Paper short abstract:

The paper deals with adivasi politics in the Odishan steel town Rourkela, focusing on trade unions aiming to defend adivasi steel workers and ‘cultural associations’ promoting the ‘development’ of adivasi communities, and on their respective relations to the politics of the adivasi urban poor.

Paper long abstract:

The paper focuses on adivasi politics in the Odishan steel town Rourkela. Built by a central government undertaking in the 1950s, the steel town and the public-sector steel plant it accommodates were icons of the Nehruvian developmental state. They were to provide India with an essential commodity to back her newly gained political independence; and they were also to provide the nation-state with an industrial working-class to serve as a modern, secular and 'socialistic' model for the citizenry as a whole. Situated in the mineral-rich, but sparsely populated internal periphery, the local steel industry would necessarily have to rely on migrant labour from all over the country as well as the local adivasi. Work in a modern, state-run steel plant and life in a modern, state-planned steel town would transcend the various 'traditional' identities of caste, region and religion of Rourkela's industrial workforce. Nevertheless, since the beginning the steel town has exacerbated conflicts between 'sons-of-the-soil' and 'outsiders'. The paper focuses on these conflicts and on their changing intersection with class inequalities in Rourkela. In particular, I will focus on the actors raising claims in favour of Rourkela's adivasis in this regard, i.e. on trade unions aiming to defend the interests of adivasi steel workers and on 'cultural associations' promoting the 'development' of adivasi communities, and on their respective relations to the politics of the adivasi urban poor.