Extractivism and the Adivasi Predicament: Reading Ranendra's Lords of the Global Village

In postcolonial India, the displacement and marginalization of Adivasis and tribals are familiar, occurring under the disguise of National Progress, modern ‘Development’, and its equivalent, such as mining and resource extraction. In a developing country like India, most settled territories of the Adivasis of mineral-rich states are considered sites of unabated resource extraction and production, which must be exploited and commodified for imperial profit and capitalist progress. Focusing on a regional novel like Ranendra’s Lords of the Global Village, this article examines the predicament of the Asur tribe in the Indian state of Jharkhand as they struggle to survive amidst constant bauxite mining and environmental and developmental racism. This article also examines the resistance movement of the Asurs against such illegal mining in the form of ‘Environmentalism of the Poor’. It concludes that the Adivasi and mainstream civilizations always run parallel with no meeting point.