Zainab Fatima Moulvi Research Proposal

Capital, development and desert ecologies: The case of Thal

Research Question:
This study seeks to address the intersecting questions of capital circulation and ecological
change. My aim is to conduct an ethnographic study of how deep ecological, economic and
social relations are restructured by capital in ways that lead to greater ecological and economic
precarity. In doing so it will take up questions of spatio-temporality, contending value pratices,
local knowledge production and moral/spiritual resources. This question is taken up with the
hope of (adding depth to current climate change discourses that seek to capture the discourse
on the changes facing the Thal Desert)

Field site:
This study takes up these questions in the Thal desert of Pakistan. Thal is a swathe of land
situated in the Southern Punjab, sandwiched between the Jhelum and Indus rivers. Thal boasts
a complex social and ecological system – communities have developed agriculture in keeping
with the geography and seasonality of the desert by growing gram and wheat in depressions
between sand dunes. Livestock rearing, mainly goats, sheep and camels, is a major source of
livelihood and landscape is populated by a variety of different trees, plants and shrubs. Despite
this it has been viewed in terms of a ‘lack’ – a barren and heat-stricken stretch of land in the
otherwise lush and green ‘food-basket of Punjab’.

From mid 19th century onwards, plans were being discussed to irrigate this land along the lines
of the ‘canal colonies’ developed by the British in the Central Punjab with the purpose of
bringing these ‘barren wastelands’ under cultivation. In 1919 these plans took the shape of the
Thal project as part of which the Jinnah Barrage and Thal Canal were constructed. The barrage
was completed in 1946, after which the project was taken over by the Thal Development
Authority under the auspice of the new state of Pakistan. This vision of transformation was
extended again to the eastern part of the doab1 through the Greater Thal Canal Project which
was launched in 2003.

Scholars have written at length about the colonial interventions in the Indus Basin and
subsequent transformation in the social order (Ali 2016, Gilmartin 2016, Bhattacharya 2009).
This scholarship has demonstrated effectively how through canal colonization, the British
introduced notions of productivity by encouraging the cash crop cultivation and attempted to
fashion the ideal loyal productive subject in the form of the Punjabi landowner. They detail
how these transformations took place in an existing social, ecological and economic context
which did not yield so easily to this vision - resulting in resistance by pastoralists, unforeseen
economic problems such as peasant indebtedness and ecological crises such as flooding and
waterlogging and salinity. Scholars have also underscored the politics of land-allotment that

1
Land in between two rivers

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Zainab Fatima Moulvi Research Proposal

birthed new fissures in society, highlighting the role that caste played during colonial
allotments (Rizvi 2013, Ali 2016).

However, there has been little work done on postcolonial canal construction and how these
notions of accumulation, statecraft, identity and ecological and spatiotemporal imaginations
have played out in the contemporary context of Pakistan. Post-independence allotment to
military personnel and central Punjabi settlers has been the most contentious issue in South
Punjab (the Siraiki belt). When the Thal Canal was built, approximately 75% of the land bought
under cultivation was distributed to migrants from India and later on, migrants from central
Punjab. This settlement pattern is a key point of contestation around which the Siraiki national
question has coalesced, which views the settlement of central Punjabis in their lands as a form
of settler colonization. Given the persistence of questions of migration and land-allotment to
canal construction, these issues need to be investigated in the case of the Greater Thal Canal2.

However, this project differs from both colonial and early postcolonial canal construction in
that it takes place in an era of liberalization where other forms of accumulation are gaining
ascendancy in Pakistan. Thal is witnessing increasing financialization and land speculation
(often in the shape of housing schemes) and large infrastructure development, particularly in
the form of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor3. Thus the nature of land allotment, the uses
to which that land is put, the kinds of economic activities and imaginaries introduced are vastly
different from earlier interventions. How do households and communities navigate this
landscape?4 How will accumulation of profit take place in this context? What kinds of
economic subjects are being produced? How are social stratifications being created, contested
or reinforced? How are relationships with animals, plants and soil shifting?

Literature review:

Bearing legacies of colonial economy and post-colonial developmental interventions

alongside contemporary processes of liberalisation, Pakistan is an intriguing field for exploring
contemporary formations of capital.

As recent scholarship has stressed, capitalism cannot be disentangled from questions of

ecology. Moore and Patel’s recent work explores the productive capacity of capitalism to not

2
At the time of its launch there was considerable opposition by a local organization Thal Bachao Tarla and an
organization in Sindh, Anti-Greater Thal Canal Committee. As the lower riparian province, Sindh has consistently
expressed concerns about upstream canal construction by Punjab which directly effects the flow of water
downstream. Thal Bachao Tarla was concerned with the nature of land acquisition for the project as well as lack
of transparency over colonization and land allotment process

3
CPEC, as it is known, is a collection of infrastructure projects and is part of the later Chinese One Belt One Road
(OBOR) initiative. A large part of the project involves transportation and road infrastructure to link up to the
Gwadar Port. However, it also includes significant energy projects, agriculture initiatives and other ‘joint
ventures’.
4 4 Tania Li’s work on the Sulawesi indigenous community is relevant. She traced the impact of the gradual

gradual introduction of capitalist relation through the planting of cacao at the level of household economies and
underscores the creation of ‘winners and losers’ among a close-knit community of kith and kin (Li 2014).

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Zainab Fatima Moulvi Research Proposal

just ‘use’ nature but to expand by colonizing other ecological frontiers – by cheapening natures
and putting them to work. (Moore and Patel 2017) The notion of frontier is useful in thinking
through how capital captures life forces outside of it. Feminist scholars have long pointed out
that women’s bodies have been one of the key frontiers through which capitalist value have
been created. (Federici 1998)

Recent scholarly efforts have also radically destabilized the way we think about the
‘environment’. They critique the idea of a free-floating nature outside of human subjects,
uncovering instead the entanglements between human and non-human beings. Scholars like
Timothy Morton with his idea of the mesh and Jane Bennet’s employment of the Deleuzian
concept of the assemblage attempt to think in terms of more distributed agency (Morton 2014,
Bennett 2010). These efforts allow us to envision socio-natural spaces as contingent
constellations of a multitude of entanglements and relations. By switching the focus to relations
that are formed between different beings (geological, chemical, biological and humans) and
the spatio-temporal rhythms that make up this mesh, they provide important resources to
address the idea of ecological change.

For instance, attentiveness to these spatio-temporal rhythms can help identify the way
ecologies and communities are made precarious. There has been ample evidence of contesting
spatiotemporal imaginations that have led to ecological catastrophes. For instance, a key
rallying claim in the mobilization against the Chashma Irrigation Project was the severe
flooding caused by irrigation construction on the river that interrupted the natural flow of the
floodwater from the Suleiman Hills. Government and donor refusal to value local knowledges
regarding the geography of the riverscape and seasonal flows resulted in immense devastation
for the local communities5. In Thal, communal grazing grounds (rakh) have already been under
contestation by the state which wishes to put these ‘wasted’ areas to use through either
agriculture or housing schemes. Loss of grazing grounds has put the livelihoods of
communities in peril as livestock farming is key to survival in the desert. These geographies
are also tied inextricably to socio-legal arrangements. Ecological shifts require restructuring
of these ‘institutions’ which are often embedded in processes such as water sharing, land usage
rights and access to grazing grounds6. With new arrangements, new institutions enter the
picture to manage these ‘resources’ - in this case, the Thal Development Authority, the
Irrigation Department and the Land Revenue Office. What effect does the increased role of
such state institutions have on the lives of the communities?

Central to all these discussions is the idea of transformation and languages through which these
changes are grappled with. Thal is an area deeply steeped in a deep spiritual tradition which is
inseparable from the area and geography in which it emerges. The figure of the desert (rohi)
and associative topographies feature heavily in its oral traditions. But the question also arises,
what happens to existing traditions of thought/wisdom in the face of ecological and economic

5
Details of the People’s Movement against Chashma Irrigation Project can be found at this website:
chashm.web.fc2.com
Additional information can be found, http://www.waterinfo.net.pk/?q=node/37
6
David Mosse makes this point forcefully in his study of the tank irrigation system in South India (Mosse 2003).

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Zainab Fatima Moulvi Research Proposal

upheaval? What moral resources do people turn to? What languages are available to understand
these transformations?

Methodology and research timetable:

The study aims to take up such questions primarily through a multi method approach, using
ethnographic fieldwork, archival materials and government documents. While my focus will
be on conducting interviews with local communities. I also plan to conduct interviews with
members from WAPDA (Water and Power Development Authority), the Irrigation
Department, Land Revenue Office and the Thal Development Authority as well as local
government officials at the union, tehsil, district and provincial level and the land record holder
(patwari). I will also attempt to trace oral archives in the form of recorded or remembered
poetry and will interview key literary figures and poets who are well-versed in the oral
traditions of this area.

I will also refer materials such as irrigation reports, land settlement records and Thal
Development Authority reports in addition to gazeteers from the British era. These will not be
used as authoritative texts on what has transpired, but useful insights into state spatial
imagination and the level and nature of state interventions in the field site. I have previously
conducted research in different parts of South Punjab through which I have developed a
familiarity with the area and the language. Given this, I am confident that that I will be able to
complete my dissertation in the stipulated time.

Bibliography:

Ali, Imran. Punjab under Imperialism, 1885-1947. Princeton University Pres, 2016.

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Zainab Fatima Moulvi Research Proposal

Bear, Laura, et al. “Speculation.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle
East, vol. 35, no. 3, 2015, pp. 387-391
Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press, 2010.
Bhattacharya, Neeladri. “Pastoralist in a Colonial World” Nature, Culture, Imperialism:
Essays on the Environmental History of South Asia, Oxford Univ. Press, 2009.
Gidwani, Vinay K. Capital, Interrupted: Agrarian Development and the Politics of Work in
India. University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
Gilmartin, David. Blood and Water the Indus River Basin in Modern History. Univ. of
California Press, 2015.
Li, Tania Murray. Land's End Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier. Duke
University Press, 2014.
Mitchell, Timothy. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. University of
California Press, 2012.
Morton, Timothy. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World.
University of Minnesota Press, 2014.
Mosse, David, and M. Sivan. The Rule of Water: Statecraft, Ecology and Collective Action in
South India. Oxford University Press, 2014.
Patel, Raj, and Jason W. Moore. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. Oakland,
California, 2017.
Rizvi, Mubbashir A. “Masters Not Friends: Land, Labor and Politics of Place in Rural
Pakistan.” University of Texas at Austin, 2013, hdl.handle.net/2152/22035.
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the Possibility of Life
in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton University Press, 2017.