THE government was in a bit of spot of bother on the issue of the nationalisation of educational institutions. There were groups who were refusing to follow its instructions in that regard. On Oct 3, 1972, the Provincial Education Minister Dur Mohammad Usto issued a note of warning to those who were attempting to create obstacles in the way of nationalisation in Sindh. He called a meeting of the chief secretary and the home secretary in his office in the city and asked them to direct those in charge of all police stations in the province to take immediate action on complaints about forced and unauthorised closure of nationalised schools. The directive was issued following a complaint received by him that schools located in rented buildings were being forcibly vacated by the landlords on different pretexts.

Continuing with that intent, on Oct 5, Mr Usto ordered action against the five defaulting managements of private schools who tried to defy the nationalisation process. They were: New Era Secondary School Nazimabad, New Happy Home School Nazimabad, Muslim Girls Secondary School Nazimabad, Husaini Boys and Girls schools Nazimabad.

In those days, as mentioned last week in these pages, the Karachi Development Authority’s (KDA) master plan for the city was on the anvil. On Oct 3, it was reported that a team of international town planning experts was in town under the auspices of the United Nations to evaluate the future development plans for Karachi. On Oct 2, a five-day meeting began to recommend one of the two alternative development plans prepared by the UN-aided Master Plan Department (MPD) of the KDA to be completed by June 1973.

It had already made the first cycle report of the scheme for the Karachi metropolitan region. The foreign experts who took part in the discussions were: Enver Ergun, Prof Kamal Ahmet Aru, Prof Leo Jekobson, Kenzo Tongo and Prof Sigurd Grava. From the Pakistani side those who attended the meeting were Chaudhry Saleemullah (chief of physical planning and housing planning commission), Dr M Samdani, project director, regional development, Ministry of Residential Affairs) and MPD officials.

Unfortunately, on Oct 6, the international panel of experts after concluding the five-day session disapproved both plans put forward by the KDA Master Plan Department. According to the panel which was invited to deliberate on the subject by the UN, neither of the plans was acceptable because of a number of complications that were likely to arise later. The KDA had prepared two alternatives — distributive investment plan (DIP) and concentrated investment plan (CIP) — for the Karachi region up to 1985 and 2000, respectively.

The experts suggested an approach quite different from that followed by the UN consultant in developing the project. Basically they did not agree with the suggestion that either of the DIP or CIP should be accepted in full. To them, the major question was to identify the policy positions of the issues raised in the development of the programme. They thought that certain policy positions under the DIP and CIP could be preferred and the decision-makers would come up with a new viable policy package.

Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2022