Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I argue that expansion of fossil fuel extraction in contemporary India must be understood in relation to two interconnected processes—accumulation by dispossession of land accessed and owned by indigenous Adivasi citizens, and the BJP’s repression of local agrarian resistance.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has accelerated domestic production of coal, with the purported aim of building India’s ‘self-reliance’. While championing the transition to renewable energy in global forums such as the G20 Summit in 2023, the Modi administration has simultaneously sought to triple its coal output by 2028. Through its systematic weakening environmental and land rights legislation, de-regularisation of coal mining, and intimate ties with big businesses such as the Adani Group, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Modi has launched a new era of neoliberal extractivism in India—one that violently intersects with its divisive, authoritarian, Hindu right-wing agenda.

In this paper, I argue that expansion of fossil fuel extraction in contemporary India must be understood in relation to two interconnected processes—accumulation by dispossession of land accessed and owned by indigenous Adivasi citizens, and the BJP’s authoritarian machinery aimed at crushing social movements, dissent and civil society alliances. I explore these twin dynamics through the case study of northern Chhattisgarh, a central Indian state with a sizeable Adivasi population (34 percent) and home to vast coal reserves that lie under fragile forested landscapes. Drawing on fieldwork in northern Chhattisgarh (2021, 2022), this paper explores the ongoing struggles over the Hasdeo Arand forest—the largest contiguous stretch of dense forest in central India— and unpacks the dynamics of coal mining projects , local resistance movements such as the Hasdeo Arand Movement, and the state-capital nexus implicated in violent silencing of activism against dispossession.