The Plight of Thar & Our venal ogres! Having so brutally exploited the natural resources of Baluchistan and keeping in utter servility its people for so long that some of its impoverished populace had to take up arms against the state, now the same venal and brutal business and ruling gluttons are aiming at repeating the same ugly episodes of exploitation in the resource- rich Thar. Indeed, the Thar has become a new Eldorado for this unscrupulous lot ever since the veins of uranium, ranges of granite and unfathomable pits of coal have been discovered in here. Contractors, so-called consultants, fake engineers, dubious developers, dirty bureaucrats, ogling politicians and the salivating foreign companies/countries have all descended upon the hapless Thar like voraciously hungry vultures, ever scavenging for every grain of its silvery deserts, every piece of its centuries-old virgin lands, and every range of its graceful mountains. However, none of these outside hounds is bothered one bit about the plight of the local populace, the mortal drought, the dying children, the starving men and women, the withering cattle, the wilting fauna and flora, and the quintessential emblem of Thars eternal aesthetics, the endangered peacocks and peafowls!!! As it is, in no time the Thar will also have fallen in the tragic league of other devastated parts of Sindh, which are perennially infested with and relentlessly exploited by the mushrooming oil and gas scavengers, the criminals land-grabbers, the jihadi vigilantes ( to guard against the axis of evil: Raw, Mossad and CIA), and, therefore, the hordes of security apparatuses to occupy the prime real estate and commercial points, of course, in the name of national security. In the end, the poor Tharis plight will have only worsened off, but a new class of nouveau riche will surely have dotted the landscapes of Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore and even that of Dubai and London ( favorites hideouts/ safe heavens of our new and old elites). Which raise the questions: how many more calamities, civil wars, criminal and ethnic warefares and the anti-state armed insurrections does this state require to dislodge its illegitimate and venal occupiers from power in order to allow the common men to partake of its national wealth and resources, particularly enabling the local people of the Thar and other parts of Sindh and Baluchistan to share, if not control, their local resources for their own economic and social developments? It should also be asked/answered as to whether a multi class and multi national state like ours can ever achieve political stability and social harmony by being an agent and transactor of the powerful peripheral/outsider interests at the altars of the local people? Alas, our Sindh government has also been hands-in-gloves with this grand theft-in-the-making to steal the Thars natural resources. In fact, the Thar embodies another living example/tragedy for those naive people and our nationalists who believed that forging an electoral alliance with the Sindhi Pir/Mir/Wadero was imperative and real politic in the last general elections. Now look, these very Pir/Mir/Wadero are eagerly opening up the golden gates of an impoverished Thar to the centre/ and outsiders in the hope of receiving a piece in the pie. True, neither history and nor the Thari/ Sindhi people will never forgive this treachery and sooner than later, chickens will come home to roost, as they did in Baluchistan, Fata, Karachi and elsewhere. But our hollow cursing and wailing wont do either, it is imperative that a new, honest, enlightened and courageous leadership must emerge to get rid of these Pir/Mir/Wadero/ fascist ethnic /obscurantist mafias, if we really wish to see Sindh--its people, lands, resources, demography, endangered fauna and flora---jealously guarded, properly harnessed and prudentially tapped for its people, Think. Before its too late, and before even the last of the peacocks too dies, as do the scores of poor Thari children,less at the hands of inclement nature, and more by the venal ogres, the rulers and their appendages!!
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 10:38:49 +0000
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