Builders’ Mafia

Almost a year ago to the day I wrote an article about how Karachi's
most famous shop was fleecing it's customers. That's right folks, I'm talking
about Aghas and I'd just like to tell those of you who are stuffing your
face with homemade chocolate chip cookies right now that you probably paid
an extra hundred percent for them. I spent a day last week looking for
prunes, in most stores they were out of stock but Aghas had them (of course)
and were selling them for a whopping RS 250. The next day I went to another
store across the road and found the same item for Rs.120. Just goes to
show, intelligent urbanites look at both sides of the road before crossing
the cash register.


Great and exciting things have been happening in this blighted city
of lights. Just yesterday there was dancing in the streets and mithai being
distributed at every street corner. A cause had been won, PTV khabarnama
had admitted Karachi existed and gave it not one, not even two, but at
least SIX minutes on the 9 o'clock news. The only drawback was that all
you could see of the city itself on the news clips was bits of concrete,
and even those were partially, well, mostly, hidden behind a multitude
of fat Punjabi men nodding in tune to the PM's latest speech. All together
they bore a striking resemblance to a troupe of wandering Humpty Dumptys
lined up on a wall just begging to be shoved down and shattered. He was
in town to inaugurate the new Fatima Jinnah Bridge. For all those in the
Cantt area it facilitates movement from one congested stretch of the road
to another. According to the PM's much hyped plan soon all of Karachi will
be easily accessible to it's inhabitants through a state of the art network
of bypasses, arteries and circular ringworms. I mean ringroads. What this
means is that soon YOU too will be able to look out of your living room
window and wave back at the people in the rail carriage passing outside.


I've spent the last one month looking at apartments. Old apartments,
new apartments, big apartments, little apartments, apartments you can live
in, apartments you can live out off i.e. roughly the size of a suitcase,
and I've come to the following conclusions. Ninety percent of builders
operating need to undergo countless sessions of reality therapy. The men
(and women) behind most new apartment architecture seem to be under the
impression that the every human being is a closet contortionist, capable
of living in the most cramped and twisted of spaces. From a slightly different
perspective it is enough for some to just be able to live in an apartment
of their own, living comfortably is a different matter altogether.


This is where the element of criminality creeps in. A lot of the builders
don't bother doing a good job with things like layout and legality once
they actually have the money in hand. There seem to be two dominant camps
in the Karachi building circles, one is made up of memons and the other
by forces as mysterious can be i.e. take their name and you'll be chewed
up and spit out faster than you could say "da PM is a ganda anda". The
memons have an interesting way of operating. Lets say 19 pan chewing old
men gather in a bolster lined room and decide to contribute a certain amount
to one bank account. They then find a 20th partner and hand him 'the keys
to this kingdom' if you like. This last man contributes no money on his
own but is totally responsible for planning, executing and gathering in
the proceeds of the real estate project they have just initiated. His silent
partners are just that, silent and faceless, their names are not on any
papers hence their shadows never fall on the walls of the courtroom where
the project will eventually culminate; in a confrontation between the builder
and the people he has hooked in (bookings) and cheated. If worse comes
to worst, the man in the front line will take the money and run. Rumor
has it that there are a few honest builders left in the country, but nothing
short of DNA testing will help the hapless public identify them.


Once the project has been started and the customers realize it is not
proceeding according to the plan that was delineated for it, the builder
starts a complicated exercise in delay and pitfall. The first is jurisdiction
claim. Karachi is divided into many districts and municipalities, most
of which have a different planning commission/building authority and different
rules. For example ground plus three might be ok in one area but illegal
in another. In other cases the problem is not with handing over possession
but whether the height of the building is in violation of building laws.
In crowded inner city areas this spells disaster for inhabitants and environment
alike. In other cases the buildings are built on land obtained under fraudulent
pretence and originally meant for public parks etc.

First the customers have to run from pillar to post trying to figure
out whose jurisdiction the incomplete (but shops have been handed over)
project falls under. There he will meet an incredible amount of (in the
words of Gerald Durrel) 'mentally defective penguins' masquerading as public
officials who are in the pay of the builders and do their best to dissuade
him from objecting. Potential claimants face all kinds of intimidation.
If he has the time and the money (improbable) he will take the builder
to court for not fulfilling his obligation. Due to the cracks in the façade
of our judiciary he will probably be six feet under and his great grandson
in diapers before a verdict is pronounced. And this is just the first rung
in the ladder of legal recourse. It is a brave man (or woman) who has the
courage and the dedication to fight for what should be a basic right.


Two such men have lately been targeted in a most underhand manner by
the notorious ’builders mafia'. Roland D'Souza of SHEHRI and Ardeshir Cowasjee
have lately been the objects of public attack through a campaign of harassment
of the basis of their being non-Muslims. Both have been instrumental in
highlighting several well-known cases of buildings raised in violation
of law (and common sense) in crowded areas in Karachi. Others have raised
these objections though publications and forums but they have been pinpointed.
The tactic is to attempt to undermine their credibility by playing up the
'minority' angle, thereby suggesting their objectivity is in some way hampered
by the fact that no one yelled an Azaan into their ears at birth. Cowasjee
has even been called an agent of a global Jewish conspiracy and 'the brother
of Clinton" (which is way insulting nowadays), while Roland D' Souza has
been castigated for his supposed role in an attempt to foster chaos in
the interests of international anti-Islamists. Both have been receiving
threats and have been pilloried in public. It is admirable to say the least
that neither of them has allowed this ugliness to shake their resolve.


Who is behind this? They shall, of course, remain nameless. They have
posters and banners put up in the dead of night, they start rumors, incite
hatred and sit back and watch with satisfaction as the more neanderthal
among them react with blind rabidity to the possible insult to all that
is holy. If confronted they will deny everything, and they are never stupid
enough to do the dirty work themselves. The burden of stupidity in this
case rests firmly on the shoulders of those who are actually swayed by
jingoistic rhetoric. The people who believe that D'Souza is the spawn of
Satan and Cowasjee the bride of (a Jewish) Frankenstein are to be pitied
for there is nothing in the book that justifies their reaction. More at
fault are the clerics who let emotion override reason and money swamp piety
and exploit the faith their congregation has in them (silly though they
may be) by encouraging sectarianism.


Mr. Cowasjee did not seem overly impressed by the latest attempts to
silence him. He has been writing his weekly columns for days now and has
taken on everyone and everything from Presidents to Pop groups. Judging
from the accounts he shared with us the latest attempts at intimidation
are a little bit like using a tweezer to stab an elephant. He says his
phone has been tapped from 1948 and his life periodically scrutinized by
people who don't take kindly to criticism but 'life goes on'. He joined
us for dinner one night and was the only person in the party of eight who
didn't run inside when firing started at the end of the street where we
were. He sauntered leisurely, looked at the stars and all but stopped to
sniff the flowers. For many this diminutive, brutally honest and straightforward
man embodies the spirit of free speech. Similarly Roland D'Souza is simply
an honest man trying to fight for what will ultimately benefit us all.
Sitting by and letting amoral low lives attempt to manipulate public sentiments
might well be the final nail in this coffin of this apathetic nation. Write
to newspapers, email the PM (you might get a 'I went to the IMF and all
I got was this lousy T-shirt' for free), speak out.


It is ironic, mullahs are going blue in the face calling for the Shariat,
Sunnis are slaughtering prominent Shias and vice versa, educated jahils
are blaming the Hindus, and a Christian and a Zoroastrian are fighting
for the rights of a populace (majority Muslim) who by and large lacks the
courage to advance without being led.