Paper short abstract:

Renewable energy is presented as the modern pathway for sustainable development and green growth, but its extraction follows traditional patterns of marginalization and dispossession. What implications does green energy extraction have on resistance practices and political (re)actions?

Paper long abstract:

Renewables are presented as the modern pathway for sustainable development and unlimited growth in India, and the turnkey solution to address and mitigate the global climate crisis. But this hegemonic consensus around the need for energy transition also entails a specific land politics and structural patterns of socio-economic marginalization and dispossession associated to traditional extraction.

It is essential therefore to adopt perspectives from political geography and political ecology to understand the territorial process, the persistence of class-caste relations and the legacy of coloniality underlying renewable projects in India: green energy infrastructures are specifically targeting so-called "deserted", "empty" and "waste" lands where subaltern groups (tribal, pastoral and low-caste communities) have been historically deprived of any agency. These violent logics of colonial and destructive green extraction are in the meantime contested by a diverse range of insubordination acts, open resistance and a renewed repertoire of political (re)actions coming 'from bellow'. Resistance to renewables is specifically conducted on the ground of biodiversity and environmental protection, the defence of common lands and their attached livelihood practices. It re-energises traditional agrarian struggles and becomes a practical tool to contest class-caste domination and violent absorption into capitalist modes of production.

This paper aims to make an empirical contribution to the existing debates on green energy extraction and resistance based on the study of Kutch (Gujarat). I will highlight the extraction patterns underlying the development of 2-3 wind power projects, and the parallel resistance alliance and political (re)actions that emerged from Dalits organisations, pastorals and environmental NGOs.