The national poet Allama Iqbal quoting a ‘hadith’ told the Italian dictator Mussolini that “when a city expands beyond control, a new city at some distance should be created to avoid a lot of social and control problems”.

In this column we discuss about people, places, things, and faces. That is what life is about. Some time it is useful to take a broad view of life as it has emerged in Lahore. When we study the way Lahore has expanded, it is shocking to say the least.

When the British took over and carried out a detailed survey, the population of the city in 1901 is recorded as being 186,884. Thirty years later in 1931, it was 400,075. In 2017, the population had shot up to a staggering 11,126,285. In the year 2024, it stands at an unbelievable 14,407,000.This in mathematical terms is an annual average increase of a staggering 62.4 per cent. If we assume that each family has an average of seven (7) persons, this makes Lahore a two million family city. With the utter failure of our family planning programmes over the years, this trend is most likely going to continue.

Just how has Lahore coped with this crazy population growth. We can see that in our youth the city ended before the Lahore Canal came. The FC College was far away and even the River Ravi was beyond the green fields. Beyond the newly created Samanabad were forests, as it was beyond Model Town. But the real population growth has been within precincts or mohallahs or specialised areas.

Let me narrate the picture of places where we have resided, and recently visited much to our shock. We initially lived in Lover’s Lane on Masson Road just behind Ganga Ram Hospital. The road was named after Charles Masson (1800-1853), the East India Company archaeologist and explorer who discovered Harappa. The road is now termed Masonne Road and Lover’s Lane is called Lower Lane. So much for history and our literacy rate. Just an extra word about Charles Masson. On the wall where the Buddha at Bamiyan in Afghanistan existed before the Taliban blew it up, is written the lines: “If any fool this high samootch explore; Know Charles Masson has been here before”. Imagine. But back to the houses in Lahore. As you entered Lover’s Lane there were five huge houses on the left side, and five on the right. The first house was of a recluse widow who used to beat us with a small stick if we pinched her guavas. Next was of Miss D’Souza a school official. She gave us boys grim looks always, just why one has never been able to understand. Then was of house of Haji Abdul Rehman, whose son Asad remains my best friend. Mr. Rahman, an amazing soft-spoken gentleman, and an astute businessman sadly lost a lot of his businesses because of the events of 1971 in Dhaka. He used to tell us about the Khaksar Movement of his youth. Then was the huge house of the lawyer Qazi Sahib and his large family. The last house on the left was our residence as well as that of Mr. Shafiq. It was an almost an acre large. Instead of five large houses today there are 21 small houses with five flats. On the right side was a two-acre house of the Zafar family, where lived four families and the Ansaris lived in the massive upper portion. Then came the house of the Maliks and the railway high officer Khwaja Hamid Hasan. Next was a two-acre housing of five houses for railway Anglo-Indian engineers. Beyond that was, lastly, probably the largest house, was a Christian monastery. The ‘servants’ told us tall stories of the priests and the nuns. Today these five spaces have 32 houses. But then we moved to Rattigan Road, where existed the Parsi Temple and the massive house of a well-known person by the name of Colonel Ata, the famous mountaineer. The lane had a total of nine massive houses. Now comes the shock. Today that huge space has 173 houses, flats, and shops. Examples of this sort just shows how the population is trying hard to fit into the confined spaces already available. But even the newly-built Gulberg was planned as a residential area. Then suddenly the current prime minister declared the entire Gulberg as commercial. The mess started off and continues. For some money is everything.

Take the example of the recently built Defense Housing Authority houses. The pressure of money has started creeping in as commercial outlets slip into residential abodes. The growth of a city in terms of qualitative living is there to judge. In a land where the rule of law exists in words only, all sorts of illegalities manage to find a way. The defenders of our borders are now the largest property owners. The question is that is there any law regarding population density in terms of its housing? Does the law not restrict the expansion of Lahore as a city? Does any law exist regarding the green spaces that are compulsory given area and numbers? The interesting thing is that there are international laws regarding the number of trees per person living in a confined space. But who bothers about the laws, local, national, or even international. The fact remains that our rulers have no regard for those who are relatively poor.

The condition of Lahore can also be judged by different parameters. How many playing grounds of different types are there given a population of 14 million. The law says that there should be one playing field for every 20,000 persons. That means 700 playing grounds. The official numbers are near 71, and even they are empty dusty one except for a few green ones.

Given the environmental concerns, Lahore should have at least 24 million trees, or just three per person. The official figure is just 2.4 million. No wonder even the air is filthy. Besides a few remarkable monuments, we as a city have failed miserably in the way our people live. Do our rulers of every ilk bother about these matters? The answer is a massive NO.

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2024