THE scent of flowers was overpowering: not a whiff of sewage anywhere. With
its lining of shrubs and climbing plants, the alley looked clean and tidy and
just visible nearby stood a large TV satellite dish. Indoors, men pored over
engineering plans and women worked at looms and sewing machines, making shopping
bags and saris for markets from Lahore to London. Could this really be Orangi,
the infamous squatter settlement in Karachi that made the news last year as the
scene of political riots and dozens of shootings by drugs mafias?
Next week鈥檚 UN conference in Istanbul will look closely at what to do about
鈥渕egacities鈥� and the collapse of effective urban government. High on the agenda
are the squatter settlements where governments leave hundreds of millions of
poor people to fend for themselves, often without the most basic services. The
conference will hear that the urban population of developing countries has
increased sixfold in the past 50 years, that 200 million city residents do not
have safe drinking water and 350 million have no basic sanitation. And the
problem is getting worse. By 2015, nine of the world鈥檚 ten largest cities will
be in the developing world.
Among them will be Karachi: a typical, chaotic metropolis. Fifty years ago,
some 400 000 people lived there. Today, there are 10 million, and another half
million arrive every year. Most join the 4 million people who live in illegally
built squatter settlements. In some areas, people live five to a room and 20 per
cent of babies do not make it to their first birthday. Infectious diseases such
as typhoid are on the increase.
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At the same time, Karachi鈥檚 political structure is in meltdown. The national
government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has forced many of the city鈥檚
political leaders, members of the Mohajir Quami Movement, into exile. Crime and
corruption are rife. The city has some 1 million drug addicts and its bus
network is alleged to be part of a money-laundering operation for drugs cartels.
Over the past two years, some 1500 people have died in riots. Government has
palpably failed, says Arif Hasan, a leading city architect and World Bank
consultant on urban affairs. 鈥淭he authorities cannot provide anything here any
more. The formal sector is defunct.鈥�
Urban revolution
But if the UN conference hears about Karachi, it will also hear about Orangi,
the city鈥檚 biggest squatter settlement with a million inhabitants. And the news
will be good, for riot-torn Orangi, which perches on a hill in the city鈥檚
northwestern suburbs, is also home to what many see as the world鈥檚 most
successful experiment in improving the lot of poor urban people. Behind the
experiment is a research organisation called the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP),
which operates with little government help and often refuses foreign aid. Its
work may hold lessons for many megacities, especially as more governments,
national and local, lose the ability to provide basic services for their poorest
citizens.
It all began with some simple technology and some revolutionary politics. In
1980, Akhter Hameed Akhan, a retired schoolmaster and sociology professor,
accepted a request from Aga Hasan Abadi, the boss of the then-prospering Bank of
Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), to investigate ways of making Orangi a
better place to live. Akhan found people who were 鈥減oor but not destitute鈥�. They
lived in single-storey homes made out of concrete blocks. They had some piped
water supplies but no sewers and had to empty their bucket latrines into the
narrow alleys鈥攐r lanes鈥攅very four or five days. 鈥淭he children were
playing in filth. Typhoid, malaria, diarrhoea, dysentery and scabies were
rampant,鈥� says Akhan.
Neighbourhood organisations had lobbied politicians for sewers, without
result. Akhan鈥檚 conclusion was devastatingly simple. 鈥淚t was clear that the
municipal authorities would never be able to build sanitation for the poor. They
were too feeble and corrupt,鈥� he says. 鈥淔oreign aid was unlikely to help because
it would become lost in the deep pockets of unscrupulous local contractors,
leaving the poor to pay the bills. There was only one solution 鈥攖o find
ways for the community to solve the problem itself. It was a difficult
transformation. Giving up hope, in a way. But psychologically, it was a
revolutionary step.鈥�
Akhan鈥檚 creation, the OPP, set about reducing costs by developing simplified,
standardised sewer designs and cutting out greedy contractors. To begin with,
researchers looked at soakaway drains, which simply let water soak into the
earth, but the city鈥檚 high water table meant that these soon overflowed into the
lanes. They also considered open sewers. These removed the sewage but hardly
solved the public health problem. The only real option was one that outside
engineers dismissed as impossibly costly鈥攗nderground sewers.
Starting point
鈥淲e decided to forget many of the existing technical standards,鈥� says Perween
Rahman, director of the OPP鈥檚 research and training. 鈥淲e changed the technology
to suit the social situation.鈥� One crucial innovation, she says, was to install
a simple septic tank between each toilet and the sewer, so that only liquids
reached the pipe. This saved the local streams from the worst pollution and
prevented the sewers becoming blocked.
Another innovation was a new design of manhole, smaller and simpler than
conventional designs. The OPP designed and provided shuttering so that local
people could cast them in situ. The new version costs 拢6,
one-tenth of the price charged by outside contractors for conventional designs.
New manhole covers, meanwhile, were made from concrete, not metal. The added
weight prevented people from lifting them to throw rubbish into the sewers.
鈥淲e researched the problem, found we could make the system work, and then
began calling meetings of local masons working in the lanes to share our
discoveries,鈥� says Rahman. There were no grants and no subsidised demonstration
projects. Akhan and his helpers, mostly university students, simply encouraged
householders to band together to install sewers at their own expense. Lanes with
typically 20 to 30 houses began to come forward for help. They elected lane
managers who collected money and organised labour and materials. 鈥淭he OPP
doesn鈥檛 handle the money at all,鈥� says Rahman. 鈥淲e insist it鈥檚 their project,
not ours.鈥�
UN consultants who visited Orangi in the early days 鈥渇ound everything wrong鈥�,
says Hasan, who has long been a project consultant. 鈥淚t had no targets, no
surveys, no master plan.鈥� Instead, Orangi鈥檚 sewer network was constructed
piecemeal, as individual lanes organised themselves for construction, starting
with those near the streams and working up the hillsides.
In the early 1980s, the UN began its own scheme in Orangi, based on a master
plan and using conventional contractors. With a bloated bureaucracy, poor
workmanship and inadequate maintenance, it collapsed within five years, with
just 35 lanes served. But in 15 years the OPP has encouraged the citizens of
Orangi to install 94 000 latrines, connected to almost 5000 underground lane
sewers and 400 secondary drains that carry wastewater to local rivers.
Residents have spent just over 拢1.2 million on sewer installations. The
OPP鈥檚 outlay has been 拢70 000 on research and development and training,
largely paid for by the BCCI. A typical family, with an average income of
拢30 a month, bought an indoor latrine connected to a functioning lane and
secondary sewer for 拢20. Upkeep costs, to clear blockages and replace
broken manhole covers, are around 10 pence a month. And that maintenance
work鈥攖he bane of most engineering development projects鈥攔eally is
carried out. 鈥淭hey are maintaining their investment as well as their lanes and
their health,鈥� says Hasan.
Having developed better sewers, the OPP moved on to houses, many of which
crumbled away because of weak building blocks. It worked with local block
makers, teaching them to improve the quality of their concrete by increasing the
amount of cement in the mix and keeping it moist as it set. The OPP put up
posters to educate the residents as well as the masons, so that they too could
play a part. 鈥淚t is common to see lane residents pouring water on the joints and
manholes during construction,鈥� says Hasan. It also developed a block-making
machine that raised output, lowered costs and increased the strength of the
blocks.
The OPP has diversified still further, helping to set up private schools and
clinics, which provide inoculations for children and advice on family planning
and health education for women. This in a community in which many women are
still sold into marriage and not allowed to leave their houses, watch television
or read the Koran. At the OPP鈥檚 headquarters, groups of traditional midwives
receive training in giving family planning advice. 鈥淭he state ignores these
women, yet they attend most births in Pakistan,鈥� says Rahman. 鈥淭hey are also the
country鈥檚 gynaecologists. We try to develop their skills.鈥�
This approach is typical of the way the OPP works. Rather than impose
solutions from outside, it looks at existing services and asks how it can help
to develop them. It researches a problem, offers training and spreads the word,
mostly through young students. The organisation receives enough money from a
variety of charitable, government and international sources to pay its 40 or so
staff. But it turns down offers of money for the OPP itself to build or set up a
project. This is against its philosophy. 鈥淲hat you pay for directly you will
look after,鈥� says Rahman. 鈥淎nd subsidies for some create community conflicts.
Everybody wants one and self-help ceases.鈥�
One of the few programmes that the OPP does manage itself is a credit scheme
for some of Orangi鈥檚 20 000 small businesses鈥攊ts Pathan motor engineers,
Indian sari-makers, Baluchi masons and Sindhi labourers. Lack of credit is a
major stumbling block for poor entrepreneurs. In Karachi, no banks will lend
directly to Orangi enterprises, so the OPP borrows money from the banks and
lends it to businesses at commercial rates, but demands no collateral. Its 4000
clients have so far borrowed more than 拢1 million, mostly for enterprises
employing half a dozen people or so. There is little red tape and few strictures
about health and safety or child labour. But a fifth of the credit clients are
women, many of them stitchers making shopping bags, dusters and kitchen towels
for Europe. The credit has allowed them to invest in better looms and to form
cooperatives so they can sell direct to exporters, cutting out the
middlemen.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a bond of trust. We cut through the endemic corruption and default
mentality of the country,鈥� says Anwar Rashid, president of the credit trust. Bad
debts are down from 20 per cent in the first year to around 2 per cent today.
Evidence of the growing faith that people have in the OPP emerged last June when
Orangi was in the grip of gangsters, and the police put the entire community
under siege. Even during the unrest, says Akhan, the credit trust was getting
back 拢20 000 a month from small-business creditors.
Improving health
In each of the four main areas of life in which the OPP works鈥攈ousing
and sanitation, health, education, and employment鈥攖he contribution of
official agencies is very small, says Akhan. The public sector provides no
housing here and very few services. Only a tenth of schools and health clinics
are state-run. The state pipes water to most areas, but supplies are
intermittent, quality dubious and pressures usually low. Donkey-drawn carts
still ply the lanes selling water. Rubbish is rarely taken away by the city
authorities from the designated collection points. 鈥淕arbage collection is one of
our next projects,鈥� says Rahman.
In spite of or perhaps because of the failure of public services and their
substitution by the private sector, Orangi is on the up. Despite the absence of
state schools, literacy rates among the young are over 70 per cent, twice the
national average. And with sewage banished from the streets, health has also
improved dramatically. Infant mortality fell from 130 per 1000 live births in
1982, at the start of the project, to 37 per 1000 in 1991. Last year, an OPP
study examined the health of people in Orangi and Thikri, a squatter settlement
to the southwest of Karachi with no sewers and little organised preventive
health care. It found that the percentage of couples using family planning in
Orangi was nine times as high as that in Thikri. Rates of illness in Orangi were
half those in Thikri, and spending on doctors was just one-fifth. In Thikri,
almost 20 per cent of babies die before their first birthday鈥攆ive times as
many as in Orangi.
As governments have become marginalised, the OPP has met its greatest threat
from gangs linked to political parties. 鈥淲e have avoided control by the
political and drug mafias,鈥� says Rahman. 鈥淏ut we do have to pay bribes and
pay-offs quite often.鈥� Worse still, Mehboob Shah, a local organiser from a
settlement called Welfare Colony, said that he spent a week unconscious in
hospital after being poisoned by drug dealers he had dared to oppose. And Raza
Sahab Iftekhar Ahmed, an Orangi blockmaker, was in despair because protection
gangs鈥攃onnected, he said, to local political parties鈥攚ere demanding
thousands of building blocks from him in return for not destroying his
business.
Branded
Not long ago Akhan himself was branded the 鈥淪alman Rushdie of Karachi鈥� by
mullahs from outside Orangi. 鈥淭hey wanted to hang me. I was accused of
blasphemy. But the local mullahs backed me and nobody in Orangi would carry out
the execution.鈥� The campaign against him was orchestrated, he said, by a former
manager of the OPP credit programme whom he had sacked for corruption.
In many respects, the OPP has become the local government in
Orangi鈥攆lexible, pragmatic and innovative, where the state is slow,
hidebound and corrupt. Akhan is convinced that this is the model that other
cities must now follow. 鈥淭he collapse of government here is very deep and
probably irreversible. The old socialist model that everything will be done for
the people has failed. The old institutions are dinosaurs that will decay and
die. The new institutions, the vital bodies that can get things done, are
arising out of the squatter settlements.鈥� He believes that central and municipal
governments will cede control of most urban services, other than the largest
components of infrastructure such as treatment works and trunk water supply.
鈥淭he state authorities promise to provide most services, but they fail. In
future, communities will provide most services for themselves.鈥�
The lesson of Orangi has reverberated round the world. The poorest people can
and will pay for services that city authorities regard as too expensive, too
complicated, or simply too much trouble to provide. And they gain from the
experience. 鈥淲e have broken out of the dependency culture,鈥� says Rahman. 鈥淲e
oppose subsidies. We say you can鈥檛 rely on other people. It鈥檚 your problem, you
must solve it.鈥�
What is more, this approach is being copied by other Karachi settlements. In
the small Balouch Colony鈥�250 houses close to a new four-lane highway and
sandwiched between two middle-class housing developments鈥攎en once assumed
they would be pushed aside by developers. New 杏吧原创 found them
sitting in their fly-blown caf茅, poring over a detailed map of a new
sewer line installed the previous week to replace a choked-up corporation sewer.
They planned and supervised the construction themselves, guided by one of their
own, Shakiel Karmal, a student being trained by the OPP. Now they plan to offer
the neighbouring middle-class community use of the sewer, in return for a share
of their clean water supply.
Spreading the word
In nearby Manzour, a settlement of 70 000 people, the residents have built
their own main sewer, and, in Welfare Colony the locals drew up plans and
supervised work to cover over a sewage-filled creek. And the OPP鈥檚 brand of
technical innovation and social organisation is now being repeated in Lahore,
Faisalabad and other Pakistani cities, mostly through other organisations
advised by the OPP. Aid agencies, from the World Bank to Britain鈥檚 Water Aid,
queue up to help. Is this, they wonder, the urban development model that has
eluded them for so long?
There is plenty of hyperbole about the rapid growth of megacities (Forum, 9
March, p 48). But the plight of the urban poor in places such as Karachi is real
enough. And in many countries besides Pakistan, national governments and city
authorities are losing ground in their efforts to meet these needs.
David Satterthwaite of the International Institute for Environment and
Development in London, author of a major study of urban problems for this
month鈥檚 conference, says the 鈥渇ailure of governance鈥� is a near-universal
feature of Third World cities. He sees 鈥渃itzen and community action
outside the state structure鈥� as the key to reversing the decline.鈥�
Politicians fret. Is this kind of pay-your-own-way self-help a right-wing
nirvana or a socialist utopia? In Orangi, such political distinctions become
meaningless. But with the notion of governments as universal providers being
eroded everywhere, from Kentucky to Kettering to Karachi, then maybe people
everywhere must learn to live like the squatters of Orangi.