Resources and the Politics of Sovereignty: The Moral and Immoral Economies of Coal Mining in India

Abstract

This paper analyses the socio-legal and political spaces within which coal is mined in India and asks if it is possible to raise the ‘moral question’ when the state attributes an iconic status to coal. The empirical evidence comes from two indigenous-dominated states that practise community coal mining. If the coal mining communities in Jharkhand exert a moral claim by mining illegally, those in Meghalaya exert a political claim by invoking the special status the state enjoys under the Indian Constitution. This paper examines this grey zone of non-legality in order to understand resource conflicts and dispossession beyond the straightforward distinctions between legal and illegal.