Green signal

Within hours of the verdict delivered by a five-member Supreme Court bench, split 4:1 over its final decision, the Punjab government has resumed work on the construction of the Orange Line Metro Train in Lahore which is set to carry 250,0000 passengers daily. Almost as quickly, activists who had won a victory in the Lahore High Court just over a year ago, with the court ordering work on the project be halted, immediately called a protest to demonstrate against the demolition of buildings and the consequent displacement of persons who will be left homeless. The controversy has been an increasingly bitter one. While the Orange Line is a treasured project for the Punjab government, and one that Shahbaz Sharif would very much like to see near completion as elections approach, conservationists and social activists in Lahore have been infuriated by the fact that the train runs perilously close to heritage sites and in its initial plan envisaged an alteration in some structures linked to the Shalimar Gardens.

Conservationists fear that scores of people will be affected, with their homes or workplaces demolished. Compensation for these families has been extremely slow to come in and some have protested that they have faced harassment as they do not wish to vacate their homes located in the older parts of Lahore. The Supreme Court verdict has built in a string of 31 conditions aimed at preventing damage to buildings or creating any kind of destruction. These include the setting up of technical and heritage committees and the monitoring of migrations from the rail using high quality machinery. The question that is being raised, however, is if the same government that is building the project will actually follow any recommendations from committees that it sets up itself. The dissenting note from one of the judges on the bench points to this as one of the problems.

There can be no doubt that the Orange Line will facilitate transport in Lahore. The city’s more than 11 million people do indeed face a shortage of cheap, efficient mass transit. But there is then the issue of whether development should be permitted to wreck heritage. Lahore is a city that houses hundreds of Mughal era sites and other buildings, tombs and gardens which date back still further in history. These sites add important value to the city and hold meaning in the lives of people who live around them. Buildings such as the Shalimar Gardens are Unesco world heritage sites. It should be noted that visas for UN experts to view the construction work were denied. The debate over the Orange Line will no doubt continue. There are possibly no easy answers. But clearly, development efforts should be planned in a way to avoid destroying the lives of people or in any way proving detrimental to the culture and architectural roots of a city. Heritage belongs not to any one government, or any one group of people, but to all those who live now and in the generations which are yet to come.