The city broken by design

2026-02-01 - 22:36

THE fire at Gul Plaza was not merely a tragedy, it was a mirror. Once again, Karachi was forced to look at itself and what stared back was not just charred concrete or lost lives, but decades of political abdication disguised as governance. Predictably, the aftermath produced a familiar spectacle, a war of words between the MQM and the PPP, two coalition partners at the federal level, trading accusations over who ruined Pakistan’s largest city. The blame game may be loud, but it is also deeply dishonest. Karachi is home to an estimated 24 million people, making it one of the largest urban agglomerations in the world, larger than Istanbul, Paris or London. It generates over 20 percent of Pakistan’s GDP, accounts for nearly 55 percent of federal tax revenue, and handles 90 percent of the country’s maritime trade. And yet, by almost every global urban metric, safety, liveability, transport, housing, governance, it performs like a forgotten provincial town.This contradiction is not accidental but structural. In the immediate aftermath of the Gul Plaza fire, the MQM accused the PPP of ‘chronic misgovernance’, pointing to Sindh’s long rule as evidence. The PPP responded by invoking MQM’s violent past in Karachi. Both arguments are true and therefore meaningless. Karachi’s decay is not the failure of one party, but the cumulative outcome of shared irresponsibility by every major political actor that has held power at the centre or in Sindh over the last three decades. The PPP has been ruling Sindh for nearly 20 years. In that time, Karachi has seen cosmetic infrastructure projects, fragmented authorities, and a persistent refusal to empower local government. Key urban functions such as water, solid waste, transport and building control remain hostage to provincial ministries and bureaucratic silos. Even the Asian Development Bank, in its 2024 assessment, bluntly noted that ‘the devolution of funds and functionaries to the city has been poor’. The MQM meanwhile cannot absolve itself by pointing fingers. During its years of unparalleled dominance, it did not institutionalise governance but personalised power. Karachi was ‘managed’ through shutdowns, coercion, extortion and land mafias, the long-term costs of which the city still pays. Political control substituted for urban planning, and fear replaced civic accountability. Other national parties are no less culpable. Jamaat-i-Islami, once Karachi’s mayor under Naimatullah Khan, delivered visible civic improvements but eventually receded from the city’s political scene, leaving little lasting impact on its governance. PML-N’s focus has traditionally remained anchored in Punjab, despite public interest in Karachi, the party never made a concerted attempt to expand its political footprint in Sindh. PTI despite winning the majority of Karachi’s National Assembly seats in 2018, remained largely absorbed in social media theatrics, emerging as one of the city’s most disappointing and ineffective political custodians. In Karachi, politics is more about extraction than governance. Against this backdrop, the suggestion by some quarters to place Karachi under federal control is not just misguided but dangerous. It violates the spirit of the 18th Amendment, undermines provincial autonomy, and risks reigniting ethnic and political tensions in Sindh. More importantly, it evades the real issue that Pakistan does not suffer from too much devolution in Karachi, but from almost none at all. Globally, cities of Karachi’s size does not function as administrative afterthoughts. Istanbul, with a population comparable to Karachi, has a powerful metropolitan municipality with fiscal authority, integrated transport planning, and city-wide land-use control. London elects a mayor with control over policing, transport, and strategic planning. New York City, once synonymous with urban decay in the 1970s, revived itself through empowered local governance, professionalised municipal services, and predictable revenue streams.Even in the developing world, lessons abound. Jakarta tackled chronic flooding through metropolitan-level coordination rather than fragmented agencies. Medellín, once one of the world’s most violent cities, transformed itself by integrating transport, housing, and social policy at the city level not by blaming provincial or national governments. Karachi’s problem is not complexity butbottomless fragmentation without accountability.Today more than 20 federal, provincial, and semi-autonomous bodies exercise authority in Karachi, often overlapping and contradicting one another. No single elected officeholder can be held responsible for the city’s failures which is precisely why they persist. Fire safety lapses, illegal constructions, unsafe commercial buildings, and infrastructure collapses are symptoms of this diffusion of responsibility. The solution is neither federal takeover nor political mudslinging buta real local government reform. Karachi needs a fully empowered metropolitan government with real fiscal autonomy, a directly elected mayor with control over planning, transport, water, waste, and building regulation, and guaranteed revenue transfers tied to its population and economic contribution. The city must have unified land-use and building control to prevent disasters like Gul Plaza, and professionalized municipal services insulated from partisan interference. Most importantly, Sindh and especially the PPP must let go of the reflex to govern Karachi from the Secretariat. Cities are not run from provincial capitals, they are run by those who live in them. Karachi does not need sympathy. It does not need slogans. It does not need to be ‘taken over’. What it needs, as every thriving global megacity does is power, accountability, and trust in local democracy. Until Pakistan’s political class finally accepts that truth, fires will keep breaking out, and so will the excuses. —The writer is PhD in Political Science, and visiting faculty at QAU Islamabad.