Capital and Ecology: Developmentalism, Subjectivity and the Alternative Life-Worlds

This volume studies the intersection of capital and ecology primarily in one of the most sensitive geographies of the world, the Eastern Himalayan region. It looks at how the region has become a melting ground of neoliberal developmentalism and ecological subjectivities with the penetrating forces of global and state capitalism, economic projects, and complex power relations. The essays in the volume argue that specific focus on energy infrastructure and energy production has pushed technology and capital towards asset building which has had an adverse effect on the environment, labour relations, indigenous knowledge systems, and traditional livelihood practices in the area. They look at assets like mega dams, electricity transmission networks, natural gas grids, infrastructural and developmental projects, and other alternative ventures which require interventions in the natural world and its resource deposits.

Interdisciplinary in approach, the volume adopts a variety of lenses -- developmentalism, state strategy, indigenous voices, geopolitics, and environmentalism -- to provide a unique and alternative narrative on the various dimensions of the ecological risks and livelihood threats. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics, development studies, indigenous studies, and Asian studies.

Rakhee Bhattacharya is Associate Professor at Special Centre for the Study of North East India, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. She was an Endeavour Post-doctoral fellow in Australia and has worked and taught in other institutes across the country. Her areas of research are political economy, development economics, regional economy, transnational economy and geo-economics, poverty and inequality, geopolitics, India’s Northeast and its neighbourhood. She has authored Development Disparities in Northeast India (2011) and Northeastern India and its Neighbours: Negotiating Security and Development (2015). In addition, she has edited a number of volumes and has written many articles in both national and international journals. She is a regular columnist in The Statesman. Her latest edited volumes are Regional Development and Public Policy Challenges in India (2015) and Developmentalism as Strategy: Interrogating Post-colonial Narratives on North East India (2019).

G. Amarjit Sharma is Assistant Professor at the Special Centre for the Study of North East India, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India. His latest (edited) book, State vs. Society in Northeast India: History, Politics and the Everyday Life, was published in July 2021. His works are published in the journals such as Economic and Political Weekly, Peace Print: South Asian Journal of Peacebuilding, Eastern Anthropologist, Man in India.