Slave Drivers and Street Vendors

While driving through Empress Road a petrifying scene attracted my attention that compelled me to pull up and watch over. It was really shocking. In a ding-dong fight the City officials were veritably frittering away the victuals and seizing the pushcarts of the luckless vendors. Under the supervision of a petty official behaving like a dummy god of the City government, the economic and physical assault of the vendors, destroyed their dignity and conviction only for being unlicensed.

The view reminded me of such instances as hackneyed during apartheid or colonial regimes. It clinched an argument that the same Pakistan that is earnestly engaged in war against terrorism, at street level follows Machiavelli.

City officials regularly quell vendors to mental and physical pressures. At times this has led to riotous situations, loss of property, and monetary damage. A major problem is that master plans prepared for our cities do not collocate space to vendors. The planners blindly imitate the western concept of marketing, ignoring our traditions and the needs of the unemployed youth, particularly in the wake of rising crime and terrorism. No wonder, weekly markets struggle to survive; natural markets are ignored. The policy statements of the local, provincial and federal development authorities talk of making provision for trading and commercial activities, which unfortunately is interpreted as doing so for rich traders and big businesses.

We have taken no notice of the ignorance of City workers, their misuse of authority and inadequacy. Consequently, their treachery, lust, covetousness, and every kind of inhumanity and cruelty, continue unabated.

Street vendors are those millions who come to cities as economic refugees hoping to provide basic necessities for their families. They provide a wide array of commodities to the urban populace at reasonable prices. They can be divided into two major categories—(a) mobile vendors who own pushcarts or simply move around with their goods in hand and (b) stallholders who set up khokhas in public places on a more or less regular basis.

The variety seen in the goods and, yes, the services provided by these innovative professionals is staggering. It is difficult not to associate these people with the culture and traditions of the city.

The type of goods they sell makes an interesting study – from daily needs like vegetable, fruits, fish, meat and snacks to occasional needs like ready-to-eat food, toys, and used garments. It would be hard to find an urbanite that doesn’t purchase something from these vendors. The middle and lower class consumer specifically prefers to purchase from them, though even well heeled citizens purchase many commodities given reasonable prices.

Vending has been a profession since time immemorial, with street vendors an integral part of our urban history and culture. Shopping and marketing, in a traditional sense, has primarily been informal. Social interaction is integral to our markets in contrast to the mechanized and sterile concept of shopping favored by modern market and super market structures.

Street vendors exhibit remarkable entrepreneurial skills. Purchasing of commodities is no easy task with constant market fluctuations. Merchandise has to be in sync with both consumer tastes and paying capacity. As most vendors deal in perishables, the goods have to be sold at the right time.

The municipal corporation laws, based on 19th century British rule, are outdated and detrimental to the peaceful conduct of business by vendors. Instead of regulating vendors, city governments treat them as a nuisance; their policies and actions are aimed more at removing and harassing them rather than at regulation. The rich traders have encroached sidewalks, footpaths and even roads, which the same authorities ignore. Why? The law only seems for the poor who are unable to grease the palms of the incompetent functionaries.

Every government in Pakistan comes with tall claims for poverty alleviation but unemployment continues to exist. Street or sidewalk vending provides self-employment and small business ownership opportunities to the downtrodden. Entrepreneurship is an exciting opportunity for the poor to realize their full potential while becoming financially self-supporting. Our planners remain oblivious to the role of vendors who are victimized, harassed, marginalized and deprived.

The city has today become an engine of growth, the main job provider. Just the same, they remain ill prepared to address the problems of poverty. Planning and governance continues to be the preserve of the politician-mafia-bureaucrat nexus. Poorly tailored policies if at all exist are badly implemented. Instead of creating an enabling environment, government policies are wrecking the livelihoods of these people, depressing their incomes and thwarting their entrepreneurial potential.

There is unabated official and social hostility towards the informal sector of street vending, even though the formal sector has ceased to grow, having reached saturation point. As the cost of creating jobs in this sector is very low, it needs to be integrated into the context of the overall macro-economy. However, we must first remove the obstacles in its functioning.

There is no institutionalization of a process to enable vendors to sell their commodities peacefully. A holistic approach targeting all the stakeholders demands changes in anti-vendor laws, a pro-vendor policy, creation of institutions to enable participation of vendors in urban governance, changing the mindset of the planners, the police and the society at large, and building the capacity of the vendors.

Pakistan’s social system must cater to the needs of its members to enable them to survive; it must have effective means of allocating and distributing resources. The government should thus formulate a policy by (a) giving vendors legal status and issuing licenses at nominal yearly fee, (b) setting up of mobile teams for spot licensing (c) promoting and developing the natural market system, (d) making street vendors a special component of the plans for urban development by treating them as an integral part of the urban distribution system, (e) setting up appropriate, participative, non-formal mechanisms with representation from street vendors, NGOs, local authorities, the police and others. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

The Local Government System

A vision of local government (LG) in the future addresses two fundamental questions: why is LG necessary; and how will it secure the skills and capacity to do its job well. City planning thus involves the anticipation, so far as practicable, of all the city's future needs, physical, social, and financial. It seeks to turn the lessons of the past to the profit of the future.

Increased attention is now being given, the world over, to the improvement of the fundamental influences affecting city life. This new solicitude has been inspired by the extraordinary growth of cities, by the steadily increasing complexity of urban relations, and by a better appreciation of the fact that contented citizenship is largely a matter of congenial environment. The enterprise is today known as city planning—an endeavor to transform the modern community into a safer, more convenient, more healthful, and more attractive place of human abode.


The new system of local government indeed superbly excellent, despite initial years of its implantation, continues to sail in troubled waters. Most key officials are yet to understand the new situation providing a dominating role to the locally elected members in running the affairs of the city government. With this ambiguity we continue to see tons of uncollected trash, broken roads, and contaminated water supply and sewerage system in ghastly conditions. Many problems remain to be solved—securing clarity and understanding about the concept by all stakeholders. Still much work still has to be done.

The councils were elected on non-party basis to avoid conflict in service delivery. Sadly, not only the conflict continues to exist but cooperation is also absent. The development of LGs has also created a dearth of trained manpower, particularly in finance and planning, information technology, law and literacy groups.

Contrary to the concept of LG, the prevailing corrupt culture has thrown consumers of services at far end, with no say, whatsoever. The Council members receiving kickbacks from infrastructure projects, display large banners in self-praise and thus trying to create false impressions of their good work. Local projects are conceived not on preference basis, but on the amount of sweetener the elected representative will get. Thus the representatives elected by people turned out to be the guardians of their own private interests.

Among the varied activities of the modern city few are more intimately related to the daily life of the people. To safeguard the public health in any large community is a task of the first magnitude. But it is an indispensable public undertaking, for health is the greatest single factor in personal efficiency.

The modern city throws off an enormous amount of waste material from day to day. The total is sometimes as much as a ton daily per head of population. This waste consists of a great variety of things namely, rubbish, garbage, and sewage. Rubbish and garbage may become a health menace under certain conditions by increasing the number of rats, mosquitoes, flies and other insect carriers. The LG must engage private sector in handling these issues.

If the most imperative need of a modern city is its water supply, the next in point of urgency among its daily requirements is the removal of waste. A modern community could endure for a season without pavements, street lights, parks, telephones, or street cars; and it might conceivably struggle along for a time without schools, police, or fire protection; but without water and sewerage it would find the greatest discomfort and inconvenience within twenty-four hours. Public sanitation is therefore entitled to a place at the top of the list among the essential industries of every large community. It may be briefly defined as the art of removing all objectionable wastes in the most unobjectionable way.

The street plan of the city determines the configuration of its growth and development, including the general uniformity or variety of private structures. Nearly all the physical aspects of municipal administration are in some way or other related to the public thoroughfares, and it is for this reason that the fundamental importance of street planning, street construction, and street maintenance can hardly be exaggerated. In the modern city one-third or more of all the land area is dedicated to street use.

The Nazim occupies a position of great visibility, and constituents have high expectations about the leadership that he ought to deliver. He is viewed as the problem-solver-in-chief in city government. Unfortunately, despite the available power and authority, his honor has failed to get things done. The incumbents are more concerned in pseudo publicity rather than real work. They need to learn that only service to people matters. They will win hearts of people when they will solve their real problems. False publicity only promotes cynicism.

EDOs are professionals, and skilled civil servants. They have adopted a policy leadership role as well as implementation of programs, delivery of services, and management of resources. Though still somewhat ambivalent about this new role, they bypass the LGs for provincial governments on many important issues, including preparation of budgets.

LG should be seen as an asset rather than a potential threat. It is not defined as a delivery agent for federal or provincial government. It is another democratically elected tier of government, with the strengths and responsibilities that come with a democratic mandate.
Bureaucracy should accept this changed situation.

Cities in Pakistan are under increasing pressure to find effective ways to meet their problems and respond to the needs of citizens. With diminishing outside assistance, officials in city government are challenged to determine the purpose and direction of their government and to generate the resources to carry out their mission. They must not only find more revenues locally to address their problems, they must also discover the resources within themselves to give leadership to their city, provide quality services, and manage shrinking budgets with greater efficiency. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

Cutting out the future of Lahore

After a process of evolution our local government system has devolved power at the doorsteps of local communities and as part of this arrangement, Lahore today has an elected Nazim (mayor) and elected council. Lahore is a wonderful city of a great historical interest. Not just the intellectual grandeur of the city is charismatic but also the well-endowed cultural heritage. In the same breath, owing to its fast track urbanization, Lahore lends out and out challenges and opportunities to the Lahore District Nazim, Amer Mahmood. He needs to look and see how to invent Lahore’s future. Implicitly and explicitly, it is high time for making local democracy work for the residents of this old city.

For making Lahore a futuristic city, it needs leadership in action—leadership that anticipates change and harnesses it to positive advantage. The city requires strength in diversity, partnership, and citizen participation, which Amer Mahmood must offer. He needs to innovate, create and lead. The city must have a destiny to sustain. The challenge is to make change our friend, not the enemy.

Amer Mahmood must be deeply involved in making and reviewing policy for transforming Lahore into a city of future. It will work best if he also respects the roles, expertise, and goals that elected and appointed officials bring to city governance. They should sit down together and develop relationships that work in this term. It is also time for the city to take greater responsibility for its economic future.

He should work with the Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry to explore how City Government can more effectively participate and partner in shaping Lahore’s economic future. The two institutions can focus on substantial issues and work together on a strategy for change and reform.

For making Lahore a modern city it should welcome the information age while providing ways for people to come together. Besides technology initiatives Amer Mahmood should push off policy initiatives and thus help people connect. This should create opportunities and places for people to gather. The city of Lahore to prosper in the 21st Century needs to improve its capacity to deal successfully with the new international context. The most successful will be closely connected to the rest of the world—through trade, transportation, technology, education, arts and culture. Indeed, the future promises dramatic and significant life style choices for exercise and connection.

Civics of the 21st Century will be more about relationships between people than about structures of government. The key is to get people talking and working together across the boundary lines that traditionally divide and diminish a community.

We expect from Amer Mahmood to offer the leadership that reaches from neighborhood to region to global. There are important and timely opportunities for thinking and acting outside of the box.

We need a new approach to transit in Lahore. Increasing traffic congestion is a fact of life. We cannot build our way out of the problem. Any solution must include improved rapid transit.
Amir Mahmood should plan a process to design a transit system for people to ride. He should develop a passion in making busses work for everyone.

He should also create places worthy of our affection. Indeed, he can create such places. He must take decisive steps for making Lahore as the business, governmental, cultural, and educational center of the 21st Century. For that matter he must take deliberate steps today to shape the future of tomorrow. The best way to do it is to invent future. He must go for it, search out and use the concepts of smart growth and new urbanism.

His task should heave in “leadership in the key of e,” that is, enterprise, environment, education, E-commerce and E-government, and eccentricity. These are the tools by which he can bring benefit to that which is most important—the people—not an extension of global uniformity, but a unique people, in a unique place and made unique by their collective endeavor.

We need a new – a different – local government to continue the task of modernizing Lahore—a new role for a new century. A role that challenges the sense of inevitable decline that has hung over local government in the previous years and provides local people and their representatives with new opportunities.

With strong leadership, the best days of cities lie ahead. So be it for Lahore. Lahore in coming days is an exciting, diverse, urban, and a futuristic city—a good place to live as well as to work and do business. It also is an exciting time for all those involved in the art and politics of city building. The right principles and the right leadership, together we can make a difference in Lahore.

Amer Mahmood should be more than a ribbon-cutter. Although he does plenty of those over and above his prolific role, he must also heighten further his attention on community safety, cleaning up the city, and making the environment business friendly. He should be involved in determining the vision for the city, not in terms of day-to-day administration, but as the key figure in deciding policy and direction for growth.

To be a good Nazim of pride, Amer Mahmood must articulate the vision of a better place and future; must lay down the challenge to constantly do better – to never rest on laurels – then cheer the community along as they work at delivering that vision; the economy, jobs, life-long education, transport, public safety, health, well-being and always, the environment.

He must reach for this vision using the tools of the 21st Century; even anticipating tools not yet even made. We don’t want the smokestacks of yesterday, we want the technology of tomorrow. Lahore is ready for a progressive city that focuses on the future. He should reach beyond what he knows to grasp and that might be a bit ahead of its time. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation