Water Crisis and Smart Consumption

Fresh water is a life support. Yet over the past half-century the scale and pace of human influences on freshwater systems has accelerated rapidly, along with population and consumption growth. Worldwide water demands roughly tripled.

Pakistan ranks 20th in water resources, 127th out of 142 countries in water availability and 24th out of 140 in severe water stress. Water availability per person in Pakistan today is 1,000 cubic meters, down from 5,600 cubic meters per person in 1947.

Water tables are falling in Pakistan from over-pumping of groundwater. Pakistan has the highest per capita water consumption in the region because of inefficient use. It ranks 8th from amongst 209 countries in groundwater withdrawals. Major rivers now run dry for portions of the year. The impacts of rising water consumption are increasingly visible.

Pakistan has large dams with Tarbela is 5th and Mangla 15th largest in world. For a time, only the benefits of these engineering projects were registered—not their social and ecological costs, in terms of people displaced from their homes, fisheries destroyed, soils contaminated by salts, and aquatic species imperiled. Mangla Dam would silt up in 10 to 15 years.

Pakistan has the 14th highest per capita consumption of water in the world. As much as 97 percent of its water goes to feed its agriculture sector, which is very high. Pakistan’s water table is falling and wells are now being dug deeper and deeper which is not only bringing up salinity but also drying up wells that were shallower.

The exploitation of fossil water in the southern Baluchistan can lead to a disaster. Water is not found until a depth of 1,000 ft is reached in parts of Baluchistan, reflecting that the water table is declining rapidly. The levels of Baluchistan's underground aquifers are dropping at a rate of 3.5 meters annually, and will run out in 15 years, resulting in massive internal displacements.

There are some trends that make the regulation of water resources a much greater need today than it was in the past. The first of these is population growth. Currently the population is 144 million and projected to increase to 260 million by 2050. Added to this, the per capita consumption of water in Pakistan is the highest in the region, due to inefficient use. Urbanization from 1970 to 1994 has increased by 7 percent putting more stress on the resources of cities. Problems are emerging. Water supply development is also reaching its limits. The wells are being dug deeper and deeper, drying up the other wells that are shallower. The Mangla dam may become inoperative in 10 to 15 years time because of silting, and no new large dam is being built.

The most urgent task is to provide all people with at least the minimum amount of clean water and sanitation needed for good health. Yet the large gap in coverage worldwide has almost nothing to do with water scarcity. Globally, providing universal access to 50 liters per person per day by 2015 would require less than 1 percent of current global water withdrawals. There is more than enough water, but so far the political will and financial commitments to provide the poor with access to it have not been sufficient.

Raising the productivity of agricultural water use is critical to meeting people’s food needs as water stress deepens and spreads. In Pakistan agriculture is using 95 percent of our total water, the remaining four to five percent for drinking and industrial use. Of the 565,000 total tube wells in Pakistan, nearly 70 percent are now pumping hard water or saline water, because sweet water has been exhausted. If the drought persists for a year or so, it will mean that there will be more pressure on these tube wells.

To raise the productivity of water, it will be necessary to deliver and apply water to crops more efficiently and to increase crop yields per liter of water consumed. This can be done by using drip-sprinklers and other micro-irrigation systems, changing cropping patterns and growing methods to get more crop per drop, and adopting high-yielding and early-maturing crop varieties. Shifting diets, too, will enable people to satisfy nutritional needs with less water. It takes five times more water to supply 10 grams of protein from beef than from rice, and nearly 20 times more water to supply 500 calories from beef.

There is no mystery about why so much of the water extracted for human use is wasted and mismanaged: the policies that drive water decisions in most cases foster inefficiency and misallocation rather than conservation and sustainable use.

Achieving an optimal balance between meeting human needs and protecting valuable ecosystem functions requires allocating sufficient water throughout the year to sustain those functions. Setting limits on the use of rivers and other freshwater ecosystems is the key to sustainable economic progress because it protects the ecosystems underpinning the economy while spurring improvements in water productivity.

The government should fulfill the obligation to protect the public trust in water by passing laws and regulations that safeguard vital ecosystem functions. It ought to institute groundwater regulations. It also needs to promote more efficient and equitable use of water by using tiered water pricing—where the unit price of water to a user increases along with the volume used. It should restrict water use when necessary—for instance, when river flows drop to low levels. It should also develop markets for water to improve the efficiency of use and allocation. The ability to trade water can help reallocate available supply and encourages users to conserve, because they can sell saved water for extra income.

Pakistan must plan for a sustainable and secure society meeting its water needs without destroying the ecosystems upon the prospects of future generations. (www.asifjmir.com)

Next War with India: Over Water --- not Kashmir

Water, not unlike religion and ideology, has the power to move millions of people. Since the very birth of human civilization, people have moved to settle close to water. People move when there is too little of it; people move when there is too much of it. People move on it. People write and sing and dance and dream about it. People fight over it. And everybody, everywhere and every day, needs it. We need water for drinking, for cooking, for washing, for food, for industry, for energy, for transport, for rituals, for fun, for life. And it is not only we humans who need it; all life is dependent upon water for its very survival.

Water as a resource is more paramount than oil; it is essential to all daily human activities. Water is becoming a very valuable commodity, yet freshwater resources are unevenly distributed. This scarcity in water has triggered desperation in countries that already have little access to water, let alone reliable water supplies. This desperation usually cannot be resolved by negotiations. If governments or rebels want water badly enough they resort to force to obtain it.

For centuries war and conflict has been tied to the protection of water resources. With the risk of water shortages becoming more and more of an issue, it has become the fuel of certain conflicts between Pakistan and India. Water Wars are becoming inevitable in region's future as the misuse of water resources continues between two countries that share the same water source. International law has proven itself inadequate in defending the equal use of shared water supplies in some parts of South Asia.

India has emerged as a major culprit in bullying its neighbors over the distribution of water. The unequal bargaining power of India and its small neighbors such as Nepal and Bhutan is seen as a crucial stumbling block in joint harnessing of Himalayan waters.

A water war between India and Pakistan is inevitable in the future. Apart from other native, vernacular, political, and national sound reasoning, Pakistan's prime interest was to secure its water resources.

Though Kashmir is a political conflict, one of its dimensions is linked to water, because all water resources for India and Pakistan generate from Kashmir. The head-works of main Pakistani rivers originate in India.

The Indus River Basin has been an area of conflict between India and Pakistan. Spanning 1,800 miles, the river and its tributaries together make up one of the largest irrigation canals in the world. The basin provides water to millions of people in northwestern India and Pakistan. Dams and canals built in order to provide hydropower and irrigation has dried up stretches of the Indus River. Water projects have further caused the displacement of people and have contributed to the destruction of the ecosystem in the Indus plain.

The enmity between India and Pakistan over water started early when India discontinued water supplies to Pakistan. Hard bargaining and the mediation of the World Bank led to the world acclaimed Indus Water Treaty in 1960. The treaty allocated the three Eastern Rivers — Ravi, Sutlej and Beas — to India, the three Western rivers — Indus, Jhelum and Chenab — to Pakistan. Pakistan was to meet its requirements of its Eastern river canals from the Western rivers by building replacement works. Safeguards were included in the treaty to ensure unrestricted flow of waters in the Western rivers. Also both parties were to regularly exchange flow-data of rivers, canals and streams. A permanent commission known as the Indus Waters Commission was constituted to resolve the disputes between the parties. This treaty is globally respected that it has survived wars and periods of acute tension between the two hostile neighbors. However, the treaty has encountered hiccups wherein some contentious issues have cropped up.

The 430-megawatt Baglihar power project on river Chenab is one such plan since it violates the treaty. India argues that the treaty allows construction for power generation if there is no diversion of water flow.

Wullar Barrage is another controversial issue, which has the potential to ruin the entire system of the triple canal project within Pakistan. Pakistan has protested because Wullar Barrage’s capacity is 300,000 acres feet, which is 30 times more than the capacity permitted by the Indus Treaty. India is already in control of the Chenab River through Salal Dam constructed in 1976 and many Pakistanis disapprove of the yielding of the Salal Dam.

Yet another issue is the Kishen Ganga project, a (390 MW) hydropower-generating unit on River Neelam in Indian Kashmir. It affects Pakistan’s Neelam-Jhelum power-generating project. However, the most significant point in the history of the treaty was when in 2001 India unilaterally tried to withdraw from the treaty. Despite the inadequacy of the international law, the fact that the treaty has another signatory (World Bank) helped Pakistan protect its legal claim to her rights in the treaty.

Political issues let countries use its water as a tool to maneuver and pressurize the other. A different water/border related dispute is that of Sir Creek. India wishes to follow the 1914 treaty between the then Government of Sindh and the Rao Maharao of Kutch in which the boundary was agreed to run through the middle of the creek as the border. According to Pakistan’s view the boundary should start with the Eastern Bank, on the basis of the resolution Map of 1914, drawn up by the British governor of Bombay.

If India and Pakistan take a political decision to restructure their relations, they will have to ensure that water serves as a flow to bring them together, rather than taking them further on the course of conflict. (www.asifjmir.com)

WAPDA & New Technologies

We are dependent on technology as never before, and technology is crucial to electricity as never before. The economy as a whole will now and forevermore be dependent on a power infrastructure that is virtually 100 percent reliable.

WAPDA’s Vision 2025 is a public document. It creates an impression for WAPDA as a farsighted organization. This fantasy is nonetheless blurred with its absolute disregard for technological environment enveloping 2025. The future trends demonstrate that WAPDA is planning investments in obsolete technology.

It looks as if WAPDA has conceived Vision 2025 based on demand built on demographic trends and completely turning its back on up and coming technologies. With enormous novel technologies coming up, mind agitates to ask: will dams in 2025 be relevant to external environment? After demonstrating a laggard response to IT, we seem to be still resisting innovation with all our might. Then multi-billion dollar mega-projects planned by WAPDA will cause cost over-runs, and inflationary risks coming from unanticipated changes in regulations, financial markets, and enthusiasm.

If WAPDA wants to stimulate the economy in a way that have both a short-term and long-term positive impacts, if it wants to give a gift that will keep on giving, it can do no better than to stimulate on-site, decentralized electricity generation. Technologies are now available that can transform households and businesses and office buildings into electricity producers. A national effort to introduce these technologies will make our energy system more efficient.

A stimulus package to literally bring power to the people will spur the installation of millions of small power plants. They will generate the electricity we will need to meet future demand. They will also dramatically improve the environment, reduce our dependence on mega dams and create large number of well-paid jobs. The manufacture of small power plants generates more jobs than the manufacture of large power plants.

Banks are no longer taking underwriting positions with large risk exposure in mega-projects conceived with archaic technologies. Foreign lenders have retreated from the market, leading to as much as a 40 percent reduction in credit capacity. Those that finance future power projects will rightly sharpen their focus on the organizations employed to protect and manage projects' inherent performance and schedule risks.

Hence there has to be a flight to cheaper and innovative technologies allowing lenders to be highly selective, with approval reserved for not large capital extensive but cost efficient projects.

We need a long-term solution. The good news is that the price spikes and power disruptions have crystallized the need for power generation with new technologies promising solutions to transmission losses, high cost, and frequently interrupted supply.

Many new technologies are promising cost efficiency, environment affability, and capability for meeting ever increasing demands. Nuclear power, for example, provides some hope. Natural gas can also help but doesn’t provide the answer. The depletion of gas reserves is going to occur soon. And as supply declines, rates are expected to increase. Price hikes make natural gas too volatile to be used in power generation. WAPDA will pass along these increasing costs to customers, as this is a routine matter for public sector utility providers. For our industry, this often means suspended production and lost earnings. This will not only have a serious impact on us, but on the entire Pakistan economy.

That leaves us to think about alternative energies like wind and solar power. These are fine for niche applications. But for a national policy, we need to depend on something that’s more abundant and that’s inexpensive.

Coal gasification is a clean coal technology and is an option. It’s the cleanest coal technology you can use. It has, for example, inherently low air emissions – the lowest sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and particulate matter emissions of all coal-based technologies for generating power. Gasification also offers the opportunity to capture carbon dioxide, and to do it for significantly less cost than other fossil fuel-based technologies.

In addition to gasification being cleaner than these competing coal technologies, it’s also competitive in cost. And, as environmental issues become more and more stringent, gasification’s cost advantage grows even greater.

No other renewable energy based electricity producing technology has attained the same level of maturity as wind power. There are no major technical barriers to large-scale penetration of wind power. India has now gained sufficient technical and operational experience, and is now on the threshold of taking off in wind power. It offers a viable option in the energy supply mix, particularly in the context of the present constraints on conventional sources. It also offers an attractive investment option to the private sector for generation.

The emerging technology that will significantly alter the entire infrastructure of power generation in the world, while using underutilized high-energy fuel sources including those derived from waste is nanotechnology.

The 1990s was all about E-everything, the next decade will be all about N-everything.

Nanotechnology is starting to make solar-energy cells cheaper and more efficient. The next challenge is to figure out how to store the electricity produced for later use. On a sunny day, an area just a few paces on a side would generate a kilowatt of electrical power. With good batteries (and enough repaved roads and solar-cell roofing), present demands for electrical power could be met with no coal burning, no oil imports, no nuclear power, no hydroelectric dams, and no land taken over for solar power generation plants.

Appreciation of the value of technological change is well entrenched in modern society. However, a powerful barrier is still in place. Government, industry, and the general populace fail to support some technologies because they threaten an established source of wealth and/or power. The generation of electricity in Pakistan is a good example. (www.asifjmir.com)

Vision of Women's Future

Unconcern and deficient resources attached to the issue of women’s economic empowerment, together with unbalance between macro-economic and development policies imply that exact economic empowerment for women remains obscure. In an increasingly globalized and interdependent economy, economic empowerment of women is an issue that needs total commitment and a pull for action.

Substantially and essentially, economic empowerment is central to gender equality. The empowerment of women and the poverty alleviation is an issue that has been enormously neglected. Even though the existence of universal recognition of the value of women’s economic empowerment, expressed through such agreements as the Beijing Platform for Action, and the Millennium Development Goals, advancement of most objectives has been slow and in some cases even been gone wrong way up.

A study by the World Economic Forum (WEF) featured prominently that no country has yet managed to eliminate the gap between women and men’s economic participation. Those countries that performed well in the WEF’s empowerment index generally acted upon better in women’s educational attainment, health and well being and political empowerment rather than in economic participation and opportunities.

Even as economic participation and opportunities are all essential components of women’s overall empowerment, they are only pieces of a puzzle that must include economic empowerment for the portrait to be whole. Regardless of meaningful above-board policy changes together with a many-sided thriving programs and explicit development programs, the all-in-all situation has not improved in the same way as visualized by such agreements as the Beijing Platform for Action, which in 1995 adopted the most clinker-built obligation to put forward women’s empowerment with a across-the-board inventory of recommendations and policy changes that, to a large extent, has yet not been executed.

Consequently and contrary to reason, imbalance prevails in parliaments where a small number of women hold parliamentary seats; women earn less than 78% of the wages that men earn for the same work; poor women represent two thirds of the world’s poor people; the labor force of the informal economy is overwhelmingly female; women provide up to 70% of agricultural labor and produce over 90% of the world’s food; women occupy a paltry percentage of managerial positions; and last but not the least, women constitute two thirds of the world’s illiterate.

There is all the more need for a commitment for research and training activities on women’s economic empowerment focus on the integration of gender perspectives and women’s economic issues in global economic policy and decision-making; a review and analysis of economic programs and projects in order to identify and disseminate good practices; and the establishment of a true measure of women’s economic empowerment that includes data on the gender impacts of economic policies and development projects.

Economic policies are seldom, if ever, gender neutral. Many prominent economists have conducted research that recognize and comment on the often negative gender impacts that are produced by structural adjustment and economic stabilization policies.

Macro-economic policies are formulated and implemented in areas such as trade, fiscal management, debt financing, social welfare and other sectors without a comprehensive assessment of their potential gender impacts.

While some micro-credit and micro-enterprise schemes have been a great deal doing well in lifting individual women and families out of poverty – en bloc they have contributed little in improving end-to-end economic status of women or addressing the gender impacts of existing economic policies. This discrimination of poor women into the micro-credit sector, though it may provide them with more income, does not necessarily address the essential gender inequalities that downgrade women to long-established pursuits such as cooking, dish-washing, sewing, laundering or other chores.

Most micro-enterprise initiatives are actually simple augmentations of the domestic domains. This calls for an urgent need to thoroughly appraise micro-finance and other initiatives thereby making them instrumental in enhancing women’s economic status together with their role within the household, community and their impact on her new function as wage earner.

Such appraisal will determine a record of booming experiences and best practices on which to base future initiatives. This will also ascertain gaps not focused on by these initiatives that would guide future policy advocacy and gender mainstreaming ventures.

The establishment of good practices is a key component of the collection, systematization and dissemination of knowledge on women’s economic empowerment, which is still seriously lacking at all policy levels.

Women’s empowerment has three elements, vis-à-vis, resources, agency and achievements. Determining empowerment is useful because it helps to focus an otherwise insubstantial and somewhat ambiguous concept. This prompts us to questions we must ask from ourselves. These questions are, a) how do we define empowerment? a) who defines empowerment? c) how do we know when women are empowered? d) who gets to decide when women are empowered?

Another crucial component is the creation of a knowledge base on women’s economic empowerment. This is about the establishment of a concrete measure of that empowerment. Ideally, this would use existing and newly created data and indicators to provide a baseline from which to measure improvements and changes in women’s economic status. The World Economic Forum’s report has created an index using a variety of indicators to measure women’s economic and political empowerment and their health and well being in 58 countries. This can serve as a useful reference.

Through and through, the issues of measurement for empowerment are often questionable and conflict-ridden. It is essential that the concept be brought down to earth so that policy-makers and development practitioners have concrete goals to strive for. Measuring empowerment includes developing a gendered statistical system and promoting the collection of sex-disaggregated data, the identification and addressing of gaps in information, including on the informal sector, credit, savings and unpaid community and household work.

We can scrutinize the full range of women’s economic contribution and identify areas for future research and action, which will determine the vision of women’s future.
(www.asifjmir.com)

Where there's no vision . . . .

Where there is no vision, people perish. That’s because they select goals and begin pursuing them, climbing the proverbial ladder of success, before they define mission and clarify purpose. Consequently on reaching the top rung, they often discover to their dismay that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.

If you only keep your eyes on the path before you, you won’t get lost, but neither will you see the stars. By creating a vision you create a focus that becomes a target that beacons a direction to which the people can become committed. It also provides a basis for the establishment of goals and objectives. Simply by visualizing their goals, people can harness the power of thought to achieve happiness, health, fulfillment, and success.

Vision sets the direction. It’s where the program priorities are set to get down to business. Pressures from the world, society, and individuals can veer off course and urge to react to the priorities and goals of others. It’s therefore important to set up something that works ahead of time and be vigilant about following that vision.

Visions are statements of destination, of the ends of the labor; they are therefore future-oriented and are made real over different spans of time. Movement of Pakistan was launched with a vision. By achieving freedom, have we completed our mission? Have we accomplished our job of retaining the freedom? Hasn’t Pakistan lost to Bangladesh and the rest is being eroded by no other than us—internal enemies. We have no answers because after the freedom we kept the vision of Pakistan in deep freeze.

Vision is uncanny and exhilarating ability to grasp opportunity, to look beyond the obstacles of today and see new possibilities for tomorrow. In national perspective, such vision is always the inevitable product of national commitment. True vision, in fact, has no other genesis. As dedication to independence grows, so does your vision. Vision for Islamic Ideology was the diadem of Pakistan Movement. Where has that vision gone?

Pakistan has unfortunately been duped to vision killers, such as tradition, fear of ridicule, stereotyped people, conditions, complacency of some stakeholders, fatigued and treacherous leadership, short-term thinking, and nay-sayers.

We were supposed to integrate the vision of Pakistan into our life, making it tougher to put off or drop our highest priorities. Such focusing could provide us a framework for all parts of our life. Unfortunately it could not happen and consequently today we fall short of spirits analogous to independent nation.

The most important role of visions in our national life could give focus to human energy. To enable everyone concerned with Pakistan to see more clearly what’s ahead of them, and our leaders could owe and convey a vision. Consciously or unconsciously, this was not done.

Imagine watching a slide show when the projector is out of focus. How would you feel if you had to watch blurred, vague, and indistinct images for an entire presentation? We face a similar situation in Pakistan. People are unaware of their future. They are expressing frustration, impatience, confusion, anger, and even nausea. Undoubtedly, the leaders with the fingers on focus button had the responsibility to focus the projector. They have utterly failed in their responsibilities.

Thus and so without direction and a map, Pakistan is lurching around, getting off course and ending up in places it never wanted to go. Had Pakistan maintained vision, its distractions would have been minimal and our national life would have been spent in a meaningful way. Thus it would have regained control over our life and no longer felt like wasting time.

Even after 61 years we have not learned to make our motivating vision important. This would have helped us in carrying out the goals with passion and energy; giving a focused meaning to a solid foundation to work from.

Unfortunately, our leaders have completely failed to articulate vision. Contrarily and shamefully they pushed the nation into confusion, chaos and disorientation only to accomplish their personal agendas. They could have painted the big picture, to convey the vision, giving people a clear sense of what the puzzle would look like when everyone has put the pieces in place.

Each Pakistani leader should ask from himself questions such as: “How would I like to change the world for Pakistan and myself? If I could invent the future, what future would I invent for my country and myself? What mission in life absolutely obsesses me? What’s my dream about my society? What’s my burning passion? What work do I find absorbing, involving, enthralling? What will happen in 10 years if I remain absorbed, involved, and enthralled in that work? What does my ideal Pakistan look like? What’s my personal agenda? What do I want to prove?

Even if armed with techniques, though, leaders can’t find any freeway to the future, no paved highway from here to tomorrow. The vision for Pakistan’s future can act as its magnetic north. It can possess the extraordinary ability to attract human energy. It can invite and draw others to it by the force of its own appeal.

Indeed, a new vision will be virtually indispensable when there is a need to significantly transform and revitalize Pakistan to increase the likelihood of its future. This will also help sensitize political leadership to emerging issues, help them think about the future and enhance their creativity or sense of risk taking.

Our leadership must provide a vision, a clear image of a desirable future—one that presents an achievable, challenging and worthwhile long-range target toward people can direct their energies. To avoid extinction, we must design our future and visioning is the starting point. (www.asifjmir.com)

Where, oh, where . . . . ?

The motivation for penning down today’s column came from an incident that might turn out to be a routine matter for Lahoreans. It has conversely moved me to the extent that I have started believing that I inhabit with a flock of animals. Today, our need for self-preservation and material gain has taken precedence over concern for society and the community.

One day around noontime in sweltering heat an ill-fated father, carrying on his back a 7-8 year old son with physical disability while waiting at the bus stop in Lahore, gesticulated a bus to stop. Disregarding even the bus stop where the bus was obligatory to stopover kept on moving, thus depriving a needy innocent person his rights as a special child.

As father of a son of just about the same age group, I developed an emotional affinity with that luckless youngster but the gravel heart society seems to be lacking the capacity to think with compassion. I have lived more than 23 years in a culture where persons with disabilities are regarded as a social responsibility and where in a similar situation not just the bus would have stopped and knelt down to facilitate access but also the whole traffic would have become motionless. Alas! This incident caused me a few tossing and turning nights wondering where, oh, where have our values gone?

Many of us are unable to see beyond our own persona. We feel bad only when we receive indifference. This happens because we fail to see the same 'self' in others that has the same needs, expectations and rights. If only we could perceive the big plan of the cosmic mind that interconnects all living beings, we would learn that when we give, we give to ourselves and when we receive happiness from others, we receive it from ourselves. The greatest paradox of life is that when we hold on to life for ourselves, we inevitably lose it, but when we decide to use it for 'giving', we recuperate it.

Indeed, the erosion of values is one of the major concerns of today's society. It is probably due to the increasing stress, fast-paced life, keen competition and overvaulting ambition to achieve too much in too little time. It has made today's man seemingly less principled than our ancestors. This explains, but does not excuse us of responsibility for the widespread decline in values.

Implicitly and explicitly, in a society of humans the real asset of a nation is not its natural resources, but people with right values. Just as it is futile to fill a leaking bucket, it is futile to think of economic reforms and progress without linking up ourselves with our lost values. In Pakistan what we need first and foremost are the solutions that can be utilized on a wide scale and on a long-term basis for reestablishing moral values.

The fabric of society is held together by the standards of morality that we maintain and practice. Values are our personal set of beliefs about what is important, unimportant, right, wrong, good and bad. In other words, values are a kind of map in our minds of how things are or should be. Just as a map is not the territory, values are only our perception of the principles of nature that govern our lives or the universe, not the principles themselves.

Throughout history, this world has seen individuals, families, societies and nations dying for want of values that sustain life—almost with the same certainty with which a plant dies for want of water. We can choose our values in harmony with the laws of the universe or to challenge them. Laws are fixed, so are the consequences of breaking them. We cannot break the laws of the universe; we can only break ourselves against them.

The greatest tragedy of the modern world is that it has given us enough to live with but nothing to live for. Today, our purpose of life has become hazy. Existence has become more important than living. People today do not ask themselves what they feel concerned about and what they would like to dedicate their lives to; they ask which field has better 'scope'. They seek to take decisions on the basis of what lies in the external world, instead of being driven from within. But unless we find a cause to live for, we are not fit to live.

Most homes do not have a value-giver today. Homes have turned into mere houses where family members come to eat, watch TV and sleep. Values are inculcated by the parents, who nowadays shrug off their responsibility. Usually the whole family sits before the TV till bedtime. Where are the values going to come from?

An unpleasant, argumentative environment at home and unresponsive, unsympathetic and ignorant teachers, who cannot act as role models, are the principal reasons for decline of values.

Our school textbooks talk irrelevant things rather than the lives of people with exemplary values. The students look for role models from the contemporary world, as they can relate to them. The media also underplays reports of exemplary people as it assumes that good deeds are uninteresting, hence not for sale.

The main challenges that we face in the 21st century provide viable alternative solutions that can be implemented, and share examples of what millions of people around the world are already doing. I am convinced that people can be transformed, irrespective of their age and conditioning. All that is required is to make them trust the light within and see the need to remove all that keeps our real light from shining forth. A world committed to ecological sustainability would create a new vision of progress that recognizes the future of humanity dependent on our ability to live with compassion for fellow citizens and thus balance with our natural world. (www.asifjmir.com)

The hodge-podge Urbanization

In this urbanizing world, cities hold the key to achieving a sustainable balance between Earth's resource base and its human energy. Industrialization in developing countries has led to urban health problems on an unprecedented scale. Cities around the world affect not just the health of their people but the health of the planet. Urban areas take up just 2 percent of the world's surface but consume the bulk of vital resources.

The definition of an urban area, as distinguished from a rural area, differs from country to country. Whilst most demographers would accept that cities are large, densely populated, built-up areas, there is little agreement about how to define urban using objective measures. Most countries use a combination of criteria: typically population size, population density, and the extent of the built-up area. However, few countries use the same measurements. In the United States census takers regard urban areas as that with at least 2,500 people; in the United Kingdom the figure is 1,000.

Cities are home to more people than ever before. In 1900, only 160 million people, one tenth of the world's population, were city dwellers. But soon after 2000, half the world (3.2 billion people) lived in urban areas--a 20-fold increase in numbers.

The location of a city reflects the function of the original settlement. Similarly, street plan, pattern of land use, and architectural style result from the interaction of factors like site and history as well as function.

Many cities conform to a geometric plan that reveals a conscious decision to impose order on the landscape. The most common plan is the grid, in which streets run parallel to each other or intersect at right angles. Such a plan has endured since the time of the ancient Greeks. In the 16th century, Spanish colonial cities in South America were laid out in grid fashion according to a set of planning laws. Many US cities were originally laid out on a grid to facilitate the sale of land. This pattern was not confined to the countries of Europe and their colonies, 15th-century Beijing was laid out on a grid of streets that surrounded the Imperial Palace.

Other city plans, such as those of Paris and New Delhi, incorporate radial thoroughfares and the street plan of Moscow is a series of concentric circles. However, city plans are more than simple exercises in geometric order; they also reflect the values of those groups or individuals that are in a position to exert power over the urban landscape.

Cities that have developed within a common culture often have strong similarities. For example, the older parts of the Islamic cities of Cairo, Damascus, and Fès all share a number of physical features. At the centre of each stand the citadel, the chief mosque, the palace, and the main souk, or bazaar. The city is divided into distinct quarters that resemble villages. The ancient core of Damascus was divided into about 70 quarters. Meanwhile, the arrangement and dimensions of streets and the architecture and orientation of houses conformed to guidelines set down in the Qura’an.

Many people are ambivalent about cities, believing that they embody the best and worst aspects of civilization. On the one hand, the diversity of peoples and activities encourages innovation and creativity, which in turn create opportunities that attract still more people. On the other, problems of overcrowding, crime, poverty, and pollution may be severe. Cities, therefore, have come to reflect the hopes and fears of the modern world.

The urban population growth in Pakistan accelerated from 4.3 percent per annum in 1960-1992 to 4.6 percent in 1992-2000. With some ten million inhabitants, Karachi is one of the largest cities in Asia; in South Asia it ranks only behind Bombay, Calcutta and New Delhi. Karachi is one of the fastest growing megacities of the world and expected to rank 7th by the year 2015 with over 20 million inhabitants surpassing Calcutta and New Delhi it will be second to Bombay in South Asia; Lahore will rank 22nd internationally and 6th in South Asia with 12 million inhabitants, as many as Hyderabad (Indian), Bangkok, Osaka or Lima.

There is no policy for alleviating urban poverty in Pakistan. And there are only few economists, who think that poverty has to be removed directly. Macro economic policies of Pakistan need major revisions. The policies of growth without much regard to income distribution needs to be reconsidered with a view to eradicating poverty and unemployment problems.

The government is totally absorbed, politically, in its power struggle, and is financially impotent, due to vast outlays for debt servicing, defense, law and order, and a tendency to ad-hocism, it pursues a policy of laissez-faire, hoping for solving social problems by economic growth and leaving them otherwise to foreign donors and private charity.

With urbanization in Pakistan crime is growing even faster. Proud centers of commerce and culture are becoming armed encampments, unable to ensure the daily safety of average citizens. Crime is also a major impediment to development. If the security of cities cannot be guaranteed, Pakistan cannot be expected to move safely along the path of economic and social development.

Environmental health related problems, including drinking water quality, waste management, housing, air quality, health and welfare related issues including narcotics problems must top the list of to do items.

Unorganized, congested and unplanned, the hotchpotch situation of urbanization in Pakistan is not due to a day's or a month's neglect but the cumulative end product of the decades’ misguided actions. Its responsibility, too, is not restricted to any particular segment but to the overall attitude of shifting policies in decision making leading to inaction, indifference and unconcern. Unless we control rural exodus with employment opportunities, unless we add purpose to city planning, and unless we establish a sustainable balance between earth’s resources and city dwellers, we can’t put a tab on future urbanization. (www.asifjmir.com)