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Paper short abstract:

This paper disaggregates green energy transitions in India by showing that the proximity of private business interests and the state has not changed in the country’s implementation of its climate agenda, resulting in repeated cycles of social and economic disenfranchisement.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores questions of justice and green energy in India’s solar energy parks through focusing on the overlapping relationships between institutions, capitalism, the state, and the people most affected by the climate crisis. Based on fieldwork conducted in the Indian state of Karnataka at the Pavagada Solar Park, the world’s third largest solar installation, this paper analyses questions of justice and green energy through examining the business-state institutional arrangements which created the solar park and the variety of problems which have resulted since its construction.

This paper provides three levels of analysis. First, it historicizes and contextualises the region, proving that the various institutions used to create the solar park strategically “prepared” the land and people undergoing green transitions to best support the interests of private capital. The second segment examines the contemporary inequalities which have been generated by the park and how such issues are intentionally obscured by the business-state relationship. The final level explains that India’s future green transitions lie in the continued subjugation of its rural areas, and that the inequalities observed in Pavagada will become omnipresent across the country should India not attempt to change its approach. This paper situates critical political economy and climate justice literature and fieldwork across the past, the present, and the future of the solar park while connecting approaches ‘from below’ to the institutions which work in tandem with private capital. This unique approach and analysis provides novel insight into the state of justice and green transitions in India.