Islamabad is a planned city, the federal capital and markedly less violent than the major metropolis of Karachi. The state, in various forms, is much more present than is the case in other Pakistani cities. State services in general are above average, electricity supply is more regular and residents have more personal connections to the state.

By studying Islamabad, one sees Pakistani state institutions at their highest level of effectiveness. If claim-making based on formal rights is going to work anywhere in Pakistan, it will be in Islamabad.

The primary site for my ethnography was at multiple subdivision offices of the Islamabad Electric Supply Company (IESCO), where I followed the employees through all aspects of their work, and observed their interactions with citizens who came to the office.

The subdivision is the lowest level of the IESCO organisational hierarchy and fulfils most of the public-facing requirements concerning electricity supply, including new connections, billing, maintenance and disconnections. In addition to working with the IESCO employees, I interviewed and spent time among the residents of Islamabad in their capacity as electricity consumers, including in the katchi abadis, such as 44 Quarter in Islamabad.

Islamabad has 34 katchi abadis, 11 of which are notified for regularisation per the Punjab Katchi Abadi Act 1992. Regularisation leads to a formal lease of the land and access to all state services for the occupants of the katchi abadi, but it is not without some drawbacks.

For the Capital Development Authority (CDA, the public agency that provides municipal services in Islamabad) to regularise the 44 Quarter katchi abadi, where I did most of the fieldwork presented here, regularisation would involve planning the housing of the katchi abadi so that it would conform to building standards and thus contain fewer housing plots.

How do those without power, both literally and metaphorically, navigate the challenges in dealing with those that do? An ethnographic study of the residents of Islamabad’s katchi abadis attempts to deal with the city’s electricity distribution infrastructure offers an enlightening view. Eos presents excerpts from Access to Power: Electricity and the Infrastructural State in Pakistan by Ijlal Naqvi, published by Oxford University Press

Which households would not be accommodated and where the surplus households would be relocated are points of contention that have stalled the regularisation process, since the proposed relocation site is much further from Islamabad. However, so long as 44 Quarter is not regularised, the residents are denied a document called a No Objection Certificate (NOC), which is issued by the CDA to certify that the applicant for the electricity connection is the legal owner of the land.

Without an NOC, the residents of 44 Quarter cannot get legal electricity connections.

MOBILISING COLLECTIVE CLAIMS

One of my key informants in 44 Quarter is Liaqat who, like almost all the residents of 44 Quarter, is Christian. Liaqat is approximately 35-40 years old, quite short and slightly built. The streets of 44 Quarter are uneven, sloping and made of packed dirt. A tiny, uncovered drain a few inches wide runs in front of the houses on Liaqat’s street. I can touch both sides of the alley at the same time.

Near Liaqat’s front door is an electricity pylon, on which I’ve seen a barefoot boy of about five climbing and playing. Children of very young ages are everywhere, usually playing unattended. I am often passed by bicycles and motorcycles on this street when I visit. Men and women are often talking in the street, frequently congregating around doorways, which seem to be open more often than not.

Liaqat’s home in 44 Quarter is a three-story brick-and-cement building that has not seen any new paint in some time. Liaqat and his wife and children live on the ground floor of their house, and other members of his extended family live on the upper two stories. The two rooms on the ground floor are a living room and a bedroom. The floor is bare cement. The ceiling is perhaps seven feet high and gives me a distinctly claustrophobic feeling when I stand.

There is a small fridge in the bedroom — that is the only visible appliance. Located in the middle of an affluent residential area, 44 Quarter is well-situated for access to employment and municipal services. The same electricity lines that serve the well-off neighbourhoods run through 44 Quarter. For most of its history, 44 Quarter was served by undocumented connections, known in Urdu as kunda.

According to Liaqat, the type of theft occurring in Islamabad’s katchi abadis occurs with the participation of the distribution company employees. Liaqat tells me, “The same money, instead of going to IESCO’s treasury, went to police and IESCO staff.”

Liaqat says that the distribution company employees were paid off to leave illegal connections alone, as were the police. Although I found no distribution company employees admitting to their participation in this specific case, many of them accepted such arrangements as being relatively common. Some 11 years prior to the time of my study — probably in 1998 — 44 Quarter’s illegal connections were forcibly taken down in an army-backed intervention.

The army’s role in power sector management came about at the invitation of the elected prime minister Nawaz Sharif. In an admission of his government’s incompetence at public administration, which foreshadowed his own government’s removal in a coup the following year, Nawaz Sharif asked the Pakistani army to take over the management of electricity distribution companies in order to reduce theft. IESCO and the other distribution companies had serving army personnel assigned to them, including at senior management levels. The chief executives of the distribution companies were replaced by brigadiers on deputation from their usual military assignments.

The residents of 44 Quarter responded to the disconnection of their electricity supply by forming a committee to approach the brigadier in charge of IESCO. The gist of the argument they put to the brigadier was that if they were not allowed kunda connections, they should be allowed legal connections.

My informants at 44 Quarter feel no qualms about the kunda connections. Liaqat tells me that, “It’s our right [to electricity]. If you won’t give it to us, then we’ll take it like this.” Another informant states that it is “inevitable, in this heat” that people will get electricity connections however they can.

The 44 Quarter residents see electricity as something fundamental for decent living, to which they, too, should have access, and their appeal to the brigadier was on largely humane rather than legalistic grounds. The meeting of the 44 Quarter residents’ committee with the IESCO brigadier went well.

The compromise reached by the parties was that 44 Quarter would be served by a few documented meters, but that all the wiring and management of the system beyond the meters would be the responsibility of the residents. This decision served IESCO by ensuring that 44 Quarter residents would pay for their electricity consumption and met the needs of 44 Quarter residents by ensuring their electricity supply.

These arrangements, however, are distinctly an exception to the rules, which define a consumer as “a person or his successor-in-interest who purchases or receives electrical power for consumption and not for delivery or re-sale to others, including a person who owns or occupies a premise where electrical power is supplied.”

The provision of electricity for delivery and resale to others is the job of a distribution company. The brigadier’s decision contravenes these rules, but IESCO’s consumer services manual limits service provision to applicants who can provide “ownership proof of the premises”, and it thus cannot be provided to individual katchi abadi residents so long as the regularisation process is incomplete.

In the absence of NOCs and legal individual connections, the committee representing residents of 44 Quarter accepted the compromise of communal metering. The residents of 44 Quarter would be allowed a single communal connection at commercial rates (higher than domestic rates).

The committee managed the process and the money for connecting the several hundred households of 44 Quarter to the communal meter. Shoaib was a member of that committee (he mentions that the brigadier was a ‘very nice person’) and tells me that his inclusion was on the grounds that he is considered educated.

Shoaib lives in 44 Quarter and is employed by the residents’ committee to manage the billing and maintenance of the electrical system. He says, “The committee met for two-three days [prior to the negotiation with IESCO]. They formed a constitution for the committee (I asked to see this later in our conversation, he smiled and said that they made it once upon a time and that no one knew anything about it now).”

The committee members are the respected elders of the community. Shoaib has, in fact, taken on many of the functions of the distribution company. He manages billing, collects the money, gives receipts, keeps records, and also handles the maintenance of 44 Quarter’s electricity system. Shoaib does many of the same tasks a subivision officer would. He also handles situations where there is difficulty in paying bills.

44 Quarter prints its own bills with instructions on the back for making payments. Paying in instalments is not unusual, and sometimes the committee can reduce the bill somewhat. Strictly commercial arrangements are also not observed for churches and those individuals whom the committee deems needy and worthy of help. Instead, the moral underpinnings of the collective organisation for service delivery are reflected in the departure from commercial logics.

Each household is charged a fixed amount based on an assessment of the household’s consumption. I ask how they determine the charges for each household. Shoaib says he knows every house on every street. They are “like a family.” He knows everyone’s name, and his paternal grandfather’s name. We have no formality in going to each other’s houses. Paying for extra facilities (fridge, a motor for pumping up water) costs up to extra 300 per month.

Shoaib is confident that he knows the ins and outs of every household. His deep local knowledge is essential to keeping the communal system going. The residents of 44 Quarter have mobilised on the basis of collective solidarity and make their claim for service delivery on a moral basis.

They do not exercise purely commercial reasoning in determining how much each household must pay. Instead, assessments are based on Shoaib’s intimate knowledge of each household. Shoaib attributes his position to his good character and reputation.

IMAGINING RIGHTS

Sharing of a common meter is also present in 75 Quarter and 50 Quarter (two other katchi abadis in Islamabad where I interviewed residents), but their committees have been less scrupulous than Shoaib. Collection for the municipal electricity bill is handled by a leadership committee, comprised of katchi abadi residents. Neither in 75 Quarter nor in 50 Quarter was anyone able to explain how the current leaders obtained their position or describe what was entailed in being a “leader”.

Their inability to explain the nature of a leadership position suggests a lack of a formalised process for selecting and changing leaders. Rates in 75 Quarter are higher than in 50 Quarter, but 50 Quarter has accumulated arrears worth approximately two months of billing.

One resident of 75 Quarter suggested that members of the katchi abadi leadership committee were embezzling some of the money. Another informant chided me for being so naive as to think that the 44 Quarter leaders were not also embezzling the committee funds.

Even in 44 Quarter, the communal system has not always worked out well. The communal meter must be put in someone’s name, which creates the opportunity for that person to take advantage of their position. Liaqat told me the following story based on 44 Quarter’s earlier experience with communal metering, which predated the current solution:

“A committee of about 20 people got together to choose the person whose name the meter would be put in. That man had not even a cycle to his name. He was a government employee, went to work wearing slippers. Now he has cars. He’s become a big-shot. This is Pakistan. Who has money is king. 44 Quarter residents brought legal suits against him, but we’d talk and he’d use his money to get away free.”

Liaqat sees how the communal system that now serves them well was once an opportunity for a member of their own community to exploit the residents of 44 Quarter. In his eyes, the legal system offered them no recourse to justice against someone with substantial resources.

In their quest to formalise their land tenure rights and secure service delivery, the residents of 44 Quarter have engaged with various political actors in a very pragmatic manner.

Liaqat tells me, “We’re not with any political party. We work with whoever is in power.” Through their different contacts — activists, academics, politicians, and also foreign embassies — the katchi abadi dwellers bring to bear whatever pressure they can on the CDA to complete the regularisation to which they are already committed.

Liaqat proudly tells me of how the 44 Quarter residents secured a majority of votes for the candidate they backed at their local polling station. The delivery of votes is an exchange for political representation in a purely transactional sense, with no regard to party platforms.

The residents of the katchi abadis used the language of rights more than anyone else I spoke with in Pakistan. In the blunt terms of Liaqat, “With a meter you get rights.” He adds, “We’ve spent hundreds of thousands of rupees on our houses, but there’s no benefit. When you have rights, you benefit if you invest in your house. With a proper road you could get a car in. That would be very valuable.

“After plotting, only 300 houses would be possible. Some people would be moved away. The Capital Development Authority initially offered [the outskirts of Islamabad], but that is too far away. Each household has three to four earners to sustain it. Their jobs are in Islamabad, the commutes would cost too much.

“The Capital Development Authority board has the plan for approval. It’s almost done. After plotting [regularisation], everyone will get No Objection Certificates. Each plot will have value. No problems with authorities in getting gas and electricity connections on our own.”

Liaqat is acutely conscious of the material benefits that can accrue from formal land titles. He hopes that the shady dealings with state officials will cease. His approach is entirely consistent with neoliberal arguments for the importance of property rights, which draw on [Peruvian economist] Hernando de Soto. Far from challenging the status quo structures of power and domination, it is a middle-class aspiration.

In some instances, katchi abadi leaders exploit institutional failures to extract rents of their own, adding one more obstacle to service delivery for the squatters. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the world of formal rights exemplified by a personal electricity connection takes on the appearance of an escape from these webs of exploitation and patronage.

However, a more careful look at the experiences of those with established formal claims on electricity services exposes just how unreal the social imaginary of citizenship with recognised rights is.

THE CHALLENGING TRANSITION TO FORMALITY

Unfortunately, many of the 44 Quarter residents who have succeeded in getting a toehold in the world of formal rights via an electricity meter in their name, have come to regret it.

Although IESCO’s compromise with the residents’ committee to provide electricity to 44 Quarter through communal metering is a functional solution (every household in 44 Quarter has electricity), it is viewed as second-best by the 44 Quarter residents. The communal arrangements notwithstanding, the 44 Quarter residents have continuously pushed to try to regularise their katchi abadi and secure the right to have individual meters for electricity supply.

A local NGO has been at the forefront of these efforts, chiefly in engaging with politicians and activists in putting pressure on the CDA to complete the process in a timely manner. 44 Quarter has been surveyed twice by the CDA. Households identified in the survey are noted by the CDA as residences with rights to municipal services.

Liaqat tells me that, for meters approved after the second survey, the demand notices (the distribution company’s equipment orders for the connection of new premises) were issued five years later, and that it was 18 more months until the meters were finally installed.

The money for these demand notices was given by a member of the National Assembly out of their official budget for development projects. Liaqat’s explanation for the delay is that the distribution company employees resisted because it would reduce their monthly earnings from the communal meters. Nonetheless, Liaqat and the 44 Quarter residents’ fight for individual meters had partly been won by the time of our meetings.

When some individual meters were installed in 2009, 44 Quarter residents were told by an IESCO officer that they would regret it and that they would want the old shared meters back. That prediction was borne out in 44 Quarter in many cases.

An individual meter can be a mixed blessing, as it requires a greater degree of direct dealing with the distribution company. The buffer from a communal meter is gone, and so are the protections that come with it. The experience of having an individual meter for a house is described to me by Adam, a young man of about 21 who is working in a community- based organisation in 44 Quarter. Adam’s family had received an unreasonably large bill exceeding 10,000 rupees:

Ijlal Naqvi (IN): What happened in the [IESCO] office?

Adam: The first man I went to see sent me to another one. The next one sent me to another one. He told me that there was no meter assigned to our house. I said then how are we getting a bill? He told us that they’ll check it out. That they’ll come and see if the meter is working properly. They said there’s a leak in our house, that the electricity is being wasted.

Liaqat: How can you have a leak with electricity? This isn’t a gas pipe.

Adam: They are taking the money from us in instalments. And the next bill came to 7,000. So we switched back to the shared meter, which is 1,200 per month. And now our bill from the meter — which we aren’t using — is 75 rupees. We aren’t the only ones. Our neighbours have complained about high bills too.

IN: There must be a form you have to fill in to complain about your meter.

Adam: I don’t know what form it is. They didn’t give me any form. We aren’t educated enough that we can deal with IESCO.

Adam and his family were poorly equipped to handle the challenge of dealing with the state on its terms. Although Adam describes himself as insufficiently educated to deal with IESCO, he tells me that he passed his Matriculation (10th grade) and, in conversation with me, is reasonably confident and able to express himself.

Nonetheless, the opacity of the process at the distribution company office and the behaviour of the distribution company staff are enough to deter him. Adam tells me that his family is resigned to paying this bill that they cannot afford and did not incur. Their retreat to the communal system is a retreat to a system where they will be protected from state officials’ efforts at predation by Shoaib and the other committee members.

A related experience to the abandonment of an individual electricity meter comes from some households from Islamabad katchi abadis who were relocated as a result of the regularisation process. These families were given small plots of land in the residential sectors of Islamabad, including the relatively well-off area of F-10. These families took possession of the land, but most of them sold their properties and returned to katchi abadis in Islamabad.

The choice to sell the land to which they had formal title in order to return to katchi abadis throws a different perspective on the value of formal rights and also the state’s responsibility to continue to provide such regularisation programmes to katchi abadi residents.

[American anthropologist] Matthew Hull reports a related set of circumstances, with villagers on the outskirts of Islamabad being compensated when they are relocated as a result of the city expanding, only for them to anticipate city planners by moving to the next area where expansion will take place in order to seek out further compensation.

The decision of the relocated katchi abadi residents to return to informality suggests that the programme for their relocation was poorly conceived. On the other hand, these families were best placed to judge how to manage their resources, and their actions suggest that living with a cash windfall and returning to informality can be preferable to having formal rights.

Nonetheless, in all the fieldwork and other interactions I had concerning electricity in Pakistan, the katchi abadi residents were the only people to invoke regularly a language of rights.

What are rights worth in this context? Formal rights seem to be worth very little. Claim-making on the state through formal channels is an exercise in frustration. Power relations (sometimes reduced to wealth) dominate proceedings, making it difficult to claim an entitlement, regardless of the black letter law underlying the claim.

The natural right to basic necessities is more compelling in achieving a compromise solution to the impasse between the electrical utility and the squatters, who are prevented from formal access to a service they are ready and willing to pay for.

These excerpts are slightly modified from the original and are being published with permission from the author and the publishers Oxford University Press from the book Access to Power: Electricity and the Infrastructural State in Pakistan

The author is an Associate Professor of Sociology and the Associate Dean for Curriculum and Teaching at the School of Social Sciences of Singapore Management University.
He can be reached at ijlalnaqvi@smu.edu.sg1

Header image: The opacity of the process at the Islamabad Electric Supply Company’s (IESCO) office and the behaviour of IESCO’s workers (pictured above) leaves many residents of Islamabad’s katchi abadis with a sense of abandonment | All photos by White Star

Published in Dawn, EOS, December 24th, 2023