Published 14 September 2025
Karachi:
“Karachi is called Lysbyen, but its original residents still live in the dark.” This is how Kamal Shah, a spokesman for Fisher people from Ibrahim Hyderi, describes their situation.
Much of the country around Karachi’s sea view and Korangi Creek was once home to established fishing communities. What replaced them was not a rising tide that lifted all boats, but rather the shift of these fishermen, pushed to the margins and forced to the slum by the sea. This upheaval has given rise to a number of problems in Ibrahim Hyderi, a solution to the edge of Korangi Creek.
An English mirror
To understand Ibrahim Hyderi, we can compare it to what happened in the home country of the former colonial rulers of Sindh centuries ago, in England.
Any school or university child in Pakistan who has flirted with radical politics for the history of the Left and the history of capitalism will not know about Ibrahim Hyderi, but will know to refer to England’s cabinets in England religiously. The actions were adopted during the 17th and 18th centuries at the morning of the industrial revolution.
This was when Commons were closed out of land that was once owned collectively, worked on and lived by English villagers. The actions transformed all common land into private property. The peasants were transformed into city dwellers in London, crowded, illness inclined and indignant. The multiplied urban population converted agricultural people to workers and helped burn the industrial revolution.
However, there is an important warning: This situation in England was not permanent. Over the centuries, their community won victorious by defeating poverty at the slum level and creating a relatively equal society under and shortly after World War II. Some inequalities have resurfaced since, but people no longer live in rat-infected slums.
Displaced and forgotten
Ibrahim Hyderi is a 30-minute drive from DHA and Clifton, open to anyone who wants to visit, though few ever wanted it.
“During my lifetime it was once peaceful and scenic,” says Kamal Shah.
Much of the house around Korangi Creek and the coast “used to be a fishing village, Gizri. People were told to pack overnight and leave”. Of course, the locals had no permits, even though they had lived and fished there for centuries. These people were forced to pack and then stuffed into Ibrahim Hyderi.
You often meet people in Karachi who can describe in living details the difficulties and suffering of those who live thousands of miles away. And yet many people living in Karachi’s distinguished neighborhoods may not be the name Ibrahim Hyderi and the great scale displacement of these people, so much less the ethnic composition of the area.
Since then, several people have flowed to this city for outcast communities. Farmers and fishermen from Keti bottom are one of them. As a little fresh water fools downstream from Sindhu (Indus), the resulting “sea penetration” along Sindh’s coastal belt has made agriculture impossible and forced many to migrate, especially to Ibrahim Hyderi.
Sindhu -Deltaet
“Why do you want to catch the river?” Shah asks, when Karachis once “died” rivers surter back with indifference to our ways. This is a timely reminder from Shah based on the ongoing debate about building more dams on Indus. Shah’s simple wisdom is supported by scientific consensus. According to the SINDH government’s own site, 90% of all commercial fishing is dependent on the mangroves, which have been significantly declined due to limited flow of Indus. It is not a surprise then that Shah believes that the ongoing flood can benefit the delta and therefore fishing people; “This is a flood for you, but for us it is a blessing.”
“The responsibility falls on the Sindh government … We have the rivers Malir and Lyari, and the government must install treatment facilities to ensure that the seawater remains clean.” He adds that untreated wastewater and industrial waste are dumped in these rivers and oceans, forcing Fishers to sail further away from the coast to catch fish.
This request may fall on deaf ears, considering that in the wake of the Malir River, the mayor of Karachi twitly twited that “at this time Nadi flows like a river,” understandably causes people to fool with the comment on social media. It reveals a darker reality that our rivers are not recognized as rivers but dumping grounds.
Shah remembers his time as a child as he could play a game by throwing a coin into the sea and diving in to find the coin when the sea was cleaner, “Today, if a person dives in, you can’t even see him.”
“Their fishing society has been lost somewhere in the middle of the bungalows,” says Fatima Majeed, the newly appointed leader of Sindh’s Fisheries Department. Majeed even belongs to the Fisheries Society. She adds, “Their pulls were seized from them …. We even protested and went to Islamabad … and although fishermen were told they would be compensated, it never happened.” A common story in Pakistan.
“The river (Sindhu) worked for tens of thousands of years to build Sindh’s land … The river would bring silt downstream and help form the country and push the sea forward … All this work has been undone in our 78 -year history in our country,” says Majeed. Her comment should remind us of the Sindhu River as the basic basis for the identity of Sindh as well as much of the region.
Majeed believes that “according to the law of nature, people living on the delta must have inalienable rights to the river.” She recalls that over 60 years ago “there was proper farming on the coast” relieved by abundance of fresh water. Since the river has been suffocated and salt-water-SIVNING has made agriculture impossible, causing people from the coastal belt to migrate to Ibrahim Hyderi.
It is important for people who live around Sea View to read the following comment from Majeed: “Today, Fisher people have to put their nets on their bikes and bikes to sea views to catch fish. There they face harassment by the police and are sometimes thrown into prison. Then we have had to save them.”
Few in this part of Karachi with liberal sensitivity will have bothered to teach people’s coastal history.
Fisherwomen of Kolachi
“The nets that were made for fishing were previously made by women … and back in the day women would fish just with men,” shares Fatima Majed. Karachi gets his name from a legendary fishing woman called “Mai Kolachi”, which belongs to a Sindhi “Kolachi” strain on this coast. It is said that she has defended her family from a sea monster who threatened her family and made her a symbolic protector of the coast.
Majeed claims, “Fisherwoman of History was an authorized woman.” She says women could earn a decent income in recent history before the destruction of the delta and the creation of elite housing projects. “But since the destruction of the Indus Delta, we have not only lost our income, but also our culture.”
“The nets used today are imported … These nets are tighter and not only are the bad for fish population, but also biodiversity.”
It is worth tacking this concern that is shared by majed. Could the government explore the possibility of promoting local productions of networks instead of importing them and thus generating well -known employment for women in Karachi?
“Women also clean shrimp. If there is a bucket of five kg, the women would make RS200,” says Majeed. “This comes with health and safety issues. Almost no precautions are taken to take care of their health and safety … Many women have changed against urban work working in people’s homes, in factories … Outside of Karachi, In Thatta, Badin, women don’t even have these prospects available.”
Ethnic tension
Ibrahim Hyderi is an ethnically diverse neighborhood. Sindhi, Baloch, Bengali, Muhajir and some Pashtuns are found in different parts of the area. Although there is general coexistence in Ibrahim Hyderi, you notice ethnic tension. This became clear while observing a battle that was almost physically on the drive back from the coast. Ethnic slurves were injured on a truck driver who had become an alley. While from a traffic point of view he may have been guilty, the episode points to the fact that people in this country do not know how to solve true disagreements through peaceful dialogue. Instead, many take to Bigotry and Hate as a means of expressing disagreement.
Concentration of people together in extreme poverty of this kind is certainly to create ethnic tensions. In Posh neighborhoods, people often do not even know who their neighbor is and what ethnicity they belong to, simply because there is enough room for everyone. This does not apologize for hatred found in poor neighborhoods, but poverty is a significant factor that causes hatred for parties.
Land grabs interests
In Ibrahim Hyderi you see large parts of the neighborhood covered with waste, coating the hills, often by the sea. When asked why it seems that the entire city’s garbage is dumped here, Shah replies that it is due to “land grab interests”. It would have been bad enough if the city’s waste was dumped out of neglect and poor waste waste practice, but reality is more creepy. “They continue to dump more and more waste to take over a particular area, and then they put the concrete and cement on it and claim the country.” This not only increases the likelihood of significant damage when and if the sea swallows the soil into a cyclone, so much less the inevitable sea level rise in coast Karachi in the next few decades; It points to poor enforcement of the law in Pakistan.
Development for whom
Are industrialization and elite housing necessary for societal progress?
“Trawlers, launches and uncontrolled fishing are a problem,” says Shah. 200 years back “uncontrolled fishing” would not have been a problem as the overall population would be a small fraction of today’s population, and there would not have been large “lifting rockets” and industrial fishing.
The argument in favor of industrialization is that it has produced an unprecedented wealth and lifted people out of poverty and gave us modern medicine. However, all this could have been achieved without looting of nature if we had limited our financial system with strong moral laws. The subcontinent had the largest proportion of the world’s GDP and the richest bankers on the planet before the British takeover, while an original industrial revolution had brewed in Bengal, at least according to historian William Dalrymple, who argued in his book “The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence and The Pillage of A Empire”. Is it possible that an original industrial revolution would have been less destructive due to the original value system that appreciated the holy rivers, land and oceans?
Not only have we obviously failed to bloom since then, we have degenerated in the opposite direction, symbolized with what can only be called the closure of water to the region and the mass displacement of its society. What do we like to call this?
Without moral progress through a bill of history, all economic and material progress is wasted. “Development” has not been a sign of our progress, but proof of our moral underdevelopment.
At a time when we have made progress in technology, artificial intelligence, engineering surveys, have we strived for moral progress? Or maybe we think all morals have already been discovered and that the case is now closed.
Fatima Majeed claims that the government can begin to tackle these issues by increasing the flow of the Indus Delta, developing a “sustainable” fishing policy and providing compensation for displacement.
“We have hope from this government that they will formally recognize Fishers as” work “and the rights that come with it,” notes Majed. She says she has worked with various members and organizations in the community against a proposal for the government.
It has not yet been seen whether Destiny of Kolachi’s fishing society will lean on justice and dignity, or whether the trend of infinite development will continue at their expense.
Zain Haq is freelance -contributors
All facts and information is the author’s sole responsibility
