Orange turns red

The focus is on Lahore once again where another of the Punjab government’s mass transit projects has come under severe criticism for a misleading Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report and threats to key aspects of the city’s heritage, including the colonial-era General Post Office, the Mughal-era Chauburji monument and the Shalimar Gardens. The project that is said to be endangering these historic monuments is the Orange Line Train Project, a Rs158 billion track being laid across the city with the help of Chinese investment. The complaints against the project include the use of a faulty EIA report, notification of plots not included in the original land acquisition and violating sections of its own Antiquities Act. The result has been a dual assault from civil society activists and affectees of the project, who have decided to go to court and out on the streets to put pressure on the government to change the route of the project. What should be clear is that the problems with the project are more than just about a fudged EIA report and threatened heritage. It is the developmental vision of the PML-N in Punjab that needs to be questioned.
Almost two decades of murmurings against the ‘concrete comes first’ approach of the Punjab chief minister are coming together to present a coherent challenge to the vision of the government. Previous projects have also been challenged, with dissent starting from the Canal Bank Road widening project, extending to the multiple flyover and signal-free road projects being embarked upon – and now the Orange Line Train Project. The fact that its earlier pet project, the Lahore Metro Bus, has become a popular site of protest should be an indicator that, despite the PML-N’s lingering popularity in Lahore, there are important voices that feel that these projects are a waste of public money in a city facing basic infrastructural crises. Moreover, one must ask that if the Punjab government felt a year ago that building a metro bus track was its priority, then shouldn’t its second mass transit project also have been a continuation of the old policy? By introducing a train, is it not cluttering the city of Lahore with multiple mass transit systems that have no relationship with each other? Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made a strange proclamation that the government was bringing the Orange Line train for those criticising the metro bus. Does that not make the criticism even stronger then – and more credible – against such incoherent development policies? The way the Punjab government is treating its heritage raises much greater questions about its developmental priorities. If the government does not account for heritage, an important part of the living fabric of its cities, then what care can it have for its citizens? While the PML-N is likely to get its way, the Punjab government would do well to formulate a coherent development policy in consultation with all stakeholders instead of the top-down ad-hocism it seems to favour.