Caste, Development, and Climate Vulnerability in the Indus Delta Region, Pakistan

Keywords: caste, development, frontier, climate change
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

In 2022, a deluge of rain-fed flooding in Sindh, Pakistan, the home of the Indus delta, affected over 33 million people, destroyed 9.8 million acres of farmland and drowned one-third of Pakistan’s habitable land area. In the weeks that followed, the floods were described as ‘unprecedented superfloods’, making it clear that this was no ordinary summer monsoon. Left out of the conversation, however, were the disparate effects the floods had within this disaster-stricken geography. The greater Indus Delta region is lined with large export-oriented agricultural estates controlled by feudal families, employing sharecroppers trapped in cycles of intergenerational debt bondage. My research shows that much of this labor is organized along caste lines, where lower-caste Dalit communities form the most dispossessed groups. All the while, their identities are invisibilized in official and public discourses in a predominantly Muslim country where caste is considered antithetical to the Islamic faith. Their precarity also makes them ideal candidates for donor-funded Community-Driven Development (CDD) projects, where experts further obscure identities by labeling them as the ‘poor’. CDD projects urge improvement through self-help, pushing market-driven initiatives such as entrepreneurship, microcredit and savings groups. Examining how caste hierarchies shape lived experiences of ‘empowerment-based’ interventions predicated on notions of upward mobility within aid-receiving communities sheds critical light on the work of development in an age of climate crisis. Challenging the notion of climate change as the great leveler, I examine how pre-existing caste hierarchies profoundly condition climate vulnerabilities, and how these dynamics are reshaped through the development frontier.