Negotiating Development at the Margins: Natural Resources, Conflicts, and People’s Movements in Odisha

This book critically examines various facets of conflicts involving people and the state arising due to the uneven distribution of natural resources. It provides an overview of the people’s movements in Odisha, a resource-rich state in eastern India. Reflecting on the conceptual frameworks of conflict, it analyses violence, and struggle for rights over resources, and public policies around natural resources, alongside local strategies and governance.

Drawing from extensive field surveys in the villages of Kalahandi and undivided Koraput districts in Odisha, this volume explores the sociopolitical and economical aspects of people’s movements instead of solely viewing them as political and security threats. The authors demonstrate the misappropriations of these movements by both the state and non-state actors for their vested interests. This book offers recommendations for policymakers to draw up a more ready response to mitigate and minimize the conflict and violence and implement equitable policies around land and resources. While doing so, the book also provides some primers to development perspectives, the role of natural resources and conditions under which the natural resources can result in conflict, and principles and practices to overcome such conflicts.

The volume will be an indispensable read for researchers and students of social history, social reform, tribal and indigenous studies, postcolonial studies, exclusion studies, development studies, political sociology, and South Asian studies.

Anshuman Behera is Associate Professor at National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, India. His research interests include conflict studies, political violence, political theory, and development and conflict. His latest books are Gandhi in the Twenty-First Century: Ideas and Relevance and Varying Dimensions of India’s National Security: Emerging Perspectives.

Hippu Salk Kristle Nathan is an engineer-turned development researcher. He is Associate Professor at the Institute of Rural Management Anand, Gujarat, India. He was the Subir Chowdhury Post-doctoral Fellow at the London School of Economics in 2017. He has won the Elsevier-National Academy of Sciences, India Young Scientist Award 2017 in Social Sciences. His areas of interest include economic measurement, sustainability, energy, human development, sociopolitical reform, and disarmament.