Paper short abstract:

India’s ‘development as security’ strategy in mineral-rich, conflict-stricken Jharkhand is questioned. Using practices of assemblage, gaps between the will to govern and ground reality are analysed. A development plan is critiqued using secondary sources; empirical material informs improved praxis.

Paper long abstract:

This paper engages with the strategy of 'development as security' that India is employing in insurgency-affected regions. It focusses on the Saranda Action Plan as an example of this strategy for security/development in the resource-rich but politically-volatile state of Jharkhand. Its official aim is welfare service provision for indigenous groups, alleviating poverty while simultaneously rendering them pro-state. Promoted as a counter-insurgency measure against local support for Maoist groups, its effectiveness and intent have been challenged. Some suspect the underlying motivation to be to facilitate land acquisition and infrastructure development for iron ore mining companies. Outdated land tenure laws, despite recent changes, make state acquisition and subsequent transfer to companies a common practice. Empirical findings from five villages, largely comparable to the 56 action plan villages, are combined with policy analysis, recent mainstream media coverage, and insights from existing regional and thematic studies. These are discussed employing an analytic proposed by Tania Murray Li (2007) in 'Practices of assemblage and community forest management', "to explore the practices that fill the gap between the will to govern and the refractory processes that make government so difficult". The attempt, rather than a political indictment of current development efforts, is to understand and explicate what the will to govern does and what it tries (or at least claims) to do in present day Jharkhand. The hope is that this contribution may aid development planning that is more contextually relevant and holistic in outlook, and less susceptible to critiques of being reductionist, or worse, deceptive.