In an editorial on Friday, The Daily Times took the opportunity to survey relations with China: “Out of all the relationships Pakistan has with other states, the one with China is the most mundane because it is not based on any intellectual or cultural affinity. It has been a materialistic connection propelled by Pakistan’s hunger for nuclear weapons and delivery systems. The trouble started with China when the Chinese were building the Karakoram Highway in the 1970s. Z.A. Bhutto, the then Pakistani prime minister who sported a Mao cap on his foreign tours, had a hard time cooling down the ideological passions aroused against the Chinese among regional officials of the state of Pakistan. But during the Afghan jihad under General Zia ul Haq, China first began to feel the heat from our religious parties engaged in plans of ‘reconquering’ Muslim areas under Communism.” In recent years, Pervez Musharraf has had to field Beijing’s requests for action against Uighur rebels from China finding shelter on Pakistani territory.

Urban futures

Cyclonic storms have led to disruptions and loss to life and property on the Sindh and Balochistan coastline. Power outages were an accompaniment in Karachi, prompting, reported The Daily Times on Wednesday, the MQM to ask people to not pay electricity bills. In an editorial on Tuesday, The Daily Times had reminded readers that “the latest crisis of Karachi relates to a year-old shortage of electricity”.

On Thursday, the newspaper took stock of projections in the latest UN Population Fund (UNFPA) report. The country’s urban population is likely to equal its rural population by 2030. The share of the urban population as part of the country’s total was 17.4 per cent in 1951. Today it’s estimated to be about 35 per cent. Much of this is concentrated: “More than half of the total urban population of Pakistan lived in 2005 in eight urban agglomerations: Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Multan, Hyderabad, Gujranwala and Peshawar. Between 2000 and 2005, these cities grew at the rate of around 3 per cent per annum, and it’s projected that this growth rate will continue for the next eight to nine years.” More than 60 per cent of the population of urban Sindh, for instance, lives in Karachi. In Punjab, 22 per cent of the urban population lives in Lahore. Leaving out Afghan refugees, Peshawar has a population of approximately one million, that is, 33 per cent of the urban provincial population. The share of Quetta in the total urban Balochistan population was 37 per cent. And, “the urban population living in katchi abadis varies between 35 and 50 per cent.”

Degree of eligibility

PMLQ President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain argues that the condition of graduation to contest elections should be deleted (The Daily Times, June 27). The view was echoed at a tribal jirga in Peshawar.