Abstract

Rio Tinto had been developing a diamond mining project in Madhya Pradesh for a decade when in 2017 it hastily abandoned the project. We analyse this counterintuitive exit through an ethnographic approach nested within a qualitative case study framework. We argue that the exit was caused by multi-scalar politics. Local protests over livelihood and labour issues –pre-emptively rearticulated by regional civil society groups through an ecological ‘framing’ – led to litigation. The national forest bureaucracy posed regulatory hurdles, and a change in the national political regime in 2014 brought to power a party that leveraged national capital of a certain variety, which weakened Rio Tinto’s political position. Lastly, a slump in the global diamond market created economic uncertainties, finally leading to its exit. It has not, however, deterred the government from facilitating investment by Indian mega-corporate houses in mining diamonds, once again ignoring local dissent. Under the current regime in India, the space for activism is increasingly restricted, and that restriction, we contend, can lead to the disarray in strategising alliances and goals between ecological and social justice concerns.

摘要

力拓在中央邦开发钻石开采项目已有十年时间，但在 2017 年仓促放弃了该项目。我们通过嵌套在定性案例研究框架内的民族志方法来分析这种违反直觉的退出。我们认为退出是由多尺度政治造成的。关于生计和劳工问题的地方抗议——由区域民间社会团体通过生态“框架”预先重新表达——导致了诉讼。国家林业官僚机构构成了监管障碍，2014 年国家政权更迭使得一个利用某种国家资本的政党上台，削弱了力拓的政治地位。最后，全球钻石市场的低迷造成经济不确定性，最终导致其退出。然而，它并没有，阻止政府为印度大型企业投资钻石开采提供便利，再次无视当地的异议。在印度目前的政权下，激进主义的空间越来越受到限制，我们认为，这种限制可能导致生态和社会正义问题之间的联盟和目标战略混乱。