The boatpeople basti who bothered a barrage

On a cold day in January, a hundred and fifty armed policemen descended on Taunsa Barrage near Kot Addu with two bulldozers to raze a settlement spread over 47 kanal of government land. Many of the homes belonged to the famous boatpeople of the River Indus, the Mohanas. As they also go by the name Shaikh, their settlement, Basti Shaikhan, was marked on the official map for demolition. Also on the map, in the corner, was a box that said: proposed for Circuit House.

The operation was carried out by the new Punjab Enforcement and Regulatory Authority (Pera) which was assisted by Deputy Commissioner Bilal Saleem. But the people who have lived there for generations, challenge the notion that they are squatters. And even though Pera’s Director-General for Monitoring and Implementation, Ahmed Zaheer, says they issue encroachers a digital Emergency Prohibition Order, activist Fazl-e-Rab maintains the basti had no idea the bulldozers were coming.

As Bilal Saleem is the second DC in three years since Kot Addu became a district, many people believe that the new district government, whose departments are not even fully developed yet, are incapable of understanding the area’s history and their relationship with the land and river.

How does the government explain, for example, that it provided the basti electricity, schools and drainage, which counts as the surest proof that it recognises it as a settlement, asks Seraiki Lok Sanjh activist Fazl-e-Rab. “Then how is it encroachment?”

The DC says the government also plans to build a cluster of buildings for an IRSA Flood Monitoring system. Yet, this begs the very question: how does it make sense to undertake so much construction in an area that is vulnerable to flooding?

What is even more ironic, says Khadim Khar Hussain of the Sindhu Bachao Tehreek, whose home was also destroyed, is that the boatpeople are the ones transporting the government construction materials for spaces where they have been thrown out of. It is even more cruel that these displaced people are the very same ones who supply catch to the fisheries and generate an estimated ten million rupees in revenue.

The government’s planning, thus, fails to factor in the ways in which the Indus has historically supported millions of people across Pakistan, including fishing communities that lived along its banks for generations and formed an integral part of the river’s economic and ecological system. This context is not considered in the face of........

© Dawn Prism