Muhammad Toheed

How to stay cool during Ramzan? The holy month of Ramzan (also spelled Ramadan) is a medium for Muslims around the world to rejuvenate their piety to the Creator. Each year, somewhere in the world, the month of Ramzan coincides with a period of seasonal or unseasonal heat. Against the backdrop of rising global temperatures, this collection asks: how do people and institutions manage the heat of Ramzan while fasting?

In the past two decades of intensified mega-infrastructural and urban development projects in Karachi, an estimated 600,000 urban poor, low-income, working class and marginalized communities have been displaced with less than 33 percent of them receiving any form of resettlement or cash compensation. This report documents how land is governed and acquired for infrastructure and urban development projects; how land displacements impact people’s lives and their communities; and how people resist displacement in Pakistan's largest metropolis. The findings emerge from a 24-month project covering 16 study sites in Karachi, called Land, Governance & the Gendered Politics of Displacement in Urban Pakistan, and funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). What makes this present moment of land displacements and struggles particularly complex, is the interlocking of emergent neoliberal policies with colonial genealogies of managing and appropriating land, as well as post-Partition legacies of housing crisis and land informalization that dovetail today with the emergence of the courts as key sites of urban planning and governance in a bid to restore law and order in the city. The research covered three case studies of displacement: people living in fear of displacement as in the case of the Karachi Circular Railway informal settlements; those who were resettled after displacement but face new vulnerabilities as in the case of Lyari Basti, Taiser Town; and those who are displaced and relegated to an endless period of waiting as in the case of Salai Para, in Hasan Auliya Village, Lyari. We used an embedded, triangulated research method, including 670 household surveys, 30 in depth interviews, numerous focus group discussions, community workshops, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping, analysis of media and secondary data, and court cases. Displacements have severe consequences: loss of home, livelihoods, community, and social networks; engendering a permanent state of anxiety and uncertainty; increasing physical, social, and environmental vulnerabilities; compounding gender inequalities; and irrevocably damaging social and economic mobility. These effects are especially pernicious because displacement is not a one-time event. Displacement is an intensely traumatic and violent experience with differentiated impacts on men and women, and the wellbeing related consequences for those who have experienced displacement or are at risk of losing their land. The report also charts the complex, evolving and rich terrain of solidarities, protests, and grassroots activism that is gradually shaping resistance against land displacements in Karachi. We place this complex process of resistance in shifting atmospheres of hope, and expectation that can quickly dissolve into despair and waiting. These shifts epitomize the extensive labors of ordinary women and men who come together in given moments, to forge connections in their common struggles to achieve the same goal. The contestations and conflicts over displacement demonstrate how the right to land as a right to citizenship, remains differentiated and unacknowledged by the Pakistani state. With future displacements anticipated in the context of new urban planning, infrastructure development, and disaster risk management interventions in Karachi, we offer recommendations for addressing the exclusions that arise from land displacement, and place these in the broader context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In the past two decades of intensified mega-infrastructural and urban development projects in Karachi, an estimated 600,000 urban poor, low-income, working class and marginalized communities have been displaced with less than 33 percent of them receiving any form of resettlement or cash compensation. This report documents how land is governed and acquired for infrastructure and urban development projects; how land displacements impact people’s lives and their communities; and how people resist displacement in Pakistan's largest metropolis. The findings emerge from a 24-month project covering 16 study sites in Karachi, called Land, Governance & the Gendered Politics of Displacement in Urban Pakistan, and funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). What makes this present moment of land displacements and struggles particularly complex, is the interlocking of emergent neoliberal policies with colonial genealogies of managing and appropriating land, as well as post-Partition legacies of housing crisis and land informalization that dovetail today with the emergence of the courts as key sites of urban planning and governance in a bid to restore law and order in the city. The research covered three case studies of displacement: people living in fear of displacement as in the case of the Karachi Circular Railway informal settlements; those who were resettled after displacement but face new vulnerabilities as in the case of Lyari Basti, Taiser Town; and those who are displaced and relegated to an endless period of waiting as in the case of Salai Para, in Hasan Auliya Village, Lyari. We used an embedded, triangulated research method, including 670 household surveys, 30 in depth interviews, numerous focus group discussions, community workshops, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping, analysis of media and secondary data, and court cases. Displacements have severe consequences: loss of home, livelihoods, community, and social networks; engendering a permanent state of anxiety and uncertainty; increasing physical, social, and environmental vulnerabilities; compounding gender inequalities; and irrevocably damaging social and economic mobility. These effects are especially pernicious because displacement is not a one-time event. Displacement is an intensely traumatic and violent experience with differentiated impacts on men and women, and the wellbeing related consequences for those who have experienced displacement or are at risk of losing their land. The report also charts the complex, evolving and rich terrain of solidarities, protests, and grassroots activism that is gradually shaping resistance against land displacements in Karachi. We place this complex process of resistance in shifting atmospheres of hope, and expectation that can quickly dissolve into despair and waiting. These shifts epitomize the extensive labors of ordinary women and men who come together in given moments, to forge connections in their common struggles to achieve the same goal. The contestations and conflicts over displacement demonstrate how the right to land as a right to citizenship, remains differentiated and unacknowledged by the Pakistani state. With future displacements anticipated in the context of new urban planning, infrastructure development, and disaster risk management interventions in Karachi, we offer recommendations for addressing the exclusions that arise from land displacement, and place these in the broader context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In the past two decades of intensified mega-infrastructural and urban development projects in Karachi, an estimated 600,000 urban poor, low-income, working class and marginalized communities have been displaced with less than 33 percent of them receiving any form of resettlement or cash compensation. This report documents how land is governed and acquired for infrastructure and urban development projects; how land displacements impact people’s lives and their communities; and how people resist displacement in Pakistan's largest metropolis. The findings emerge from a 24-month project covering 16 study sites in Karachi, called Land, Governance & the Gendered Politics of Displacement in Urban Pakistan, and funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). What makes this present moment of land displacements and struggles particularly complex, is the interlocking of emergent neoliberal policies with colonial genealogies of managing and appropriating land, as well as post-Partition legacies of housing crisis and land informalization that dovetail today with the emergence of the courts as key sites of urban planning and governance in a bid to restore law and order in the city. Land displacements have severe consequences: loss of home, livelihoods, community, and social networks; engendering a permanent state of anxiety and uncertainty; increasing physical, social, and environmental vulnerabilities; compounding gender inequalities; and irrevocably damaging social and economic mobility. These effects are especially pernicious because displacement is not a one-time event. Displacement is an intensely traumatic and violent experience with differentiated impacts on men and women, and the wellbeing related consequences for those who have experienced displacement or are at risk of losing their land. The report also charts the complex, evolving and rich terrain of solidarities, protests, and grassroots activism that is gradually shaping resistance against land displacements in Karachi. We place this complex process of resistance in shifting atmospheres of hope, and expectation that can quickly dissolve into despair and waiting. These shifts epitomize the extensive labors of ordinary women and men who come together in given moments, to forge connections in their common struggles to achieve the same goal. The contestations and conflicts over displacement demonstrate how the right to land as a right to citizenship, remains differentiated and unacknowledged by the Pakistani state. With future displacements anticipated in the context of new urban planning, infrastructure development, and disaster risk management interventions in Karachi, we offer recommendations for addressing the exclusions that arise from land displacement.