Lahore is the center of political development in the Punjab. It has hosted the best and most significant projects led by the government, vindicating the theory that those who rule Lahore rule the country. Its development has been the central point of persuasion for the former ruling party when it comes to flaunting their past record to secure votes in the upcoming elections. They tell people that they have built a web of roads, installed state-of-the-art transport mechanisms, and allocated their best capabilities towards making this city the next Paris of the world.
What they won’t ever tell you is that in the city where the last two governments spent the best of their economic and political capital, communities continue to live with a complete absence of clean water. They won’t tell you about Maryam Colony, Green Town, Chungi Amer Sidhu, Singhpura, where entire neighborhoods lack water in their homes and that on a daily basis, thousands of people travel to other places to get drinkable water.
Reports telling us that we shall run out of clean water in 2025 or that water extraction underground sources will not be feasible after 2040 have already surfaced. The interesting thing, however, is that all political parties are yet to make this issue the central points of their manifestos. They would rant over corruption stories and unpublished books, but none of our seasoned politicians or esteemed analysts will talk about the lack of infrastructure for water.
Recently, the Haqooq-e-Khalq Movement launched Paani Do, Vote Lo (Give Water, Get Votes) campaign in the bid to make water a central issue in the upcoming elections. As part of this movement, students and activists from around the city visited the most water-scarce parts of the city to get information on the crisis and to build up pressure on parties to give this issue the importance that it deserves. They visited Chungi Amer Sidhu, Green Town, Railway Headquarters, Singh Pura, Baagriaan Chowk and Maryam Colony.
Volunteers of this movement were welcomed in these neighborhoods because people knew that this had something to do with water. With the exception of Khawaja Saad Rafique and company, who manhandled, physically harassed and locked me and my fellow volunteers in a room when one of us dared to ask about his position on the water crisis, people from all other parts of Lahore were quick to offer us a reception that was grounded in deprivation and dispossession.
These areas are predominantly working class settlements and the majority lives at the margins of the poverty line. This means that affording safe, private water is out of question and practically all of the area lives at the mercy of a government who continues to practice habitual negligence.
The fundamental problem with the water crisis in these areas is, again, the lack of requisite infrastructure. As opposed to having clean water, people living at areas like Nawaz Morh and Green Town, are yet to have water in their homes because pipelines in those areas haven’t been installed. People get infected water and, that too, only for a few hours in the day. People have to live on makeshift water arrangements and the best government response is the chief minister confessing extreme corruption in sectors responsible for handling the water crisis.
For constituencies like Green Town, where more than 200,000 people live, there are only three working filtration plants. New tube wells were installed recently but the entire pipeline network in the area was installed in the 1980s and has not been updated since. This means that even the best filtration plants do not work here. The steel pipes responsible for transmitting water are rotten and rusted and they contaminate water with zinc and other poisonous matter. Furthermore, because this pipeline system has not been updated, cracks in sewerage pipelines directly results in sewerage water mixing with drinking water. The water is, therefore, contaminated with sewerage, mud, arsenic, and even oil in some instances. Water levels have gone more than 700 feet on average in these areas. This is why doctors say that the majority of diseases they treat in these areas are typhoid, diarrhea and hepatitis, all directly related to water.
Children are dying in Chungi by diseases considered 19th century illnesses in most parts of the world. One of our own volunteers, Altaf, lost his eight-months-old daughter to diarrhea and was told by doctors that even though he gave her filtered water to drink, the fact that her feeders were washed by tap water gave way to diarrhea. People in Chungi and Maryam Colony have stated that when they turn on the motor to fill up water tanks, they have to get out of their homes because the odor from the water makes it unbearable to sit inside. The filtration plants they have to use as a result were made by the government in partnership with private companies. In places where the contracts have ended and the responsibility of management has shifted to the government, plants operators have not received salaries for more than six months.
Another fundamentally damaging aspect of this crisis is how the state has actively disempowered local authorities to solve these problems. Local councilors and even chairpersons have no offices in most areas, their funds are given to MNAs who in turn give them little money and, that too, if the local authorities promise them complete loyalty and obedience. Most local authorities that we talked to were enraged over the fact that the MNAs had taken away all their powers and even then, it is always the local councilor who has to face the people and be accountable. Other councilors and chairpersons were busy in electoral campaigns and solving internal party disputes over tickets. In almost all the cases, the common people, deprived of clean water, were either left with local authorities who lack any power to do anything, or with people who have no time to care for them.
Water is not just the most important human right being taken away by the state. It also acts as a representative of socio-political conditions of our context as well as the decay of our basic infrastructure. You go the Bahrias and the DHAs and you would have better clean water facilities everywhere. You go to areas like Maryam Colony and you would see whole communities deprived of the opportunity to drink from home.
Our crisis is not simply the fact that our water is running out. The emergency lies in the cracks this predicament has opened: in the growing economic gap that makes clean water a luxury that a privileged minority can afford, in the conscious disempowerment of local authorities to take assert their will in a bid to make life easier, and in the criminal negligence of the pillars of popular political forces who are more interested in seeing who gets the ticket to run for elections than who gets clean water to drink.
What they won’t ever tell you is that in the city where the last two governments spent the best of their economic and political capital, communities continue to live with a complete absence of clean water. They won’t tell you about Maryam Colony, Green Town, Chungi Amer Sidhu, Singhpura, where entire neighborhoods lack water in their homes and that on a daily basis, thousands of people travel to other places to get drinkable water.
Reports telling us that we shall run out of clean water in 2025 or that water extraction underground sources will not be feasible after 2040 have already surfaced. The interesting thing, however, is that all political parties are yet to make this issue the central points of their manifestos. They would rant over corruption stories and unpublished books, but none of our seasoned politicians or esteemed analysts will talk about the lack of infrastructure for water.
For constituencies like Green Town, where more than 200,000 people live, there are only three working filtration plants. New tube wells were installed recently but the entire pipeline network in the area was installed in the 1980s and has not been updated since
Recently, the Haqooq-e-Khalq Movement launched Paani Do, Vote Lo (Give Water, Get Votes) campaign in the bid to make water a central issue in the upcoming elections. As part of this movement, students and activists from around the city visited the most water-scarce parts of the city to get information on the crisis and to build up pressure on parties to give this issue the importance that it deserves. They visited Chungi Amer Sidhu, Green Town, Railway Headquarters, Singh Pura, Baagriaan Chowk and Maryam Colony.
Volunteers of this movement were welcomed in these neighborhoods because people knew that this had something to do with water. With the exception of Khawaja Saad Rafique and company, who manhandled, physically harassed and locked me and my fellow volunteers in a room when one of us dared to ask about his position on the water crisis, people from all other parts of Lahore were quick to offer us a reception that was grounded in deprivation and dispossession.
These areas are predominantly working class settlements and the majority lives at the margins of the poverty line. This means that affording safe, private water is out of question and practically all of the area lives at the mercy of a government who continues to practice habitual negligence.
The fundamental problem with the water crisis in these areas is, again, the lack of requisite infrastructure. As opposed to having clean water, people living at areas like Nawaz Morh and Green Town, are yet to have water in their homes because pipelines in those areas haven’t been installed. People get infected water and, that too, only for a few hours in the day. People have to live on makeshift water arrangements and the best government response is the chief minister confessing extreme corruption in sectors responsible for handling the water crisis.
For constituencies like Green Town, where more than 200,000 people live, there are only three working filtration plants. New tube wells were installed recently but the entire pipeline network in the area was installed in the 1980s and has not been updated since. This means that even the best filtration plants do not work here. The steel pipes responsible for transmitting water are rotten and rusted and they contaminate water with zinc and other poisonous matter. Furthermore, because this pipeline system has not been updated, cracks in sewerage pipelines directly results in sewerage water mixing with drinking water. The water is, therefore, contaminated with sewerage, mud, arsenic, and even oil in some instances. Water levels have gone more than 700 feet on average in these areas. This is why doctors say that the majority of diseases they treat in these areas are typhoid, diarrhea and hepatitis, all directly related to water.
Children are dying in Chungi by diseases considered 19th century illnesses in most parts of the world. One of our own volunteers, Altaf, lost his eight-months-old daughter to diarrhea and was told by doctors that even though he gave her filtered water to drink, the fact that her feeders were washed by tap water gave way to diarrhea. People in Chungi and Maryam Colony have stated that when they turn on the motor to fill up water tanks, they have to get out of their homes because the odor from the water makes it unbearable to sit inside. The filtration plants they have to use as a result were made by the government in partnership with private companies. In places where the contracts have ended and the responsibility of management has shifted to the government, plants operators have not received salaries for more than six months.
Another fundamentally damaging aspect of this crisis is how the state has actively disempowered local authorities to solve these problems. Local councilors and even chairpersons have no offices in most areas, their funds are given to MNAs who in turn give them little money and, that too, if the local authorities promise them complete loyalty and obedience. Most local authorities that we talked to were enraged over the fact that the MNAs had taken away all their powers and even then, it is always the local councilor who has to face the people and be accountable. Other councilors and chairpersons were busy in electoral campaigns and solving internal party disputes over tickets. In almost all the cases, the common people, deprived of clean water, were either left with local authorities who lack any power to do anything, or with people who have no time to care for them.
Water is not just the most important human right being taken away by the state. It also acts as a representative of socio-political conditions of our context as well as the decay of our basic infrastructure. You go the Bahrias and the DHAs and you would have better clean water facilities everywhere. You go to areas like Maryam Colony and you would see whole communities deprived of the opportunity to drink from home.
Our crisis is not simply the fact that our water is running out. The emergency lies in the cracks this predicament has opened: in the growing economic gap that makes clean water a luxury that a privileged minority can afford, in the conscious disempowerment of local authorities to take assert their will in a bid to make life easier, and in the criminal negligence of the pillars of popular political forces who are more interested in seeing who gets the ticket to run for elections than who gets clean water to drink.