It would take more than a new bus fleet to make Pakistan’s 'orphan city' Karachi ‘liveable’

Karachi has been in the news in this part of the world quite a bit over the past few days. Residents protested on the streets against excessive and unscheduled power cuts and the city was placed at 168 out of 173 in the Global Liveability Index ranking. The problems that ail Pakistan's financial hub and crucial port city promise to eclipse whatever gains that could be had by the launch of a new bus service.

This is hardly the first time that Karachi has ranked this low on the Global Liveability Rankings released annually by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Algiers, Tripoli, Lagos and Damascus were the only cities deemed worse than Pakistan's former capital thanks to various security and stability crises.

The rankings are based on 30 factors, both quantitative and qualitative, covering multiple aspects of urban life, ranging from stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. Cities are scored on a range of 1 to 100, with 100 being the perfect score. Karachi performed relatively well on education (66.7) and infrastructure (51.8) but was pulled down by egregious scores on stability (20), healthcare (33), and culture and environment (35.2). The city's total score was 37.5 on 100.

On the more desirable end of the spectrum produced by the ranking was the Austrian capital of Vienna, which had an overall score of 99.1, thanks to perfect scores on stability, healthcare, education, and infrastructure.

Karachi has sunk from its position of eminence within Pakistan over the decades. Local leaders have long complained of neglect from the federal government in Islamabad and the uniformed government in Rawalpindi. They have claimed it is because the city is the core of support for the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) led by the Bhutto-Zardari family.

A truer assessment of Karachi's woes would however place the blame on Pakistan's economic slide since the 1980s and on poor planning and poorer response to development that has happened anyway. The present crisis storm of looming default, soaring inflation and energy and electricity woes have also done little to help matters.

Police on Tuesday had to tear gas and lathi charge protestors who had taken to the streets against load shedding power cuts that were reported to last up to 16 hours. These unscheduled power cuts have sparked rage considering they come in the midst of peak demand for the city's searing summer.

PPP chairperson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Monday launched a new bus service for the city, which suffers from extremely poor internal connectivity. The new service will see 240 buses imported from China ply on seven routes. This is ostensibly "to facilitate the people with inexpensive and high-standard transport".

While patchwork schemes may stand no chance of covering the systemic deficiencies that make life in Karachi hard, the new bus service could indeed make things a bit better. However, given the state of Pakistan's economy and the solvency of its government, Karachi may yet end up spending a number of years at the bottom of the rankings before it shows any marked improvement.