Resisting ‘extractive capital’: a comparative study of two adivasi anti-mining movements in postcolonial (and neoliberal) India

Globalizations. 2026. Vol. 23. No. 1. P. 27–44.

Agostini J., Roy Chowdhury A., Gupta P.

This study compares adivasi movements against two mining projects commissioned in India by Vedanta Resources, a London-based Indian mining corporation. One is the resistance of the Dongria Kondh to the bauxite mining and aluminum processing projects at Niyamgiri. The movement succeeded when the Supreme Court of India scrapped the project in 2013. The other is the movement of the Binjhal against a gold mining project at Sonakhan. The project was to be started in 2015, but intense opposition led the chief minister to promise to stop it. We argue that both the movements, which had only 'cultural resources' available, established solidarity by mobilizing history, memory, and folk imaginaries. The participation of external civil society organizations led to a resounding success across scales in the case of Niyamgiri. But the local contextualization of culture and limited networks constrained the success of the Sonakhan movement to the local scale. The ultimate successful outcome for both, however, depends on the available 'political opportunities' across times and scales.

Keywords: collective memory, social movements, cultural history, political opportunity, Extractive Industries, Extractive capital, extractivism

Publication based on the results of: The diversity of forms, effects and barriers to integration of modern Russian society in synchronic and diachronic dimensions (2025)