Indigenous Struggles in India: A Comparative Study of Anti-mining Movements in Chattisgarh and Odisha

Student: Agostini Jacopo

Educational Programme: Comparative Social Research (Master)

Year of Graduation: 2020

This study compares these two indigenous movements against projects commissioned by Vedanta. I aim to see how these movements deployed indigenous cosmologies and discourses, ideas of sacred geography and religiosity, and heterodox cultural idioms in mobilizing history, memory, and folk imaginaries, for staging an organised resilience. I analyse the similarities and differences in trying to understand the varying degrees of success. I argue that while factors related to the movements shaped the nature of the success, the successful outcome itself was in each case related to the structures of “political opportunities” available at the provincial and national levels; it depended on electoral competition and party politics between the ruling and opposition parties.

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