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Pakistan, Politics and Water Supplies

Journalist Samira Shackle has tracked the lives of a Karachi ambulance driver, street school teacher and crime reporter. Majed Akhter researches dams. Ejaz Haider is a journalist.

In Karachi Vice, journalist Samira Shackle tracks the lives of a Karachi ambulance driver, street school teacher and crime reporter amongst others - and uses their story to map a history of different political groupings across the city and the recent decades. New Generation Thinker Majed Akhter from Kings College, London researches water shortages and dam building. Ejaz Haider is a journalist based in Lahore. They share their views of Pakistan with Rana Mitter.

Karachi Vice: Life and Death in a Contested City by Samira Shackle is out now from Granta and has been a ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 4 Book of the Week available to listen on ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Sounds. /programmes/p034wrq4
Majed Akhter is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which turns research into radio. You can hear more about his work in a conversation with Dustin Garrick in an episode of Free Thinking called Rivers and Geopolitics /programmes/m00051hb
Ejaz Haider is one of Pakistan’s most prominent journalists, writing for the Friday Times independent paper and presenter of a TV show.

In the Free Thinking archives we hear from novelists Neel Mukherjee, Preti Taneja, Mohsin Hamid and Nadeem Aslam about their view of Partition /programmes/b090tnyp
Kamila Shamsie discusses her novel ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Fire /programmes/b095qhsm
Philip Dodd explores Islam, Mecca and the Qur'an with professor of Islamic and interreligious studies Mona Siddiqui, and scholars Ziauddin Sardar and Navid Kermani /programmes/b04tcc1l

Producer: Harry Parker

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45 minutes

Podcast