Presentation short abstract

This paper attempts at discussing the debates surrounding 'green growth' in a massively-scaled banana producing region of Assam, India wherein the indigenous groups are routinely bargaining and adapting the global plantation patterns and neo-liberal policies yet time and again faces the brunt of it.

Presentation long abstract

The Daranggiri region, located at Assam, Northeast India is known for its massive banana plantations and carries a historic affiliation with its residing tribes, who have been generationally growing bananas not out of their ‘pesa’ (passion) but has lately turned out their prime ‘jibika’ (livelihood). How these communities have improvised their life-chances from a deprived economy to an industrial monoculture, to now back again at a realisation towards inclusive growth is a trajectory at itself and needs critical appraisals. These Rabha, Garo and Koch communities’ strategic desire to advertise their banana fields as modern ventures of 'green growth' pinpoints to the multi layered, complex dynamics of 'development' and 'developmental notions' and needs negotiations within the global Anthropocene. Perhaps, the transition from ‘green forest lands’ to ‘green banana plantations’ has reached a current saturation point when it started questioning back on, how much green is too much green and how does this green politics subtly divide the erstwhile egalitarian tribal belt? While it is no surprise that with capitalist encounters comes inequities and unequal resource allocations; how these communities faced, responded and dealt with these concerns remains vital interrogations.

Conducting rounds of ethnographic encounter, prolongated fieldwork to expose these layered dilemmas, the paper tries voicing out the alternative narratives from a Global South banana site to the readers; on why these communities verdicts banana monocultures as slow poison and compares penetrative capitalism to cancer cells yet hypothetically themselves generating wealth out of it; both controversial and justifiable at their own rights.