Pakistan's Largest City Karachi Ranks High on Human Development

While Pakistan's HDI of 0.504 (2011) ranks it among UNDP's low human development countries, its largest city Karachi's HDI of 0.7885 (2005) is closer to the group of nations given high human development rankings.



In a regional human development analysis for Pakistan done by Haroon Jamal and Amir Jahan Khan of the Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC), Karachi ranks at the top with HDI of 0.7885, followed by Jhelum district's 0.7698 and Haripur's 0.7339. Lahore has HDI score of 0.6882 and Rawalpindi 0.638.



Majority of the nations ranked as high human development are less populated than Karachi with its 15 million+ inhabitants, and none is experiencing the massive waves of poor rural migrants from some of the least developed areas of Pakistan which Karachi continues to absorb after each disaster in other parts of the country, natural or otherwise.



Karachi often makes news for its recurring episodes of violence which claim many innocent lives. Yet, the city continues to be a big draw for large numbers of rural migrants looking for better economic opportunities. In spite of the many problems they face, it's a fact that even the slums in Karachi offer them better access to education and health care--basic ingredients for human development.

When visitors see a squatter city in India or Pakistan or Bangladesh, they observe overwhelming desperation: rickety shelters, little kids working or begging, absence of sanitation, filthy water and air. However, there are many benefits of rural to urban migration for migrants' lives, including reduction in abject poverty, empowerment of women, increased access to healthcare and education and other services. Historically, cities have been driving forces in economic and social development. As centers of industry and commerce, cities have long been centers of wealth and power. They also account for a disproportionate share of national income. The World Bank estimates that in the developing world, as much as 80 percent of future economic growth will occur in towns and cities. Nor are the benefits of urbanization solely economic. Urbanization is associated with higher incomes, improved health, higher literacy, and improved quality of life. Other benefits of urban life are less tangible but no less real: access to information, diversity, creativity, and innovation.

In a 2009 interview published by Wired Magazine, Stewart Brand, "the pioneering environmentalist, technology thinker", and founder of the Whole Earth Catalog summed up the positive aspects of urban slums, and made a counterintuitive case that the booming slums and squatter cities in and around Mumbai, Nairobi, and Rio de Janeiro are net positives for poor people and the environment. Wired asked him to elaborate. Here are a few excerpts:

Wired: What makes squatter cities so important?

Stewart Brand: That's where vast numbers of humans—slum dwellers—are doing urban stuff in new and amazing ways. And hell's bells, there are a billion of them! People are trying desperately to get out of poverty, so there's a lot of creativity; they collaborate in ways that we've completely forgotten how to do in regular cities. And there's a transition: People come in from the countryside, enter the rickshaw economy, and work for almost nothing. But after a while, they move uptown, into the formal economy. The United Nations did extensive field research and flipped from seeing squatter cities as the world's great problem to realizing these slums are actually the world's great solution to poverty.

Wired: Why are they good for the environment?

Brand: Cities draw people away from subsistence farming, which is ecologically devastating, and they defuse the population bomb. In the villages, women spend their time doing agricultural stuff, for no pay, or having lots and lots of kids. When women move to town, it's better to have fewer kids, bear down, and get them some education, some economic opportunity. Women become important, powerful creatures in the slums. They're often the ones running the community-based organizations, and they're considered the most reliable recipients of microfinance loans.

Wired: How can governments help nurture these positives?

Brand: The suffering is great, and crime is rampant. We made the mistake of romanticizing villages, and we don't need to make that mistake again. But the main thing is not to bulldoze the slums. Treat the people as pioneers. Get them some grid electricity, water, sanitation, crime prevention. All that makes a huge difference.


Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Karachi Tops Mumbai in Stock Performace

Eleven Days in Karachi

Citymayors website

Karachi Demographic Trends Worry MQM

Pakistan Most Urbanized in South Asia

Karachi: The Urban Frontier

Do Asia's Urban Slums Offer Hope?

Orangi is Not Dharavi

Climate Change Could Flood Karachi Coastline

Karachi Fourth Cheapest For Expats

Karachi City Government

Karachi Dreams Big

Comments

Riaz Haq said…
Here's a NY Times blog by Huma Yusuf about Pakistan stalled census 2011:

Yet Population Year is drawing to a close and no census is in sight. There are many reasons: the precarious security situation, repeated flooding in many parts of the country, lack of resources to train the 225,000 census takers required to conduct the head count in time. But the main reason is politics. The major parties draw their power from rural constituencies, and by highlighting the extent of the country’s urbanization, a census would lead to the creation of new urban constituencies.

With an eye toward the national elections slated for 2013, many Pakistani politicians are doing everything in their power to circumvent or delay a count. The country’s largest parties, the governing Pakistan Peoples Party and the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N, are particularly threatened by the prospect of reduced rural constituencies. Newcomers such as the cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, the founder of Tehreek-e-Insaf, which enjoys significant support in Punjabi cities, stand to gain.

Gerrymandering is not rare in boisterous democracies. But in Pakistan, it can be a matter of life and death. In Karachi, from where I have been reporting for eight years, many of the political parties are based on ethnic groups, and a revised count would lead to a revised political balance. Fears that this might happen are fanning ethnic violence. More than 2,100 people have been killed in Karachi in political assassinations over the past two years — a death toll not seen since 1995, a year of widespread ethnic and political violence. Muhammad Jalil, a community organizer in Lyari, one of the worst-affected slums of the city, told me in August that everyone — women, teenage footballers — is exposed to the violence. “Political activists and gangsters are not the only ones targeted. Entire communities are vulnerable.”

Since the 1980s, ethnic Pashtuns and the Urdu-speaking Mohajirs, migrants from northern India, have clashed over access to property and jobs in Karachi. Criminal gangs with ties to political parties — including the ruling P.P.P. — had been warring over smuggling rackets and extortion rings. But as election year approaches, it is Karachi’s shifting demographics that are driving much of the violence.

Until recently, the Mohajirs were the city’s clear majority, accounting for 48 percent of the population, according to the 1998 survey. But military operations against militant groups in northwestern Pakistan since 2007 have increased the flow of Pashto-speaking migrants into Karachi. By some estimates this group now represents 22 percent of the city’s population, up from about 12 percent in 1998. So now the M.Q.M., the Mohajirs’ representative party, fears that a census documenting the expansion of Karachi’s Pashtun population would lead to a redistricting that would favor its local rival, the A.N.P......


http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/in-pakistan-a-census-count-turns-into-a-body-count/
Riaz Haq said…
Here's is an APP report on UAE Trade & Investment Expo 2011 in Karachi:

KARACHI, Dec 01 (APP): Speakers at UAE trade and investment conference at Karachi Expo Centre said Thursday that Pakistan was a growing market and UAE companies operating here would stay and make long term strategic investment. President and CEO of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL) Walid Irshaid said that his company will make more investment in Pakistan to fully transform PTCL into a world class telecome company.
“We have transformed PTCL into a modern company offering all ICT products in Pakistan and we are here to stay”, he said while sharing the experience of his company in Pakistan and investment opportunities.
He said that “Pakistan is a growing market and we are making long term investment to offer world class network to local consumers who are quality conscious”. Do not underestimate Pakistani consumers, he suggested.
Regional general manager Asia Pacific North and Indian sub continent Etihad Airways, Joost den Hartog said that his airline was doing great business in Pakistan.
“We are running daily flights from Karachi, Islamabd, Lahore to UAE and twice a week from Peshawar. We are planning to enhance our operations in Pakistan in future with the expansion of our fleet”, he noted.
Hartog said that his airline is now catering for Pakistanis living in USA, Canada, Europe and Middle East and will soon start lifting Pakistani passengers for Frankfurt and Munich.
Pakistani Ambassador in UAE Jamil Ahmed Khan advised Pakistani businessmen to take full advantage of opportunities in the Emirates for re-export business. He said that 40 percent of the exports to UAE are re-exported to African countries.
He said that Pakistani exports to UAE can be enhanced from 2 percent of Emirates’ global trade to 6 percent with the help of planned efforts.
Chief Executive Officer of Bank Al Falah, Atif Aslam Bajwa said that his bank is growing fast in Pakistan and “we have plans to further expand our operations in the country”.
Chief Executive Officer, FlyDubai, Ghaith Al Ghaith said that the business of his airline has increased in Pakistan by 10 percent while it is growing worldwide at 12 percent. “We are planning to further expand our business here”.
CEO Dubai Islamic Bank Junaid said his bank has plan to expand its branch network from 73 to 100 in Pakistan by next year and offer the entire range of Shariah compliant products in Pakistan.
Director of IBA Dr Ishrat Husain said that foreign investors were never touched in Pakistan by any regime even during the nationalization in 1972.
He said Pakistan has liberalized its foreign exchange regime and profits, royalties, fees can be fully repatriated.
Acting President of FPCCI Khalid Tawab said that business chambers are playing their full to expand bilateral trade and investment between Pakistan and UAE.
Meanwhile, consul generals and commercial officers of USA, China, Germany, Japan, Russia, Afghanistan and Korea also visited UAE Expo 2011 Magnificent 7 and took keen interest in the products at display.


http://ftpapp.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=168041&Itemid=49
Riaz Haq said…
Here's an Express Tribune story of a Pakistani young man of humble origins helping terror victims after studying Emergency Medicine at Yale:

.Today, Razzak is a renowned emergency medicine expert and the executive director of the Aman Foundation. He started his schooling at a humble primary school in Lyari, completing his secondary education from Nasira School in Depot Lines. Not one to be held back, the hard-working student subsequently attended Adamjee Science College where his impressive grades and unbounded enthusiasm won him a scholarship at the prestigious Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH), the top private medical institution in the country.
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In collaboration with the Edhi Ambulance Service, an arm of the philanthropic Edhi organisation and the largest volunteer ambulance network in the world, he researched and analysed road traffic injuries and emergency cases. Edhi had a mountain of documentation for every call and every case it had handled in the last two decades. The downside? None of it was digitised, so he spent days sifting through it manually.

The experience stayed with him, and the data revealed a disturbing pattern. Gruesome injuries, often suffered by the poorest members of society, were often improperly handled by well-meaning doctors, simply because of a lack of know-how. These mistakes frequently, and literally, led to the loss of life and limb.

Yet, Razzak soon realised that he needed more professional training and specialisation courses before he could progress further. He sat for the US Medical Licensing Exams (MLE) and had observations at the Beth Israel Medical Centre, New York, and the Yale-New Haven Hospital, Connecticut. In 1996, his residency and training programme at Yale University’s School of Medicine started and in 1999, he was given the ‘Best Trainee’ award by the State of Connecticut.

On the personal front, Yale was also important for the doctor since he met his future wife there. Following graduation, the two stayed in the US for a few years, always looking forward to the time when they would return home. “The plan was always to come back,” says Razzak. “That’s why we never bought a house, never completely settled in.”

Before they could come back, Razzak did his PhD in Public Health at the world-renowned Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, where he focused on the use of ambulance data for monitoring road traffic accidents. Finally, in 2005, the studious boy from Kharadar returned to Pakistan as a successful, qualified expert in emergency medicine.

He joined his alma mater, AKUH as a faculty member and went on to successfully found Pakistan’s first emergency medicine service (EMS) training programme at the university. “There were many doctors who were awarded their degrees without ever administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) as it wasn’t a requirement,” he reveals.

This changed when his EMS programme became a mandatory rotation that all students had to serve. Subsequently, Razzak went on to build and head a new emergency department. Yet, the battle was just half won. Students in the new department faced a dilemma, similar to the one Razzak had as a student. They were required to go to the United Kingdom to sit for their exam, otherwise they would not be considered qualified.
-----------
Determined to remove, for others, the hurdles that he himself had crossed only after many toils, Razzak collaborated with the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan (CPSP) to organise a curriculum for the specialised field. The first batch for this course was enrolled last year. Now students wanting to specialise in emergency medicine will be able to obtain certification in their chosen field, without having to travel abroad....

http://tribune.com.pk/story/300042/positive-pakistani-call-of-duty/
Riaz Haq said…
Here's an excerpt from a piece in Express Tribune:

...Karachi contains 62 per cent of Sindh’s urban population; 30 per cent of Sindh’s total population; and 22 per cent of Pakistan’s urban population. Lahore, the second largest city in Pakistan, on the other hand, contains only 22 per cent of Punjab’s urban population; seven per cent of Punjab’s total population; and 12 per cent of Pakistan’s urban population. Individually, the other major cities are a very small fraction of Karachi and Lahore.

Karachi’s large-scale industrial sector employees make up 71.6 per cent of the total industrial labour force in Sindh; 74.8 per cent of the total industrial output of the province is produced in Karachi; and 78 per cent of formal private sector jobs of the province are located in Karachi.

Then there are powerful federal government interests as well, in the form of the Karachi Port Trust, Port Qasim, Customs, Railways, Civil Aviation Authority and the armed forces and their various industrial and real estate activities. The city contains 32 per cent of the total industrial establishment of the country; generates 15 per cent of the national GDP, 25 per cent of federal revenues and 62 per cent of income tax. Also, the most important health, education, recreation, entertainment and media-related institutions in the province, are located in the city and so are the provincial headquarters.

Provincial and state governments always have conflicts with powerful autonomous cities since the non-city population of the province or state feels that the city and its assets do not belong to them. Even in a relatively homogeneous country like Thailand, Bangkok was seen by the anti-government Red Shirt Movement as responsible for deprivation and inequity in the country.

The second issue is related to the changing demography of Sindh. There is a fear among the Sindhi-speaking population (in which I include Balochi, Seraiki and Brahvi speakers as well) that they are being converted into a minority in their province. Let us see how real this perception is.

Seventy-three per cent of Karachi’s population in 1941 said that their mother tongue consisted of one of the local provincial languages, 6.2 per cent said it was Urdu/Hindi, and 2.8 per cent said it was Punjabi. Pashtu at that time was nonexistent. In 1998, the local languages had declined to 14 per cent, Urdu increased to 48.52 per cent, Punjabi to 14 per cent and Pashtu stood at 11.42 per cent....


http://tribune.com.pk/story/319333/sindh-local-government-the-real-issues/
Riaz Haq said…
Karachi is the world's fastest growing megacity, according to Forbes magazine.

http://www.forbes.com/pictures/edgl45fdfe/no-1-karachi-pakistan/

Riaz Haq said…
Punjab fares much better than other provinces in human development

https://www.geo.tv/latest/196173-punjab-fares-much-better-than-other-provinces-on-hdi

Lahore was the highest ranked city of Pakistan on the HDI with 0.877, followed by Islamabad and then Rawalpindi. Four out of six cities of Punjab feature on the list of high human development including Rawalpindi (0.871), Sialkot (0.834) and Jhelum *0.829).

Moreover, only one city from Sindh, Karachi, makes it to the high human development list with 0.854.

The high medium human development rankings include 18 cities from Punjab, four cities from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and one city from Sindh (Hyderabad).

Eleven cities each from Punjab and KP make it to the list of medium human development, which also includes four cities from Sindh and one from Balochistan (Quetta).

Very low human development includes 14 cities from Balochistan, two from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Tor Ghar and Kohistan)and one from Sindh (Tharparkar).

Pakistan itself ranks in the medium human development category of the global rankings.

'KP excels other provinces over next three years'
Meanwhile, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chapter said the UNDP report exposed propaganda by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

The report is an analysis of first 18 months of the incumbent government, the PTI KP chapter said in a statement, which it said was even less than first two years of the government.

"The stats of five years cannot encompass first two years," the statement said, adding that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has surpassed rest of the provinces in performance and human development over the next three years.

Over the next three years, 4 KP districts progressed in terms of human development, compared to 3 districts in Punjab, 2 in Balochistan and 1 in Sindh, it said.

The PTI KP chapter said that under the tenure of Pakistan Peoples Party-led government in Sindh, 6 out of 10 Sindh districts fell prey to worst governance in the province.

The PML-N, which came to power in Punjab six times, has been perplexed over the performance of PTI's first-ever government in KP, the statement added.
Riaz Haq said…
nearly 8 million Muslims crossed over to Pakistan during and immediately after Partition;19 a sizeable proportion of these migrants comprised the elite or the educated class of Indian Muslim society. In a paper for Yale University, scholars Prashant Bharadwaj, Asim Khwaja, and Atif Mian have offered a very interesting statistic. Exploring the changing demographic profile of India and Pakistan, they write that the outflow of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan and the inflow of Muslims from India only marginally affected the literacy ratio of Pakistan because even though the migrating Hindus and Sikhs were far more literate than the resident Muslims of Pakistan, this deficiency was offset by the emigrating Muslims from India who were also highly literate. Using Karachi as an example, they write: The district of Karachi received a large influx of migrants—in 1951, nearly 28 per cent of the population population was migrant…. Hindus and Sikhs in Karachi in 1931 were also much more literate than the resident Muslims—21 per cent as opposed to just 3.7 per cent. After partition, nearly all Hindus and Sikhs left Karachi (only 1.5 per cent of the population in 1951 was composed of minorities). Yet, the aggregate effect on Karachi’s literacy is very small—this was due to the highly literate migrants who moved into Karachi. In the city of Karachi, 91 per cent of the literate population were migrants! What is important here is while overall literacy rates remained largely unchanged, who the literate population was composed of certainly changed. Partition thus replaced existing minority-majority literacy differences with within majority literacy differences.20

This wasn’t simply a case of brain drain from India. This created an intellectual deficit which continues to have a cascading effect on the community. education is not about literacy alone. It’s about exposure to diverse ideas, being challenged by new concepts, and learning to go beyond inherited wisdom. Above all, education adds to confidence and encourages people to overcome insecurities.

Wahab, Ghazala. BORN A MUSLIM: Some Truths About Islam in India (pp. 60-61). Kindle Edition.
Riaz Haq said…
ASER Report Findings:

https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/913975-educational-outcomes

These poor living conditions (in urban slums) are also reflected in the delivery of education. Around 20 percent of the urban slums surveyed did not have a government school. The majority of children living in the surveyed urban slums were enrolled in private schools (59 percent) that include madrassahs (eight percent) and non-formal education providers (one percent) and the remaining children (41 percent) were enrolled in government schools. Enrolment is higher in the 5-10 age bracket, while one in three children of 16-year-old is out of school.

There are also inter-district variations. Government school enrolment is higher in Lahore (59 percent) while private school enrolment is higher in Korangi, Karachi (again 59 percent). In terms of madrassah enrolment, it varies between two and three percent in Lahore, Malir, and Korangi, and it is 24 percent in Karachi-West where one in four children is studying in a madrassah.

Girls relatively fall behind in terms of enrolment. With regard to evaluating learning outcomes, children studying in urban slums lag behind the ASER assessment in 2019 in these very same districts conducted as part of the ASER survey. However, urban slums of these four districts are being assessed systematically for the first time in this pilot study.

According to the report, “In 2019, learning outcomes (5-16 year old) gathered in the same four districts revealed Urdu/Sindhi story reading at 46 percent, while in 2021 the four district katchi abadis, story reading in Urdu/Sindhi is 35 percent. For two-digit division in 2019, 41 percent children were competent, while in katchi abadis in 2021, it is 26 percent; in 2019, 46 percent children could read sentences in English, but in katchi abadis in 2021, 37 percent children can read English sentences. The challenges can be interrogated by gender, institution, mother tongue, psychosocial well-being etc.”

Despite challenges, girls performed relatively better in numeracy and literacy in urban slums. Similarly, children studying in private schools showed relatively better results than those studying in government schools. It is again something that has already been highlighted by me in an article ‘Private education’ (October 31) published on these pages. Madrassah students’ educational outcomes were extremely poor. Only 7.4 percent could read a story in Urdu/Sindhi, 10 percent could read sentences in English, and 4.4 percent of more than 400 madrassah students (5-16 years old) who were assessed as part of the pilot study could solve division problems.

The other important factors are learning in the mother tongue, household wealth, parents’ – particularly mother’s – education, technology availability and usage that are positively correlated with higher learning outcomes of children. The report also states that psychosocial well-being is important, and as someone who has always believed and practised in never ever giving up and always having a good fight with a positive frame of mind no matter how difficult and arduous circumstances might be at some point in one’s life, one sees the wisdom in including this variable in the report while assessing children’s well-being.

Another positive finding of the report is that technology and internet usage is prevalent in the majority of houses in urban slums. Roughly 80 percent of the households have mobile phones – 63 percent even have smartphones – and 21 percent have laptops/computers. In total, one-third of the participating households (33 percent) stated that they use the internet. This shows that there is tremendous potential for web-based technology-oriented learning and livelihoods solutions.


Riaz Haq said…
More than 150,000 people visited the 17th Karachi International Book Fair in just two days and organisers of the event expect at least 400,000 people to take the trip to the five-day expo that ends on December 12.

https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/pakistan/pakistan-five-day-international-book-fair-in-karachi-proves-to-be-crowd-puller-1.92623229

The Pakistan Publishers and Booksellers Association (PPBA) has organised the annual exhibition at the Karachi Expo Centre that is open from 9am to 10pm daily.

Some 40 foreign publishing houses from 17 countries and over 130 noted publishers from Pakistan are participating in the event by setting up 330 book stalls.

According to the event organisers, the annual exhibition serves as a platform to let book publishers and retailers around the world share with each other the latest trends, technological improvements, and innovations introduced to upgrade the publishing industry.

Sindh Education and Culture Minister, Syed Sardar Ali Shah, said such events provided the opportunity to teach the new generation to stay away from violent and gory video games played on smartphones and reconnect with their native culture that stands for peace and security for everyone.

He conceded that the number of book readers had sharply gone down over the last several years due to excessive reliance on digital means of communication but still books play an important role in the lives of coming generations.

He advised the PPBA to organise fairs in other cities including in Hyderabad, Sukkur, Mirpurkhas, and Larkana as the authorities would provide all help in this regard.

The provincial government aims to expand the network of public libraries to small towns and in the first phase the number of libraries was being increased in Karachi.

The retired bureaucrat and former lawmaker, Mehtab Akbar Rashdi, said that the recent pandemic had provided an opportunity for many people in the world to reconnect with the hobby of book reading.

PPBA Chairman, Aziz Khalid, appealed to the government to lessen the duty on paper and also introduce incentives for local paper producers for promoting the Pakistani publishing industry which had been facing a challenging situation due to economic woes.

Haroon Aziz, a first-year college student, said it was an amazing sight for him that the Karachi Expo Centre, which just a month back had hosted an international arms expo was now exhibiting thousands of books under one roof.

He said the books displayed at the expo would be highly helpful in his studies in addition to encouraging him to adopt the reading habit in his leisure time.
Riaz Haq said…
Mismanagement complicates Pakistan’s long recovery from deadly floods

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/mismanagement-complicates-pakistans-long-recovery-from-deadly-floods


Fred de Sam Lazaro:

For decades, Karachi has been a magnet for migrants from conflict and climate disasters. Decades ago, it ran out of room. Dotting the city's outskirts are clusters of ramshackle dwellings. These have stood since the 2010 floods.

Less than a mile away, crammed under high-voltage power lines, a 2022 wave of settlers.

Sikhandar Chandio, Flood Victim (through translator):

When the water came, it came all of a sudden at night. We just managed to get out with whatever we could and had to abandon our animals.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Sikhandar Chandio and his wife, Sughra, were sharecropper farmers. They escaped with their four children, and were able to save one cow. They journeyed here on foot, which took a week.

Sughra Chandio, Flood Victim (through translator):

Everything was underwater. There were no facilities. There was no help, no food.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Today, they rely on a patchwork of charities, everyone overwhelmed by what U.N. officials describe as one of the worst climate disasters on record, slamming a country that contributes less than 1 percent of the world's greenhouse gases.

Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistani Prime Minister (through translator):

We have mobilized every available resource towards the national relief effort, and repurposed all budget priorities.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Pakistan took the lead at this year's COP 27 climate conference, helping to secure agreement on a loss and damage fund to help developing nations cope.

Just how those funds, if they appear, will be used is a concern.

Kaiser Bengali, Former Adviser, Pakistan Ministry of Planning and Development: But there is a fair amount of manmade responsibility for these floods, and politics plays a big part.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Kaiser Bengali was a government adviser during the 2010 floods, Pakistan's worst until 2022.

Kaiser Bengali:

I think it is also important to see how this fund will be utilized and how it will be implemented and whether the sociopolitical structures and the planning structures that need to be changed, made more effective happens.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

The 1,800-mile-long Indus River, lifeblood of Pakistan's agriculture sector, has been extensively engineered with dams and canals, beginning during British colonial times and ramping up in the 1960s with loans and advisers from international lending agencies.

Has it been, in terms of food production, a reasonably good investment?

Kaiser Bengali:

Certainly. Lands where not even a blade of grass grew now produce two crops a year. It's just that one has to manage this better.

Ahmed Kamal, Chairman, Pakistan Federal Flood Commission:

Governance structure is not good.

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