‘Our wetland is our mother, you cannot take her away from us’: Reconstructing the political space of reclaiming a coastal wetland in Sompeta, Andhra Pradesh, India

ABSTRACT

The article is a case study of state-mediated wetland grabbing and dispossession and the people’s struggle to reclaim a coastal wetland at Sompeta in India. It examines the nature and mechanisms of dispossession as well as the resistance to wetland grabbing. The study shows that the apparatuses used by the state to capture the wetland, unleash a coercive process of land dispossession from above. It also uncovers a composite dispossessory politics, which is a convergence of the physical loss of wetland used as commons, loss of livelihoods and exclusion based on socio-cultural identities of gender, caste and class. Resistance from below counteracted both the coercive process and the dimensions of dispossession. We find that wetland commons is a geography of social embeddedness and ecological sustainability which has to be protected from commercial exploitation. Moreover, wetland conversion implies water scarcity and loss of social safety net for the disadvantaged communities dependent on the wetland. As long as the state continues to neglect this social reality, the rural communities will resist. To break the impasse, it is imperative to have ‘a dialogue’ among resource users with competing claims encompassing equity and sustainability.

KEYWORDS:

• Wetland grabbing
• coercive process from above
• composite dispossessory politics
• resistance from below
• ecological sustainability

Acknowledgements

We reserve our gratitude to the villagers of Sompeta for sharing their experiences and making this study happen. We thank Dr.Pranesh Bhargava for helping us edit the document and appreciate the anonymous reviewers and the editor of Environmental Sociology for their critical and constructive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

K. Lakshmi Jahnavi

K. Lakshmi Jahnavi, the corresponding author, is PhD fellow in Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) - Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, India. She completed her Masters and M.Phil. from the University of Hyderabad, India. Her M.Phil Dissertation deals with political ecology of an informal seed supply system in Telangana. Areas of research interest are Rural Agrarian Studies, Sociology of Development, Sociology of Environment and Sustainable Development.

Suchismita Satpathy

Dr. Suchismita Satpathy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) - Pilani, Hyderabad Campus. She is presently working on two projects – Water issues in two tier cities funded by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and Commercialization of breast milk funded by Awareness in Action, India. Her areas of interest are land conflicts, Political economy of urban space, Smart cities, Street vending and Urban architecture. She takes courses on Globalization Studies, Urban Policy and Governance, Development Studies and Social Change.