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Sovereignty, Governmentality and Development in Ayub's Pakistan: the Case of Korangi Township*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2011

MARKUS DAECHSEL
MARKUS DAECHSEL*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper uses a historical ethnography of the construction of Korangi Township outside Karachi to analyse the configuration of power in the post-colonial Pakistani state of the late 1950s and 1960s. Foucault's distinction between ‘sovereign’, ‘disciplinary’ and ‘security’ power helps to reveal how possibilities of non-interventionist control were deliberately discarded in favour of an (often theatrical) exercise of ‘raw’ power. The way in which the township was conceived by the international architect and city planner, C. A. Doxiadis, often stood in contrast and tension with the ways in which it was executed by General Ayub Khan's military regime (1958–1968). Rapid early success—tens of thousands of refugee slum dwellers were resettled within six months—went hand-in-hand with equally-quick failure and abandonment later on. The Pakistani regime was only interested in demonstrating its ability to make decisions and to deploy executive power over its territory, but it made no sustained effort to use spatial control to entangle its subjects in a web of ‘governmentality’. In the final analysis, the post-colonial Pakistani state was a ‘state of exception’ made permanent, which deliberately enacted development failure to underscore its overreliance on sovereign power.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 1: From Subjects to Citizens: Society and the Everyday State in India and Pakistan, 1947–1970 , January 2011 , pp. 131 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

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9 This is the result of Foucault's own shifty usage, which becomes clearer only when considering his lecture cycle as a whole. Much of the reception prior to 2007 derives the meaning of ‘governmentality’ exclusively from Lecture 4 (1 February, 1978) which is the only one to have been widely circulated before the recent publication of the entire lecture cycle. For instance, in Michel Foucault, Power, Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984 (New York: New Press, 2000), pp. 201–222. Unlike the others, Lecture 4 downplays the juxtaposition of disciplinary and ‘security’ power.

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25 Ibid., p. 428; Karachi Development Authority, The Greater Karachi Resettlement Housing Programme, January 1961, p. 10.

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29 C-Pak KH 7079, 19/8/1964: CADA PakVol. 213.

30 C-PKH 2660 24/3/1961 Progress of Activities in Social Planning for February 1961: CADA PakVol. 107. S.A.A.B.; Rizvi, ‘Findings’, p. 85.

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32 Dox PAK LH 18, 16/5/64, Rehabilitation of Low Income shelterless families in West Pakistan: CADA PakVol. 199.

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34 ICA advisor Robert Clifford, for instance, wanted more agricultural development but no steel mill, ‘Telegram State to Karachi’ 30 July, 1957, Box 9; similarly Audit Report to the Congress of the United States: United States Assistance Program for Pakistan, International Cooperation Administration, Department of State, 1955, p. 5, Box 15. The contrary view was powerfully expressed by Rep. Passman, Chairman of Foreign Operations Subcommittee on House Appropriations Committee, ‘Confidential Comments on Foreign Aid Programme’, 26 October, 1955: USNA RG469 Pakistan Subject Files, 1952–1958, File ‘Pakistan programs’, Box 12.

35 Meeting Notes on German and US Steel Industry in Pakistan 14 September, 1953, Magis, Ed Dahl, SOA, Jo Drake, Larry Nahai; USNA, Box 1.

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37 Ernest F. Fisk's farewell assessment, Lahore Despatch 165, 3 May, 1957: USNA File—Pakistan Programs Evaluation, RG469 Pakistan Subject Files, 1952–58, Box 13. For a more detailed discussion of the history of this development see Jalal, Ayesha, ‘The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan's Political Economy of Defence’, Cambridge South Asian Studies, No, 46 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

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41 C. A. Doxiadis ‘The Arab Metropolis’, lecture delivered at the Seminar on ‘The New Metropolis in the Arab World’ sponsored by the Congress of Cultural Freedom, Cairo 18–23 December, 1960. CADA, General Reports R-GA 211.

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45 The most direct link existed in the person of Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, one of the most important popularizers of Geddes's ideas. She was also one of Doxiadis’ closest collaborators and editor of his ‘house journal’ Ekistics.

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59 For example Dox PA 17 ‘Development of the Korangi Area’ in CADA: PakVol. 14. Based on Lt. Col. Nazir Ahmed, Survey of Shelterless Persons in Karachi, Government of Pakistan, 1958.

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61 Government of Pakistan, unpublished secret ‘Report on the Location of the Federal Capital of Pakistan’, p. 31, CADA. Doxiadis Associates later performed remarkable feats in statistical manipulation proving that Islamabad would not be a civil servant ghetto, despite the fact that most of the projected population was already accounted for by bureaucrats. ‘The Federal Capital of Pakistan: Periodical report No. 5, Estimating the cost’: CADA PakVol. 16, p. 197.

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67 C-PKH 2292, 7 January, 1961 CADA: PakVol. 107; Dawn, 10 April, 1959, p. 14; The Times, 4 November, 1960.

68 Dawn, 8 December, 1959.

69 C-PKH 4456, 27 April, 1962: CADA, Vol. Dox-Pakistan, p. 154.

70 Dawn, 2 February, 1961.

71 Government of Pakistan—Ministry of Rehabilitation, National Housing and Settlements Agency, The Korangi Township in Karachi: special issue on the occasion of the visit to Pakistan of the President of the United States of America Dwight D. Eisenhower, CADA: ArchiveFile Dox 25310.

72 Not to be confused with commonsense notions of a ‘police state’, Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, pp. 313–328.

73 ‘The panopticon is really the oldest dream of the oldest sovereign’, Ibid., p. 66.

74 Dawn, 12 February, 1961; Communication and Works Department, ‘Minutes meeting with Abdul Aziz’, 25 August, 1963, C-PKH 6109: CADA, PakVol. 188.

75 Ihsan Ullah, ‘A study of a neighbourhood market in Korangi’, August 1961: CADA.

76 For example, Letter Mashooq Ali, President, Kurrissian [Qureshian] Mosque to Overseer in Charge Market 36/D, 6 April, 1962, R-PA 150, 12 April, 1962, Building Regulations for Korangi (draft): CADA PakVol. 154; Letter ‘Residents of 2-A Area’, 10 November, 1961, CADA: PakVol. 110.

77 Google Earth [accessed 10 October, 2008].

78 For example, Letter Mashooq Ali Siddiq, Aziz Ahmad Bukhari, C-PKH 6271, 30 October, 1963: CADA PakVol. 188; Letter S. Y. Karmani, Chairman Baldia Residence Deputation, 22 November, 1960: CADA PakVol. 108.

79 It is indicative, for instance, that Hamza Alavi's celebrated Poulantzian theoretization of the Pakistani state pays much attention to the interests of the ‘metropolitan neo-colonialist bourgeoisie’, Alavi, Hamza, ‘The State in Post-Colonial Societies—Pakistan and Bangladesh’, New Left Review, vol. 74, no. July August (1972)Google Scholar.

80 As argued with regard to India's recent capitalist development in Partha Chatterjee, ‘Democracy and Economic Transformation in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 18 April, 2008.

81 Expressed directly in ‘Secret Memo MAAG Submission’, ICA, 5 October, 1958 (Killen), Box 4 ‘Pakistan—Defense—Expenditure’; also in ‘Secret Memorandum’, Brodie (State Department) to J. H. Canning (ICA) 5/12/1955, Box 12, ‘Pakistan programs 1955–1956’. ‘1958 MDA programs Military Advisory Group to Pakistan (secret)’, 23 July, 1957, Appendix A; ‘Memo US Embassy Karachi to Department of State’, 16 December, 1958, Box 13, ‘Pakistan Programs (MDA) 1956–1958’; Secret telegram Karachi to State 27 August, 1954, Box 14, ‘Heinz Mission Report (draft) 1954–1955’: USNA, RG469 Pakistan Subject Files, 1952–1958.