The sun and the scythe: energy dispossessions and the agrarian question of labor in solar parks

ABSTRACT

Green grabbing is accelerating throughout the Global South to facilitate climate change mitigation. This paper illuminates the discursive and extra-economic means through which the state dispossesses agropastoralists of both land and energy to develop solar parks in semi-arid rural India. We advance the empirical and theoretical aspects of energy dispossessions, with implications for the agrarian question of labor. Using data obtained from mixed methods fieldwork, this research reestablishes the urgency of responding to the classical agrarian question in the context of low-carbon energy transitions.

KEYWORDS:

• Solar parks
• agrarian question of labor
• energy dispossession
• green grabbing
• India

Acknowledgements

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to friends, respondents, colleagues and key informants in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. Special thanks to Pradipsinh Parmar, Vasae MD Munawar and Lakshmi Reddy Yeruva for fieldwork support. We dedicate this article to Shilpa, Shyan and Lakshay.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The Santalpur Special Investment Region, the Euro Multivision Special Economic Zone, and the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) are all SEZs that are geographically proximate to GSP (Government of Gujarat 2017; GIFT 2018). The larger Andhra Pradesh-Telangana region also has many SEZs and ICTs nearby KSP, including the futuristically branded Cyberabad (Zoomers 2010). Each of these industrial and financial centers receives electricity from the grid-connected solar parks.

2 Roughly 40% of Gujarat’s land mass is ‘either left barren or unculturable/culturable waste’ (ICAR 2010). Total estimated degraded lands in Patan district is 317,000 hectares (ICAR 2010).

3 Roughly 549,000 hectares of Kurnool district considered to be ‘degraded and wastelands,’ mostly due to mining activities (ICAR 2010).

4 The category of ‘assigned land’ (D-form patta land) and the resulting process of land distribution to the landless poor emerged with the Andhra Pradesh Assigned Lands (Prohibition of Transfers) Act, 1977. Unlike private land, assigned lands are inheritable and alienable but not transferrable.

5 See Levien (2011a) for a generative critique of this bill.

6 The authors have used the following conversion rate between US dollar and rupees: USD $1 = Rs. 70.

Additional information

Funding

This work was generously supported by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship under [grant number P022A170064].

Notes on contributors

Ryan Stock

Ryan Stock is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Geographical Sciences at Northern Michigan University. He is a political ecologist whose work examines development interventions, social power and intersectional social difference, and the political economy of environmental change.

Trevor Birkenholtz

Trevor Birkenholtz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Pennsylvania State University. He is a political ecologist and critical development scholar who specializes in understanding agrarian change in South Asia.