DAWN - Cowasjee Corner; 29 November, 1998
The city of Karachi
Ardeshir Cowasjee
GO TO the municipal office, or to the Civic Centre, and try to impress upon the men there holding high offices that under any circumstance it is a crime to desecrate a public park or a vehicular road, and hand it over for private benefit, and you will meet with blank expressions and empty looks.
You wonder if these men are made of wood from the navel upwards or are merely routinely corrupt. Even after giving them the benefit of the doubt, you conclude that routine prevails.
Descending the stairs of the municipal office you pass two marble plaques, neatly embossed (rather than engraved) commemorating "the consecration ceremony of the building on January 17, 1932, the presence of the citizens of Karachi. May all be blessed in this city." You wonder how many who have passed by have understood the message and its import.
The other day, by chance I came across a copy of a speech delivered over 70 years ago by a City Father of Philadelphia. It has spirit. It marches.
"Back 144 years ago, this great nation, the United States of America, was born in my city of Philadelphia, and so it is quite natural that a city having such a historical record should have that strong American spirit that has not only made it the greatest industrial centre in this country, but also one of the largest and the most beautiful cities in the whole world.
"Philadelphia has a population close to two millions of people, and our city has an area that is equal to the combined size of Milwaukee and Boston, Paris and Berlin, and out of our 130 square miles of territory we have given up nearly 8,000 acres of our best land for beautiful parks, squares and boulevards, so that our people would have the proper places for recreation and pleasure, and the right kind of environment that belongs to every decent American.
"Philadelphia, friends, is not only a large, clean and beautiful city, but it is also known everywhere as the great workshop of the world, and the reason it is called the workshop of the world is because we have a vast army of over 400,000 people employed in 9,200 industrial establishments that turn out one hundred thousand dollars worth of useful commodities every ten minutes of the working day, and according to a well known statistician, there is no city in this country that equals Philadelphia in the production of woolen goods, leather goods, knit goods, textiles, felt hats, hardware, tools, storage batteries, steel ships and a great many other things. We build a railroad locomotive every two hours day and night, and more than one half the people in this great country ride in street cars made in the city of Philadelphia.
"We manufacture a thousand cigars every minute and last year, in our 115 hosiery mills, we made two pairs of stockings for every man, woman and child in this country. We make more carpets and rugs than all of Great Britain and Ireland combined, and, in fact, our total commercial and industrial business is so stupendous that our banks clearing last year, amounting to thirty-seven billions of dollars, would have paid for every Liberty Bond in the entire company.
"But, friends, while we are very proud of our wonderful industrial progress, and while we are also very proud of being one of the largest medical, art and educational centres in this country, yet, we feel a still greater pride in the fact that we have more individual homes in the City of Philadelphia than there are in any other city in the whole world. In Philadelphia we have 397,000 separate homes, and if these homes were placed on twenty-five foot lots, side by side, in one single row, that row would reach all the way from Philadelphia clear through to this Convention Hall, at Kansas City, and then on to Denver, a distance of 1,881 miles.
"But what I want to call your special attention to is the significance of the fact that tens of thousands of these homes are owned and occupied by the working people of our city, and when a man owns the ground upon which he stands and the roof over his head, there is no argument ever presented that would infect that man with those imported diseases, known as Socialism and Bolshevism.
"Philadelphia is no fertile soil for European anarchy, because our homes, our educational institutions and our gigantic industry have been produced by that true American spirit that was born in our city, and is a heritage from our forefathers. Philadelphia is the mother city of this great country, and the very fountain-head of American liberty. It is the city where the first American flag was made; it is the city where the first Congress of the United States met; it is the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed; it is the city where that best loved relic in America, the Liberty Bell, has inspired tens of thousands of our men, women and children, so that we believe we have a sacred mission, which is not to worship the golden calf, but to spread the American spirit, and to keep the fires of freedom burning, so that with God's permission, the Government of Washington, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt may be an inspiration to all humanity."
The Karachi municipality was established in 1852, almost 150 years ago. Its ex-officio president was the Commissioner of Sindh, that able administrator Sir Henry Bartle Edward Frere, assisted by a secretary who was paid the grand sum of Rs 50 per month. The secretary's assistant, a native of Karachi, was described as 'an English-knowing clerk' who in turn was assisted by a munshi, all of whom had the services of three peons. With the passage of time it grew and by 1918 had assumed proper responsibility for the affairs of the city, with representatives on its Board of a large cross-section of Karachi's residents, both British and Indian.
It was in 1918 that Jamshed Nusserwanjee Mehta was elected a councillor, which he remained until 1922, when he was unanimously elected to succeed his senior Ghulam Ali Chagla as President of the Council. He was re-elected year after year, eventually becoming the first mayor of the city in 1933, when the Karachi Municipal Corporation was formed. On being elected mayor, Jamshed made it a rule that mayoral elections were to be held annually, and that no candidate could serve for more than one term at a time. When Jamshed stepped down in 1934, he reverted to his councillorship, finally retiring from public office in 1937.
The second mayor of Karachi, the great lawyer, Tikamdas Wadhumal (mentor of Dingomal Narayangsingh Ramchandani), had been the municipality's honorary legal adviser for many years. He was followed by Kazi Khuda Buksh, Khan Bahadur Ardeshir Hormusji Mama (the founder of Mama Parsi Girls High School), Durgadas Advani, Hatim Alvi, Rustom Khurshedjee Sidhwa, Lalji Melhrotra, Mohammad Hashim Gazdar, Sohrab Kawasjee Hormusjee Katrak, Shambonath Mulraj, Yousuf Haroon, Manuel Misquita, Vishramdas Devandas and Mohammad Ahson, as mayor when Pakistan came into being.
The foundations of the corporate body were laid by Jamshed, and he conceived its majestic building. Sir Montagu de Pomeroy Webb, doyen of Karachi's British community, on Jamshed's retirement recorded: "I consider that Jamshed has done greater and better work for Karachi - for its citizens and the people of Sindh - than any other individual private citizen of this capital whom I can remember. His sacrifices of time, money, strength and peace of mind have been unequalled and wholly admirable. The city owes him an immeasurable debt of gratitude which I hope that each and every community will ungrudgingly recognize."
Coming to the present, the city is fortunate in having, by accident, two good bureaucrats - Allahrakhayo Aasi as director-general of the Karachi Development Authority, and Syed Arshad Ali as administrator of the Karachi Municipal Corporation. They and a few of their officers genuinely wish to do good by the city, but as must be expected, the corrupt in their organization, fed by the builders' mafia and the land grabbers and desecrators, impede them at every step. The corrupt include many of the incompetent legal advisers of these bodies who have well entrenched themselves (the KMC man has been there for 22 years).
Their latest ruse is to encourage the builders to file dubious 'contempt of court' applications against the correctly acting officers, engineering the issuance of notices for personal attendance and then getting the cases adjourned week after week. Some judges tend not to excuse personal absence and the officers have to wait in the corridors each day the case is listed. This further stifles remedial action while illegality rises, swiftly, brick by brick.
"May all be blessed in this city."