PukhtunWomen

(this article first appeared in The News)

First their homes were bulldozed by the authorities to make way for a hospital complex. The residents settled at another site. This time their houses were demolished to make room for a public park. Like a flock of sheep, the urban poor have finally been pushed into a peri-urban area 17 miles southeast of Islamabad . This is Alipur Farash. Samar Minallah pens a portrait of urban poverty.

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other: it is not the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern world poor are not pitied, but written off as trash.

___ John Berger (English author)

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

___ John F.Kennedy

Life is in constant flux for the have nots of the less developed countries. Throughout their lives they strive for a better living environment. They yearn not for a land of milk and honey, but merely a habitation providing the bare necessities of life.

‘ Islamabad the Beautiful,' a symbol of urban success, is fighting to sweep the urban poor out of sight in its peri-urba areas in an effort to keep its glamour untarnished. As a Capital Development Authority official puts it, “The labour colonies were spoiling the urban environment as they had no sewerage facilities, so we decided to shift them to the suburbs”. Are the poor to the blamed, or are indifferent and insensitive policies to be condemned?

The capital's Master Plan has no provision for land to accommodate the urban poor. Each new government modifies the Plan by turning green areas into residential plots for those already born with a silver spoon in their mouths. While the professional gujars (milkmen) have been pushed out of town, buffaloes belonging to the capital's bigwigs graze right across from a block of new high rise flats.

Rural people are lured to the cities in the hope of improving their living conditions. They settle down in vacant spaces where they build rudimentary houses on a self-help basis. Although the people who in habit these areas come from different ethnic backgrounds, a sense of solidarity binds them together.

In one multi-ethnic squatter settlement of the capital, the inhabitants had not only settled down but also started regarding the place as their own village. The settlement was later bulldozed by the authorities to make way for a hospital complex.

Disheartened, yet hopeful, the residents settled at another site with the same vitality. This time their houses were demolished to make room for a public park.

Like a flock of sheep, the urban poor have finally been pushed into a peri-urban area 17 miles southeast of Islamabad . This is Alipur Farash. The residents have to commute every day to their workplaces in Islamabad . Their income is well below subsistence level.

Manndal from Charsadda says, “I am a labourer, and work is very unreliable. I travel to Islamabad every day and wait at a bus stop to be hired. If I fail to find work, I lose Rs. 20-25 in commuting. I have to eat something too, as I drag my stomach along. That cost another Rs. 10-15. I might find work five days in a row while the rest of the month I am unemployed. Mostly my family has to eat dry roti. Once in a while they have shorba (gravy) with it. Sometimes we sleep with full stomachs, but not often”.

Zainab and her family migrated from occupied Kashmir in search of pece and security. Frail and wornout, the mother of two sons, Zainab says her first priority is feeding them. She has already lost her eldest son to diarrhea. While she was talking to me her one-year-old son lay on an uncomfortable looking bed, drenched in sweat. With one hand he held a plastic feeder in his mouth. With the other, he was continually swatting at flies.

Zainab says, “My husband is a labourer. He earns Rs. 70 a day. From that, we have to buy fuelwood for Rs. 80 per maund. Commuting between here and the city costs Rs. 25 ech day, not to mention food. In this salary we can buy either fuel or food. My husband never takes me and the children to Islamabad for an outing. We can't afford such luxuries”.

While her husband goes to work, Zainab tends to her one-room mud house. She keeps a few chickens to sell in the local market to make ends meet.

These squatter settlements lack drinking water, sewerage lines and pucca housing. Zainab points to a well in her house which is the family's main source of water. “Baji, a chicken fell in there and is rotting now. Nobody will clean it for me. I have to get drinking water from my neighbour's well, but I use this for washing.

Bakht-i-Seywa, a woman from Bannu, complains, “Some people have dug deep trench latrines. During the rainy season the runoff enters the house. The stench is unbearable. We women prefer to cover ourselves with chadars and go out into the fields to relieve ourselves. During the day, if need be, we collect the refuse in plastic bags ad hide it in the garbage”.

The exodus from rural to urban areas might stop if rural people were given incentives at home. Naik Mohammad, a native of Karak, says, “Who would want to leave one's native land for a place where one is not even wanted? Would you abandon the land where your ancestors are buried? It is this stomach of ours that forces us to migrate”.

Another resident from Karak adds, “My old parents are sad to leave their village at this stage of their lives, but they have no other choice. Karak is a new district, and employment opportunities are very limited. We have only barani [rain-fed] lands. How can we survive in such circumstances?”

Zaman, from the small village of Lora near Murree, says, “Not everyone can survive in a mountainous area like ours. I migrated to Islamabad because it is a city of barey log [big shots]. At least one can find work as a gardener or something similar”.

Baydaar Khan, a milkman from Swat Kohistan, says “In our village it is often very cold. With no gas or electricity, it becomes difficult to survive. I suppose fate has brought us here”.

The hope of a better life is illusory; most migrants exchange one form of poverty for another. Duniya Zaada, a woman in her late 50s, migrated with her two daughters from a small village near Kohat after her husband remarried and abandoned her. Now she works as a domestic servant to pay for her daughters' education and secure their future.

I pay Rs. 300 a month rent for this two-room house. My salary is Rs. 1,500. My daughters' education, travel, our food, wood, they all cost me a fortune. Since I came here I have been under constant debt. I just hope I can return all the money I have borrowed before I die.”

Facing similar problems, Raas Bibi from Karak is in her late 60s. She limps, as one leg is paralysed. Despite her disability, she has been working as an unskilled labourer for the past ten years. She proudly declares, “I have built more than four tall buildings of Islamabad by carrying heavy bricks on my head. Still there is no place for me there. I cried when we were evicted from our village in Islamabad . The officials had sticks in their hands and were shouting, ‘Alipur, Alipur!' I struggle to feed my family. I am neither a smuggler nor a thief. Why should I bae treated like this?”

Despite the odds against success, the rural poor opt for urban rather than rural poverty. They are cynical about politicians who court their votes during elections. “They tell us they are the topak [gun] and we are the Kaartoos [bullets] but when we need it the topak stops working!”

Squatter settlements are seen as a blemish on the face of the city. Affluent residents are annoyed by the street children who try to clean their cars with dirty rags. They dismiss these children as liars and thieves. But should we expect a high standard of morality from someone who sleeps in a cramped room with nine other people, drinks contaminated water, and breathes the stench of overflowing drains? A Greek proverb says, “You cannot reason with a hungry belly. It has no ears”.

The urban poor are victims of urban bias. Decisions are made by city dwellers, and rural development is low on their list of priorities. But given the numbers of urban poor, the government cannot afford to ignore this issue for long. Dumping the poor in suburbs won't work unless infrastructure is provided there. Catering only to the needs of an affluent elite will not bring development and prosperity to a democratic country like ours.