Challenging Power and Redefining Progress: Arundhati Roy’s Critique of Neoliberalism, Militarization, and Environmental Injustice

Abstract

Abstract: This study examines how Arundhati Roy critically articulates power dynamics in her groundbreaking writings The Greater Common Good and Power Politics: The Reincarnation of Rumpelstiltskin, offering a thorough analysis of neoliberalism, militarization, and environmental injustice. By dissecting modern development theories, Roy reveals structural oppressive mechanisms that disproportionately affect ecological systems and vulnerable groups. The study shows the complex relationships between economic exploitation, environmental degradation, and social marginalization by critically examining the ways in which corporate interests and state-sponsored policies work together to sustain structural violence. The research examines the rhetorical construction of development via a postcolonial feminist perspective, exposing the systematic commodification of natural resources and the dispossession of indigenous population by neoliberal ideology. Roy’s philosophical intervention highlights grassroots resistance as a transformative political approach and centers the realities of marginalized people, challenging prevailing narratives. Large- scale infrastructure projects, like the Sardar Sarovar Dam, are symbolic representations of modern power structures that put economic expansion ahead of the wellbeing of people and the environment, as the analysis shows. The ethical implications of development theories are critically examined in this study, which adds to larger academic conversations about social resistance, political economy, and environmental justice. Roy’s writing are regarded as an important intellectual critique that reveals the normalized violence present in international capitalism systems and provides substitute ideas of progress, sovereignty, and ecological interdependence.