In 2013, upon my arrival as an exchange student in the US, I noticed a rather unusual behavior – everyone around me was drinking directly from tap water. While this is a normalized First World privilege turned into a right, taps in several districts of the developing nations run dry as millions and millions of people gather around various water tankers or stand in endless queues waiting for their turn on the communal taps across cities, with their buckets, hoping to collect barely enough water to fulfill their daily needs. For these citizens, being able to drink “clean” water directly from a tap becomes a myth that they cannot even afford to believe. They are equivalent of travelers who hallucinate of an oasis in the scorching heat of the Sahara Desert. Karachi, for many of its residents living in informal settlements is one such city. Though it has earned the status of a megacity, its administration has failed miserably. The evidence of the city’s administrative incompetency is particularly rooted in the water crisis that Karachi has been facing for decades now. However, in order to fully comprehend the issue of water supply and usage, we must be willing to examine not only the presence of the concerned problem and its impact on the population but also its origin i.e. how water reaches us (if it reaches at all).

“Karachi draws its water mainly from the Keenjhar Lake, a man-made reservoir about 150 km from the city, which, in turn, gets the water from what’s left of the Indus River after it completes its winding 3,200 km journey through Pakistan” (Hashim, n.d). Then, “through a network of canals and conduits, 550 million gallons of water a day (MGD) is fed into the city’s main pumping station at Dhabeji” (Hashim, n.d). However, it is important to assess the situation henceforth. Out of the 550 MGD, “42 percent – or 235 MGD – is either lost or stolen before it ever reaches consumers, according to the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB), the city’s water utility” (Hashim, n.d). Setting the stage for the water crisis, this illustrates how water reaches the taps of only a few selected households and confirms that it is not fairly distributed.

The aforementioned lucky recipients include households of rich businessmen and government officials. These people, from the well-recognized and accepted elite class, not only enjoy the luxury of running tap water 24/7, they also actively waste it. For instance, leaving the tap on while brushing teeth is the most commonplace example of the wastage of water. Since tap water in Karachi is not clean for anyone to drink, the rich easily stock bottled mineral water that is delivered to their doorstep. Citizens belonging to this class hardly ever acknowledge the plight of the water crisis in the city and its repercussions because they are never directly impacted.

The middle class may qualify as another recipient of the water that reaches Karachi, but it is, nonetheless, an unfair struggle for them. On one hand, the upper middle class is allotted a certain time daily at which they can fill their tanks or turn on their motors. If the chance is missed, they may have to wait until the next day or be forced to buy a water tanker. “A typical 1,000-gallon water tanker costs anywhere between $12 and $16, depending on where you are in the city, what time of year it is, and how desperate you might be” (Hashim, n.d). On the other hand, lower middle class households may receive water once or twice a week only, which they store in tanks or other large plastic water-storing tubs. Despite this, the situation is often worse and water availability is highly unpredictable.

The working class living in informal settlements is faced with the most severe water shortage. “People living in Karachi’s Machar Colony, an informal settlement at a considerable distance from the city centre, pay Rs7,000-8,000 a month in water purchased through tankers and other informal means” (Abdullah et al., 2020). Hence, buying water takes away a “significant portion of their earnings” (Abdullah et al., 2020) that they could utilize or invest elsewhere.  In Orangi Town, the last time water “flowed through the main pipeline in Begum’s neighborhood, for example, was 33 days ago” (Hashim, n.d). Ali Asghar, 75 years old and a resident of Orangi Town admitted that “the biggest injustice is that he is still paying his bills to KWSB for water that never comes” (Hashim, n.d). The poor are clearly not only actively exploited but also deprived of their basic needs.

Although the class bias visibly exists when it comes to the unfair distribution of water, there also emerges a location-bias. “The state of injustice is such that where certain areas get a daily supply of water, others less fortunate have to wait from a week to a month’s time for their share to flow” (Ali, 2020). Posh areas such as Clifton and DHA unjustly receive the share of other areas as well. This concept of emptying one’s container to fill another’s is best displayed in the movie Rango (2011) whereby water is selfishly taken from the poor to transport it to the rich on the other side of the road. The movie, Rango (2011), also smartly exposes the idea of two extreme kinds of gated communities separated merely by a highway. Megacities like Mumbai and Karachi experience similar divides – the Navy Housing Scheme (NHS) vs the Orangi Town is one very prominent example of two communities reflecting almost two different types of worlds. Just like the town Rango enters in the movie (Rango, 2011), “areas such as Orangi, Baldia and Gadap, some of the most densely populated in the city, receive less than 40 percent of the water allotted to them, according to data collected by the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP)” (Hashim, n.d). “The crisis is most felt by those living furthest from the main supply lines, where water can be especially scarce” (Ali, 2020).

Lack of rainfall and other climate changes play a significant role in the storage of water, however, Karachi’s rising population is causing endless problems with the balancing of resources and an even supply of water. A KWSB engineer claimed, “the biggest reason for the crisis is that the city is not being supplied with water in accordance to its massive population. The population of Karachi has reached 25 million according to which the city needs over 1,200 million gallons a day (MGD) of water, yet the combined supply from the Indus River and Hub Dam is only 550 MGD” (Ali, 2020)

Another prevalent issue that restricts the flow of water to different parts of Karachi is “leaky pipelines” (Ali, 2020). Ovais Malik, a KWSB engineer, “complains that the water supply infrastructure in the city is aged, parts of it running for more than 40 years, and that the funds simply are not there to fix the problems” (Hashim, n.d). Consequently, a substantial amount of water is lost dripping along these broken pipelines. The lost water and overflowing gutters eventually destroy the roads and limit public movement across the city as well. Most importantly, Farhan Anwar (an architect and urban planner), also highlighted that “there are cross-connections of water, where sewage lines are leaking into supply lines. Construction practices are such that…often sewage lines are side by side with water lines, or even above them.” (Hashim, n.d).

The incompetency of KWSB is definitely worth mentioning as it is mainly responsible for the supply of water across the city. Farhan Anwar stated that “KWSB was almost bankrupt” (Hashim, n.d). Furthermore, it is estimated that the institution “will be running at a deficit of 59.3 percent” because “only about 60 percent of consumers pay their bills, with the biggest defaulters being government institutions themselves, which owe KWSB about $6 million in arrears” (Hashim, n.d). Failing to extract bills from the government, it turns to the citizens by exploiting them financially on the basis of false hopes and promises.

“The problem, however, is not just leakages and inefficiency in the system: it is theft” (Hashim). Hundreds and hundreds of illegal hydrants function all over Karachi. Anwar Rashid, a director at Orangi Pilot Project explaining the process said, “they syphon off the water. And then there are tankers standing there, and they’ll fill up directly from the [illegal hydrant] and then drive off” (Hashim, n.d). In addition to this, Hashim (n.d) revealed that if these tankers made 50,000 trips all over Karachi and assuming a tanker was sold for Rs. 3000, then “in a month, that adds up to $42.3 million” and “by the end of the year, stealing water in Karachi is an industry worth more than half a billion dollars”. Simply put, “the bulk of Karachi’s ‘lost’ water is being stolen and sold right back to the people it was meant for in the first place” (Hashim, n.d).

Karachi’s water crisis is more than just an environmental, technical, or administrative failure, it is a complex web of authorities who intend on maintaining the issue rather than resolving it. Water in the city is no longer a natural resource, it is a commodity that is actively, and quite openly, illegally obtained and sold. Perveen Rehman, the former director of the Orangi Pilot Project discovered that “it is not the poor who steal the water. It is stolen by a group of people who have the full support of the government agencies, the local councilors, mayors and the police; all are involved.” (Hashim, n.d). It is also, at the same time, crucial to recognize that “[Illegal hydrants] can only be run by people who are in the government, or in the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board, the police, or the revenue department” (Hashim, n.d). Conclusively speaking, the bigger question is – who should we trust?

References

Abdullah, A., et al., (2020, April 14). Why the Covid-19 crisis is an urban crisis. Dawn. Retrieved from https://www.dawn.com/news/1544933

Verbinski, G. (Director). (2011). Rango [Motion picture]. Paramount.

Ali, S. A. (2020, May 5). Karachi toils with water crisis amid lockdown. The Express Tribune.
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2214182/1-karachi-toils-water-crisis-amid-lockdown/

Hashim, A. (n.d). Parched for a price: Karachi’s water crisis. Al-Jazeera.
https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2017/parched-for-price/index.html

The photograph in this blog is obtained from Google Images.