All projects are equal, but some are more equal
A public transport revolution has been claimed in the city of Lahore with the inauguration of the Rs 30 billion Metro Bus Service last Sunday. Minor accidents, multiple near misses and jam-packed buses have been the order of the first three days since the service was inaugurated as government officials have begun to sing the chorus of ‘conspiracy’. Seven buses were sent to the docks for “minor” repairs on the first day with over 800 people arrested for various “violations” of discipline.” Only 20 of the 45 buses were functional with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz MPA incharge of the project admitting that a number of buses were not being run for “fear of the people”.
The chorus sung by this particular legislator-cum-project manager reeks through the entire Metro Bus project. It is a strange logic via which a project that was been charioted by the Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif as “pro-people” is now being saved from “the people”. The discourse of the benevolent ‘developers’ and the ill-disciplined, jaahil awam has been pandered about amongst the middle classes and PML-N wallas. “Oh, look how organised this looks, this is exactly what Lahore needed,” are the words spoken by people who shall neither travel on the buses nor bear the cost of the piling of the province’s meager funds into a single bus route. Let us cut to the chase and be brave enough to say: “This is exactly what Lahore did not need.”
The sheer jahalat with which the project was executed aside – although one should take out time to count out the number of violations that went into making the project possible in paperwork and on the ground – the project fails to fundamentally challenge the city’s public transportation trajectory. In fact, before we go on to discuss alternate public transport proposals, let us begin to count the violations that took place.
For a project on which work began one fine day in March 2012 without a legally mandatory Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report – or even any form of public disclosure whether such a project was in the pipeline, claiming transparency was never going to be easy. Moreover, to avoid the mandatory approval from the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC), since rules dictate a provincial government must seek approval for a project worth over Rs 5 billion, it divided the MBS into six projects, and approved them individually. When the first public hearing for the project was finally held on March 30, the project was reported to have been ‘slammed’ by citizens. Asked about the actual problems faced by disabled or elderly commuters, TEPA officials preposterously suggested they could cross the main Ferozepur Road to reach the bus stops. The escalators plan, worth another Rs800 million in the budget, was added as a result of this public criticism.
Added on to it was that almost all public utilities across the rapidly changing bus route (the elevated highway was a later innovation, we are told) were being dug out, laid and relaid again. One official at WAPDA in charge of the process told this writer his team would be given new instructions “midway into a relay” and “be sent to the same spot the next day”. No environmental protection measures were taken, as dust filled the air of the entire city, and smoke from motor vehicles clogged the city roads. Moreover, labour laws were also flouted, with no protection available to workers for over a thousand workers working on the route. There was no separate fund existing, no helmets, gloves, with hundreds of injuries being reported on a daily basis, and one of the safety inspectors having suffered crushed legs from falling debris. The human cost of the project shall never be calculated nor the number of deaths reported. Of course, the criticism the project received did not mean the provincial government ever revised its plan, let alone admit that there were serious flaws in how it was going about it. Add on to that the fact that businesses and people’s properties were demolished at will and compensation was doled out also at will.
Somehow, despite all these violations on the part of the government, we are expected to believe that the motorcycle rider crossing the buses route through the metal grills, or, the man who jumps onto the one-metre high doors, is the jahil in the picture. This is a classic case of so-called ‘development’ being imposed on a city’s people and a great deal made out of it. The fact that the Punjab government undertook no consultation means it has no basis to claim that this particular MBS model was what the ‘people of Lahore’ wanted. Of course, one also has to ask: why is the Punjab government taking a decision the Lahore government should take?
Furthermore, one cannot see the MBS project as separate from the various other ‘developments’ being enacted on to re-configure Lahore’s road infrastructure: the Multan Road widening, the Canal Road widening, the Kalma Chowk flyover, the Kalma Chowk underpass, the Muslim Town flyover, Garhi Shahu road renovation, MM Alam Road widening and so forth – all of which were built almost in parallel. In fact, the current MBS infrastructure construction falls in line with an earlier plan to create an elevated expressway on Ferozepur Road for which Rs 250 million were sanctioned for a study in 2008. In constructing the current MBS route coupled with two flyovers on the same route, the chief minister has killed two birds with one stone: instead of just an elevated expressway, an elevated bus path was created, while the rest of Ferozepur Road serves as an expressway for all practical purposes.
One would also suggest that the MBS project cannot also be seen outside the PML-N’s wider practice of the semi-privatising public service provision in Lahore. This process includes the creation of the Lahore Waste Management Company, Lahore Transport Company and more recently the Lahore Parking Company. Defined and registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as ‘private, profit-making’ companies, these are operating as government-run subcontractors for multinational service providers, with the board of governors for each made up of sitting MPAs, the DCO and Commissioner for Lahore, and the CEOs serving DMG officers.
This brings us to the question of financial transparency of the project. Does anyone know where the money for the project is coming from? And, if, as the Punjab government claims, it is funding the project from its coffers, why has a preferential Turkish bidder been selected, instead of inviting an open bid, or running the system itself? What is the nature of Turkish involvement in the project, whose own Metrobus (Istanbul) has been facing questions of its own? And frankly if the Punjab government is indeed paying for the MBS, then why is a Turkish company going to be subsidised by as much as Rs 1 billion a year to run it for half a decade? Somehow, despite laying down a Rs 30 billion infrastructure and promising unilateral subsidies to the Turkish company, both the company and our chief minister have insisted that the MBS is “not about making money, but about brotherhood”.
If the Rs 30 billion cost figure provided by the Punjab government is taken at face value then it is equivalent to almost 50 percent of the entire province’s transport budget: a measly Rs 63.5 billion has been allocated for the entire province. Compared with the Rs 16.5 billion health budget and Rs 25 billion education budget, both of which are expected to lapse by at least 20 percent or more (as is usual), the amount of money put into the project is lavish, if not wasteful.
This is not to suggest that Lahore, a city of 10 million people and a growing population of cars, did not need a revamp of the public transport system. The point rather is that there were much more apt proposals that were put to the current Punjab government, including a visit in 2008 by the former Mayor of Bagota, who pitched a public transport overall: to increase walking spaces, shrink major roads and create a designated-lane MBS with much lower cost. The Bagota model had emerged after the rejection of a Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) proposal to build a multi-billion dollar rapid mass-transit system. The same JICA that was rejected in Bagota has one of the key advisors on the Lahore transport plan and Master Plan since the 1990s, including the current period. That suggests that the project is less revolutionary and more of the same that opinion makers are imagining it to be.
If one may make a prediction from its first few days of operation, Lahore’s Metro Bus Service has kicked off as a bit of a circus and a safari ride, and shall end up as a labour quarry as soon as ticket fares are charged. The Khadim-e-Aala’s promise that “the rich and the poor, bureaucrats and ordinary citizens, the chief minister and the voters, all will travel in these buses” is already fading fast. It goes without saying that the dearth of public discourse about urban planning in Pakistan is such that inviting a foreign company to run 45 buses on a purpose built route at the cost of Rs 30 billion is being considered a ‘revolutionary’ step in public transport. One may only hope that the high and mighty too – for the poor would have no other choice but to – take CM’s advice and step aboard one of the Metro Bus joyrides.
The writer is the general secretary (Lahore) for the Awami Workers Party. He is also a journalist and a researcher, with a focus on urbanisaton and law. He can be contacted at: hashimbrashid@gmail.com