not seem to extend to Oil tankers, to make them move to the new allocated area. If anyone has to move, it will probably be the residents. The Oil tankers will be sitting pretty where they are, as monuments to the impotence of the hapless city's governance. The water tankers without tail lights and number plates, and which seem held together with scotch tape, have been an essential part of the street scene in Karachi for decades. They are as much a part of city life as used to be the 'bahishtis', or water carriers, who delivered water in calfskin sacks.
The water tanker owners, and their facilitators, are a powerful group, or mafia, which has prevented water supply in the city from being streamlined. Even the self governing Defence Housing Authority (DHA), is alleged to be not free of the water tanker mafia's influence. It's not laying water lines in DHA's largest segment, or Phase 8, is alleged to be under influence of the tanker mafia. The great DHA desalination plant debacle is held to be result of sub-standard, used plant being installed, which did not help DHA, or its residents, but is believed to have enriched many.
The great DHA desalination plant experience seems to have been the 'inspiration' behind the government policy to go for used rental power plants, including a very large floating one from Turkey, which is being paid a massive daily cost for just docking in Karachi port, doing nothing. The rental power plants may not have helped light the country, but with the sudden rise in demand for houses and apartments from Pakistan, immediately following the rental power plant agreements, the real estate market in and around the Edgware Road area of London, lit up.
The Transport mafia, made up of city bus owners and operators, and their facilitators in the police and other power centers is a striking monument on wheels, to the impotence of city governance. If you get a guilty feeling driving behind a city public bus with people clinging to the sides, and perched on the roofs, you have the Transport mafia to thank for it.
The Transport mafia is against bringing order out of chaos, as the existing bedlam on roads serves its profit motive superlatively. It has effectively frustrated all plans ever made to streamline public transport in the city. The circular railway was sabotaged before its full potential could be developed, the underground railway proposal on selective routes was thwarted, all overhead or elevated train and monorail proposals were foiled, even the proposal for exclusive bus corridors on roads for buses was blocked, for that would have regulated bus movements, when the present no holds barred 'free for all' on roads between private buses, serves the transporters profit lust better.
The Mother of all Monuments on Wheels, to the incompetence and corruption of successive rulers, with the present lot breaking all records for both, is the once proud North Western Railway of British India, now Pakistan Railway, or PR. It is heart a wrench to see this gem of an institution, inherited from the British, now reduced to its present wretched state, particularly in last three years, and in the last throes before, as the worthy minister for railways said - 'its final demise, Inshallah'.
Lalu Prasad Yadav, an Indian politician from Bihar, who was bit of a clown of Indian politics, was also Minister for Railways between 2004 -2009. There was, however, nothing clownish about how he turned the Indian Railways around during his tenure, which were then in marginally better state than PR is now. The good Lalu is now a legend in management world. His achievements as minister of railways are subject of case studies in best universities. How one wishes that one, just one, among our own 'Lalu Prasad Yadavs', would turn out to be like the real Lalu.
(The writer is former corporate executive.)