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Paper short abstract:

This paper is an attempt to analyse the struggles between capitalists and ecofeminists by advancing various competing storylines in the context of development discourse in India.

Paper long abstract:

Scholarly works focusing on the increasingly expansion of capitalism and its effects on nature are well documented in the development literatures, but largely under-represented gender dimensions and their struggles in relationship with resource use. This makes an entry point of combining Ecofeminism and Discourse Coalition Theory. Vandana Shiva enriches the understanding of ecofeminism and see how the male-stream knowledge driven by capitalism exploited women and nature. The capitalists’ control over nature and women lead to escalate conflicts with indigenous women; this results into the rise of ecofeminist movements in India. Such struggles between capitalists and ecofeminists can be viewed as the conflicts between modernist discourse and environmental discourse through storylines, detailed in Maarten Hajer’s Discourse Coalition. Both discourses merged to form wider development discourse. Analysing the struggles of discourses and linking gender roles with storylines is the central focus. How gender roles and narratives are constructed through storylines in the existing development discourse in India? At the higher level, modernist discourse coalition largely composed of educated male political leaders, exploiting nature by advancing pro-developmentalist storylines. At the lower hand, formally educated middle class women formed environmental discourse coalition and spearheaded ecofeminist movements against the development paradigm through alternative storylines.