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BOOK REVIEW 
  

Growth and Identity: A Deadlock? 
 

Saroj Giri  
 
Patrik Oskarsson. 2018. Landlock: Paralysing Dispute over Minerals on Adivasi 
Land in India. Canberra: Australian National University Press, ISBN (print): 
9781760462505; pp. 226 + xiv, USD 50 (Print), Open Access (online) 
 

‗Grassroots‘ is mostly used in a positive 
sense, like when we talk about 
deepening democracy and community 
participation. But isn‘t a top-down 
apparatus of control and exploitation, 
such as that by, capital, also a variant of 
the notion of the ‗grassroots‘? 

When mining corporations destroy 
tribal rights and adivasi culture, is there 
not precisely this grassroots capital at 
work in the form of ‗local elites‘ (as 
mining contractors) who are busy 
minting money? Here, I take a name: 
the Karnataka based ‗Bellary brothers‘ 
who, however, were very ‗global‘ given 
that they exported iron ore to China, 

Brazil and other countries. Some argue that it is easier to fight ‗global 
companies‘ like Vedanta or global institutions like World Bank than to fight 

                                                        
 Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Second Floor, University of 
Delhi, Delhi – 110007; saroj_giri@yahoo.com 

Copyright © Giri 2019. 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.v2i2.81  

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v2i2.81


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [118] 

‗your very own‘, home-grown variety — who is now perhaps the ‗new 
global‘ or glocal. 

The possibility of mapping out the contours of such struggles against 
‗grassroots‘ capitalist elites is present all along in Patrik Oskarsson‘s 
Landlock (2018). The monograph focuses on bauxite mining in Andhra 
Pradesh and explores the role of private company Jindal Steel Works which 
is, it is pointed out, in active collusion with public sector companies and 
politicians. The author‘s intention through this detailed effort is to show 
that a ‗deadlock‘ can result between ‗growth‘ and ‗identity‘. The ‗identity‘ 
here is contiguous with tribal/adivasi culture and the notion of livelihood 
dependent on the land and forests. This deadlock, according to the author, 
however, does not do anyone any good.  

The deadlock takes hold because paraphernalia of ‗pro-people‘ legislation 
has in recent decades emboldened tribal claims to their traditional land and 
has also enabled them to cross swords with the mining mafia, who are 
backed by big companies and powerful politicians. The 1997 Samatha 
judgement of the Supreme Court used by activists to block mining is a case 
in point. In the deadlock, civil society opposition to ‗growth‘ flourishes. 
This opposition, or even the movement as a whole, is not some idealised 
tribal or adivasi ‗resistance‘, but is caught up in the deadlock. 

For example, according to Oskarsson, civil society opposition does not 
have any alternative plan for the good of the tribals. The companies at least 
appear to have a plan for the community, however flawed it may be. The 
central problem in such a scenario, he says, is the lack of free flow of 
information, which he calls as a ‗Habermasian nightmare‘. 

In effect, Landlock attempts to resolve the problem of strong entrenched 
interests of big capital, state players and glocal contractors as well as civil 
society opposition in a deadlock scenario, at the level of a formalistic model 
of ‗free flow‘ of information and knowledge. The problem of ‗power‘ seems 
to be displaced to that of ‗knowledge‘. I would not agree with this 
‗framework‘. 

However, the book provides us with a lot of detail, close-up view of the 
‗deadlock‘ and compelling description of the intentions and actions of the 
different players. 

The fact that the project could be stalled or delayed for so long by those 
opposing it also casts some doubt on the real power of the pro-project 
entrenched forces. The myriad court cases, litigation and the see-saw 
around the project implementation does nonetheless urge us towards 
considering the centrality of information; notably, how specific clauses of 



[119] Saroj Giri 

court cases shape what increasingly looks like a knowledge-based discursive 
and legalistic contest. That is why, I think, to give a long rope to the author, 
one tends to gravitate towards a Habermasian framework. 

It is clear that this study suffers from the paucity of critical-political 
categories related to the new global. And here I suggest that the author 
reconsider the notion and probable roles of glocal elites, particularly 
keeping in mind the rise of China, India, Brazil and in contexts where 
Western capital is increasingly becoming marginal or at least getting majorly 
reconstituted with the rise of white ethno-nationalism and the decline of 
libertarian imperialist ideology.1 In India itself, the glocal elites are in sync 
with the rise of strongman-led authoritarian regimes. Examples are of 
course JSW but also the ‗Reddy brothers‘ or for that matter the Saharanpur-
based ‗Gupta brothers‘ (also into mining) controlling the South African 
economy, and so on.  

An understanding of this new political economy needs many more concrete 
case studies on aspects such as mining in order to take political stock of the 
‗new global‘ scenario. It is in keeping with this need that Oskarsson‘s 
Landlock should be recommended as it offers us straightforward and clear 
documentation of how such realities unfold on the ground.  

At one point in the book, we get a sense that the deadlock between growth 
and identity is mediated through money in which both ‗sides‘ are immersed. 
In a meeting with officials, the Chief Minister opines that tribals opposing 
the project just want money (pp. 58-59). The local officer-in-charge, 
however, points out that all that money being poured in the area does not 
reach the poor tribals but instead lines the pockets of the local contractors 
and a range of intermediaries. Here we find that, rather than land or forest, 
money is the key.  

If I may say so, tribals have every ‗right‘ to want to have more things, more 
money. It appears adivasi marginalisation can be addressed if only they 
acquire more money! It is good to get rich, right? The problem gets 
displaced: the relationship between humans (the exploitative relationships 
of the mining companies towards the adivasi communities) now appears as 
the relationship between things (‗they have less money‘, or even, ‗they do 
not have schools‘). This displacement from relationships to things is what Marx 
points out in his notion of ‗commodity fetishism‘ in Capital, volume 1 
(Marx 1887/1954). The fetish powers of money and the fetishism of 
identity (its affective power) therefore appear to converge.  

                                                        
1 For more on this decline, see Giri (2017).  



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [120] 

Glocal elites would, of course, fete about their newly minted money, flashy 
cars or big fat weddings as part of their legitimate entitlement, and self-
respect and ‗dignity‘ for the community and tribal culture. The rise of 
mining contractors from within the local community would appear to 
converge ‗growth‘ and ‗identity‘. The fact that that mining project in 
question did not achieve official completion cannot be harped upon beyond 
a point. The ‗deadlock‘ would have already spawned so much of its own 
political economy, a good harvest, a good redistribution of the spoils!  

The deadlock is not between equality and inequality, but between different 
forms of inequality, where both identity and growth are enmeshed in the 
web of asymmetrical relations or, as the author prefers, the ‗Habermasian 
nightmare‘. The book seems to want to provoke activists to rethink the 
vantage point from which they oppose projects such as the one considered 
here. 

 

REFERENCES 

Giri, Saroj. 2017. ―Parasitic Anti-colonialism.‖ In The Final Countdown: Europe, 
Refugees and the Left edited by Jela Krecic and Slavoj Zizek, 79-102. Vienna: Wiener 
Festwochen. 

Marx, Karl. 1887/1954. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume 1. Moscow: 
Progress Publishers. 


