Class dynamics and development in the mining region of Eastern India.

This paper examines how intra- and inter-class relations mold the development process. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the bauxite-rich, plateau of Gumla district in Jharkhand, a state in the eastern part of India, this paper uses an historical approach to trace the evolution of the relationship between a mining company and the local adivasi (indigenous) communities over the last three decades. It portrays how development in this mining region is operationalized through the use of compensation. This makes financial resources available to landowners, and in turn provides private capital an access to natural resources. Compensation, thus, unifies the opposing interests of capital and labor in their strife to maximize their share in the wealth generated by bauxite mining. Against the associational power of labor, private capital forges multiple alliances with power elites including the state. These alliances coalesce multiple power structures into what we term the architecture of control (AOC). Three main functions of the AOC are identified: erosion of labor's collective bargaining power, suppression and delegitimization of anti-mining voices, and the replacement of primordial loyalties by the market rationality, which facilitate capital accumulation. This paper argues that the tension between capital accumulation and reproduction of household constantly reconfigures the development process which essentially increases dependency of the local population on the market. The paper warns that the benefit-sharing mechanism will justify and deepen the exploitation of labor in mining industries, unless the working class reinvents its politics to free development thinking from the concerns of capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]