International Institute for Environment and Development

Report Part Title: Migration to Pakistan

Report Title: Migration and small towns in Pakistan
Report Author(s): Arif Hasan and Mansoor Raza
International Institute for Environment and Development (2009)

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/resrep01265.5

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roughly correspond with the borders of Punjab province, and the lower plains which are in
Sindh.

Most of the area of the Indus plains has historically been an arid desert. The only natural
vegetation of any substantial quantity has been along the rivers. This has consisted of
tamarisk and tali forests sustained by the yearly flooding of the rivers. Most of these forests,
especially in the upper plains, have been cleared in recent times for irrigated agriculture. In
the delta region there are also substantial mangrove forests.

The Indus plains contain 77 per cent of Pakistan’s population and almost all its major cities
and industries. Income per capita and literacy rates are higher here than in the rest of the
country, especially in the upper plains, and communications are well developed. These
conditions have led to the migration of skilled, educated people and entrepreneurs from the
villages to the urban areas. These trends are discussed below in Section 3.1 of this paper.

The eastern deserts

East of the lower Indus plain are the deserts of Nara and Thar in Sindh, and of Cholistan in
the Punjab. These deserts extend east into Indian Rajasthan. They consist of shifting sand
dunes of 20 to 100 metres in height with flat areas between them. These flat areas are fairly
fertile and yield a good crop of millet and other grains after the monsoon rains. After the
rains the desert also supports a variety of grasses which are excellent fodder. However,
rains are meagre and erratic and these areas are subject to long periods of drought. In
addition to rainfed agriculture, pastoral activity is carried out here. In the Thar and Nara
deserts alone there are over 2.75 million head of livestock against a human population of
760,000. Due to extremely arid conditions in the desert, this pastoralism has been nomadic.

Large parts of these desert regions have now been brought under cultivation through canal
irrigation. Outside such areas, the desert region until the 1980s contained no major human
settlements except small scattered hamlets seldom consisting of more than 40 to 60
households. However, with the building of roads and the expansion of political activity and
administrative structures, all this is rapidly changing and urban populations are increasing as
a result of new, urban-based economic activities.

2 Migration to Pakistan

The areas that constitute Pakistan today have received a very large volume of migrants from
India and from neighbouring countries due to development policies under British rule and
later due to political and ethnic conflicts. These migrations and their repercussions are
discussed in this section.

2.1 Development of the Punjab canal colonies

Between 1872 and 1929, the British developed perennial irrigation in the regions of central
Punjab, which are now part of Pakistan. As a result, they colonized over 4.5 million hectares
of desert and pastoral land for agricultural purposes. They imported peasants from eastern
Punjab (now in India) to colonize these lands and in the process marginalized the local
pastoral population and completely changed the demography of a number of districts that
constitute Pakistani Punjab.31 A population increase of 18 per cent between 1901 and 1911
in the rural areas of Pakistan is attributed to this first Punjab migration. Increases in the
subsequent two censuses were 8 per cent and 9 per cent. An increase of 22 per cent in the
urban population between 1911 and 1921, compared to 4 per cent between 1901 and 1911,

31
Imran Ali (1989), The Punjab Under Imperialism: 1885–1947, Oxford University Press, Delhi.

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is also considered to be the result of the development of mandi (market) towns that emerged
to handle and export the agricultural surplus that perennial irrigation made possible.32

Before perennial irrigation was introduced, agriculture was carried out through inundation
channels or in the floodplains of the Punjab rivers. The rest of the region was for the most
part arid. The tribes living in the floodplains resisted the development of perennial irrigation
and colonization, since it was depriving them of their pasture lands and ancient way of life.
The British suppressed the rebellion, executed the leaders and declared the floodplain tribes
to be “criminal tribes”. Members of these tribes were denied admission to educational
institutions and government jobs, and denied access to land. Since they kept harassing the
settlers, they were confined to concentration areas and developed a reputation as cattle
thieves, a reputation that still lives with them. Thus, a major division between the “locals” and
the “settlers” emerged, and continues to this day.

There are also major physical differences between the old settlement patterns and those
introduced by the British at the turn of the 19th century. The old settlements are on mounds,
built on the rubble of former settlements. They have narrow winding lanes and agricultural-
land subdivisions are irregular. In the colonized areas, land is divided into squares of 25
acres and each square is divided into one-acre plots. The settlements are also built on
squares of 25 acres or their multiples. This process and its repercussions have been
described by Professor Pervaiz Vandal (Box 1).

Box 1: The making of the Punjab canal colonies

The colonization by the British brought about a fundamental change in settlement patterns in
the central Punjab. The British launched a programme of irrigation of the vast lands between
rivers, the Doabas, with canals taking off from barrages built on the rivers. The gentle
southward slope of the land made this ideal, as there was no major hurdle to overcome. The
making of these canal colonies transformed the economics, political outlook, governance
and culture of the region. More than 5 million acres were taken from original inhabitants, the
pastoral and nomadic people, and allocated to people from other parts (now mainly in India)
of the central Punjab. The original inhabitants living in various clans and tribes, small and
big, were given the generic names of Janglis (savages) and deemed to have no rights,
culture or values and were literally driven off the land.

The building of canals, allotment of lands to newcomers, maintenance of the irrigation

system, distribution of the canal water (the life blood of the land and the new settlers),
adjudication of conflicting claims of land and water, collection of revenue and cancellation of
allotments of the defaulters of revenue was administered by the British-led bureaucracy. The
Deputy Commissioner could and sometimes did make or break families with results
reverberating for generations. Thus, there developed a very close nexus between the
settlers and the officials, which coloured their political and even cultural outlook. The Sahib
did indeed become the mai-bap (mother and father) of the settlers of the canal colonies.

Villages called chaks were planned on the lands taken from the original inhabitants by the
Crown, and among the villages at reasonable distances towns were laid out. These towns
were central market places, called mandis, for livestock and agricultural produce. Both
villages and towns were planned on a grid layout, as opposed to the traditional labyrinthine
pattern of streets. The canal projects resulted in a great increase in agricultural produce, and
the mandi towns were linked with a network of roads, with the more prosperous mandis
linked through the railway network to collect the produce of the region for export by sea,
mainly via Karachi.

See over

32
Calculated from government of Pakistan population census reports.

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During the two World Wars, ‘men and grain’ of the Punjab were exported, and Karachi
acquired more prominence. This predominance of the North–South trade using railways
altered the status of some of the older trading cities that relied on the West–East trading
pattern with Central Asia.

Source: Pervaiz Vandal (2004), The Lesser Cities of the Punjab: Forgotten or Neglected?,
paper presented at the Urban and Regional Planning Conference, NED University, Karachi,
5 June.

The colonization process was followed by the creation of Pakistan in 1947, and the further
migration of people from Indian Punjab to Pakistani Punjab (see Section 3.2 below). Thus,
the population of settlers increased, and they now control the economy of the colonized
areas, are better educated and fiercely upwardly mobile. The locals are catching up but they
still mostly consist of agricultural labourers, pastoralists and old pre-colonization elite families
retaining considerable political importance. Politically, the local–settler conflict expresses
itself through the Saraiki Suba (Province) movement. Saraiki is the old language of southern
and parts of central Punjab, which were overwhelmingly Saraiki-speaking in the 19th and
early 20th centuries, but now have a large Punjabi-speaking population. The movement is
demanding government jobs and improved infrastructure for the Saraiki-speaking region,
and actively promoting its language and culture.

2.2 The 1947 migration from India

When the British Indian Empire was partitioned in 1947, 4.7 million Sikhs and Hindus left
what is today Pakistan for India, and 6.5 million Muslims migrated from India to Pakistan.33
Thus, over just a few months, the population of Pakistan increased by 1.8 million people, or
6 per cent. However, this increase was mostly in the urban areas of the Sindh and Punjab
provinces. There was almost no migration to the NWFP and Balochistan. According to the
1951 census, 48 per cent of the urban population in Pakistan had originated in India and had
migrated since August 1947.34

A large number of towns in the Punjab, both large and small, had a population increase of
anything between 90 and 192 per cent in the inter-census period of 1941–1951. In the 1931–
1941 period, these cities experienced much less growth.35 These towns are located in the
districts of Bahawalnagar, Rahim Yar Khan, Faisalabad and Toba Tek Singh, where the
refugees settled. Towns and other districts where the refugees did not settle registered a
negative growth because of the departure of the Hindus and Sikhs. Such towns are in the
districts of Dera Ghazi Khan, Layyah and Rajanpur.

The urban population of Sindh in 1941 was 12 per cent of its total population. In 1951 this
had increased to 29 per cent. Most of the smaller towns registered a negative growth, as a
result of the departure of the Hindus. However, Sindh’s two major towns, Hyderabad and
Karachi, increased by over 150 per cent during the inter-census period because of migration.
In the case of NWFP, the urban population actually declined from 18 per cent of the total
population in 1941 to 11 per cent in 1951. Census figures show that of the 29 towns and
cities that existed in the NWFP in 1951, 24 had a negative growth. This is because of the

33
Iffat Ara and Arshad Zaman (2002), Asian Urbanization in the New Millennium: Pakistan Chapter,
unpublished paper written for a publication of the Asian Urban Information Centre for Kobe,
August.
34
Worked out from Government of Pakistan Population Census Reports
35
Major population increase took place in the larger cities of Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Multan,
Rawalpindi, Khanpur and Rahim Yar Khan.

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departure of the Hindus and because the refugees from India did not settle in the NWFP.
The situation in Balochistan is not dissimilar from that of NWFP.36

There are three main reasons why the refugee population settled in the Punjab and Sindh.
First, about 80 per cent of the refugees to Pakistan came from Indian Punjab and had a
cultural and linguistic link with the province, in addition to physical proximity. Second, the
division of Punjab (into Indian and Pakistani) was accompanied by a compulsory transfer of
populations, which was not arranged for the other provinces. Third, there were better
communication links between Indian Punjab and Pakistani Punjab and Sindh than there
were between Indian Punjab and the distant provinces of Balochistan and NWFP.

The refugee movement to Sindh took place because Punjab refused to accept more
refugees and also because Karachi, the capital of Sindh, had been made the capital of
Pakistan. However, through rioting and conflict, the Hindu and Sikh population of the NWFP
and Balochistan were either driven away or exterminated, and they were not replaced by a
refugee population.

The socioeconomic impact

The migration from India had a major impact on the sociology, economics and politics of
Pakistan. Before the coming of the refugees, clan and caste organizations were strong and
urban areas were divided into clan neighbourhoods. Caste and professions were inter-
related. With the coming of the refugees and the anarchy that followed, caste and clan
organizations in the towns where they settled became weak and ineffective, almost
overnight. Neighbourhoods vacated by migrating Hindus and Sikhs were occupied by
Muslims and were no longer homogenous in terms of ethnicity or caste.37

The refugee populations very soon came to dominate the cities in Sindh and Punjab in which
they settled, and a fiercely upwardly mobile go-getting culture replaced the old value system.
This culture, because of its increasing control on the economy of Pakistan, expanded into
the other regions as well. All this had an important impact on politics, and a division was
created between the indigenous population and the refugees, especially in the case of
Sindh. This division continues to this day. Aspects of this change in socioeconomic terms
are shown in Table 3, Karachi: demographic change due to partition, in Appendix 3.
Karachi’s political problems and ethnic conflicts, and those of all Sindh, are to a great extent
rooted in the demographic change that took place in 1947.

The other major change that took place due to the refugee migration was that, from a multi-
religious, multi-cultural society, Pakistan became a mono-religious society attempting to
become a mono-cultural one as well. This mono-culturalism was resisted by the smaller
provinces, but in Sindh the refugees supported it.

The physical impact

The physical impact of the migration from India on the Punjab and Sindh cities was
considerable. The inner cities, where most of the richer Hindus and Sikhs used to reside,
were taken over by the refugees. Their densities increased within a few months due to
subdivisions of large homes and the occupation of open areas for makeshift residential
accommodation. Old religious and community buildings were also occupied and turned into
residential accommodation. Many of the occupied areas became poor neighbourhoods
whereas before they were middle- and upper-middle-class ones. The refugee migration was

36
Calculated from government of Pakistan population census reports.
37
Arif Hasan (2002), The Unplanned Revolution: Observations on the Process of Socio-economic
Change in Pakistan, City Press, Karachi.

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the beginning of the environmental degradation of a number of old cities, and the destruction
of their cultural heritage, in both physical and social terms.38

Open areas in the cities, such as parks and playgrounds, were turned into reception areas
for refugees, and subsequently became squatter settlements. The migration created an
immense problem with regard to water, sanitation and health. The government managed to
tackle this in the initial stages but other factors in the 1950s and 1960s, discussed below,
multiplied these problems to such an extent that the government became helpless. The
comparative tolerance of squatter colonies in Pakistan, compared to other Asian countries, is
the direct result of the migration from India and the support given to refugee reception camps
and informal settlements by the government and various social welfare and religious
organizations.

The case of Sindh

The case of Sindh is very different from that of the Punjab. In the Punjab the overwhelming
majority of migrants were Punjabi-speaking. There was already a Punjabi Muslim middle-
class in existence, and so the conflict between the refugees and the local people was
comparatively small-scale. In the case of Sindh, the migrants were predominantly Urdu--
speaking, whereas the locals were Sindhi-speaking. Also, the Sindhi Hindus constituted the
business and professional class in Sindh. Sindhi Muslims were by and large landlords and
agriculturists and before partition the Muslim population of Sindh considered the Sindhi
Hindus as exploiters. The migrants to Sindh quickly took over the functions vacated by the
Sindhi Hindus. In addition, they settled almost entirely in the towns, thus creating a rural–
urban divide. For example, in the 1998 census almost 42 per cent of the urban population of
Sindh stated that Urdu (as opposed to Sindhi) was its mother tongue, as compared to 2 per
cent in the rural areas.

This division has manifested itself politically, with the refugee population (until recently)
supporting a strong centre and the Sindhi population fighting for greater political autonomy
and decentralization.39 The void created by the departing Hindus and Sikhs was also filled by
migration from the Punjab and the NWFP. Table 4, Languages spoken: Pakistan/provinces,
in Appendix 3 illustrates this well.

2.3 Migration as a result of the Indo-Pakistan wars

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since 1947, and numerous small-scale battles.
The wars took place in 1948, 1965 and 1971. The Kargil conflict took place in 1997. All these
wars produced refugees.

The 1948 Kashmir war

The 1948 conflict resulted in the division of Kashmir. A large number of Kashmiris migrated
to Pakistan and settled in Azad (free) Kashmir, as the Pakistani part is called. The Hindu
elite who were the rulers of Kashmir were forced to migrate, thus finishing off the old feudal
system. Nationalist-minded Kashmiris migrated to Azad Kashmir from Indian Kashmir and
have since waged a diplomatic, and at times armed, campaign for establishing an
independent and united Kashmir or for the holding of a referendum under UN auspices for
allowing the Kashmiris to determine their own future. During the Afghan conflict, the
Kashmiri independence and/or referendum movement acquired an increasingly Islamic
character.

38
See: Khalid Bajwa (2008), Development Conditions of Androon Shehr: The Walled City of Lahore,
unpublished PhD thesis, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.
39
For details see G.M. Sayed (1995), The Case of Sindh, Naeeu (new) Sindh Academy, Karachi.

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The social changes brought about by the end of feudalism in Kashmir, and the emergence of
Islamic culture, freed the Azad Kashmiris from serfdom. The region that they occupy is really
the extension of the western highlands of Pakistan, where there is immense pressure on
productive land and rainfall is erratic. These two factors together have resulted in large-scale
migration from Azad Kashmir to urban areas of Pakistan, especially Karachi. The Kashmiri
migrants to Karachi work as drivers, cooks and in the building industry. As a result of the
2005 earthquake in Kashmir, they went back to their devastated villages to rehabilitate
themselves. Their connections with Karachi helped them in the rehabilitation process (Box 2,
Interview 34). Also, as a result of their departure, there was an acute shortage of drivers,
cooks and waiters in Karachi and there were almost no contractors and workmen left for
erecting timber shuttering for cast-in-situ concrete works.40

Box 2: Interview with Mushtaq Ahmed: the Karachi connection

Mushtaq Ahmed comes from a small village in Azad Kashmir. His father was a numbardar
(government-appointed village revenue collector). As such, the family was not poor. But then
his father died when he was 7 years old and the family simply could not live off the land they
possessed. So, in 1984, when he was 11 years old, Mushtaq was sent to Karachi where his
uncle was working. His uncle got him a job with a family as a domestic servant for very low
pay. He developed connections with neighbourhood servants and they arranged a better job
for him. At this job the employers were very kind and taught him how to cook and improved
his reading and writing skills. He has remained a cook but as his experience and expertise
grew, he was able to get himself better jobs.
Mushtaq’s family has lived well because of the money he has sent. However, he has not
been able to save. He says that families who have members in Karachi eat better, dress
better and think differently, especially in political and social terms. They relate politics to
political parties rather than to individuals, unlike others in the village. They are also able to
think in terms of their children, including their girls, getting college and professional
education, which the others cannot. Their help is often sought in arranging reconciliation in
village disputes and they are considered wise. Local business opportunities are also more
easily accessed by their families. A lot of shops have been funded by money from Karachi.
Mushtaq’s family has kept their land but it gives them nothing more than two to three months
of “ration” per year. They have let it out on contract to landless labour in their village. Today
there are 50 to 60 people from his village, of about 65 households, working in Karachi.

The earthquake of October 2005 devastated Mushtaq’s village. Families with members
working in Karachi were able to seek relief and rehabilitation from their connections in
Karachi. Their employers helped them with money and with connecting them to NGOs and
relief organizations working in the affected area. Also, for the rehabilitation process there
were complex procedures involving banks, government regulations and political dealings.
The families with migrant members were able to understand and fulfil these requirements
easily, unlike the others. Mushtaq feels that he, like many others, would still be destitute
today without the Karachi connection.

Source: Interview carried out by Arif Hasan, Karachi, 17 December 2007.

The 1965 and 1971 wars

In the 1965 war, Pakistan captured a large area of the Indian part of the Thar desert, and in
1971 India captured a large part of the Thar desert in Pakistan. Many UCs in Pakistani Thar
were Hindu majority areas, and Pakistani Thar as a whole was dominated by the Hindu
upper caste who controlled most of the productive land and livestock. They also dominated
the politics of Thar and strictly enforced caste divisions, making upward social and economic
40
One of the authors is an architect and this is his experience at building sites.

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mobility almost impossible for the Hindu lower castes. Their control over the caste system
also ensured the maintenance of agriculture-related infrastructure through baigar (forced
labour) and the protection of forests and pasture lands.

Following the 1965 and 1971 wars, the Hindu upper castes and their retainers fled to India.
As a result, the feudal institutions that managed agricultural production and the maintenance
of infrastructure collapsed. This has had severe repercussions on the natural environment of
Thar. In addition, the lower castes were freed from serfdom and to some extent from
discrimination. Many of their members, as a result, have acquired education and are
important professionals and NGO leaders. Apart from the migration of Hindus to India, 3,500
Muslim families moved from Indian Thar to Pakistani Thar. They were given 12 acres of land
per family (a total of 42,000 acres), thus introducing another factor in the social and political
structure of Thar and creating a new interest group. Studies indicate that famines in
Pakistani Thar associated with drought are to a great extent the result of the social and
economic changes that the Indo-Pakistan conflicts have brought about in the region.41 The
social changes would have taken place in any case, but through other processes and over a
longer period of time.

2.4 Migration as a result of the Afghan conflict

As a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent jihad and civil war, 3.7
million Afghan refugees came to Pakistan.42 The majority of them settled in refugee camps in
the peri-urban areas of the NWFP and Balochistan. As a result of this refugee influx, the
growth rate of Peshawar, capital of NWFP, increased from 2 per cent per year between 1961
and 1972 to 9 per cent between 1972 and 1981. It again fell to 3 per cent between 1981 and
1998. Similarly, Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, increased at a rate of 7 per cent per year
between 1972 and 1981, compared to 3 per cent during 1961–1972 and 4 per cent during
1981–1998. According to the National Alien Registration Authority (NARA), 600,000 Afghans
have settled in Karachi.

Most of the Afghan refugees, like the majority of the population of NWFP, are Pushto-
speaking Pukhtoons, and so the Afghan migration considerably increased the number of
Pushto-speakers in Pakistan. It strengthened Pukhtoon culture, of which there was a
blossoming in the NWFP following the Soviet invasion. The Afghan migration also led to the
strengthening of the religious establishment in Pakistan, which became the main support to
the military government of that time although it never received more than 7 per cent of the
vote in any election in the country. The migration was accompanied by massive opium
cultivation and heroin manufacture, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The finances
generated as a result were used to fund the war. Guns came with the heroin trade and so
what the Pakistanis refer to as the “heroin and Kalashnikov culture” consolidated itself in
Pakistan43 with disastrous results for democracy and for the young people in urban areas
who became drug addicts.44 The emergence of the drug and gun mafia also undermined the
administration of the state as government employees, especially those belonging to the law-
enforcing agencies, became collaborators of the mafia.

The richer Afghans very quickly established themselves in business and trade in Peshawar,
Quetta and other cities in NWFP and Balochistan, and in Karachi. There is a view that these
41
Arif Hasan (2002), The Unplanned Revolution, City Press, Karachi.
42
Iffat Ara and Arshad Zaman (2002), Asian Urbanization in the New Millennium: Pakistan Chapter,
unpublished paper written for a publication of the Asian Urban Information Centre for Kobe,
August.
43
For detail see: Ahmed Rashid (2000), The Taliban, I.B. Twis and Co. Ltd, London.
44
According to the Pakistan Country Report of the UNDCP, September 2002, there are 1.5 million
heroin addicts in Pakistan. In 1979, there were none. In addition, there are another 1.5 million
chronic addicts using drugs other than heroin.

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businesses were financed by the heroin trade and through corruption in the Afghan transit
trade through Pakistan. The Afghans have become major transporters and have supported
poor Afghans in operating inter-city and intra-city buses. As unskilled construction workers
they were (and still are) willing to work for lower wages. All this has been resented by the
local populations who consider the Afghan migration responsible for their high
unemployment rate. Afghans have also invested in fisheries in Karachi. They have become
boat owners, crew and watchmen, and also labourers at the fish harbours. Their presence is
resented by local entrepreneurs, boat owners and local fishermen. Newspaper reports
suggest that most of the Afghan labour involved in this sector consists of “non-regularized”
immigrants.45

For centuries, if not for thousands of years, the Koochis or Pawandas as they are called in
South-Asia, have migrated with their animals for winter from the cold of Central Asia to the
relative warmth of northern India and Pakistan. During their stay in winter, they maintained
and constructed agriculture- and building-related earth works in exchange for water, fodder
and space for their animals. This movement took place between the Oxus and the Jamna
rivers. It was restricted as a result of the creation of Pakistan but continued between
Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Afghan war made this movement impossible and so the
Koochis in large numbers settled in Pakistan with their animals.46 Their leaders acquired
funds and purchased heavy earth-work-related machinery and bid for earth-work contracts in
NWFP, Punjab and Sindh. The Afghan labour force, some of it bonded, is used by them and
is far cheaper than the Pakistani workers. This labour force is housed in camps wherever the
earth-work takes place. As a result, the Afghans now dominate as earth-work contractors.

Destitute Afghan boys and a small percentage of adults have taken to picking garbage at
dumps in all the major cities of Pakistan. In Karachi, there are over 20,000 boys doing this
work.47 They are employed by contractors who sell recyclable material to the garbage-
recycling industry. Some of these boys have started to go back to Afghanistan, creating
problems for the recycling-industry contractors.48

There has also been considerable resentment of the fact that water schemes, schools,
clinics and skill-development institutions were set up for the Afghan refugees by Western
NGOs and governments whereas the locals did not have a similar level of service in these
sectors. However, after the withdrawal of Western aid to the refugee camps, most of these
services have collapsed. Where the refugee population has left the camps, most of these
facilities have been bulldozed, and the land is in theory reverting back to agriculture. In
reality, it is being taken over for informal residential development.49

2.5 Bangladeshi and Burmese migrants

The 1971 war in Bangladesh for independence from Pakistan resulted in the migration of
non-Bengalis from Bangladesh (previously East Pakistan) to West Pakistan. However, this
migration was comparatively small and limited to Karachi. Most of the migrants settled in
Orangi Town, one of the 18 towns that constitute the Karachi City District. Here, they
constitute about 30 per cent of the population. They come from the urban areas of
Bangladesh, unlike the Pushto- and Hindko-speaking residents of Orangi who have migrated
from the NWFP or from Afghanistan. As a result, they have been able to set up schools

45
http://www.pff.org.pk/article.php3?id_article=100.
46
For details see: Arif Hasan (1987), “The Sohrab Goth Massacre”, Herald, Karachi, February.
47
Figures of the Urban Resource Centre, Karachi, 2002.
48
Saleem Alimuddin et al. (2000), The Work of the Anjuman Samaji Behbood and the Larger
Faisalabad Context, IIED (UK).
49
Arif Hasan’s observations and dialogues at sites of demolished camps in NWFP and Balochistan in
1998.

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through self-help, improve their settlements and have no problems with their women
working. Their union councillors are also from their community and their union councils have
a higher level of accountability and efficiency.

Bangladesh and Pakistan were one until 1971 and so Pakistan is a major attraction for
Bangladeshi migrants. In addition, the conflict between the Muslim tribes in Burma and the
Burmese government has resulted in a large migration of Burmese Muslims to Karachi as
they feel more comfortable and welcome in a Muslim state such as Pakistan.

The Burmese and Bangladeshi migrants work in the fishing industries as crew members on
trawlers and large deep-sea-going vessels. They also work in other fishing-related activities
such as sorting, cleaning and packaging fish. Local fishing communities are extremely
resentful of the presence of these migrants, since they are willing to work at much cheaper
rates and in violation of all established labour laws and regulations.50 It is estimated that
there are over 300,000 Bangladeshi and Burmese migrants in Karachi. Almost all of them
live in exclusive informal settlements from where their work sites are easily accessible, and
they are protected by middlemen in the fishing industry.

Apart from the resentment of locals against migrant labour, a number of other issues have
also surfaced. It is claimed that illegal immigrants have acquired Pakistani National Identity
Cards and vote in the local elections, which distorts the electoral process.51 Investigations
into the electoral results show that 14 “illegal” migrants from Bangladesh and Burma were
elected as councillors in the 2005 local government elections in Karachi.52 The other serious
issue is that Bangladeshi and Burmese women are trafficked to Karachi for prostitution. It is
estimated that 200,000 Bangladeshi women were trafficked to Pakistan in the last 10 years.
Many of them have been sold in the slave trade for US$1,500 to US$2,500 each. At present,
there are more than 2,000 Bangladeshi and Burmese women in prisons and shelters as
illegal migrants in Karachi.53

3 Rural–urban migration

Tables 5 to 9 in Appendix 3 give an overview of the scale and causes of migration in

Pakistan. They also indicate the scale of migration to and from different provinces, providing
the basis for an analysis of the sociological and economic reasons for migration, and its
locations.

3.1 Scale of migration

The census definition of a migrant is someone who has resided somewhere else previously,
other than the district or tehsil in which he or she is residing at the time of the census. This
definition refers to internal migrants and does not cover international migration. According to
Table 5, 10.8 million Pakistanis (8 per cent of the total population) are migrants. Some 64
per cent of all migrants have migrated to urban areas, and 25 per cent of all migrants have
gone to Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi, which are all large cities where job opportunities
are available. Of all migrants, 13 per cent have migrated to Karachi alone, which is the only
port and mega-city in Pakistan, and is the centre of trade and commerce in addition to being
the capital of Sindh Province. The main destinations for migrants have been the larger cities

50
Arif Hasan (1993), Evaluation of the Community Development Work at Rehri, IUCN Karachi, July.
51
Daily News (2007), “Removal of NIC requirement will allow bogus votes”, 7 August, Karachi.
52
Daily Times (2007), “14 illegal immigrants made it to CDGK elections”, 5 August.
53
CATW, Asia Pacific-Trafficking in Women and Prostitution.

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