Felix Padel’s research while affiliated with University of Sussex and other places

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Publications (22)


FAULTLINES IN PARADISE:: INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AND CONSERVATION AREAS
  • Chapter

November 2024

Malvika Gupta

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Felix Padel

And red flows the Koina river: Adivasi resistance to the ‘loot’ of their land and resources in eastern India, 1980–2020
  • Article
  • Full-text available

October 2022

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136 Reads

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2 Citations

Modern Asian Studies

This article documents Adivasi resistance to the ‘loot’ of their land and resources since 1980, especially during the Kalinganagar movement in Odisha, roughly between 2004 and 2010, and the Pathalgadi movement in Jharkhand, between 2016 and 2018. Using the lens of trauma and testimony, the article represents a combined effort by Gladson Dungdung, an Adivasi activist, journalist, and writer who has borne witness to events during these years; Felix Padel, an anthropologist; and Vinita Damodaran, a historian. The land grabs are mainly oriented towards mining and metals production, justified in terms of ‘development’, which leaves many dead and destroys landscapes that Adivasis have cared about for countless generations.

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Out of This Earth

April 2020

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570 Reads

Out of this Earth is a detailed account of bottom-up view of the aluminium industry. Focusing on the Khondalite mountains in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, which are capped by some of the world's best bauxite deposits, the authors trace the roots of this industry, which promises prosperity to the most marginalised sections of the world’s poorest countries, yet ends up causing untold damage. Moving beyond Odisha, this book provides a macro-view of the aluminium industry, the complex web of interests the white metal sustains, and its disastrous effects in many nations, including Brazil, Australia, Guyana, Jamaica, Guinea, Ghana and Iceland, as well as a bottom-up view of how affected communities in east India and elsewhere are rising up and resisting their displacement.




Indigenous Knowledge and Value Systems in India: Holistic Analysis of Tribal Education and the Challenge of Decentralising Control

June 2019

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227 Reads

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5 Citations

Since Independence, a need was expressed in Nehru’s Panchsheel principles, and in every major policy document since, to allow tribal communities to develop according to their own genius, and in the field of education, to allow a synthesis between formal education that imparts literacy, etc. and indigenous models that formalised ways of transmitting knowledge and value systems to succeeding generations long before the first schools appeared. Yet, the tendency has increased to promote boarding schools that separate Adivasi children from their homes, removing them from the influence of their own cultures and languages. If Ashram boarding schools are the dominant model, and village day schools are declining, the continuum extends from small-scale, culturally sensitive ‘alternative’ schools to the influential KISS model, whose main school in Bhubaneswar offers education ‘from KG to PG’ to 27,000 tribal children. By contrast, the model of communitised education adopted by the Nagaland Government allows communities to exercise control over teachers’ salaries, and many educationalists advocate a system of decentralised education that would allow communities a much bigger say in curriculum too. Under this backdrop, the paper presents a holistic analysis of the situation and shows that what is at stake is the survival or annihilation of knowledge and value systems entrenched in lifestyles that are sustainable in the long term.





Investment-Induced Displacement and the Ecological Basis of India’s Economy

March 2016

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65 Reads

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2 Citations

India’s economic policies need to be reviewed holistically in relation to their impacts on ecosystems and communities and to ensure long-term sustainability. The term ‘Development-Induced Displacement’ adds insult to injury in a context where a majority of those displaced by industrial projects do not experience these as development at all, but experience a drastic drop in their living standards. What is indisputable is that this process is ‘Investment-Induced Displacement’, since financial funding is the driving force that makes projects happen; and Adivasis themselves often say ‘We are being swept away by money’.


Citations (12)


... The meetings were held at the centers of capital, far removed from the spaces of livelihood of the Dongria Kondh and were heavily influenced by threats of violence as well as promises of rewards, with the strong presence of police and company officials. Community members did not have access to the environmental impact assessments that were being conducted and were not aware of opportunities to provide input into the impact studies (Amnesty International, 2010; Das & Padel, 2010). ...

Reference:

Public relations, indigeneity and colonization: Indigenous resistance as dialogic anchor
Battles over Bauxite in East India: The Khondalite Mountains of Khondistan
  • Citing Chapter
  • September 2013

... Many studies highlight that trust is a prerequisite for strengthening the relationship between the people and the Government (Parasuraman, 1996;Engle, 2010;Padel and Das, 2012). The Government's awareness of people's attitudes toward its functions helps the Government better connect with people. ...

Resettlement Realities: the gulf between policy and practice
  • Citing Chapter
  • March 2012

... While Dungdung et al. (2022) claim that the movement began in the year 2016 in the Chamri village of Khunti district, local media and other scholars (Singh 2019;Tete 2018) maintained that it originated on 9th March 2017 from Bhandra village, a Mundari Khuntkatti village in the Khunti district. Under threat of displacement and dispossession for decades, Adivasis apprehended the appropriation of their land for these schemes. ...

And red flows the Koina river: Adivasi resistance to the ‘loot’ of their land and resources in eastern India, 1980–2020

Modern Asian Studies

... (Kondh Adivasi male, EA leader, research notes, 2009) Regardless of such historical territorial claims, ADNTFD have continued to experience multiple evictions and continued eviscerations since the post-independence state still treats them as "encroachers" in the way of development. Given the structural impositions of a contemporary neoliberal colonial capitalist process of accumulation, ADNTFD land/forest action has since oscillated between subversions of colonial capital as in the case of antimining movements (Kapoor, 2017;Padel & Das, 2010;Sahu & Dash, 2011) and strategic (partial) incorporations of state-defined land classification schemes. The latter is contrary to some ADNTFD sacral and communal ontologies, since it construes land/forest as property/commodity through individuating land claims. ...

Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel
  • Citing Book
  • February 2020

... Moreover, since their native language is different from the medium of instruction in schools, they face severe problems in expressing themselves and learning, in general (Devy, 2017). Consequently, mainstream schooling leads to the alienation of children from their language and culture (Gupta & Padel, 2019). Thus, a wide gap exists between the school-world and the life-worlds of Adivasi students that needs to be bridged to make learning relevant and meaningful for students. ...

Indigenous Knowledge and Value Systems in India: Holistic Analysis of Tribal Education and the Challenge of Decentralising Control
  • Citing Chapter
  • June 2019

... The 2-year-long resistance-cum-negotiation process resulted in a compensation package which included regular employment to people from the affected villages, adequate financial compensation for land and the loss of crops, availability of running water 24 h in each household, the health and education facilities, and post-mining return of the land in its earlier condition to the raiyats (tenants). The last component-post-mining land reclamation policy-was the most crucial, for it allayed the fear of displacement which was a traumatic reality in the nearby coal bearing region and considered to be the primary factor sparking protests against investment-driven development projects in several parts of the country Damodaran and Padel 2018). The compensation package can be said to have incorporated some elements of the community's notion of development articulated in terms of security in livelihood, food and water security, and, above all, security of life (Damodaran and Padel 2018). ...

Investment-Induced Displacement in Central India
  • Citing Article
  • January 2018

Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East

... Development in India has come at a cost to certain communities and regions. From its earliest post-independence economic era in the 1950s, state led large industrialisation projects such as mining and dams have displaced mostly rural, adivasi and peasant populations, many with generational associations to their lands (for example see Padel 2016). Even though civil society movements have questioned the lack of distributive justice in the decades following Indian's sovereignty, industrial development has largely been accepted as serving the greater common good 6 . ...

Investment-Induced Displacement and the Ecological Basis of India’s Economy
  • Citing Chapter
  • March 2016

... However, the experience of the nearby Nalco mine and refinery fostered strong resistance that evolved into possibly the longest running protest movement against any form of industrial development in the state of Odisha, which culminated in the police shooting of three protesters in 2000. These and other human rights violations have been extensively documented but are still largely unresolved (PUDP 2005;Reddy 2006;Goodland 2007;Padel and Das 2007). While the ongoing protests caused the withdrawal of international investors Hydro (from Norway) and Alcan (from Canada), and even the Indian Tata Group, the project has continued, and is now wholly owned by Hindalco (part of the Birla Group), which is proposing to expand the operation. ...

Agya, what do you mean by development

... Therefore, there is a huge outcry against this idea of development, which victimises Adivasis more than benefitting them. In the study on Dongaria Kondhs of Niyamgiri hills in Odisha, Padel and Das (2010) have classified the mining of the Adivasi landscape as 'cultural genocide'. In this case, Adivasis won their right to existence claiming their natural right over their sacred and cultural landscape that was in tandem with nature. ...

Out of this Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel

... As such, the added value of certified organic coffee as a commodity pales in comparison to the value of land rights and enduring tenure for current and future generations made possible through organic farming as a relationship. Adivasi farmers have struggled to maintain control of their land across India (Padel 2012), but organic coffee is one way to claim land rights legible to banks and the state. Certification offers a means to maintain control over land that might otherwise be sold through corrupt channels between government officials and extractive companies. ...

How Best to Ensure Adivasis' Land, Forest and Mineral Rights?
  • Citing Article
  • July 2012

IDS Bulletin