Tharparkar: the last bastion of peace

My immersion into the matchless natural beauty of Tharparkar is enlivened when I think of going away from the maddening crowd of urban life.

The mesmerising charm of the chameleonic nature of sand dunes – changing colours from dawn to dusk – perturbs the souls trapped in the monotonous and mundane urbanity. The idyllic and serene environs of Thar reflect peace, artistic depth, creativity and organic freedom. These wonderful people of the desert, perhaps, represent the last bastion of sanity in this conflict-ridden, intolerant and fast-deteriorating country.

In December 2014, I had the opportunity to spend one of the most memorable days of my life in Tharparkar with my best friend from the area. Being a man of letters, my friend introduced me to local poets, writers and development practitioners who were so well-versed in their fields that I found myself hardly educated in the august gathering of these people of wisdom.

They broached a number of interesting subjects, ranging from the history of the Thari people, the evolution of art and culture to the challenges of development and the influx of violent and extremist ideologies disrupting the serenity of social life. I spent two nights in Mithi and enjoyed the hospitality of the Thardeep Rural Development Programme (TRDP) – a local development initiative of poverty alleviation with a multi-sectoral development approach.

Nights at Mithi are so romantic that they would outshine the genius of Wordsworth’s odes to nature and wilderness and his lyrical ballads of a recluse and the parables of excursions. Subsequently, I travelled to the mounts of Nagarparkar with my friend and was lost to the remorseless desert and its magnanimity that touched the depth of my imagination. I recount the oozing magnificence of Judhian Village, its indigenous communities and its temple – as if the heavens have chosen the best site as an embodiment of their majesty.

The temple of this border village stands out as a symbol of the pluralism, peaceful coexistence and grandeur of these peace-loving people whose organic liberalism would outshine the sophisticated, evasive and trendy liberal ideologies of our affluent urban classes.

On my way back from Nagarparkar, I attended the rituals in the temple of a Hindu ashram – a spiritual hermitage – in Islamkot with my Muslim and Hindu friends who impressed upon me the real meaning of pluralism in action. To them, religion is a way of life not as a means of imposing the self-righteous tyranny of the majority.

I was told by the attendant of this ashram that locals participate in the rituals and provide support to run the ashram regardless of their faith. For them, religion is a personal affair and it does not prevent people from expressing their affection to local traditions, culture and social life. Our demagogues of purity and profanity must learn the secret of peaceful coexistence, tolerance and mutual respect – which breed the value of pluralism – from the people of Thar.

Tharparkar is now at the cusp of unmediated and intrusive changes that wither away the centuries-old social order and leapfrog its evolutionary stages. Will Tharparkar remain the same with the influx of the corporate investment which stem from CPEC? Despair and hopelessness abound in Tharparkar as people feel excluded from this process of transformation. Elected leaders are also not interested in paying attention to the miseries of the people. The miseries of famished children in Tharparkar are so eerie that they would send a shiver down one’s spines – barring those spineless souls who are partly responsible for the wretchedness of Thar’s peace-loving and pluralistic society.

According to the local experts, Tharparkar is undergoing a transformation that has been imposed on it. It risks losing serenity, peace, means of livelihood and cultural pluralism. Coal extraction and the exploitation of soil reserves in an area of 9,600 square kilometres is going to take away everything from the locale, reducing land that is used for the centuries-old agro-pastoral economy to a barren tract.

These apprehensions become more pronounced among local environmental activists as they argue that the CPEC projects in Thar will place huge environmental pressure on its scarce resources, fast-depleting water reserves and the natural habitat of rare species. Pakistan – which is vulnerable to climate change and focuses on dirty coal power and the use of subcritical technologies – will have impacts beyond Thar, a local environmentalist says.

According to the officials of Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company Limited, state-of-the-art technologies will be used to ensure a reduction in emissions in line with international standards and IFC emission guidelines. Moreover, 70,000 trees will be planted to offset the adverse impacts. However, its monitoring and compliance on a regular basis will always be a challenge in the absence of a locally managed technical oversight function.

The development of Thar’s coalfield and power generation potential has triggered a process of transformation for local communities in Sindh, particularly in the district of Tharparkar.

The transformation from an agro-pastoral way of living towards an industrialised society poses key challenges to local communities. This involves the disruption of centuries-old cultural affinities and self-sustaining pastoral economy without creating a workable alternative, the disenfranchisement the locals whose land and livelihood is being taken away and the depletion of hydrological resources and local biodiversity and increased spells of droughts. It also pushes out the agro-pastoral communities to urban slums in search of employment. Most members of these communities have no marketable skills, which could result in intergenerational poverty.

While the transformation is imminent and inevitably imposed upon Tharparkar, there has to be a coping strategy to ensure that locals benefit from this transformation as well. The strategy must entail providing the right skills to locals so that they have the opportunity to participate in the new economy.

This will not happen unless there is a strong platform of advocacy to promote local voices and put forth cultural, economic and environmental concerns within a rights-based framework. The first name that comes to my mind is the TRDP, whose role will be pivotal towards creating a counter-narrative of social development and bringing together local civil society networks for advocacy. The TRDP has already invested immensely to create community-based institutions of the poor and it commands credibility among the donors, government, private sector and the local communities.

I was exhilarated to know that my friend Dr Allah Nawaz Samoo, who introduced me to the inner dimensions of Tharparkar – its people and culture – has now assumed the role of CEO of the TRDP. He has initiated steps to transform the TRDP into a rights-based, people-centric civil society organisation to represent the aspirations and voices of locals in the emerging new economy.

It is vital for the TRDP to work as a hub of technical knowledge, perform a local oversight function and help integrate these communities into mainstream economic life. I am optimistic that, under its new leadership, this organisation will act as a platform for local expression and emerge as a knowledge-based entity to equip its people to navigate through the emerging challenges to their culture, environment and economy.

Federal and provincial governments should provide an enabling policy environment to help civil society organisations play their role to articulate the vision for a locally-informed transformation.

The writer is a freelance columnist based in Islamabad.

Email: ahnihal@yahoo.com