Red lines, red lights

Some episodes in the story of Karachi are enacted on its thoroughfares. So much is happening on this stage, including fatal traffic accidents. At times, people walking on the streets are easily transformed into a mob and lives are lost in a frenzied dance of death. In that sense, the streets provide a projection of our collective state of affairs.

It would be a matter of routine to write about the traffic situation. It is a subject that often attracts the attention of columnists and commentators. A traffic jam becomes a meaningful portrayal of a dysfunctional society.

But there are occasions when issues that relate to traffic and transport come to the surface in a manner that threatens public order, with social and political implications. We have just had some intimations of popular upheaval in the aftermath of a number of unusual traffic mishaps involving dumpers and tankers. An attempt was made by some political elements to exploit the anger that these accidents were breeding at the popular level.

On an ominous day last week, at least ten dumpers and tankers were set ablaze by mobs in North Karachi after a motorcyclist was crushed to death under the wheels of a dumper. This has naturally prompted the administration to undertake a damage control exercise, and multiple measures have been announced to enforce some order and observance of rules in a potentially riotous situation.

The irony is that we have been here before, again and again. One may not doubt the intentions of the higher officials, but there is hardly any prospect that the present drive would produce any long-term results. Anyone who drives on the roads in Karachi would testify that the traffic chaos has already extended beyond the administrative capacity of our administration.

Anyhow, Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has directed the police officials to take “indiscriminate and effective” action against vehicles with tinted glasses, illegal emergency lights and fancy number plates. Concerning dumper-related fatal accidents, the city administration has extended the ban on heavy vehicles during the daytime. Fresh curbs have been imposed on rickshaws, banning them from some busy roads.

Because motorcycles have mostly been victims in traffic accidents and because they generally do not strictly follow traffic laws, there is a plan to empower city wardens of the KMC to impose heavy fines on them when caught driving on the wrong side. The fine is set to be Rs15,000. How will this work in the present conditions?

As I have suggested, the pandemonium that we encounter on the streets in Karachi cannot be disciplined by the traffic police alone, even if its personnel can generate honesty and efficiency within their own ranks. In the absence of sufficient public transport or a mass transit system, middle-class and lower-income groups, most of them constrained to live very far away from their places of work, are compelled to use a motorbike. And so many of them are unruly by the very nature of their existence in an extremely hostile environment.

We now have this critical situation that is created by a tsunami of motorcyclists that has flooded the streets of Karachi. And this is only one feature of the city’s traffic. Those who pretend to own the territory are, in fact, the owners of the shining four-wheelers and luxury vehicles that are escorted by armed guards. Their pomp and show is matched only by high officials who travel under heavy police protection. On both extremes, traffic rules are thrown to the wind.

While the focus has recently been on dumpers and tankers, we may recall the stories of how the reckless rich drivers had trampled over the poor riding a motorcycle and had, somehow, gotten away with their crime. The point here is that everyone is willing to cross the line – and the traffic light is just a minor offence that is taken lightly.

As for the upheaval that a fatal traffic accident can create, Karachi has a unique history. We could have marked the anniversary of the death of Bushra Zaidi on Tuesday this week. She was overrun by a minibus on April 15, 1985, sparking riots that resulted in the death of about 50 persons. The stage was set for the rise of ethnic politics, and it was said that Bushra Zaidi changed Karachi forever.

A death on the street now may not become a catalyst of that kind. But the overall state of the traffic disorder, in my view, carries some profound messages that we need to understand. Our streets are a reflection of the people we are, seriously bereft of any sense of civility and discipline. In many ways, it is a civilisational deficiency.

One indicator of this deprivation is the repeated instances of lynching by a mob on whatever pretext. I mention this also because there was one more lynching in Karachi on Friday when supporters of a religious political party stormed a place of worship of the Ahmadi community in Saddar and a businessman was reportedly lynched.

Walking on the street, in any country, presents a measure of what the people are like and how its society functions. Similarly, observance of traffic rules and respecting others’ right of way is to be seen as an extension of the collective behaviour of the people in a legal as well as a moral context.

Actually, the laws that the motorcyclists and the drivers of other vehicles break may not be as lethal for the country, though a loss of life as a consequence of reckless driving should be unacceptable, as perhaps the laws that are violated by the high and the mighty.

It may be said that there are those who cross red lines and others who cross red traffic lights. Together, they subvert rule of law and social harmony. It also means that order on the streets is incumbent on a lot more than the presence of a traffic policeman on every crossing.

The writer is a senior journalist. He can be reached at: ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com