Political Ecology of Everyday Resistance and State Building: A Case of the Ho of Jharkhand

Resource extraction and conflicts over natural resources are a global phenomenon, including in India. Indigenous tribes, like the Ho community in Jharkhand, are affected by these dynamics, as their cultural practices and livelihoods are intertwined with the local ecology.

This book explores the process of state formation through developmental intervention in the resource-rich areas of Jharkhand in eastern India which are inhabited by the indigenous Ho community.

The conflict in Jharkhand is intertwined with State development projects and capitalist interventions. This book examines the history of these projects and the issues of territorialization, dispossession, accumulation, and marginalization which communities have been fighting against for many decades. It examines the process of development policies and projects shaping and restructuring the resource-rich ecology in the region and addresses the interrelated issues of development-induced dispossession, resistance, ecological transformation, governance, illegalities, and state-building. It focuses on the questions: what do development projects bring to the Ho community; what induces them to resist and negotiate? How do State decentralization schemes and local governance in resource conflict areas strengthen State capacities?

The book highlights the consequences on the livelihoods and cultural practices of the local people because of ecological transformation and everyday resistance.

Comprehensive and important, this book will be of interest to students and researchers of anthropology, sociology, political ecology, social work, development studies, ecology, developmental sociology, indigenous studies, law, and economic anthropology.

Dhiraj Kumar is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Mahila Maha Vidhyalaya, Banaras Hindu University, India.