Resisting or negotiating wind energy dispossession: class and caste in changing rural Kutch

Abstract

This article analyses the political reactions of Kutch district villagers, in Western India, facing wind turbine projects as a complex political terrain of resistance shaped by the materiality of dispossession and local configurations of agrarian power. I argue that the terrain of resistance got diluted and dispersed towards individual actions aimed at negotiating dispossession through caste capital, while other power and caste scenarios have rendered collective resistance movements possible, up to a certain point. Deploying a class-caste analysis of land conflicts in rural India, this reveals continuity not only with traditional agrarian struggles but also with caste politics and excluding forms of mobilisation.