KARACHI: Tharparkar, located in the south of Sindh, is said to be a desert, but being a fertile desert, it is unlike the other known deserts of the world such as the Sahara Desert and the Gobi Desert.

During a talk about his research and findings about Tharparkar at the Urban Resource Centre on Tuesday, architect and town planner Arif Hasan said that Tharparkar is a neglected area of Pakistan, and of undivided India before that. Only Mithi, its headquarters, had seen some development due to trade.

Arif Hasan’s research on Tharparkar has also resulted in a book, published a few years ago. He first started documenting the area in 1974 but left it to return to it in 1978. “The people of Thar approached me. They told me to come and see what can be done for their district,” he said. And that was how he found himself heading there in a truck full of goats and other grazing animals.

Strange discoveries were made. No one, except three people, in Tharparkar owned a watch. They determined the time from the stars at night and the shadows cast on the ground by sunlight. Apart from that, there was also the issue of Hindu castes since the area is predominantly Hindu. The scheduled castes, or “untouchables”, were even afraid of letting their shadow fall on anyone.

Says roads built in Musharraf’s time brought some changes in peoples’ lives

They lived on the outskirts of the main cities. The people of Tharparkar lived a simple life. They had goats, buffalo, camels, etc. The milk from such animals was used in producing butter, yogurt and the like. The barter system was used for trading. “Maybe a goat or two in exchange for a watch, and so on. These things and more I figured out slowly,” the senior architect explained.

“For water assessment, I noticed that the locals stored and used rainwater. When that water finished, they simply migrated to another area where there was water as they not just needed it for themselves but also their animals. There they got busy growing crops and fodder again. It was their culture,” Arif Hasan pointed out.

He said that they also have wells that are 60 to 100 feet deep. “It is all rainwater till that level. Any lower than that the water is brackish, which only the camel can consume. It is useless for humans and plants,” he said.

About the drought and famine in Tharparkar, he said that the rest of the country and the world first heard about it in 1987 as it was only then that the press printed stories about it along with the photographs of starving and dying animals.

But studying the details of the drought then, I realised that it was nothing new, but a common occurrence in Thar. “I wrote that it was actually a drought of social relations with Thar, of the rest of the country’s callousness for the region. For this I was called by the Sindh government as well as the Unicef to prove my claims,” he says.

Land ownership is another issue in Tharparkar. With people migrating so much the land was often left to the peasants, who became de-facto owners though they didn’t really have a 99-year lease of the land.

Still there was big change with the peasants who sold animal produce and agriculture harvests in the market. Suddenly, there was money coming in. But they needed roads to reach the markets or for the market to reach them.

The building of roads in Tharparkar, during the time of President Musharraf, brought on further changes. Camels were sold off to buy motorcycles. There was also an increase in tourism in Mithi, Islamkot and other cities of Tharparkar. Artisans who used to make clay pots and pans are no longer sought after as plastic containers have come into demand. And the Thar Coal Project has brought on more changes. There has been displacement of more people where mining takes place.

Those areas have also been robbed of vegetation, turning them into arid zones. It can only be speculated what all this means for the district. “But it is a human disaster and a land disaster,” Arif Hasan concluded.

Published in Dawn, May 14th, 2025