Roads and rulers

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif thinks big especially when it comes to construction works and notably road-building. His two previous tenures in government have left behind mega road projects, including the motorway which winds its way across the country and the dramatic expressway linking Islamabad to Murree, which aids travel up to the hill station but which experts argue has come at an enormous environmental cost to the already damaged hillsides of the area.

The commercial value of the MI and M2 motorways have also been questioned, though there can be no doubt that they have brought benefits, notably to towns falling along it and also to at least some categories of commuters.

It is also a fact that we need development projects, both to serve people and generate jobs. But things seem to get out of hand when the prime minister puts on his thinking hat – or is it in fact a crown since the PML-N is looked at by the Sharifs as a kind of personal fiefdom?

His past aspirations to glory are also well documented: in 1998, Sharif had pushed through a series of constitutional amendments, culminating in a bid to overturn the civil code, impose Shariah law and declare himself Amirul Momineen. The legislation had made its way easily through the National Assembly where the PML-N held a two-thirds majority, and was only thwarted in the Senate in January 1999.

This love for the grandiose seems at times to extend out from beyond the realms of common sense. The new ‘dream project’ conjured up by Sharif and his team seems to fall into a rather alarming world of fantasy. As reports go, Sharif has chaired a meeting at which a $12 billion project was approved, apparently intended to build a ‘mirror’ city of Islamabad, expanding the capital over some 25,000 acres of land. News accounts say the Capital Development Authority has already begun acquiring land. A company has been approved by the CDA to carry out the project. It entails, apart from the new city, a plan to widen the Islamabad Highway – stretching from the Blue Area in Islamabad to Rewat in Rawalpindi, and to build a new airport at Rewat.

The Islamabad Highway is apparently to be re-modelled along the lines of the plush Sheikh Zayed Avenue in Dubai, with tall commercial plazas lining it. ‘Imported’ ideas, it seems, in the minds of our leaders are always best. Lahore, already bowing under the weight of the tons of concrete that now stand over it in the form of bridges and roads, is after all bizarrely to be turned into Paris. The city’s own character, beauty and historical inheritance are evidently not good enough. We do not know from where power will be obtained to light the buildings along the ‘Sheikh Zayed Avenue’ and can only hope the replication attempt does not also involve palm trees.

Islamabad has abundant natural beauty, but the lure of palm trees has in the past proved irresistible and we have seen this species of flora wither away under the winter frost of Islamabad and Lahore, for which it is ill-suited given the fact it is essentially a desert plant.

But putting all this aside, what threatens to turn the PM’s dream into a potential nightmare for many others is the plan to ‘link’ the two Islamabads that are to stand on either side of the Margallas via a tunnel dug through the hills. Senator Mushahid Hussain, who represents the federal capital in the Senate, has already moved an adjournment motion seeking urgent discussion on this most peculiar of ideas.

Boring through the band of hills which look down over Islamabad would damage their beauty and ecology. A violation of multiple rules is also involved given there is a bar on construction in the Margalla Hills National Park. No approval was sought from the Planning Commission or the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council and no NoC obtained from the Environmental Protection Agency. Senator Mushahid has pointed this out in his adjournment motion while environmentalists are also asking what the costs would be. The matter has been taken notice of by the SC which will no doubt discuss all its aspects.

The questions come even as CDA bulldozers are said to be on the ready to begin work on this new mega project. The haste is almost impossible to understand. Why in a country like ours where there are so many other needs would anyone wish to embark on quite so ambitious a project at this time, especially one that not only involves extraordinarily huge sums of money but would also undoubtedly damage the beauty of Islamabad and the ecology of the area around it?

Roads may look good in some ways from the eyes of rulers, who see them as monuments which will stand forever; but in many ways they do nothing to better the plight of the people, especially when they involve tunnelling through hills or other activities of a similar nature. It has been suggested that the purpose of this tunnel is also to connect Haripur and other areas lying beyond it including Gilgit-Baltistan, Abbottabad and Mansehra with Islamabad, giving people from these parts quicker access to the federal capital. But it is hard to understand why they would wish to get to it quite so quickly, particularly since other perfectly adequate roads already exist to meet their needs.

The benefits of the expansive project are also unclear. Money would be earned by selling off plots in the ‘new’ Islamabad and through the plazas to be built along the Sheikh Zayed Avenue. But is this enough to justify what is planned? Why has there not been more discussion on quite what the whole idea involves?

Would it not be wiser to spend the scarce money we have on schemes that can truly uplift people in the short term by bringing development activity into villages and focusing on repairing the many farm-to-market roads as well as streets in poorer urban areas which currently lie in a state of disrepair?

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com