Syed Feroz Ahmed
Sindh, the second-largest province of Pakistan, is home to Karachi, its capital and the nation’s largest city. Often called Mini Pakistan for its diversity and dynamism, Karachi has long been the economic backbone of the country. Yet today, this once-thriving metropolis stands in visible distress. Decades of unchecked population growth, fragile governance, and persistent institutional neglect have gradually eroded its foundations, leaving a city where dysfunction has become an everyday reality rather than an exception.
With an estimated population exceeding 20 million, likely far higher in reality, Karachi’s infrastructure, law enforcement, and public services are struggling to cope. This strain has exposed serious flaws in the existing provincial governance model.
The growing anger among Karachi’s residents is often mischaracterized as a provincial divide. In reality, it reflects deep frustration with successive provincial governments that have consistently failed to administer the city effectively. For more than two decades, poor planning, administrative inefficiency, and a lack of coordination have steadily eroded public trust. The current government has been no exception, offering political rhetoric in place of meaningful reform.
Karachi’s management and control systems have effectively collapsed. No comprehensive or sustained measures have been implemented to address the city’s mounting challenges, allowing problems to compound over time. As a result, Karachi has reached a stage where dysfunction threatens basic urban viability.
Today, the city’s governance apparatus appears overwhelmed. Essential civic functions, from waste disposal and road maintenance to water supply and public safety remain unreliable. Instead of decisive action, a culture of blame-shifting has taken root.
During the present tenure, long-standing issues such as infrastructure decay and law-and-order challenges have only intensified, reinforcing public concerns about administrative capacity.
This failure is particularly alarming given Karachi’s central role in Pakistan’s economy. The city generates a substantial share of national revenue and serves as the country’s primary trade and employment hub. Yet its residents endure deteriorating infrastructure, chronic water shortages, inadequate public transport, and weak crisis-response mechanisms.
Karachi’s decline not only threatens its own future but also undermines Pakistan’s credibility as a stable destination for investment and commerce.
A key contributor to this crisis is the city’s fragmented governance structure. Authority is divided among multiple agencies with overlapping mandates, rendering accountability elusive and effective decision-making nearly impossible.
Moreover, Karachi’s demographic and political realities often differ from those of provincial power centers, resulting in the city’s priorities being repeatedly sidelined. At this stage, piecemeal reforms are clearly insufficient.
Pakistan’s Constitution provides remedies for such exceptional circumstances. Articles 148 and 149 permit federal intervention when provincial failures threaten public order, economic stability, or national interests. Karachi’s prolonged administrative breakdown meets this constitutional threshold. Limited and well-defined federal oversight could help establish unified planning, restore accountability, and align the city’s governance with national economic objectives.
Concerns regarding provincial autonomy are understandable. However, autonomy cannot be invoked to justify sustained governance failure. When mismanagement in a single city begins to damage the national economy, corrective action becomes a constitutional necessity rather than a political choice. If carefully implemented within constitutional limits, federal intervention should be viewed as a temporary corrective measure—not a permanent erosion of provincial authority.
Karachi’s unfolding crisis can no longer be dismissed as a local failure, it is a national emergency demanding urgent action. The question confronting policymakers is not whether reform is necessary, but whether the courage and political will exist to confront decades of neglect head-on. Without bold, structural, and immediate intervention, Pakistan stands to lose its most vital city to a slow but irreversible decline, with consequences that will echo far beyond Karachi’s borders.