After displacement: Coal mining, development, and inequality in the Thar desert of Pakistan

Abstract

This paper will examine the resettlement process initiated under the Thar Coal Project, located in the arid Thar desert region in southern Pakistan, which is likely to cause the displacement of at least ten villages, many of whom are inhabited by marginalized Hindu Dalit and pastoralist tribal populations. We will focus on those displaced villagers who have been resettled in New Sehnri Dars village and those who have lost land in Bhawa Jo Tar village, taking an ethnographic approach. Large scale development induced displacement and resettlement (DiDR) has occurred in Pakistan, but it has been subject to limited scholarship. Individuals being displaced by large scale infrastructure projects, referred by some as ‘development refugees,’ face material losses leading to impoverishment. The paper here focuses on the recovery and reconstruction of the displaced population and how they have been rebuilding their livelihoods and communities after getting forcibly relocated, beginning from 2017 onwards. We argue that some aspects of DiDR may contribute to positive outcomes resulting in accumulation of sociocultural and educational capital for the traditionally marginalized groups. The displacement literature from the Global South, focuses on forms of coercive control, administered by institutional structures that generated and normalised state led bureaucratic violence, leading to the disempowering of those displaced by infrastructural development. The voices from Senhri Dars and Bhawa Jo Tar in Pakistan give us a different picture of the relationship between infrastructural development and displacement, showing how—quite counter-intuitively—a situation defined by force and coercion can become in a limited way a process that enables agency and empowerment. This paper will provide fresh insight into DiDR in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, a region that has had very limited scholarship on this issue.