Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on how the Gujarat model-of Development has increasingly led to polarisation and inequality. It looks at how this model is experienced and challenged from below to understand strategies for survival and resistance in the face of growing repression and dispossession.

Paper long abstract:

In the current expansion of authoritarian rule, India forms a paradigmatic case. Despite impressive ‘economic growth’, a particular kind of authoritarian developmentalism is intensifying processes of polarisation and growing inequalities with the State increasingly co-opting institutions and policies to the detriment of basic liberties and rights amidst consolidation of unbridled power. This paper looks at the Gujarat Model of Development which underpins these trends. This model is often attributed to the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, originating in his home state Gujarat where he was Chief Minister from 2002 – 2014, and expanding nationally after he came India’s Prime Minister in 2014. Taking the case of the controversial Sardar Sarovar (Narmada) dam, one of the earliest examples of this model, and other infrastructure projects in Gujarat, this paper examines how a capitalist intensive approach to addressing livelihood, water and food security has led to the manufacture of singular/ authoritarian solutions that have drowned out alternative perspectives. In doing so top-down infrastructure-led development is increasingly associated with ethno-nationalism, majoritarianism, masculinity, authoritarian populism, increasing inequality and a toxic state-capital nexus. These have legitimised ethno-religious agendas and the dispossession of minorities, Adivasis (Indigenous people) as well as poor resource users ( pastoralists, fishers, farmers) from their livelihood base and commons. I conclude by exploring how how these authoritarian practices and the Gujarat model are experienced and also challenged from below with an aim to understand strategies for survival and resistance in the face of increasing repression and dispossession.