Entering 34th hour without electricity, and tired of the @KElectricPk bot, it pays to address the real culprits, the DHA and the Cantonment board.

For 33 hours, we have been told that the administration is on it. What they are on is never shared, as the devil is in the details.

In the 34th hour, we are being told to use "individual contacts" to immediately get @KElectricPk to send technicians, which is obviously an admission that nothing whatsoever was being done thus far.

There is a pattern to how these DHA and cantonment units are administered.

Info is deliberately kept from residents. Residential rulebooks are not shared, because you might demand your rights.

Snippets of rules are posted whenever something needs banning, such as a partial "dangerous animals" extract when someone needs to be warned about their dog etc.

Vast sums of money are extracted and expended without any clarity or audit. If you ask for transparency or a change in status quo, the first inquiry is whether you are a resident or a Tennant, so that your bloody civilian status can be appropriately diluted.

Taxes are paid to a cantonment board which by law governs active military zones only; & operates illegally.

In cantts, Civilians are LEASED plots of what used to be an artillery shed & then treated like they are trespassing on the shed if they ask for accountable administration.

The DHA in Karachi has accumulated vast swathes of land upon which the KPT lay claim through an ancient central govt allotment, and then proceeded to create a kingdom upon it. It is the master developer, the decider of plot sizes, amenities, water, health, sanitation.

It did such a marvellous job of this monopoly that there is no line water for most of DHA, the commercial areas are all slums due to poor planning, sanitation was an after thought and storm drains were considered only in 2007 and the residents were made to pay extra for them.

Where does the transfer money go? How can a statutory body charge fees for what it doesn't provide? What is done with what is left over?

Ask this enough, and it becomes a national security issue. Audits don't happen, the residents better be thankful for being allowed in.

In cantonments, If you demand basic rights as a leaseholder, you are reminded that along with the illegal lease you signed a document promising not to create trouble.

This exists from back when cantonments were military zones and civilians within them had to abide by martial law

Yet even after destroying the spirit of the Cantt act and behaving as a parallel government, these authorities are quick to attempt to threaten your very status as leaseholder, on the first sign of accountability or group demand. Courts thankfully stop the more ludicrous acts.

If you gave the ministry of agriculture a farm with which to grow crops, and it decided it would grow them elsewhere, then split the farm into 100 small portions and sold them to civilians with no accounting for where the money went, it would be behaving like a cantonment board.

Ofcourse, the ministry of agriculture would also have to bully the landowners it sold the land to and remind them to shut up and watch extra plots being carved out of the farm which were marked as shared spaces to truly be a cantonment board.

Add to this mix the fact that a plot of land is listed for a tenth of its actual price, so black money can conveniently be parked in it, and speculators trade without paying any capital value tax, which compliant provinces abolish.

Every transaction pays a transfer fee to DHA.

Black money Speculators drive property prices beyond the reach of most legitimate buyers, and Karachi has apartments worth a small flat in zone 2 London which rent for a fraction of the London rents because rental value reflects real value and not inflated monopoly rates.

Enter the government: province adds fuel to the speculation fire by reducing taxes and further incentivising the holding of unimproved property in a city where annual new housing demand is more than double supply.

Fed govt gives an amnesty to construction ind, so that every black money Speculator gets away with no qs asked about source of income. As long as you invest in land which has dubious ownership, administered by authorities whose primary aim is unaccountable revenue extraction.

And here we sit, being asked to be thankful for having a great system which gives us a backup generator. As if the generator was a gift from papa John's and not bought from our money.