Resource Extractive Regimes in India

Understanding resource extractive regimes, especially in the context of the Global South, requires an interdisciplinary and mixed methods approach. HSRC hosts an interdisciplinary research community – consisting of researchers trained in the social sciences as well as in computational tools – which studies the complex social, ecological, economic and policy-related dimensions of natural resource extraction in India. We are focussing on mineral extractive regimes in particular.

The social, economic and ecological impacts of resource extraction are well documented. Frameworks of “resource curse” and “resource war” have for instance been used to explain the implications of extractive regimes. These frameworks, however, fail to provide a socially sensitive, politically engaged, historically informed, locally embedded understanding of how and why local communities engage with extractive regimes in the many ways they do. Understanding the conundrums presented within the domain of resource governance requires us to look at continuities and disruptions in the history of resource extraction, since historical legacies from India’s colonial past continue to inform and influence contemporary resource policy. It is this broad context that we seek to understand the dynamics of natural resource extraction.

We are specifically focusing on studying the possibilities of a “just transition” away from coal in India. We are seeking to understand the potential of various future(s) of mineral extraction. We are exploring possibilities of new relations and entanglement, possibilities, tensions and contradictions in imagining futures without a socio-economic dependence on minerals.

Faculty involved: Radhika Krishnan