Accumulation by Dispossession or Dispossessing Strategies of Accumulation in the Indian Periphery?

The proposed project will investigate the rise of grassroots resistance to industrial development in rural India. Research centres around a memorandum of understanding (MOU) negotiated in 2005 between the Government of Odisha (a coastal state in north-east India) and Pohang Steel Company of South Korea (POSCO) to construct the largest integrated steel plant in South Asia. Valued at $US 12 billion, it remains the largest single foreign direct investment (FDI) contract in India’s history. Despite the promise of growth and development for one of India’s most
impoverished regions, however, the project was vehemently resisted by local groups for over a decade, and today has been all but formally abandoned. In collaboration with Raju J. Das, an economic geographer at York University, and B. K. Sahoo, an economics professor at IIT Kharagpur, I will determine how and why the megaproject was rejected, and what this has meant for state legitimacy in the region as a consequence. The project will also contribute empirical findings to bourgeoning literature on the class character of struggle over industrialization and dispossession in the Indian periphery. TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Raju Das

Student:

Jarren Richards

Partner:

Discipline:

Geography / Geology / Earth science

Sector:

University:

York University

Program:

Globalink Research Award