Investment-Induced Displacement in Central India

Abstract

India’s abundant natural resources are a key feature of its newfound status as an emerging market that attracts foreign investments. As the country’s output of metals and their ores increases, investments to secure deals over mineral deposits and manufacturing plants increase. Apart from direct funding for new projects, new investments pay for a large increase in the deployment of security forces, multilayered briberization, and protection money that also funds Maoist outfits, in yet another unending war that is fundamentally a resource war around mineral and metal production—primarily steel and aluminum as well as coal and water. In this article, Damodaran and Padel examine the mining operations in Central India where Vedanta Resources, a corporation that has become symbolic of neoliberal capitalism in India today, brings huge new foreign investments in to exploit India’s resources under the logic of emerging markets. About a quarter of postcolonial India’s scheduled tribe population has been displaced by development projects, often through foreign loans and investments.