Light fractals of urban Punjab

In this map, created from night-time lights of cities recorded by satellites, Lahore and Delhi and the surrounding Punjab form continuous urban corridors, or agglomerations. The densely coloured nodes represent 67 cities (in 2010) with populations above the 100,000 threshold (see http://ciesin.columbia.edu/). Map: Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)

About 470 kilometres along the Grand Trunk Road from Lahore (a large urban mass with an orange core in this map), first through Amritsar, then Jalandhar and Ludhiana, then past Patiala and Panipat, and on to New Delhi – an even greater orange core, engorged with its status as a national capital territory, feasting on uncountable megawatts of crackling electricity.

During the days of the undivided Punjab, both Lahore and Delhi were divisions of the province, the other three being Multan, Jalandhar (usually spelled ‘Jullundur’) and Rawalpindi (usually called ‘Pindi’, a name that eased the toils of newspaper sub-editors in the 1960s, when Pindi was Pakistan’s capital).

Urbanisation in Punjab compared between 1999 and 2010, the CIESIN map based on night-time lights recorded by satellite.

The burst of urban light due east of Lahore (it would be about 125 kilometres away) is the city of Faislabad. As with the chain of light that erupts into settlements along the Grand Trunk Road from Lahore to Delhi, Faislabad makes a great vibrant punctuation on the urban light map of historical Punjab, a solar flare jetting out from the cultural orb of old Lahore. Perhaps the chain marks the hasty passage of ‘halwa‘ and ‘adh ridka‘ (the Lahori ‘lassi‘) between one and the other.

South-westerly from Lahore another chain of urbanising sparklers marks the road to Multan, and the beginnings of a lattice – clearly discernible from the built-up nodes that are Ludhiana and Ambala – that connects hamlets and would-be highways into an evolving fractal shape is visible.

At times the dizzying fractal appears to be caught in swift metamorphosis, coloured an uncertain blue that Amritsar is awash in, but so are Ludhiana and Shimla (where Delhi’s acquisitive gentry spend week-ends), for here new neighbourhood wards spring up unplanned and unmarked but for the glare of new lights, so well captured in this cartographic curiosity.

The long orange line – India-Pakistan border from space

This night-time view of the India-Pakistan border was photographed by an Expedition 28 crew member on the International Space Station. Clusters of yellow lights on the Indo-Gangetic Plain of northern India and northern Pakistan reveal numerous cities both large and small.

What the border looks like on the ground – near Jammu, India. Photo: BBC News

Of the many clusters of light, the largest are the metropolitan areas associated with the capital cities of Islamabad, Pakistan in the foreground and New Delhi, India at the top – for scale these metropolitan areas are approximately 700 kilometres apart. The lines of major highways connecting the larger cities also stand out – also visible are Lahore, Pakistan, which is close to the border, and Srinagar, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, India. More subtle but still visible at night are the general outlines of the towering and partly cloud-covered Himalayan ranges immediately to the north (left).

The full image from the ISS. Photo: NASA

[For other posts on Pakistan see Pakistan, India and people’s responsibility (new), Floods in Pakistan displace 5.4 million and Pakistan floods, six months later.] The striking feature of this photograph is the line of lights, with a distinctly more orange hue, snaking across the central part of the image. It appears to be more continuous and brighter than most highways in the view. This is the fenced and floodlit border zone between the countries of India and Pakistan. The fence is designed to discourage smuggling and arms trafficking between the two countries. A similar fenced zone separates India’s eastern border from Bangladesh.

NASA has said this image was taken with a 16-mm lens, which provides the wide field of view, as the space station was tracking towards the southeast across the subcontinent of India. [NASA ref: ISS028-E-029679 (21 Aug. 2011)]

Pakistan floods, six months later

A young girl in Azimabad waits at a flour distribution centre. After the floods, she returned with other residents of her village to discover that entire walls of houses had been washed away. Photo: Al Jazeera/Islamic Relief

AlertNet has reported that six months after the rains and disastrous floods in Pakistan, hundreds of thousands remain in camps and thousands are living in tents beside their destroyed homes. Sub-zero winter temperatures have increased the incidence of chest infections including influenza and pneumonia, with over 200,000 cases reported in the second week of January alone. In the south, swathes of land – both homesteads and agricultural – remain under contaminated water and there are concerns that already worrying pre-flood malnutrition rates have risen.

The crisis in Pakistan is far from over and could get worse, warned Oxfam, the international aid agency and AlertNet partner Oxfam. In a report, ‘Six months into the floods’ the agency warned that millions of people were still in dire need and that the situation could deteriorate further. The report [get pdf here] says that although the aid effort has reached millions, it has struggled to match the immense scale of human need. Oxfam says that although Pakistan’s floods are the biggest emergency of recent times with more than 18 million people affected, the funding for the response has been woefully slow. The UN appeal for $2bn to rebuild Pakistan remains only 56 percent funded.

A girl collects contaminated water from a well in Sabjuzat, Punjab. Agricultural land around Sabjuzat was damaged by the floodwater. Crops like cotton were affected by rising salt levels in the soil. Photo: Al Jazeera/Islamic Relief

Neva Khan, head of Oxfam in Pakistan, said: “Six months on millions of people are still facing flood water, shivering in temporary shelters and struggling to find food. Oxfam is currently helping nearly 1.9 million people – one of our biggest programmes worldwide – but this is dwarfed by the number of people who are in need. The aid community has done a tremendous amount – but given the immense scale of this disaster we have only scratched the surface of human need.” Oxfam is urging the government of Pakistan to extend the emergency period until peoples’ needs are met. The Pakistan government is due to stop emergency relief operations in most areas from 31st January 2011, but Oxfam warned that this could put at risk large numbers of people who still need assistance.

In a related report, AlertNet has emphasised a continuing concern of the International Committee of the Red Cross – the persistent lack of security which affects people. Those displaced by the fighting in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly the North-West Frontier Province) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, including those who have commenced the process of returning to their homes in Orakzai Agency and South Waziristan, are still in need of assistance.

A young boy named Abbas visits the river that brought destruction to his home in Muslimabad, Nowshera. Photo: Al Jazeera/Islamic Relief

In addition to bringing aid to flood victims, the ICRC has provided more than two million one-month food rations over the past 10 months for people displaced by fighting and has also vigorously engaged in many other humanitarian activities. “We have been doing more than merely providing food aid,” said Pascal Cuttat, the head of the ICRC delegation in Islamabad. “The ICRC surgical hospital for weapon-wounded patients in Peshawar has been operating at close to full capacity for several months. In 2010 it admitted more than 1,000 patients and performed more than 3,800 surgical procedures.” Patients with serious weapon-related injuries are frequently referred to the hospital, which is staffed by highly experienced Pakistani and international surgeons.

Nearly six months after monsoon rains caused severe flooding across much of the country, people are trying to rebuild their shattered lives.

As the floods receded in October, a Quran remained open in a Punjab mosque that had been inundated by water. Photo: Al Jazeera/Islamic Relief

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Pakistan flood situation map, 2011 January 25

In parts of the province of Sindh, progress is painfully slow. Tens of thousands of northern Sindh residents live in a squalid, watery wasteland where stagnant floodwaters still covering fields are a serious health concern and make subsistence cropping impossible. ICRC staff from Jacobabad, working together with the Pakistan Red Crescent, have given one-month food rations to nearly 280,000 people in the province, where the ICRC will continue to provide relief for the foreseeable future.

The Oxfam report, ‘Six months into the floods’, commented: “The huge floods that began in July 2010 have been unprecedented. The people of Pakistan have shown resilience, strength and generosity of spirit against remarkable challenges. Now more than ever, the needs of the people must be put at the heart of the recovery.

“Building on the current humanitarian response, a nationally-led, pro-poor reconstruction and development plan must lead the way. By resetting priorities to tackle underlying inequities that keep so many people poor and vulnerable, the disaster can be turned into a transformative moment for Pakistan. It is time to get down to business: steering the trajectory of Pakistan towards sustainable, comprehensive pro-poor development and growth.”

Pakistan ‘superflood’ and relief work

A crowd of people surround a truck loaded with food aid © Eduardo Diaz/UN OCHA

New reportage, contact information of UN and related relief efforts, other resources.

Shelter assistance: Daily updates on distributions to date, coverage, projected coverage and outstanding gaps in terms of shelter assistance are available on the shelter cluster website.

Logistics assistance: The Logistics Cluster is coordinating with the Pakistan Government to include relief items from the humanitarian community. Interested organisations can contact the cluster here.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is the world’s largest humanitarian organization is running a range of relief programmes in Pakistan.

Outside Islamabad, humanitarian coordination centres (HCCs) continue to operate in Peshawar (covering Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Multan (covering Punjab) and Sukkur (covering Sindh). Contact details of coordination focal points in each are below. Further information is available on the response website.

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

OCHA Pakistan, Manuel Bessler, Head of Office bessler@un.org
Maurizio Giuliano, Public Information Officer, UN Pakistan giuliano@un.org +92 300 8502397
Nicki Bennett, Senior Humanitarian Affairs Officer bennett5@un.org +92 300 850 2289
Susan le Roux, Donor Liaison Officer leroux@un.org +92 308 520 5819
Fawad Hussain, Sindh Coordination Centre fawad.hussain@un.org +92 301 854 2495
Hussain Ullah, Punjab Coordination Centre ullah5@un.org +92 301 854 2449
Waheed Anwar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Coordination Centre anwarw@un.org +92 301 854 2449
Alexander Hasenstab, NGO Liaison Officer hasenstab@un.org +92 345 850 9011

Plan Pakistan is coordinating relief work and assistance, donations and material. Contact them here.

UN OCHA’s Pakistan Monsoon Floods Situation Report 18 August 2010 says:

A submerged street near Nowshera, Kyhber-Pakhtunkhwa province. Rising water in dams could create more havoc © Abdul Majeed Goraya/IRIN

Government figures on the number of people directly affected by the floods remain unchanged since the previous situation report, at 15.4 million (National and Provincial Disaster Management Authorities, 18 August). Assessments to establish the degree to which affected populations are in need of immediate humanitarian assistance continue.

The official death toll has risen to 1,475, with 2,052 people reported as injured. Almost 1 million houses are now reported as having been either damaged or destroyed. The south of the country continues to feel the impact of the second wave of floods, with a spur of the Indus River now stretching through Jacobabad district in Sindh into Jaffarabad in Balochistan.

The Meteorological Department warns of a continuing risk of inundation of low-lying areas of Khairpur, Jacobabad, Ghotki, Sukkur, Larkana, Nawabshah, Hyderabad, Naushahro Feroze and Thatta districts of Sindh in the coming days. The Meteorological Department’s Flood Forecasting Division reports that flood levels in the Indus are holding at “extremely high” levels at Guddu and Sukkur in northern Sindh, and rising further downriver at Kotri, as the flood wave continues to move through the province.

Despite the continuing efforts of the Government and the humanitarian community to assist affected populations across the country, large numbers of people are yet to be reached with the assistance they need, particularly in Sindh and Punjab. While funding levels are now improving in key sectors, the continuing threat of flooding in many areas and the manner in which populations are spread across a vast area persist as major operational challenges.

An IRIN news report has said that the chaotic evacuation of towns and villages in flood affected areas means vulnerable people have become separated from male family members, putting them at a disadvantage: The elderly, women and children are often unable to reach the bags or parcels being distributed, especially when mobs besiege the aid trucks. “It’s these vulnerable groups that we need to pay attention to,” said Shahnawaz Khan, disaster risk reduction coordinator for the NGO Plan Pakistan.

Aid organizations have already expressed concern over incidents in which convoys attempting to hand out food have been attacked. A 16 August report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said looting of aid supplies has been alleged in Muzaffargarh in the southwestern part of Punjab Province, one of the worst-hit of the province’s 36 districts. A Muzaffargarh District administration official who asked not to be named said: “We have hordes of starving people. Things are desperate. There is insufficient aid and people who are weak and vulnerable, including women, are naturally worst affected.”

IFRC Secretary General Bekele Geleta said millions of Pakistanis have been affected by the most destructive disaster in the country’s history. “Survivors have experienced tragedy three times over,” said Geleta, who took part in a distribution of tents and other relief items by the Pakistan Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in Charsadda and Tenghi, north of Peshawar. “Many have lost loved ones, household goods and animals. The Red Cross Red Crescent Movement is now planning a fivefold increase in its response to Pakistan’s monsoon “superflood”, and is appealing to international donors to support a recovery programme likely to extend to 2012. In the medium term, at least 6 million people will need emergency humanitarian assistance, in the form of safe water, tents and shelter materials, and medical help.

Asia’s epic urban sagas

Courtesy UN-Habitat: Waterside shanties in the Philippines.

National governments and planning authorities in Dhaka, Islamabad and New Delhi are tending more and more to follow a single ideology – economic growth will drive down poverty – and a primary route to that misplaced objective, which is greater urbanisation. These governments are therefore commissioning a welter of studies and reports, from within and without, to show their citizens why more cities and towns are a good thing (jobs and citizen services, they say) and why mobilising a great deal of money to build infrastructure for these settlements is a good thing (more jobs, more ‘development’).

The cleverer authorities are linking South Asia’s rising urban trendline to a variety of socio-economic goods, such as product and monetary innovation, such as cities being the wellsprings of social entrepreneurship, such as greater tax receipts which will help accumulate funds for social sector spending on the poor and marginalised. For companies and banks that deal with the building of big infrastructure, its engineering, its operation and its financing, this is a persistent swell of good news, and this group is doing everything it can to sustain the urbanisation wave.

[You can find my full essay at Energy Bulletin]

The raw numbers are on the side of the powerful urban-centric cabal. Among the world’s cities ranked by average population growth rate per year (in per cent) for 2006-2020, there are 37 South Asian cities (Afghanistan 1, Bangladesh 3, India 25, Pakistan 8) and 8 in China in the top 100. In the next 100, there are 20 cities in China and 11 in India. Asia’s two biggest countries have between them 64 of the top 200 cities that are projected, by the global group of city mayors, to grow the fastest in the next decade. This extraordinary prognosis for the two most populous countries – both of which have become economic powers – has enormous implications for global energy, food and resource flows.

When China and India buy material (as they have been doing, with China’s headstart over the rest of the BRIC/BASIC group placing it in a league of resource acquisition by itself), entire populations of supplier countries will face the consequences. Moreover, much of the material the two countries will commandeer will be directed towards their cities. China’s urban population is already 45% of its total population, while India’s is 30% and set to grow faster than it has at any period until now. There are combined numbers so large in the cities of China and India that the implications of the consumption by this grouping alone have become too profound to internalise for planners and administrators. Amongst the 300 most populous cities in the world, 97 are in China and these 97 are home to 243.98 million people (2010 estimate); 26 are in India and these 26 are home to 90.38 million people (2010 estimate).

In the state of Goa, western India, new residential blocks loom over shrinking fields. The produce from such fields once fed the capital city of Panaji, which now imports food 130 kilometres from the neighbouring state of Karnataka

What do we know about India’s food consumption patterns? Let’s look at some numbers to illustrate this. India’s most admirable National Sample Survey Organisation has just begun releasing summary data from its 2007-08 survey of household consumption (the earlier such ’round’, as it is called, pertained to the 2004-05 period). In rural India, average monthly per capita cereal consumption was around 10.3 kg for the poorest 10% of the population. (The survey distributes both rural and urban populations by ten ‘deciles’ – bands of 10% – which correspond to level of consumption expenditure.) It was between 11 and 12 kg for each of the next six decile classes, and was above 12 kg for the top three decile groups.

This means that for rural India, there is a strong positive correlation between ability to spend on food and quantum of consumption of cereals – the greater the household income, they more it is able to spend on staple foodgrain. In urban India, per capita cereal consumption increased from under 9.5 kg to about 10 kg per month over the first four decile classes but then showed a tendency to fall slightly rather than to rise in parallel with further increases in total expenditure.

This indicates the fulfilment of staple foodgrain needs and that expenditure on food thereafter is on cereal substitutes, processed food or eating out (what the surveys call ‘purchased cooked meals’), and fruit. Average cereal consumption per person per month was 11.7 kg in rural India and 9.7 in urban India. From this it would appear that the average urban person’s monthly cereal intake was about 2 kg less (a difference of 67 gm per day) than that of the average rural person. But it needs to be factored in that in urban areas the cereal content of processed foods and eating out (‘purchased cooked meals’) gets left out in the estimation of cereal consumption, which is why the difference in cereal consumption between the two may be less than it appears.

The FAO food price index plotted from 2000 to early 2010

India’s urban national average of per capita daily cereal consumption is 9.7 kg. At this average, we are able to gauge the cereal supply needs of cities with populations of over a million. Using population estimates for 2010 (from the City Mayors website database) we find:

Pimpri-Chinchwad (Maharashtra) with a metro population of 1.515 million consumes 483 tons of cereals a day
Nagpur (Maharashtra) with a metro population of 2.42 million consumes 772 tons of cereals a day
Varanasi (Bihar) with a metro population of 3.15 million consumes 1,005 tons of cereals a day
Ludhiana (Punjab) with a metro population of 4.40 million consumes 1,403 tons of cereals a day
Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh) with a metro population of 6.29 million consumes 2,006 tons of cereals a day
Kolkata (West Bengal) with a metro population of 15.42 million consumes 4,918 tons of cereals a day
Mumbai (Maharashtra) with a metro population of 21.2 million consumes 6,761 tons of cereals a day

These daily consumption demands mean movement, by road and rail, of food produce citywards at prodigious scales. In Navi Mumbai, an urban satellite of Mumbai which is a fair-sized city by itself today, lies the food wholesale depot that marshals and redirects the daily procession of trucks, lorries, light commercial vehicles and pick-ups bringing food for Mumbai’s millions. The number of vehicular movements in this yard are reckoned to be over 2,000 every day which indicates the vast physical reach of the giant city’s food gathering subsystem, one that holds in its thrall a region that could comfortably encompass western Europe.