To the Chowk Reader: The article below is about the bold-faced loot
and plunder of a public institution in Pakistan. It was published
under a less provocative title in The News (Dawn had asked me to
delete certain names, which I refused) in May last year. In any
civilized country of the world a similar crime against the public good
would have caused a storm of accusations and counter accusations. At
the very least, it could have led to denials and excuses. But the
expose below had exactly zero effect and elicited no response although
it was widely read. When I spoke to the Big Ones, they all shook their
heads, clucked their tongues, and said what a pity it was. But to date
not one person has been or, it seems, ever will be, punished. None of
the facts contained within it have been contested by the
authorities. Nor, for that matter, are they contestable -- except
possibly in some tiny irrelevant detail.
My question to you, Chowk Reader, is: Why does the wholescale plunder
of resources by our ruling classes no longer elicit anger? Why have we
collectively lost the will to protest crimes against people and
institutions? Some people say that our emotional energy has been
expended because there are just too many things wrong. Not true!!
Shall I tell you about the howling, maddened mobs I saw in Pindi that
twice swept through the city like a tidal wave burning cars and
smashing shops after a page of the Quran was found in a gutter
somewhere in the city? There was tremendous energy there, as in other
frequent spontaneous eruptions of anger and violence in all our
cities. Yet this energy is only released by religious or ethnic fights
and by anti-Indianism or Kashmir, but never by substantive matters
like corruption, inequity, injustice, administrative incompetence,
etc.
My question remains: Why? I have my hypotheses and you certainly have
yours. Let's talk through Chowk.

An invitation to lecture on physics took me recently to Shah Abdul
Latif University in Khairpur, deep into the backwaters of rural
Sind. What I saw was a phenomenon so amazing and unique that I am
compelled to lift my pen and write. A brand new university campus with
30 nearly completed buildings, spread over 900 acres of land, stands
in eerie, desolate silence in the backdrop of barren hills. A decision
was made to abandon it about two years ago, well before a single class
could be held. Apart from some half-baked ideas about converting this
campus into a cement manufacturing complex, no one I talked to had the
foggiest idea of what to do with it now.
Before my visit I had been vaguely aware of some problem in Khairpur
University but knew nothing more. However my hosts, some angry young
university teachers who had recently returned from abroad, did not
allow my state of ignorance to persist for long. On their insistence
I, somewhat reluctantly, agreed to visit their newly constructed
campus.
A 16 mile dusty drive along a narrow unmetalled road brought us to an
especially arid, treeless, and virtually uninhabited part of the
desert. In the merciless, unremitting, blazing heat of the sun it
comes close to being hell on earth. I cannot imagine a more
unattractive and hostile environment for higher learning. Here, next
to the shrine of Shadi Shaheed, stands the ghost campus. We ventured
into the abandoned buildings, now the abode of desert lizards and
diseased stray dogs.
It was like visiting a town in the aftermath of a violent
earthquake. The first building you encounter was intended as the
university guest house. This building doesn't have a roof; gravity
made sure of that shortly after it was put up. The other buildings
were more fortunate but it was not clear how much longer they will be
able to keep their roofs. Everywhere the woodwork had rotted even
before it had been installed. I saw the walls go in different
directions everywhere, some slanted at impossible angles. The stately
"Roman pillars", which are supposed to bear the building's load were,
in fact, just gutter pipes filled with earth. Enormous cracks run from
ceiling to floor -- some so wide that you can see the other side. I
kicked a wall and the plaster came crashing down, revealing the rubble
which had been used instead of bricks. A hefty second kick could have
brought down the wall, I feared.
Standing inside the collapsing buildings of Khairpur University, I
learned from my hosts how it all happened. It was the same sad story
told over and over again through the length and breadth of our land --
a story of greed, avarice, ambition, deceit, and the single-minded
pursuit of wealth by stealth.
Way back in 1989 a site had been selected for the new campus. It was
well located, had water, was not too close to the National Highway,
and said to be generally reasonable. But then along came a certain
deputy secretary from the chief minister's secretariat in Karachi. He
had some barren, un-irrigated, land at Shadi Shaheed to get rid
off. And so, with the approval of the chief minister, Qaim Ali Shah,
and at many times the market price, the land was sold to the
university. The new choice proved fatal.
It was usual, my hosts explained, for the soil to be tested for its
load bearing capacity. Indeed, laboratory testing had clearly showed
that the soil at Shadi Shaheed would expand unevenly when wetted,
making it unsuitable for construction of buildings by ordinary means
and with usual materials. At this stage the site should have been
immediately abandoned. But it was not; by now there were too many
vested interests in the game. The two former vice-chancellors, Ibrahim
Shah Bukhari and Abdul Hameed Memon, the project consultant, Dr. Alvi,
and the university's project director, had much at stake. Therefore,
the report was twisted around and interpreted as saying that all would
be well if water was kept away from the foundations!
But what if it rained and the water seeped down into the foundations?
This eventuality was left to God; He is free to change the laws of
physics as and when necessary to prevent a calamity from happening to
the faithful. I suppose that that is not an unreasonable expectation
since everyone knows that we are an Islamic state and therefore enjoy
Allah's special protection.
The inevitable happened, and it happened very soon. The first cracks
started to appear in 1992, and thereafter they began to spread
uncontrollably. At this stage it should have been clear that the
already constructed buildings would be short-lived. However, the
construction of identical new buildings continued without a break. To
conceal from view the ever-growing cracks, a thin layer of plaster was
put over them. The hope was that the buildings could hang together
long enough to be formally handed over to the university. But even
this limited goal proved impossible to achieve because it rained
heavily in the summer of 1994. Thereafter the walls went
higgledy-piggledy in almost every building, the pillars disassociated
themselves from the ridges, the plaster crumbled, and chunks of
masonry fell to the ground.
The campus by now was visibly collapsing but construction still
continued and money continued to be shelled out to the various
contractors. The university's senate approved a report that "nearly
ninety percent of the work had been satisfactorily completed". This,
in my opinion, makes the senate complicit in the crime together with
the two vice-chancellors, project director, the head-contractor and
various sub-contractors. Perhaps still more money would have been
spent. But then the vice-chancellor was eventually booted out and the
present one, Bashir A.Sheikh, took charge and finally forced the
project to a halt. It was then that the skeleton walked out of the
closet. An official investigation was carried out in March 1996 by the
Provincial Ombudsman, Justice Salahuddin Mirza, and a report was filed
by the new vice-chancellor.
While any kind of report into the disaster is welcome, many crucial
questions are not satisfactorily answered by these two reports. First,
why has no legal action been taken against the former
vice-chancellors, project director, consultant, and others responsible
for this unmitigated disaster? It is simply astounding that Mr. Abdul
Hameed Memon, the former vice-chancellor in whose tenure most of the
contracts were awarded, now heads the Sindh Textbook Board. The
project director, Khamiso Khan Memon, has "absconded" but everyone I
talked to knows where he is; he is apparently thriving on his
ill-gotten wealth and has the protection of a powerful political
Sindhi family. Not a single person has been charged with defrauding
the state although the former Sind Governors, Mahmood Haroon and Kamal
Azfar, had made televised visits to the site at different times and
made noises about bringing the culprits to book.
One can also ask: why did the monitoring teams sent from Islamabad at
various times write positive progress reports after their visits?
Blindness, stupidity, or temporary insanity could be one reason. A
hefty cut could be another. Certainly, without their approval of the
construction work, the disbursement of further funds would have been
frozen. It will certainly be interesting to see from the records of
the University Grants Commission or the Ministry of Education which
individuals were in these teams. This investigation must be undertaken
immediately by these two organizations if they have any dignity or
integrity left.
It has now turned out that Allah is the guilty party. In March 1997
the Federal Secretary of Education wrote to the Governor of Sindh
saying that the responsible persons seek to absolve themselves on
grounds that "this incident should be seen as an act of God which mere
mortals could do little to prevent". Let us hope that the Secretary
will not buy this argument and instead ask for an enquiry to be
initiated against the culprits. Will this actually happen, and the
crooks be brought to justice? We shall all be waiting to see if the
Nawaz Sharif government delivers on its promises to enforce
accountability.