Presentation short abstract

The Tharparkar desert in Pakistan has become an extractive assemblage of Pakistani and Chinese state and non-state actors, capital flows, extractive logics and a site of resistance. The study interrogates the role of class, religion and caste in resistance movements against coal mining.

Presentation long abstract

The Tharparkar desert is under immense pressure of temporal, spatial and social reconfigurations because of coal energy development in Pakistan under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The threat of socio-ecological destruction has given rise to a long ongoing resistance by Thari indigenous community against the Thar coal mining project. The Tharparkar desert has become an extractive assemblage of Pakistani and Chinese state and non-state actors, local and global capital flows, extractive logics across scales and a site of resistance.

The Thari indigenous community is resisting extractivist imperatives through multiple strategies and forms of resistance including sit-in, ‘long march’ to provincial capital, blocking access to mine and road, litigation and social media activism. The repertoire of resistance spans into both structured and everyday form of resistance.

The resistance has been, though successful in some demands is marred, with class interests of landed and business elite against landless agricultural labour and herders. Furthermore, the class interests intersect with religion and caste politics. These dynamics combined together play an important role in transformative potential of resistance or lack thereof. The study interrogates the role of class, religion and caste in resistance movements against coal mining.