After Coal | SOAS University of London
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 03/03/2020

'After Coal: Indigenous mining and life outside neoliberal extractivism in India's northeastern borderlands.' was a webinar hosted by Bengt G. Karlsson on the 20th of February 2020. Read more at http://bit.ly/2x1MAO5.

This paper concern the mining of coal in Meghalaya, a small hill state in the north-eastern region of India. The extractive industries are largely in the hands of the indigenous elite, who have been able to accumulate massive wealth and, along with it, secure political power in the state. Pollution of water bodies and health hazards and risks for the mining labourers have pushed the Supreme Court to intervene and put a moratorium on the extraction of coal. This intervention divides the indigenous community: criticized by some as a violation of indigenous sovereignty and welcomed by others who take it as an invitation to build a sustainable future outside neoliberal extractivism. Women have been in the forefront of the anti-mining campaign, and the paper begin by narrating a recent event where two leading female activists were brutally attacked and left to die in a forest. An additional provocation with the anti-mining activists is that some of them also been outspoken against the attempt by male leaders to amend the traditional matrilineal kinship system and prevent indigenous women from marrying outsiders. As I will argue, in the combined protests one can detect what Ghassan Hage calls “alter-politics”, the contours of something radically different in the making.