







































Ecology, Economy, and Society–the INSEE Journal 6(2): 147-170, July 2023 

 

RESEARCH PAPER 

“Our People Can’t Hold the Line!”  – Extractive 
Capital, Fragile Ecologies and Politics of 
Dispossession and Accumulation in Eastern India  

Minati Dash  

Abstract: A protracted movement emerged in Kashipur in Southern Odisha in 1993 
that stalled a bauxite mining project for over 18 years. It went through 
fragmentations and eventually petered out by the early 2010s. This paper aims to 
understand how and why the processes of capital accumulation through 
dispossession cause fragmentation of social movements and their eventual petering 
out. I analyse the collective strikes that the villagers engaged in during 2008–2010, 
paralyzing the company’s incipient construction work over a tumultuous nine 
months. Critically engaging with David Harvey’s concept of “accumulation by 
dispossession” (ABD) and Kalyan Sanyal’s concept of “jobless growth”, I argue that 
ABD processes entail protracted interaction of extractive capital, bureaucratic 
structures, ecology, and the movements of subaltern communities with existing 
divisions. Dispossession processes generate new fissures in which ownership of land 
or lack of it due to land acquisition becomes the central axis of cleavage, shaping the 
politics and outcomes of dispossession. I further reveal that ‘jobless growth’ is 
unachievable for a company that can push ahead only through the provision of 
precarious employment and such promises.  It is based on eight months of 
ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2010–2012. Methodologically, it follows 
Burawoy’s (2000) call to “construct perspectives on globalisation from below” 
through “ethnographic grounding”.  

Keywords: Strikes; Dispossession; Accumulation by Dispossession; Jobless growth; 
political society; Dalit-Adivasi; Bureaucracy; Commodity cycles 

1. INTRODUCTION 

On several occasions during 2008–2010, the villagers in Kashipur, Southern 
Odisha, differentially dispossessed by a bauxite mining project in the region, 
paralysed its incipient construction work through strikes. The strikes 

 
 Associate Professor, Jindal School of Art and Architecture, Sonipat, Haryana. 
minatidash@gmail.com  

Copyright © Dash 2023. Released under Creative Commons Attribution © NonCommercial 
4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 

Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581–6152 (print); 2581–6101 (web).  

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v6i2.1061  

mailto:minatidash@gmail.com
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v6i2.1061


 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [148] 

 

challenged land acquisition and dispossession terms, making several demands 
on the company relating to compensation, employability, and employment. 
For a tumultuous nine months, these strikes pushed the project into a state 
of uncertainty. This period also coincided with the engendering of a dynamics 
that created intractable differences between villagers, fragmented the 
collective struggle against mining, and deepened the mining company’s 
presence in the area. This paper explores how a closer reading of the 
engagements between the key actors in an extractive frontier can help in 
understanding the processes of accumulation, dispossession, and 
transformation underway in India. More specifically, it seeks to analyse how 
and why processes of capital accumulation through dispossession cause 
fragmentation and, eventually, the petering out of social movements. 

This paper is primarily an ethnographic contribution concerning an area of 
acute extractive conflict. A protracted movement emerged against mining in 
Kashipur in the villages around the proposed bauxite refinery of Utkal 
Alumina Private Limited (UAIL) in 1993. UAIL is a 100 per cent subsidiary 
of Hindalco Industries Limited, a metals flagship brand of Aditya Birla 
Group. It is one of the world’s cheapest and biggest greenfield mining 
projects. The villagers organized under the banner of Prakrutika Sampada 
Suraksha Parishad (PSSP or Council for Protection of Natural Resources). 
PSSP was led by local Adivasi and Dalit leaders with mass participation from 
the villagers. For over 18 years, it stalled the project. During this period, the 
movement underwent a series of fragmentations and shifts and eventually 
died down by the early 2010s. 

This study shows that processes of accumulation through dispossession are 
essentially political, protracted, and contentious and lead to the fragmentation 
of collective action. To demonstrate this, I analyse the specific forms of 
engagements that occurred among the villagers, between the villagers and the 
mining company, and between the villagers and the state during the period of 
strikes, and the outcomes for stakeholders. 

Firstly, I show that the dynamics of the strikes engendered tensions between 
different groups, which the mining company exploited to deepen its presence 
in the area. During the strikes, deep fissures emerged between those displaced 
and those who had retained their farmlands, indicating a kind of structural 
disarticulation between a still-existing peasantry and a proletarianized 
workforce that discouraged villagers from participating in collective action 
and fractured the movement. Secondly, I connect the localized struggles to 
the bureaucratic structures that drive land-intensive capital investment in 
contemporary India. High-ranking bureaucrats intervened in the strikes by 
engaging with the villagers directly and promising to address their grievances. 



[149] Dash 

 

However, such promises and the opportunities for precarious employment 
created by UAIL, in turn, generated wedges between the strikers. Thirdly, I 
show that these projects of dispossession in unexplored resource frontiers are 
spurred by commodity supercycles in metals. A commodity supercycle refers 
to a general global upward trend in prices in particular sectors. Subsequent 
sections discuss it in detail. Fourthly, the impact of a severe drought in the 
region in 2008–2009 also accelerated the project of dispossession in 
unexpected ways. An ecological crisis motivated this project of dispossession.  

This paper presents David Harvey’s framework of “accumulation by 
dispossession” (ABD) (2003) and Kalyan Sanyal’s “jobless growth” (2007) as 
two primary referents for understanding the conceptual relevance of the case. 
It reworks Harvey’s concept of ABD and compares the same with Sanyal’s 
findings. As it stands today, ABD largely obscures the political processes and 
dynamics that accumulation and dispossession unleash on the ground as they 
interact with heterogeneous communities. It also does not fully explain the 
global context in which ABD processes have accelerated at an unprecedented 
rate since the late 1990s.  

Similarly, Sanyal’s findings are primarily a description of an economic process. 
Ethnographic findings in Kashipur reveal that “jobless growth” is not a 
passive economic description but a political field. Rather, it is not jobless at 
all. It produces precarious employment and promises more of such 
employment. Therefore, the question of precarious employment becomes the 
terrain on which the politics of dispossession unfolds as livelihoods are lost 
and villagers stare at uncertain futures.   

This paper, thus, depicts the interactions and relationships between extractive 
capital, global markets, bureaucratic structures, ecology, the politics of 
dispossession, and dynamics of collective action through the complexities of 
the case study at hand. It highlights the fundamental difficulties in sustaining 
collective action in contexts wherein dispossession processes create new 
fissures in communities and mining and state actors carefully manoeuvre their 
strategies to deepen accumulation processes.  

2. METHODOLOGY 

The ethnographic fieldwork for this paper was conducted over eight months 
between 2010 and 2012 in villages around the bauxite refinery of UAIL in 
Kashipur. Detailed interviews and participant observations were conducted 
with mining company officials, district administrators, PSSP leaders, strike 
leaders, and villagers from Ramibeda, Kendukhunti, Dwimundi, 
Kucheipadar, and D Karol. Documents and archival resources were obtained 
from UAIL, the district administration, and PSSP. My familiarity with the 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [150] 

 

highly inflected dialects that are spoken locally was useful in obtaining 
insightful information from the village participants. By the time the fieldwork 
began in November 2010, the strikes were over (see Table 1). Yet, it was an 
important milestone and participants were able to describe their experiences 
vividly and provide rich details. Methodologically, the paper seeks to 
“construct perspectives on globalisation from below, i.e., grounded 
globalisations… through ethnographic grounding” (Burawoy 2000, 339–341). 
Such a construction demands robust ethnographic insights into the 
interaction of the forces of accumulation and local actors, who continuously 
act upon each other and shape one another’s politics. 

3. ACCUMULATION, DISPOSSESSION, AND POLITICS 

David Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession is a theoretical 
advancement of Marx’s concept of “primitive accumulation” or “original 
accumulation”, which is part of his theory of neoliberalism (2003, see Marx 
1867 [1977]). Accumulation by dispossession is framed as an outcome of the 
over-accumulation of capital in the core Western countries, which is resolved 
by finding new territories to be opened up. While Marx considered the 
concept as the starting point of capitalism or as a one-time phenomenon, 
Harvey articulates ABD as “the continuation and proliferation of 
accumulation practices” (2003, 159). By doing so, Harvey centres the role of 
dispossession in the context of neoliberal accumulation. It entails diverse 
processes, including the commodification and privatization of land and 
forceful expulsion of farmers; privatization of common property resources; 
intellectual property rights; commodification of labour; and usury. Including 
discrete processes under the same umbrella helps us fathom the breadth of 
arenas in which capitalist accumulation occurs. However, as Levien correctly 
observes, “Harvey is vague about the mechanisms of land dispossession. …a 
high level of abstraction prevents him from capturing the diverse and unequal 
consequences of dispossession for rural people and the conditions under 
which they organize to prevent it. ... (it) prevents him from the sociological 
specificity of land dispossession” (2018, 15–16). 

As it were, the concept does not illuminate our understanding of the 
opposition that accumulation practices face and how dispossession is 
accomplished on the ground in terms of the interactions between unequal 
actors in terms of power, class, identity, and politics. These entanglements are 
particularly complex as communities are not monoliths. Subaltern 
communities are not “bounded entities” (Crehan 2002). Studies show that 
there is heterogeneity among the local actors and a diversity of economic and 
political interests in the social field of resistance (Nielsen 2009; Nilsen 2010; 
Wolford 2010). However, we know very little regarding the shifting of 



[151] Dash 

 

positions of subaltern groups in the context of land dispossession dynamics, 
something that this paper discusses. Peluso and Lund (2011) argue that the 
politics of land constitutes a key aspect in the dynamics of accumulation by 
dispossession in the context of land grabs. The findings of this paper also 
support this. It shows that the forces of accumulation and dispossession 
exploit existing rifts between communities and create new fissures between 
groups, in which ownership of land or lack of it due to land acquisition 
emerges as the primary axis of fissure that undermines collective action to the 
point of collapse. 

Besides, Harvey’s analysis, which subsumes ABD under the notion of over-
accumulation, does not explain the role of commodity supercycles1 at the 
global level, vis-à-vis the acceleration and intensification of extraction and 
dispossession in the Global South between the late 1990s and 2000s. This 
period was considered particularly “transformative” for metal prices—
particularly aluminium, iron, and copper—which experienced a tectonic 
demand boost from industrialization and urbanization in emerging nations, 
including India, China, and Brazil (Goldman Sachs 2020; Sawyer and Gomez 
2012; Nappi 2013; PwC 2011; World Bank 2008). The upward trend in prices 
was interrupted briefly in 2007 and 2008 due to the global financial crisis; 
however, it continued immediately thereafter. This reinforced the dominant 
industry narrative and the expectations of investors, corporates, and 
governments that the supercycle will continue for decades (Bowman et al 
2021; Humphreys 2015). For an industry defined by successive cycles of 
boom and bust, these expectations encouraged the expansion of mining into 
resource frontiers primarily inhabited by indigenous communities in Africa 
and Asia (Ballard and Banks 2003; Humphreys 2015; Nappi 2013; Singh and 
Bourgouin 2013). This implies that the supply gap in emerging countries 
spurred this zeal for extraction rather than over-accumulation. The concept 
of ABD also does not tell us how crises of livelihoods in marginal 
communities living in fragile ecologies might steer these processes.  

This paper expands the concept of ABD by showing that the state, through 
its senior bureaucrats and mining capital, worked in tandem with the 
commodity supercycle and engaged variously with communities to animate 
the politics of dispossession on the ground.  

 
1 There have been four broad-based commodity price supercycles since the early 1900s. 
One of the potential drivers of these supercycles is the interaction of unexpectedly large 
demand shocks and slow-moving supply responses (Büyükşahin, Mo, and Zmitrowicz 

2016).  



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In post-colonial economies, including India, it is argued that processes of 
ABD have led to “jobless growth” and the creation of surplus labour, as 
capital is unable to subsume the dispossessed within its ambit (Sanyal 2007; 
see also Bardhan 2015; Chatterjee 2008; D’Costa and Chakraborty 2017). 
Sanyal (2007) discusses this transition in the context of the trajectory of post-
colonial capitalist development. Based on the dispossession of marginal 
communities, this transition does not absorb the population as capitalist wage 
workers as classical Marxist theory would have it (see Marx 1867 [1977]). 
Rather, it creates a redundant, uncommodified, and surplus labour power that 
is extraneous to capital and the processes of capital accumulation (Sanyal 
2007, 58–59). In the process, the post-colonial economies exhibit a process 
of “jobless growth… the phenomenon of exclusion of a significant part of 
the population from the growth process” (245). The result of primitive 
accumulation is a wasteland where the surplus population is economically 
rehabilitated as the need economy. The need economy, Sanyal notes, emerges 
due to the compelling discourses of development and human rights that states 
must adhere to and is based on non-capitalist economic activities that enable 
subsistence (60). Sanyal thus articulates “jobless growth” as a description of 
an economic process and leaves some of the political specifications to Partha 
Chatterjee (2008) under the “political society” framework.  

Bracketing this surplus population under the political society, Chatterjee notes  

the bulk of the population in India lives outside the orderly zones of proper 
civil society. It is in political society that they have to be fed and clothed and 
given work, if only to ensure the long-term and relatively peaceful well-being 
of civil society. That is the difficult and innovative process of politics on 
which the future of passive revolution under conditions of democracy 
depends. (2008, 62) 

This conceptualization also marks out “marginal groups” who are so 
powerless that they cannot even mobilize electorally to make demands on the 
state. These groups are the Adivasi and Dalit communities, “who are unable 
to gain access to the mechanisms of political society” (61) or make “effective 
claims on governmentality” (ibid). According to Chatterjee, they comprise 
“an outside beyond the boundaries of political society” (ibid, 61). However, 
rejecting the dichotomies set by Chatterjee, Baviskar and Sundar (2008) 
observe that, far from being a benign actor, states have mostly come down 
militarily on subaltern groups—whom Chatterjee refers to as “political society 
or even non-society/marginal groups” (ibid, 87)—struggling against 
dispossession. These groups, rather than being passive subjects of neoliberal 
welfarist governmentality to whom rights are automatically granted by the 
state, have engaged in sustained and powerful campaigns against the state to 



[153] Dash 

 

make rightful claims on the state (ibid, 87–88). Adivasis, as well as Dalits, have 
led some of the longest and strongest political movements against 
dispossession and for the assertion of rights against corporate take-over of 
land (Baviskar 1997 EQUATIONS 2007; Karlsson 2013; see Padhi and 
Sadangi 2020; Dash 2017; see also, Rajan and Baral 2020 for contemporary 
histories of Dalit assertions against extraction and dispossession in the post-
colonial period in Odisha).  

4. ACCELERATED EXTRACTION, MINING-LED 
DEVELOPMENT, AND DISPOSSESSION IN ODISHA  

In 1993, India announced its first National Mineral Policy (NMP), thus 
opening the mining sector to private investors from across the world. NMP 
mandated the acceleration of the process of extraction through corporate 
mining. UAIL was the first private-sector bauxite mining project to be set up 
in India following this announcement. This period coincides with the global 
commodities supercycle in metals that began in the late 1990s. Buoyed by the 
optimism generated by this supercycle, India witnessed an accelerated mineral 
boom in the 2000s (Padel and Das 2010; Sawyer and Gomez 2012). During 
this period, states undertook an inordinately large role in governing mineral 
extraction (Ballard and Banks 2003; Humphreys 2015). It is likely that a fresh 
national mineral policy was implemented in 2008 to facilitate large-scale 
corporate mining and reap the benefits of the supercycle, as it was believed 
that “the needs of economic development (make) the extraction of the 
nation’s mineral resources an important priority” (GoI 2008). 

Odisha contains nearly a quarter of India’s mineral wealth, including over 
55% of its bauxite.2 Economic growth in Orissa has been led by expansion in 
the mining sector with private investment, particularly after 2002–2003 
(World Bank 2008, 17). Investments in mining picked up in 2005–2006, 
leading to “mega-mining” (Mishra 2010), which is evident in the increased 
production of minerals that rose five-fold between 1993 and 2010. From one 
bauxite mining lease in 1993—that was operational since the 1960s—Odisha 
advanced to 11 major bauxite mining leases in 2010 (GOO 2010) and, overall, 
128 working mining leases covering an area of 98,438 thousand hectares in 
2011–2012 (GOO 2013). There is no exact data to convey the quantum of 
displacement in Odisha due to mining projects during this period.3 However, 

 
2 Odisha contains 95% chromite, 92% nickel ore, 55% bauxite, 33% iron ore (hematite), etc. 

(It is) the leading producer of chromite with a share of 99.8%, iron ore 47% and bauxite 36% 

in the total production of respective mineral in the country (GoI 2015). 
3 One estimate suggests that over 0.3 million persons have been displaced in Odisha between 

1960 and 1995 due to mining (Fernandes and Asif 2007). 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [154] 

 

if the scale of investment roughly provides a sense of its extent, it must be 
mentioned that between August 1991 and March 2014, Odisha topped all 
other states as the most attractive investment destination—a leader in mining 
and mining-related industries (GoI 2014).  

This extractive industry is so central to the state’s economic growth that 
Naveen Patnaik, the chief minister of Odisha, thundered in the Odisha State 
Assembly in 2004 that “no one, I repeat, no one would be allowed to come 
between mining and development”—he was responding to concerns about 
human rights violations in the mining areas in South Odisha (PSSP 2005). 
This also informs the larger context in which the Kashipur movement 
emerged, as well as the shape of community-state-miner engagements on the 
ground. 

5. KASHIPUR AND THE ADIVASI AND DALIT 
MOVEMENT AGAINST MINING  

In the mid-1990s, the Adivasi and Dalit villagers of Kashipur organized 
themselves under PSSP to oppose the UAIL mining project. Initially a 
consortium of three multinational companies—Norsk Hydro (Norwegian 
mining company), Indal (Indian subsidiary of the Aluminium Company of 
Canada), and Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO)—UAIL became a 
wholly owned subsidiary of Aditya Birla’s metals flagship company, Hindalco 
group, in 2007. The project proposed mining the Baphlimali hills in Kashipur 
and establishing its refinery in Ramibeda valley, which became the locus of 
the Kashipur struggle (Map 1). The region has a fragile resource base with 
mountainous terrain. Only a quarter of the total geographical area is available 
for farming (Senapati and Sahu 1966). Livelihoods are based on agriculture 
and wage labour. In the 1990s, less than 30% of the villagers were food-secure 
(TARU 1996). In 2010–2011, over 85% of farmers were small and marginal 
farmers, with an average landholding of 1.19 acres (Agricultural Census of 
Kashipur 2010/2011). Jhodia (also called Paraja or Jhodia Paraja) and Kondh 
Adivasis dominate the area—60% of the population—along with Dalits—
21% of the population (Census Commissioner 2011).  

Since the inception of the project, the villagers attacked UAIL-related works. 
On a few occasions, the people involved were taken hostage. Soon, social 
activists from the state got involved. The collective struggle faced severe 
repression—its leaders and participants were routinely beaten up by local 
policemen and company-hired goons. In the summer of 1996, landed Dalits 

from the Dwimundi village accepted a meagre compensation of ₹21,000 per 
acre against land acquisition following threats from the administration, even 
as the struggle continued. Facing local protests, TISCO withdrew from the 



[155] Dash 

 

project in 1997. After three Adivasis were shot dead in an unprovoked police 
fire in the Maikanch village in 2000, the project was put on ice. Attempts were 
made to revive the project in 2004–2006. By this time, other UAIL partners 
had also withdrawn from the project after selling their stake to Hindalco. In 
December 2004, a large police outpost was set up amid huge opposition next 
to the proposed refinery site, and paramilitary forces swarmed the area for a 
year. Active police repression and low-intensity paramilitary repression 
paralyzed the movement’s attempts at mass mobilization. PSSP leaders were 
arrested, preventing local mobility, and the area was sealed off to outsiders. 
Between 2004 and 2006, two villages (Kendukhunti, a Dalit village, and 
Ramibeda, an Adivasi village) were displaced at gunpoint and relocated to a 
rehabilitation and resettlement colony to make way for the refinery. Residents 
of D. Karol (lower colony)—comprising landless Dalits—were also declared 
displaced.   

Figure 1: Mobilization Area of PSSP 

Source: Author 

It is important to mention that participation of the Dalit and Adivasi groups 
together was not always explicit; their positions regarding the movement 
changed over time. As such, there were clear differences between Adivasi and 
Dalits along caste/tribe identity, and they were also internally divided.4 This 

 
4 Structural markers of difference in terms of land ownership between Adivasis and Dalits also 

present a complex picture. Marginality among both groups increased during 2000–2011. It 

became far worse among the Dalits, when the proportion of marginal farmers in the 

population increased from 46% in 2000–2001 to 73% in 2010–2011. However, more than 

50% of the overall Adivasi-Dalit population comprised marginal and small farmers and an 

equal number were still landless (Agricultural Census of Kashipur 2000/2001, 2010/2011). 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [156] 

 

made organising these disparate groups for collective action difficult. The 
mining project had also deepened the fissures between them. For instance, 
the landless Dalits joined the company as “communicators” (persons working 
at the behest of the company for a pittance) in the mid-1990s. Landed Dalits 
were the first to accept compensation in 1995. Groups of the more powerful 
Dalit farmers also sought special packages from the administration for their 
lands that were acquired by UAIL (RPDAC 2005). All of these instances 
caused resentment among the Adivasi villagers, as the Dalits were seen as 
working against the movement. In a few cases, the communicators were also 
physically targeted by PSSP members. In contrast, PSSP was largely seen as 
an Adivasi organization by the Dalits, even though a few PSSP leaders were 
Dalits. Some landed Adivasi men also worked as communicators, but they 
were never targeted. At the same time, a large section of landed and landless 
Dalits supported the PSSP vehemently during 1999–2007.  

The Adivasi-Dalit dynamics are important to understand these contexts [see 
Dash 2017, 2020, 2024 (forthcoming)]. However, it is not the central line of 
fracture in the context of strikes, as I show in subsequent sections. After 
displacement, new dynamics came into play. The displaced persons (DPs) had 
turned into wage labourers. Throughout 2005–2006, they clashed with the 
mining officials and occasionally stopped work at different construction sites, 
including the refinery, demanding wages and work (UAIL 2010). In 2007, the 
displaced villagers and PSSP came together to launch strikes. Strikes were 
considered “the only and last option” (“aau upaaya kana”) to put pressure on 
UAIL and make effective collective demands. Beginning in 2008, these strikes 
paralyzed the company’s construction work and threw the project into a fresh 
state of uncertainty. The strikes continued for over two years. However, by 
the end of 2010, the Kashipur struggle lay in a state of decline.  

6. KASHIPUR STRIKES: DISPLACEMENT AND NEW 
SOLIDARITIES  

 
Landlessness was pervasive and the resource base was fragile. The Adivasis-Dalits inter-

relations were also multifaceted. They had pronounced differences, for instance, in terms of 

linguistic abilities—Adivasi men’s inability to speak Odia and Dalit men’s proficiency in it—

Dalits calling Adivasis “dumb”, and Adivasis referring to Dalits as “thieves”. Yet, they 

interacted in their daily lives—inter-marriages between Kondh Adivasi women and Dalit men 

were not rare and did not result in physical violation against the groom, they spoke of 

“collective destiny”. At the same time, their orientation to the movement shifted over time 

(see Dash 2017, 2020, 2024).  

 



[157] Dash 

 

The project hit the ground by displacing two villages and a colony and turning 
them into wage labourers who worked on the construction sites. They did not 
receive wages regularly and, at times, had to beg for food from other villages. 
The house deeds of the resettled quarters were not given to them as well. In 
2006, UAIL constituted a Displaced Persons Committee (DPC) by 
handpicking people from these villages. Every displaced person was 
economically vulnerable, as they had spent the compensation and the ex-

gratia amount of ₹80,000 per acre given to them in 2005 (Fieldnotes 2011). 
The displaced villagers had frequent heated quarrels with mining officials as 
well as DPC members, as day-to-day survival had become difficult for them 
due to the absence of assured daily wages. However, no one articulated or 
addressed their grievances.  

In 2007, leaders of the displaced villages reached out to PSSP for support, 
apologizing for “acting smart and consequently eating shit” (“chalaki hai ki 
guha khailu”). Following a series of village-level meetings, PSSP extended its 
support to them for a long-drawn struggle to obtain substantial long-term 
benefits for their collective future. Towards the end of 2007, a new 
committee, Basachyuta, Khyatigrasta o Prabhabita Committee (Displaced 
persons, Land-losers, and Affected People’s Committee [DLAPC]; hereafter, 
committee), replaced the DPC. The committee had one member each from 
all the 26 villages that refinery operations would impact adversely. A charter 
of demands with 38 points was drawn up. The key demands included: raising 

compensation amount to ₹1 millionper acre; withdrawing all the criminal 
cases filed against over 1,000 villagers for opposing the mining company; 
permanent employment to all those displaced and those who had lost land to 
the project; provision of technical training for young men; DP status to five 
more villages that lay close to the refinery and tailing pond sites, and 
development of education infrastructure in the area. 

Table 1: Strikes During 2008–2010 

Year Period of Strikes Days 

2008 20 February–26 June (126 days) 150 

8 December–31 December (24 days) 

2009 22 February–7 March (16 days) 74 

3 June–30 July (58 days) 

2010 10 January–5 February (27 days) 27 

 Total number of strike days 251 

 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [158] 

 

The strikes were launched by the villagers by locking the company gates and 
its offices. Company-related construction work was halted. Displaced persons 
left their jobs and sat on strikes. Over 10,000 people from over 26 villages 
participated in these strikes in front of the refinery gates. The demand charter 
was submitted to UAIL and state government departments, including the 
Tribal Development Department and the Department of Steel and Mines.  

Section 6.1 discusses the villagers’ longest strike, which began in February 
2008 and lasted for over four months. The dynamics of the strikes—including 
existing differences between the villagers in terms of land ownership and 
identity, engagement of bureaucrats, and promises and opportunities of 
employment—engendered tensions between various groups. Most notably, 
an irreversible rift emerged between those who were displaced and those who 
had retained their homes and/or farms, indicating a kind of structural 
disarticulation between the proletarianized workforce and the still-existing 
peasantry. The severe drought conditions of 2009 in this region further caused 
widespread food insecurity and hunger. This crisis accelerated the project of 
dispossession causing fragmentation in the movement. 

6.1 Committee Leaders, Bureaucrats, and the Deepening of 
Structural Disarticulation Between Villager Groups 

Strikes began by daybreak on 20 February 2008. Within hours, the local police 
and UAIL officials arrived and warned the leaders and protestors from the 
displaced villages of dire consequences. They were told that if they stopped 
company work, the company would not take responsibility for their welfare. 
DLAPC members came forward as the representatives of the 26 dispossessed 
villages. Two months went by without any formal dialogue with the company 
or state administration. 

However, unbeknownst to the villagers, frantic negotiations were taking place 
in Rayagada between the district administration and select committee 
members. Ram Naik, an ex-president of the committee, spoke to me about 
these meetings, 

When we closed the gates, we—just some of us, the “main people”—were 
called to Rayagada for discussions. The collector and other officials 
repeatedly urged us to end the protests. We remained firm on not opening 
the gates until our demands were met. The collector said that they could not 
agree to all our demands as the resettlement and rehabilitation plan was 
finalized long back, but we did not budge from our position. (Personal 
Interview, March 30, 2011) 

In contrast to his assertion in his statements, I learned that the villagers had 
forced him to step down from the committee in 2008 following allegations of 



[159] Dash 

 

corruption. Chitta Naik, committee coordinator (2009–2010), bemoaned 
such betrayal in these words, 

On the ground, people were suffering, sitting in the sun and starving 
themselves for a future in famine conditions, and in Rayagada, persons like 
Ram Naik were negotiating with the company and administration to open 

the gates. Ram got a construction contract of ₹0.6 million from the 
company and an assurance from the collector that criminal cases against him 
would be dropped. Hundreds of our brothers have police cases against 
them, but all he thought about was himself. (Personal Interview, April 4, 
2011) 

Despite such negotiations in Rayagada, the strike continued, effectively 
paralyzing the company’s work. Alongside these negotiations, senior 
bureaucrats were mobilized to engage and negotiate with the villagers, which 
created new dynamics. In May 2008, in response to the strike pressure, one 
of the most senior state officials, the revenue divisional commissioner (RDC) 
[Berhampur division], met the committee members in Rayagada. He assured 
them that “their demands would be fulfilled”. Soon after, another senior-most 
state bureaucrat—the secretary of the Board of Revenue, Odisha—visited the 
site of the strikes in June 2008. He spoke to the protesters for over two hours, 
agreeing that “they were wronged”. He promised that their demands of 
employment would be considered at the “highest level” and their grievances 
would be addressed at the earliest. He urged the villagers to open the gates so 
that the company could resume work. 

Biju Majhi, a PSSP leader, spoke sarcastically about the practical challenges of 
working with disparate groups: 

He (the revenue secretary) came and, after hearing us, urged the villagers to 
“open the gates”, and, immediately, some persons began to push open the 
gates. But there was no discussion among the villagers regarding ending 
strikes or opening the gates. Some villagers, mostly the displaced villagers, 
supported the decision to open the gates. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a bunch 
of people brought garlands, some got musical instruments, the revenue 
secretary was garlanded—as if all our demands had been accepted—and 
before we could make sense of anything, the gates were opened! Raji and 
Ram were leading the group. Loud chants in the name of the secretary 
accompanied the drumbeats as if we had won a war. Months of the suffering 
of the strikers came to nought…what did we get? The deadline passed, and 
not a single demand was met. (Personal Interview, December 13, 2010)  

The engagement of some of these bureaucrats with the protestors implied 
that the Odisha government considered resolving the Kashipur impasse 
critical. The state had deep stakes in mining, given the commodity supercycle 
in aluminium. This partly explains the continual presence of senior 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [160] 

 

bureaucrats on the ground in attempts to address the deadlock. However, it 
cannot be said that these officials had any alliance with the miners, as several 
studies on mining projects have shown (Adduci 2013; Bharadwaj 2009; 
Sawyer and Gomez 2102; Lahiri-Dutt 2014). Many villagers that I spoke to 
during my fieldwork asserted that when a “big official came down from the 
capital to meet and speak to us patiently, how could we not believe him?” 
(Fieldnotes, 2011). Such a popular perception is more likely to draw from an 
understanding of “higher officials seen as providing redressals for grievances” 
(Gupta 1995, 390).  

Throughout strikes during these years, there were rumours that committee 
leaders had taken money from UAIL to break strikes. Charged by the villagers 
of “eating money”, more than five presidents of the committee—including 
both Dalits and Adivasis—had to step down between 2008 and 2009. The 
accusations had a ring of truth. UAIL documents reveal that construction 

contracts of up to ₹77.6 million and monetary offers worth ₹0.5 million were 
given to several committee leaders by mid-2008. Raji Naik, for example, 

received contracts worth ₹7.7 million, while Gajendra Majhi, an Adivasi 

committee representative, received contracts worth ₹4.3 million (UAIL 

2011). The total quantum of contracts given to these leaders rose to ₹150 

million by the end of 2008. It further increased to ₹181 million in 2009 and 

was at ₹201 million in 2010 (ibid). 

UAIL, as well as the district administration, cultivated some of the leaders as 
“strike-breakers”. The strike-breakers were most likely persuaded to do the 
deed through material incentives and/or guarantees on withdrawal of criminal 
cases that had been filed against them for participating in the movement or 
squabbling with the company officials. Interestingly, these leaders had been 
either active supporters or antagonists of the company in the past. Of the six 
key strike-breakers, four were displaced Dalits and two were landed Adivasis 
who had lost parts of their lands for the project. This group was similar to the 
figure of an intermediary or brokers who are crucial actors in land deals and 
in sinking the interests of the corporations into the local community (Levien 
2018; Sud 2014; Welker 2014). These shock troopers for the company were 
very effective. They were members of the local communities, so they could 
engage more closely with the villages without drawing much attention to 
themselves. The villagers knew most of these strike-breakers as “kompany 
dalals” who worked to further company interests in the area. Of these strike-
breakers, the Dalit ones were also on the committee. On the other hand, the 
Adivasi strike-breakers were landed persons who were disgruntled with PSSP 
leadership. Dalit strike-breakers were on the committee because they were 
also DPs, and the committee drew from leaders from all 26 villages. In the 



[161] Dash 

 

context of displacement, PSSP and villagers erroneously believed that these 
dalals would work towards obtaining long-term benefits rather than serving 
company interests. Instead, they took money from the company and worked 
towards breaking the strikes. During the fieldwork, villagers often regretted 
trusting the strike-breakers and said, “chhoro ku jagial kolu, bhool helu” (“it was 
a mistake to trust the thieves as watchmen”). 

Yet, the opening of the gates on 26 June after the revenue secretary had 
promised to fulfil their demands implies that a far more complex set of forces 
and factors were at work—the involvement of persons such as Ram Naik and 
Raji Naik in exhorting others and opening the gates was for their gain. 
However, which forces swayed the villagers to agree to open the gates? We 
now turn to understand this.  

6.2 Deepening Sense of Structural Disarticulation 

The visit and promises made by the revenue secretary brought existing 
contradictions between the two major groups to the surface. The role of 
strike-breakers in fanning these contradictions was critical too. They 
frequently did so by emphasizing the DPs were a precarious labour force that 
was dependent on the company for everyday survival, in sharp contrast to 
other villagers who still owned homes/lands and had “no imminent fear of 
dispossession”. Usa, a displaced Dalit woman from the erstwhile 
Kendukhunti village, spoke about the role of strike-breakers in creating a 
charged environment on the site of strikes: 

In the evening, dalals like Raji and Ghana would come and sit down with 
our menfolk. They would talk about our misery and tell us that PSSP did 
not care for us. Sometimes, upon hearing all this, our menfolk would get 
agitated. (Personal Interview, September 24, 2011)  

As it is, the displaced persons framed each day spent at the strikes without 
any tangible outcome as a “loss of wages for the day”. The movement leaders 
had to deal with the economic contradictions between different groups 
constantly. Each time after the strikes, the displaced villagers, both Adivasi 
and Dalits, entered into arguments with other villagers over their suffering 
due to the strikes. They accused the other protestors of “enjoying their 
troubles” and PSSP of pursuing its agenda of “no plant, no mining” and being 
more interested in stalling the project rather than solving their problems. It is 
difficult to say how much of this was merely instigation by the strike-breakers. 
Those displaced and the rest of the villagers were united in their 
understanding that short-term gains would have to be sacrificed to achieve 
substantial long-term benefits from the company. Yet, “surviving without 
wages or hope for any solution” (“bhutti bi milu nai, samadhan bi heu nai”) and 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [162] 

 

living like squatters without land deeds was becoming an inescapable grim 
reality for them.  

Here, one can see parallels with the industrial strikes. Chandavarkar, in his 
compelling work on striking millworkers in Bombay cloth mills, suggests that 
“complex calculations occurred everyday” as workers decided if they would 
take part in the strike. He notes, 

Workers would appear at the mill gates on the morning of the strike to check 
whether the general tendency favoured a stoppage… At every stage of a 
strike, the commitment to industrial action imposed complex calculations 
upon the workforce. They had to consider not only their immediate chances 
of success but also the extent to which their … resources would enable them 
to bear the costs of industrial action. At the same time, to obtain 
concessions from the employers… it was imperative for the workers that 
the strike be complete. (2009, 137) 

It is likely that this contradiction around land—that those who still had land 
could afford to be more patient as compared to the DPs who depended on 
the company for everyday survival—caused an increasing rift between these 
groups. They vacillated between hope and despair in the context of their 
everyday vulnerabilities and associated anxieties. Ordinary DPs clashed with 
other striking villagers and PSSP leaders on several occasions, telling them to 
“either pay us wages or else open the gates” (Fieldnotes 2010). Their tone 
became increasingly bitter as they blamed the PSSP leaders and other villagers 
for a continued deadlock in the strikes. This also vitiated the already tense 
environment, further widening the rift between DPs and the rest and 
generating a sense of betrayal among groups of the existing peasantry for 
trusting the DPs to lead a long-term fight. 

Linking how the strike-breakers provoked the villagers by exploiting their 
economic vulnerabilities and interests, an upset Chitta Naik continued,  

On what basis could the displaced persons ask us to give them jobs or 
money? The dalals would take a group of displaced people to a corner and 
say, “Look, PSSP is making you fools; they want UAIL to leave the area. 
Otherwise, why are they not ending the strikes now?” Do villagers not know 
how the struggle is done? One must sacrifice to get something valuable. 
What to do? Our people are not good; they can’t hold the line. (Personal 
Interview, April 4, 2011) 

Throughout this period, displaced villagers frequently clashed with mining 
officials and corporate contractors over wages, and committee members and 
dalals quarrelled with officials to obtain petty construction contracts. Criminal 
cases of dacoity and attempt to murder were registered against them (Police 
Files 2009). Following a squabble over wages in early 2009, their discontent 



[163] Dash 

 

erupted in a riotous incident in which the company sites of refinery and other 
construction were vandalized. Eighteen corporate construction contractors 
of UAIL, including Gannon Dunkerley & Co. Ltd and Larsen & Toubro, 
withdrew, leaving the company in a fresh state of uncertainty. Such an 
incident heightened the DPs’ sense of immediate economic insecurity. At the 
same time, it put the government on edge. Throughout 2009, a series of high-
level meetings were held at the district to discuss the situation in Kashipur, 
including compensation, a special package for select land losers, and 
rehabilitation plans (RPDAC 2009). These meetings were attended by at least 
one state under-secretary, RDC (Berhampur division), and district 
administrators, implying the urgency of resolving the deadlock that had 
marred the project. 

6.3 Fragile Ecologies: Accelerating the Mining Project in 
Unexpected Ways 

In 2007, over 350 cases of deaths due to cholera and a lack of food and 
potable water were reported in Kashipur (Das 2007). Entire cattle had 
perished. As the region was still reeling from the drought conditions of 2008 
and 2009, there was a lot of anger among the villagers against the 
administration for its inaction. PSSP galvanized the striking villagers to picket 
the local administration at Kashipur block over issues of malnutrition deaths, 
crop failure, and hunger. Over 2,000 villagers moved from the site of the 
strike to picket the block in mid-2009. They locked the sub-district offices, 
petitioned for compensation against cattle heads lost, crop failure, and 
compensation for the families of the deceased, and urged the administration 
to take measures towards food security.  

Since the 1980s, this ecologically sensitive region has been in the spotlight for 
malnutrition deaths. In 1987, 400 deaths were reported due to malnutrition 
and there have been instances of sale of children due to distress (Ahmed 1987; 
Currie 2000). In Dasmantpur and Kashipur, 21, 350, and 14 deaths were 
reported in 2002, 2007, and 2009, respectively, due to starvation and cholera 
(Das 2007; see Dash 2017, 86–87 for details).  

After a week of picketing, the administration responded by providing food 
rations in all the drought-affected villages with promises of strengthening 

food security schemes and provision of ₹5,000 per acre per family. Around 
the same time, UAIL and the state administration responded to the strikes by 

increasing compensation to ₹0.344 million by 2010.  

Speaking of a possible link between the summer months and the company’s 
disbursal of the compensation and arrears, Paban Misra, a PSSP activist, told 
me, 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [164] 

 

As monsoons approach (in the villages), the food is exhausted, and soup 
becomes watery with less and less ragi. Is it a mere coincidence that the 
compensation amount, the arrears, and employment offers…are all made 
during a period when hunger stalks? (Personal Interview, November 8, 
2010) 

UAIL began to issue housing deeds and employment letters to DPs towards 

the end of 2008. It also started giving a monthly allowance of ₹2,000 to each 
displaced family. The outstanding wages to the villagers were also cleared. 
According to Chitta Naik, by the end of 2008, each time the gates were locked, 
the DPs got into fights with the other villagers over the opening of gates, 
accusing them of “envying that UAIL had given them jobs”. Although, these 
were either precarious jobs as gardeners and security guards or jobs in which 
they needed to show up once a month to collect their salary without doing 
any work whatsoever.  

By the end of 2009, many of the villagers from the 26 villages stopped 
participating in the strikes. Near the end of 2010, no collective action had 
taken place. PSSP formally withdrew from the strikes in early 2010,. The hope 
that they could work together to achieve long-term benefits for everyone in 
the area died. 

7. CONCLUSION 

This paper shows that the Kashipur strikes successfully mobilized and 
organized disparate groups envisioning a collective destiny around 
livelihoods. The strikes became a formidable force and achieved many 
successes. Yet, collective action also became a site of explosive interactions 
and collapsed by mid-2010. 

This paper is illustrative of how local struggles were shaped by larger 
bureaucratic structures at play in the context of commodity supercycles in 
metals and minerals. It depicts globalization grounded in and generated by 
complex interactions and entanglements of local struggles, bureaucratic 
structures, mining capital, and global markets. The movement eventually 
became disarticulated due to the fracture that emerged between the displaced 
persons who had become precarious wage labourers and the existing 
peasantry, who still owned small parcels of land. These differences were 
exacerbated due to false promises made by the bureaucrats and localized 
strategies of the miners involving strike-breakers. The efforts of the leaders 
of the collective struggle to sustain collective action were severely 
undermined, as many DPC leaders were charged with corruption, and a large 
section of protestors grew tired of the frequent breaking of the strikes without 
any substantial gains.  



[165] Dash 

 

The role of the commodity supercycle in animating these dynamics is crucial. 
The optimism demonstrated by the dominant industry narratives fuelled the 
expansion of mining into new territories such as Kashipur. An enormous 
opportunity was envisaged by state actors in leveraging the windfall from 
mining to fuel the state’s economic development. However, the mining 
supercycle did not automatically lead to the engagement of state and mining 
actors with the communities. It was realized through localized accumulation 
strategies of mining capital in which the state actors (bureaucrats) played an 
important role. These were strategies of divide and rule, accomplished 
through false promises and amplification of existing contradictions between 
groups through strike-breakers. Contrary to Chatterjee’s slotting of Adivasi-
Dalit groups in the category of marginal groups, who cannot make “effective 
claims on governmentality” (2008, 61), one finds that the Kashipur struggle 
started in the 1990s as a movement against corporate penetration and 
governmentality through its anti-mining stance. It changed orientation 
following the displacement of the villages towards obtaining better 
compensation and rehabilitation packages as well as pressing claims of 
governmentality through a language of rights and assertions by demanding 
access to education, health, and nutritional security; technical training for the 
young men and allowances for the elderly persons; agricultural development, 
and comprehensive area development. These processes of claim-making, 
however, led to the fragmentation of the movement. This fragmentation was 
accompanied by a parallel process of displaced persons increasingly engaging 
with the processes of a narrow version of development as survival through 
precarious employment opportunities. This ultimately led to the collapse of 
the movement. This also brings into terrain the concept of Sanyal’s “jobless 
growth”. If the company is, per the final analysis, dependent upon the 
generation of consent from local communities for dispossession to ensure the 
smooth functioning of everyday refinery operations, “jobless growth” is 
ultimately unachievable for the company.  

As land and mining-based accumulation processes gather pace across eastern 
India, these dynamics provide important lessons. Local politics after 
dispossession is shaped significantly by precarious jobs and promises, 
exacerbating existing contradictions and fracturing the tenuous solidarity 
achieved between different groups. Accumulation processes advance by 
carefully undermining and fragmenting collective action both from inside and 
outside, implying that there is nothing really “contingent or haphazard about 
its (ABD’s) modus operandi” (Harvey 2003, 149; author’s emphasis). So, how 
do social movements deal with such an onslaught both from inside and 
outside? It is an open-ended question that I leave all of us with. 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [166] 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

I would like to express my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and editors 
at EES for their detailed feedback helped to improve this paper greatly for 
conceptual clarity. Thanks are due to Chitralekha and her team at The Clean 
Copy for painstakingly editing the paper. I would also like to express my 
thanks to Nandini Sundar for her support.  

Ethics Statement: I hereby confirm that this study complies with 
requirements of ethical approvals from the institutional ethics committee for 
the conduct of this research.  

Data Availability Statement: The data used in this paper is not provided in 
a repository as the data is obtained from the mining company’s officials and 
is part of the company’s internal records. Other reports from the district 
administration are also not available for public scrutiny.  

Conflict of Interest Statement: No potential conflict of interest was 
reported by the author. 

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