Last month, around 55,000 people paid the Rs 250 daily fee to enter the Karachi Eat food festival held at a historic park in Pakistan’s financial capital. The 88-odd participants of the three-day festival presented visitors with instagrammable indulgences like nutella and strawberry gol gappas, Oreo pakoras, cheese samosas and lotus root chips.
But what does it mean to celebrate food in a city with stifling water shortages, in a country where 60% of the population faces food insecurity, one third lacks access to safe drinking water and 35% of all infant deaths are due to malnutrition?
The politics of food
Food has always been a political issue in Pakistan though it is seldom discussed as one. Alongside language and economy, it framed West Pakistan’s relationship to East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. East Pakistan broke off in part due to unfair policies regarding food distribution and famine alleviation.
Food insecurity continues to damage Pakistan. It is the product of bad governance. It is even linked to its relations with the US. Pakistan’s earliest alliance with the US was based on a donation of wheat to alleviate a national famine in the early 1950s. That came with a cost and the country’s alliance with the US continues to frame Pakistani national and international policy. Today, food is an indicator of the disparity between the rich and the poor, as well as rural and urban areas.
Rich-poor bias
In the words of a Karachi Eat organiser, the festival was an opportunity for the city’s residents to reclaim public space. Private real estate companies have taken over much of Karachi’s public spaces, converting them into underpasses, parking lots, shopping malls and apartment complexes. Thus, reclaiming this space is an important quest.
However, there is a class bias in this reclamation too. The city’s elite can freely breathe in its gardens, cafes, restaurants and shopping malls. But what about the rest of the population in a city of widespread poverty?
Scholar Mike Davis categorised Karachi as 60% slum. Even its affluent suburbs are dotted with congested areas housing labourers, sweepers, painters and other members of the working class. They desperately need public space too. But any quest for that space at Karachi Eat would have been halted at the gate with the prohibitive cost of the entrance ticket.
Difficult living
Karachi has a serious water shortage. Its original source of water, the Lyari river is polluted beyond recognition. The Malir river further East struggles to sustain a handful of farms and the new luxury suburbs in the area. The Indus has been so heavily dammed that there is little freshwater in its last 250 km run to the sea. Karachi must therefore rely on a trickle from the Hub dam on the Sindh Balochistan border, the Keenjhar lake about 100 km east of the city, and canals from Kotri barrage 250 km north of Karachi.
The city’s poor ration what little water they have making the growing of vegetables very difficult. In order to save money, the poor rely on vegetables that would have otherwise been thrown out. Men often eat at food stalls during the day where a plate of gol gappas costs Rs 50, one-fourth the price of a similar plate at Karachi Eat. Meat is either made on special occasions or only for the men. It is expensive and can double the monthly food bill. Many families do not know if they will be able to afford their next meal – the very definition of food insecurity.
The cost of food
But how much is food really worth in this city?
Prices at Karachi Eat ranged from Rs 250-Rs 350 per plate. For the rich, this is affordable. But it is criminally expensive when compared to how cost-effective collective cooking really is.
My mother runs a community kitchen where nearly 20 women from the slum of Neelum colony gather to cook from 7 am to noon every weekday. Through their combined efforts, they can feed 100 to 150 people a day at the cost of Rs 20-Rs 50 per person per day. This is not a langar, where food is served free of cost. The cooks are paid and everyone who comes must contribute according to their ability.
Given the steep difference in the prices at Karachi Eat and community-cooked meals, which the majority of the city can afford, does the festival attempt to correct these inequalities?
Charity is not the answer
An organiser of Karachi Eat said that several charitable organisations, which set up stalls at the venue, benefitted from the festival’s popularity. This included the Special Kids Education Institute, the Children’s Cancer hospital and the Shermeen Khan Memorial Foundation. He added that the festival had good intentions.
However, by simply giving space to charities that have little to do with food politics, the festival neglected to raise awareness about the issue of food insecurity in Pakistan. In this situation the rich remain wealthy and oblivious, and the poor remain hungry and angry.
Food has been the cause of revolution for hundreds of years and continues to cause shifts in international policy. Food insecurity has often led to violent change. The citizens of Karachi must, of course, be allowed fun events. But the obvious inequalities on display at Karachi Eat could have been used to discuss issues we have criminally ignored so far.