Amazing buses of Amazing Karachi

Prepared by: Shaista Rehman

Majority of the Karachiites have close acquaintance with the public buses plying on the roads of Karachi city. Apparently these buses are tawdrily decorated with a lot of stuff like strings of colorful beads hanging from the roof in endless loops, various colours of Parandas (Tied threads used by women for hair dressing particularly in the villages) and wind shield framed with “Chamak pati” along with the brilliant artistic work for instance, peacock with its erectile fan like feathers, pigeons and flower vases. The title of the bus is usually written on red hearts painted on the windscreen. The bus drivers are worthy of true appreciation who can easily see through these foggy windscreens. On the right top over the steering are a set of buttons, for different loud Motor-horns. The driver sounds the horn repeatedly to warn the pedestrians and other vehicles to get out of his way. Sometimes the horn button is broken and to use it he holds two exposed wires together.

The estimated population of Karachi is 15 million whereas the number of registered Buses & Mini buses is 20,810. The number of buses is much less than the demand consequently, these buses are often over crowded and according to a survey report about 35 passengers compete for one bus seat. These overloaded buses are tilted to the left side and increase the chance of dropping their passengers on the road particularly when they take peril turns. The bus conductor(bus boys who collect fares) facilitate the passengers by continuously shouting and announcing the names of the bus stops because the passengers are unable to see their own body parts in these over thronged buses. During summer season these suffocated buses get worst when the smell inside becomes unendurable. The bus never stops any where for passengers, bus driver only slows down the bus. The passengers have to actually jump in or out of the bus. As soon as their feet are off or on the bus the conductor taps the gate and it picks up the speed once again. There are only four conditions which can stop these supersonics and that are :

The driver sees a cop on the road side.

1. If there is a traffic jam.
2. The driver needs to take a rest.
3. When the “Red light” of traffic signals turn on.

Women are 52% of Pakistan’s population but only four seats are allocated for them in the public buses including one over the engine. In spite of the less number of seats and space available for females, male passengers sometimes occupy this compartment as well. The most uncomfortable seats for women are those whose backs are attached to the men’s compartment because women on these seats are usually molested by poking fingers and groping hands. To avoid these harassments the women have to keep their back straight and sit on the foremost part of the seat, no matter how uneasy this ride may be. Besides this, the women ought to dress up conservatively while traveling through these public buses because different untoward remarks are waiting for them on the bus stop and in the bus. Almost all the women keep their faces towards the windscreen in order to avoid eye contact with the men at the back because most of them stare the ladies continuously throughout the ride.

Moreover, those people who daily depend on public buses for transportation are fortunate enough if they reach home safely without facing any mishap. Bus accidents make thousands of people passed away, crippled or injured each year. Bus overturned, bus flipped over, bus fell down while crossing the overhead bridge/Fly over are constant streams of bus accidents. There is no solid information about how exactly this deadly problem is. Although bus accidents have certain common denominators that are: Speeding, reckless passing, failure to obey traffic laws, overworked & exhausted drivers racing each other to pick up passengers.

The driver is the single most lethal ingredient in this recipe for catastrophe. Inadequate training or no training is a major problem. They begin as bus conductors and then learn by watching the driver who is himself not skilled, pick up bad habits and then get to drive themselves. Most of the drivers are paid according to the number of passengers they pick up each day. As a result, bus drivers are required to work long hours and take drugs to stay awake. The inordinate pressure on drivers to pay vehicle owners a daily fee result in driver fatigue, sleep deprivation, overloading, reckless driving and high speed. Nevertheless, sometimes for the sake of pleasure these bus drivers run a race with each other particularly when they see the bus of the same company. This competition between the drivers encourages unsafe driver practices such as speeding, jumping signals and dangerous overtaking of other vehicles. These factors turn the vehicle into death traps, with high rates of involvement in fatal road crashes.

Buses are often kept going as long as possible and effectively run into the ground. Maintenance requirements are spotty, substandard tyres, missing rear lights, mirrors or windscreen wipers are very common. The damaged roads of Karachi city are also contributing in making the conditions of these public buses more miserable. However the main contributory factor of crashes is speed. Constant traffic jams for hours irritate and embolden the drivers to violate traffic laws and reach their destinations in shortest possible time. The passengers also feel good whenever the driver moves the bus expeditiously and he has been cursed by the public when he stops the bus for long or slows down the speed. For the reason that people want to get rid of these troublesome buses as early as possible.

Government really does not know how many of the masses are suffering in these public buses. People have an absolute right to reasonably safe public transportation. They should be treated as human beings and should not be filled out in the bus as chickens in the cage. According to an official of the ministry, there are 12,000 old buses and coaches currently plying on the city roads. The official said that in 2005-06, the federal government had accepted a proposal for the procurement of 8,000 CNG buses for Karachi to help resolve its transport problem. However, the ministry is reluctant to impose a ban on old buses as it could aggravate the already serious transport problem in the city. Meanwhile, transporters have vowed to resist the proposed ban on their old buses and coaches, and demanded compensation from the Sindh government on the plea that this would help them purchase new buses. They have also proposed that soft loans be extended to them by the Sindh government for the purpose. They argue that the old buses have served the pubic transport system in the city over a long period of time without any government support.

Few years ago the government had started a new bus service the UTS and the Green Buses, which were centrally air-conditioned and bigger than the normal buses. It had been announced that these buses would not carry more passengers than their seating capacity. The government had promised to run 1500 UTS, green buses in Karachi but the number of these buses is still less than 800. Unfortunately, these buses have become nightmares just like the rest of the public transport. The air conditioners don’t work and they are as over crowded as the other modes of transport with at least fifteen people clinging outside the bus.

Our Government should take necessary steps and the responsible officials ought to focus their attention rightly on the person behind the steering wheel. The drivers should be taught technical skills to be safe and responsible professional, higher salaries and limited working hours would be beneficial in this regard. There should be penalties for driving under the influence of drugs. In the meanwhile, the owners must maintain their vehicles adequately and the old damaged buses should be replaced by the new ones. Passengers should discourage the dangerous driving practices and need to understand that it is better to wait than worry. Female passengers should be given respect, equal rights and any unethical action should be avoided and condemned by the male passengers. Furthermore, the revival of Karachi Circular Railway may also provide better transportation facility to the people of Karachi and can minimize the traffic problems of the city.

http://storyofnation.com/articles/amazing-buses-of-amazing-karachi/

Holbrooke praises Pakistan’s progress against Taliban

ISLAMABAD: President Barack Obama’s special envoy to Pakistan praised the country’s ‘very significant’ progress in taking back key areas from Taliban militants and said the US would provide more weapons for the fight as well as badly needed economic aid.

Richard Holbrooke began an official visit Sunday but heavy rain forced him to postpone a trip to the northwestern Swat Valley, a US Embassy official said on condition of anonymity citing embassy policy.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees have begun to return to the valley after the military declared it had mostly driven the Taliban from control of the area.

Holbrooke told reporters travelling with him Saturday that the Pakistani military’s success in ending the Taliban’s takeover of Swat was a sign of progress, along with the reported death of the militants’ leader, Baitullah Mehsud, in a CIA missile strike Aug 5.

‘I cannot tell whether the Taliban have been destroyed or dispersed as a result of this operation until I go myself,’ he said. ‘But one thing that is quite obvious is that security forces regained Swat and Buner from the Taliban, which itself is very significant.’

The Taliban takeover of the valley — a scenic alpine enclave that once boasted Pakistan’s only ski resort — had become a symbol of the extremists’ expansion in the country of 175 million.

Holbrooke said the US planned to provide more helicopters and other equipment such as night-vision goggles to the Pakistani military to aid the fight, as well as give economic help for the cash-strapped government.

Pakistani forces have been winding down their three-month offensive in Swat but still face pockets of militant resistance and violence.

On Saturday, a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into a checkpoint, killing at least five people. It was the first suicide attack in Swat since July, when the government said its forces had mostly driven out the Pakistani Taliban from the one-time tourist area in its largest offensive against the militants in years. Hundreds of thousands of the roughly two million people who fled during the fighting have been returning amid tight security.

The suicide attack came a day after Swat residents who had come home staged celebrations of Pakistan’s Independence Day, waving flags and beating drums in a government-sponsored show of normalcy. In some places, women danced in the streets — an act of defiance, since the hard-line Taliban banned women from public during their rule over the valley.

Pakistan has said troops will remain in Swat until the fighters of Mullah Fazlullah — a notorious Taliban leader whose thousands of followers are blamed for the violence — are eliminated. Although the military says it has killed or captured a number of Fazlullah’s commanders, he has evaded capture.

Saturday’s suicide attack showed that the Taliban still can strike periodically, though they probably won’t be able to retake any territory as long as army stays in Swat, political and defence analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi said.

‘It is a strong message from Taliban. They want to convey that it is not over,’ Rizvi told The Associated Press. ‘They want to show that they are not sleeping, and they cannot tolerate people, including women, going into the streets and dancing as happened yesterday on Independence Day.’ – Dawn

The Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity – BJP’s Jaswant revises Jinnah

VIEW: BJP’s Jaswant revises Jinnah —Karan Thapar

Courtesy: Daily Times

Jaswant Singh’s view of Jinnah is markedly different to the accepted Indian image. He sees him as a nationalist. In fact, the author accepts that Jinnah was a great Indian. I’ll even add he admires Jinnah and I’m confident he won’t disagree

There’s a book published tomorrow that deserves to be widely read and I want to be the first to draw your attention to it. It’s Jaswant Singh’s biography of Jinnah. Read on and you’ll discover why.

Jaswant Singh’s view of Jinnah is markedly different to the accepted Indian image. He sees him as a nationalist. In fact, the author accepts that Jinnah was a great Indian. I’ll even add he admires Jinnah and I’m confident he won’t disagree.

The critical question this biography raises is how did the man they called the Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity in 1916 end up as the Quaid-e-Azam of Pakistan in 1947?

The answer: he was pushed by Congress’ repeated inability to accept that Muslims feared domination by Hindus and wanted “space” in “a re-assuring system”. Jaswant Singh’s account of how Congress refused to form a government with the Muslim League in UP in 1937, after fighting the election in alliance, except on terms that would have amounted to it’s dissolution, suggests Jinnah’s fears were real and substantial.

The biography does not depict Jinnah as the only or even the principal force behind Partition. Nehru and Mountbatten share equal responsibility. While the book reveals that Gandhi, Rajagopalachari and Azad understood the Muslim fear of Congress majoritarianism, Nehru could not. If there is a conclusion, it is that had Congress accepted a decentralised, federal India, a united India “was clearly ours to attain”. The problem: “this was an anathema to Nehru’s centralising approach and policies”.

Jaswant Singh’s assessment of Partition is striking. After asserting that it “multiplied our problems without solving any communal issue”, he asks: “if the communal, the principal issue, remains…in an even more exacerbated form than before…then why did we divide at all?” The hinted answer is that no real purpose was served.

Jaswant Singh, however, goes further. He accepts that because of Partition the Muslims who stayed on in India are “abandoned”, “bereft of a sense of real kinship” and “not…one in their entirety with the rest.” And he concludes: “this robs them of the essence of psychological security”.

But that’s not all. He does not rule out further partitions: “In India…having once accepted this principal of reservation (1909)…then of partition, how can we now deny it to others, even such Muslims as have had to or chosen to live in India?”

Where the book compares the early Jinnah and Gandhi, the language and the analysis tilt in the former’s favour. At their first meeting in 1915, Gandhi’s response to Jinnah’s “warm welcome” was “ungracious”. Gandhi insisted on seeing Jinnah in Muslim terms and the implication is that he was narrow-minded. Of their leadership, the book says Gandhi’s “had almost an entirely religious provincial flavour” while Jinnah’s was “doubtless imbued by a non-sectarian nationalistic zeal”.

Finally, in terms of their impact: “Jinnah…successfully kept the Indian political forces together, simultaneously exerting pressure on the government.” In Gandhi’s case “that pressure dissipated and the British Raj remained for three more decades.”

Unfortunately, I can’t assess the reliability of Jaswant Singh’s viewpoint. I’m a journalist not an historian. But I can assert that it’s courageous and probably a valuable corrective. We need to see Jinnah without the hate or prejudice of the past. It may be uncomfortable to accept suppressed truths but we can’t keep denying them.

This book will stir a storm of protest, perhaps most from Jaswant Singh’s own party. He realises that. But it did not deter him. Let it not put you off.

The writer is a leading Indian television commentator and interviewer

Source- http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20098\16\story_16-8-2009_pg3_3