STRIP the land, plunder the mountains, until all that remains is not even a shadow of a bygone time. That seems to be the approach of the Sindh government in its heedless pursuit of material gain. Its willingness to barter away the province’s glorious natural resources and its heritage puts Sindh’s past as well as its future in peril. The magnificent Karoonjhar mountain range of Nagarparkar in the Tharparkar district, from whose heights rainwater flows down into more than 20 streams in the monsoon season, is of environmental as well as cultural significance. Thankfully, the Sindh High Court, acting on a public interest petition, stepped in after the provincial government last month decided to call for tenders for extracting granite from these hills. This was part of the auction the Sindh government was planning to hold on Aug 4 for small-scale mining permits for lake salt, china clay, marble, gravel, sand and limestone across the province. On Tuesday, the court passed a restraining order till Aug 15 preventing the Mines and Minerals Development Department from undertaking any stone-cutting activities in the Karoonjhar range.

The rich stores of granite in these hills have drawn predatory attention since many years: the first contract for cutting stone here was issued during the Zia regime. In 2008, the PPP government gave the area on a 20-year lease to a private company. The court has now and then intervened to stop the stone-cutting operations here. However, despite protests by activists and locals, illegal quarrying has continued virtually unabated, changing the topography and gutting the history intrinsic to this landscape of ancient holy sites. One hopes the court will once again impose a ban on mining in the Karoonjhar range. But already there are allegations that the SHC’s stay order is being flouted. When the supposed guardians of this land are themselves profiting from its unsustainable exploitation, only continued public pressure will stay their hand.

Published in Dawn, August 6th, 2023