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Indus Valley school paints for Badin

By Urooj Zia

KARACHI: A fundraising art and photography exhibition, organized by the students and the faculty of the Indus Valley School of Art an Architecture (IVSAA) opened Wednesday at the Canvas Art Gallery.

The exhibit, which includes 27 paintings and 47 photographs, depicts facets of life in Phalakra, district Badin. All proceeds from the sale of the work, which are expected to amount to Rs 1,973,000, will go to the Hisaar Foundation, which will use the money to build a nutritional clinic in Phalakra. Land for the hospital has been donated by Dr Nadeem Qamar, a cardiologist, who belongs to the area.

“Dr Qamar spoke to the Hisaar Foundation about the plight of the residents of Badin. Tammy Haq of the Hisaar Foundation brought it to our notice,” IVSAA Department of Architecture Head, Hameer Soomro, told Daily Times. “More than 20 students, accompanied by some of the faculty then went on a day-trip to Badin, recorded events and life around them, and then came back and created these paintings over a period of three weeks.”

Phalakra in district Badin is an agricultural village, with a population of 50,000. People work as labourers on fields owned by landlords. The main crops include sugarcane, cotton and wheat, and the haris are paid Rs 1,700 to Rs 2,000 per month for working seven to eight hours a day.

“Poverty is prevalent in the area,” Dr Nadeem Qamar explained. “The problem is that most of the locals, especially the men, are addicted to Gutka and Mainpuri. They sleep all day; hardly anyone works at all. Agriculture has declined, and as a result, so has the per capita income. There has been no development in the area for the past several years, water is short, farming is difficult, and the people have always been poor-these conditions pushed them towards drug addictions, which made their plight worse.”

“The addictive stuff supposedly comes in from Hyderabad,” Hisaar Foundation Chairperson, Simi Kamal, said. “It looks like choorun and comes in small transparent plastic packs. We tested it and discovered that it was opium-based. Almost every man, woman and child in Phalakra is addicted to it. A packet costs Rs 5, and a person consumes four packets a day on average. So they’re spending Rs 20 a day, amounting to at least Rs 600 per month on this. They’re not left with money to spend on anything else.

“Our main purpose would be to help them overcome this addiction through the rehabilitation unit at the hospital,” Kamal said.

The hospital will be small. It will be an inpatient facility with a capacity for 10 beds. It will have a maternity ward, a nutritional centre, and a rehabilitation centre for counselling. All facilities, including ambulances, will be provided free of cost, and the hospital will function round-the-clock.

Currently, the nearest hospital was a state-run facility, 15-20 kilometres from Phalakra. “But people don’t go there, though-you know how government hospitals function. They prefer taking patients to Hyderabad, which is 60 kilometres away,” Qamar said.

About overcoming water shortages in the area, Kamal said that agriculture in Pakistan uses up 97 percent of the country’s sweet water supply, which is the lowest productivity in the world. As it is, the per capita availability of water is extremely low. The foundation will be working on an experiment to try and come up with water-efficient methods and crops.

One-third of the pieces on display were pre-sold. Each photograph has five limited copies that can be ordered. The exhibit will remain open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. till October 21.

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