I keep reading articles in the paper about some section of Karachi where the rain has caused gutters and sewage lines to overflow, and that water is stagnant and not draining away from the roads, the open plots, filling up basements and underground water tanks. Communities are sending in letters to the papers, “please clean our roads of water!” There was even a demonstration, a protest near Teen Talwar some weeks ago, as the residents of Clifton raged at the garbage and sewage that gushed out of the blocked storm drains and lay on the open roads.
The way I see it, the garbage on the roads, the blocked sewage lines are the direct result of OUR actions. Each and every citizen of this city is responsible for throwing trash into the storm drains (has anyone seen the nullah behind Boat Basin?), for tossing empty bags and cans and bottles out of moving cars, for thinking it is none of our business where our maasis dump the garbage they collect from our homes. Here’s a clue: “Bio-degradable” doesn’t mean instant vapour. If you throw out a banana peel it will take some weeks for it to decompose and disintegrate into the earth. But since we don’t believe in recycling, kitchen waste is nicely packed in plastic and non-degradable materials, and we get rotting fertilizer protected from the earth in man-made containers.
Our City Nazim has been out on the streets without break, trying to respond to all 15 million Karachiites at once – and more than once, he has begged the citizens to act responsibly, and to keep drains and gutters free of trash. Yet the criticism keeps coming.
How about, for a change, when we look to the West to emulate their clothes, their speech, their music, their lifestyles, how about we examine their civics instead? Suppose we pick up their ideas of being polite to total strangers, their grace and generosity to neighbours and communities, their habits of cleanliness inside and outside their own properties? Just for a minute, lets forget their foreign policies and their intolerance of other races, let’s concentrate on the individual, the driver on the road who waits patiently for another driver to make a turn, the shopper who conscientiously deposits litter in the trash cans and not the street, the good Samaritan who actually stops to help someone else, the total and complete lack of spitters…
Suppose today, we decide to stop blaming the government for the environment we live in. Today, we look at ourselves, and decide to change. All it takes is one individual’s decision – we don’t have to follow the crowd, make them follow us.