by Natasha
Ansari
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| Natasha Ansari/Collective for Social Science Research |
While
issues concerning the ownership of land have been the subject of political
debate and policy dialogue, much less attention has been paid to the rights of
land use which may not necessarily be connected to ownership. For many of the
most marginalized communities the right to use land which they may not own is a
critical element of their economic and social well-being which is under
threat. I saw this at close quarters in
the Rohi region of southern Punjab which I visited as part of the Collective
team conducting fieldwork for a study under the research programme Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) on women’s work in agriculture.
We
ventured out 30km off the metalled road near Lal Suhanra to bastis (settlements)
nestled in the Rohi desert of Bahawalpur that are virtually inaccessible by
road. In addition to a host of vulnerabilities confronted by the settlements of
indigenous communities in terms of education and women and children’s health, they
now face the threat of eviction from their ancestral land. They fear the loss of homes, livelihoods and
access to sources of water as a result of the government’s plans for establishing
a hunting game reserve in the region.
The Boohar kinship group, whose main
occupation is animal rearing, has lived in Rohi as far as they can remember.
The families maintain herds of cattle which graze in open rangeland. They sell a head of cattle at Eid-ul-Azha and
use this income to purchase their annual stock of wheat and other essential
food items - the uncultivated expanses of the Rohi desert do not sustain a crop
economy. Besides this market activity, self-subsistence characterizes their way
of life. The settlements are called tobas, which is actually a word for rain
water collection ponds and the main source of water. Toba water is not clean by
modern standards but it is a far better alternative compared to groundwater there,
which is brackish and known to cause illnesses to people and livestock.
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| The Boohars’ settlements in Rohi by Natasha Ansari/Collective for Social Sciences Research |
The
Boohars, whose pastoral life depends on their access to
rangeland, acknowledge that the desert or their homestead land is not,
technically, their private property.
While the land legally belongs to the government, Boohars’ sense of entitlement
and rights is rooted in history and tradition.
The Boohars’ ‘rights’ of use in the desert predate the establishment of
private property rights in land in the 19th century. The
colonial government created private property in agricultural land in favour of
landholders to protect self-serving hierarchies, marginalizing all other rural
classes in the process. Uncultivated
land adjacent to settled villages was made part of the village estate – and rights
to this land were understood to be in proportion with the ownership rights over
the cultivated land of the village.
Other land which was deemed to be “uncultivated waste” was declared to
be the property of the government.[1]
The process through which land which
has historically ensured the Boohars’ access to livelihoods, homes and water
was made the sole property of the government was initiated by the colonial government
– arbitrarily and without consultation.
Today decades after independence the Boohars feel that they are being
forced to leave land which is their lifeline also, apparently, without
agreement, negotiation or compensation.
This is despite the fact that the government recognizes their presence
here. The Boohars showed us receipts for
taxes paid on livestock. Moreover, the
settlements were enumerated in the 1998 census and in the Benazir Income
Support Poverty Scorecard survey of 2009.
According to local people, under
orders of the government, a metal boundary wall chalking plans for the game
reserve (presumably for wealthy hunters from the Gulf) has been erected,
severely constraining the communities’ access to clean water by bringing the
number of their accessible tobas down.
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| Toba in Rohi by Natasha Ansari/Collective for Social Science Research |
When a toba dries up families are
forced to rely on hand pumped ground water and this has started causing
illnesses and health problems for the residents and their animals. “The ground
water is not good here. People are dying because of the water,” said one person
from the community. The family we spoke to was in a state of mourning after an
18-year old son passed away the previous week from an infection on way to
hospital on a camel cart. They suspected
water contamination as a cause of his illness.
More recently, the tobas have started
facing physical threats of eviction. According to the locals some nearby tobas have already been demolished with a bulldozer,
and now they themselves have been approached by officials to leave the
territory.
An elderly man from the community
asks: “Where do we go? This is the main tension here. We have forgotten about
health, education and hunger issues. Right now we are just worried about being
driven out. What will we do with our livestock?
There is no way for us to take it anywhere. We have been here since the
time of our ancestors and we have nowhere else to go.” Another person remarked: “Nawaz Sharif is
doing things for wild animals, but what is he doing for the people? We might
not be able to meet again—because even if you plan on returning here, we might
already have been forced out by then.”
While Boohars’ claims are based on
tradition, their relationship with the Rohi desert has enabled them to rights
which are acknowledged in modern national constitutions and international
charters – such as the right to livelihood, housing, water, and to a way of
life. These rights, it seems, are being
trumped by the government’s assertion of property rights acquired arbitrarily
and without consultation in the colonial period. And all of this appears to be happening without
any fanfare or media attention.
[1]
See, for example, Haris Gazdar ‘s essay ‘The Fourth Round and Why They Fight
On: A History of Land and Reform in Pakistan’, http://www.researchcollective.org/Documents/Leveling_the_playing_field.pdf
