Environmental Injustice: Exploitation of Sindh’s Natural Resources in Pakistan

Abdul Hadi

doi:10.5901/mjss.2015.v4n1s1p9

Abstract

Immediately after the creation of Pakistan, attempts were started to obliterate the proven history of Sindh as its being a separate state and nation, having its own creed, heritage, culture, language and traditions. Sindh is enriched with oil and gas resources but people of Sindh are living in pathetic conditions. The majority of people who resides in natural resource-enriched regions find difficulty to meet their basic needs. The surrounding area of oil and gas fields are polluted, local people bear the burden of this pollution. The aim of this paper is to understand that why natural resource-enriched soil of Sindh’s people live in abject poverty and lag far behind in human development indicators. The prevalence of internal colonialism has been noted in this study where a dominant ethnic group Punjabi in control of a government systematically exploits resources of Sindhi people. This is an environmental injustice with Sindhis resulting from their subordinate and peripheral status in Pakistan. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v4n1s1p9

Highlights

Pakistan is not one country composed of only one Nation but is a conglomeration of socio-cultural different nationalities
“The election of 1946 were a kind of virtual referendum on the partition, in which the anti-partition Unionist Party won in Punjab; Congress won in NWFP ( KPK); the all India Muslim league (AIML) lost in Sindh, giving lead to Indian National Congress (INC) and Sindhi nationalist forces
Balochistan was not part of Pakistan in 1947 and Sindh rejected AIML in the 1946 elections, i.e. both aspired to reclaim the status of sovereign countries, which they lost after Britain's 1843 invasion (Shah, 2014)

Summary

Introduction

Pakistan is not one country composed of only one Nation but is a conglomeration of socio-cultural different nationalities. “The election of 1946 were a kind of virtual referendum on the partition, in which the anti-partition Unionist Party won in Punjab; Congress won in NWFP ( KPK); the all India Muslim league (AIML) lost in Sindh, giving lead to Indian National Congress (INC) and Sindhi nationalist forces. Balochistan was not part of Pakistan in 1947 and Sindh rejected AIML in the 1946 elections, i.e. both aspired to reclaim the status of sovereign countries, which they lost after Britain's 1843 invasion (Shah, 2014). British imperialists decided to divide up India for strategic reasons and purposely set out to create a new state called Pakistan against the wishes of Sindh and other minority ethnic groups

Objectives

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Conclusion