Land Acquisition and Dispossession: Private Coal Companies in Jharkhand

Lahiri‐Dutt, Kuntala; Krishnan, Radhika; Ahmad, Nesar

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2015125

Cited by 17 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 12 publications

(2 reference statements)

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“…The widespread liberalisation of land‐tenure regimes in the 1990s allowed firms to purchase large swaths of surface land held by rural (often, smallholder) landowners: a process often seen as the root of later instability (Ballard & Banks, ; Bridge, ; Bury, ). This role in facilitating the land‐acquisition programmes of extractive operators has been studied across the world, including in South Asia (Lahiri‐Dutt et al, ), Africa (Campbell, ; Emel & Huber, ), and Latin America (Bury, ; Bury & Bebbington, ). In some cases, state legal codes regarding land rights have been mobilised in order to evict populations from extractive sites, and to keep them out (Ballard & Banks, ; Bunker & Ciccantell, ).…”

Section: Power At the Extractive Frontiermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Compensation programmes may provide land and resource holders in areas of extractive investment with assets to replace those lost to industry expansion. However, negotiations over compensation are rarely between equals, and evidence abounds of local communities receiving poor deals, especially when firms themselves organise and direct negotiations (Himley, ; Lahiri‐Dutt et al, ; Szablowski, ). Szablowski documents how, at Peru's Antamina mine, the firm sought to curtail relocation negotiations and “select the ‘entitled’ group according to its own criteria, decide upon a compensation plan, then approach the group while seeking to compel it to accept the plan without change” (, pp.…”

Section: Power At the Extractive Frontiermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Historically, the tumult produced by extractive‐industry expansion has been remarkable: in Bougainville (Papua New Guinea), pollution impacts from the Panguna mine triggered a decade‐long civil war in which thousands died (Kirsch, ); in Nigeria, decades of oil‐industry‐led dispossession led to what Watts describes as “an economy of violence,” characterised by “a strange and terrifying underworld of armed insurgency, organized crime, state violence, mercenaries and shady politicians” (, pp. 456–447); in India, coal mining displaced an estimated more than one million people between 1950 and 1995 (Lahiri‐Dutt et al, , p. 41). Recent decades, meanwhile, have seen new rounds of extractive‐industry expansion in many parts of the world, with numerous “greenfield” operations constructed in remote, peripheral regions (Ballard & Banks, ; Bridge, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tactics of dispossession: Access, power, and subjectivity at the extractive frontier

Frederiksen

Himley

2019

Trans Inst British Geog

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In this article we analyse and theorise how power is exercised and subjectivities reworked to achieve and maintain socio‐political order in areas of large‐scale international extractive investment. Through a critical review of recent literature on the political ecologies of the international mining and hydrocarbon industries, we explore the strategies that firms and their allies deploy to secure and preserve the transformed relations of land and resource access upon which accumulation relies. Inspired by the work of John Allen we analyse these strategies with attention to the modalities and techniques of power used, highlighting the diverse ways socio‐political stability is pursued despite the industry’s destabilising effects. What emerges is that, contrasting the sector’s reputation for coercion and domination, transformed regimes of access to land and resources at the extractive frontier are to a significant degree achieved and stabilised through what Allen calls the “quieter registers” of power. Attention to the varied and overlapping ways extractive firms and their allies exercise power to secure and maintain access to land and resources highlights limitations to David Harvey’s influential accumulation by dispossession framework for understanding how extractive capital circulates into “new ground.” It also directs attention to processes of subject formation at the extractive frontier, and to how industry expansion may be facilitated through the production of particular kinds of subjects. To illustrate this, we outline three interrelated ways subjectivities are reworked through peoples’ encounters with the logics, materiality, and power of contemporary extractive industry. We suggest that those living in the shadow of large international extractive operations become extractive subjects.

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Section: Power At the Extractive Frontiermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Power At the Extractive Frontiermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tactics of dispossession: Access, power, and subjectivity at the extractive frontier

Frederiksen

Himley

2019

Trans Inst British Geog

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“…Rather, critiques of mining are animated by the need to preserve environments to benefit indigenous peoples (Padel and Das, ). Research on mining‐related land transfers tend to criticize either the use of legal and para‐legal instruments — sometimes outdated or of colonial vintage (Ahmad, ) — or non‐state tactics to acquire land (Lahiri‐Dutt et al., ), including tactics driven by corruption (Joseph, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Incremental Dispossession to a Cumulative Land Grab: Understanding Territorial Transformation in India's North Karanpura Coalfield

Oskarsson¹,

Lahiri‐Dutt²,

Wennström³

2019

Development and Change

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This article explores a great contradiction in rural land debates in India: on the one hand, explosive political contestation that is often able to halt proposed land acquisition; on the other, an unprecedented urban‐industrial expansion that is appropriating rural land. The authors argue that land grabbing for mining proceeds in an incremental manner, yet its cumulative effect leads to territorial transformation. To investigate this incremental appropriation, a temporal study of the North Karanpura coal mining tract in eastern India was conducted, combining remote sensing, interviews and official land‐use data. The results reveal a cumulative land grab of thousands of hectares from the late 1980s to the present day as open‐cut coal mines swallow up vast swathes of agricultural fields and forests. The political economy mechanism behind this immense land grab, which to date has gone undetected, consists of three phases: the reservation of the land as a coalfield with multiple coal blocks; the division of the blocks into separate mines; and the flexible expansion of individual mines wherever reduced resistance to land acquisition is encountered. This research indicates that an aggregate analysis of land dynamics can more robustly place the dramatic rearrangements of the Indian countryside within the international land grabbing debate.

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“…Kuntala Lahiri‐Dutt, Radhika Krishnan, and Nesar Ahmad, “Land Acquisition and Dispossession: Private Coal Companies in Jharkhand,” in EPW , February 11, 2012, 40.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Re‐Imagining Capital, Labor, and the State in the Coalfields of Eastern India

Sen¹

2014

Journal of Labor and Society

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The geographical space did not get sufficient attention in the early writings of Karl Marx. He had a conviction in the universal path of capitalist industrialization up to a point in his career. But, there was a significant shift in Marx's thinking in the later phase of his intellectual journey. This is evident in Marx–Zasulich correspondence (1881). Marx criticized N K Mikhailovskii of Russia for his attempt to transform his (Marx's) theoretical formulation in Capital into a “supra‐historical theory.” Actually, Marx took England as the chief illustration in the development of his theoretical ideas in Capital. The fact that the British model of capitalism was not followed by other nations has been testified to by historical research.

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Land Acquisition and Dispossession: Private Coal Companies in Jharkhand

Cited by 17 publications

References 12 publications

Tactics of dispossession: Access, power, and subjectivity at the extractive frontier

Tactics of dispossession: Access, power, and subjectivity at the extractive frontier

From Incremental Dispossession to a Cumulative Land Grab: Understanding Territorial Transformation in India's North Karanpura Coalfield

Re‐Imagining Capital, Labor, and the State in the Coalfields of Eastern India

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