FOR as long as I can remember, all I have heard about Karachi is that it is resilient. Resilient in the face of years of ‘civil war’, in the face of suicide bombings and targeted killings, and in the face of continuous neglect and negligence by the state and successive governments.

There was a time when I believed this narrative. For nearly a decade and a half, Karachiites moved around the city in fear, hesitant to go too far from their homes in case another fight broke out among militant wings of political parties. Years were spent watching main roads and neighbourhoods turn into battlegrounds within minutes. Schools, businesses and roads would be forcibly closed by party workers one fine evening and while students would rejoice at another school holiday, parents waited with bated breath for their older children to come home. And then a few days later, when the fog of tear gas from the battlefield cleared, we would all carry on with our lives. A whole generation of Karachiites grew up almost completely immune to the senseless killings of civilians in their city. We were resilient. We are resilient.

The city has a barely functional public transport system. Poorly maintained minibuses, more deathtraps than anything else (especially when they race each other illegally with passengers on board), have seen their routes being increasingly restricted to only a few in the city. The lower-middle income and working classes that depended on these buses for their daily commute are faced with several problems, including walking long distances from bus stops to their destination. But we are resilient.

In late 2020, monsoon rains flooded the city. Several drains overflowed and were unable to carry rainwater and sewage to the outfalls at sea. The administration decided to not only blame the low and lower-middle income communities living on or along these drains (instead of acknowledging that those drains and their gates had not been cleaned for years of debris and garbage) but also to evict and demolish more homes than were necessary for cleaning and maintenance purposes. To date, no compensation has been given to them and most continue to live on the rubble of their homes, much poorer than they were before. In all this, they have, somehow, managed to find a way to continue living in this city. They are resilient.

Karachi has had no choice but to go on living.

Is Karachi resilient? Maybe. But more than that, I think it is tired. Resilience does not mean much when one does not have any other choice — and Karachi has had no choice but to go on living, brushing conflicts and death under the carpet. We accept that Karachi will always have, among many other things, broken roads and a crumbling social and physical infrastructure.

I begrudge Karachi being known as resilient not because it isn’t — if anything, its resilience is what has allowed it to grow to its current size, with more and more people migrating to the city for better livelihood opportunities. But it is also because of this ‘resilience’ that it faces the problems that it does — the romanticisation that accompanies the narrative of ‘resilience’ takes away from all that Karachi desperately needs.

During the Covid-19 pandemic for instance, government organisations and departments were ill equipped to deal with the storage and distribution of relief aid. Private charity and welfare organisations had to step in and deal with communities, distributing ration and becoming points of resource, on behalf of the state or in place of what it should have done. Is this resilience or resignation to the fact that the state will not come to our aid?

To overcome the lack of a functional, reliable and safe public transport system, we have come up with ride-hailing apps that only the middle and upper-middle classes can afford. We are buying more cars than ever and using expensive fuel that neither the economy nor the roads of the city can sustain or bear. A lack of a proper traffic management system, including one that caters to pedestrians, results in people being stuck in traffic for hours on end. Is it resilience or resignation that more expensive infrastructure, such as the People’s Bus Service, does not mean an alleviation of our problems?

Karachi is by no means a pretty and aesthetic city and the increasing gap between the rich and poor is huge. It is true that there has been a revival of the arts and drama festivals, the mushairas and ghazal mehfils, comedy and open mic nights. However, all this is limited to hardly two to three per cent of Karachiites, and is largely concentrated in District South. The rest of the city just puts up with the grind of everyday life. It is perhaps necessary to have another word for this city rather than resilience. Without this crucial change in narrative, we will keep living in a world of make-believe.

The writer is a researcher.

Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2022