Seminar: "The New Colonisers of the Commons: The Rise of the Contract Raj and Shooting From The Shoulders of the Poor", by Aruna Chandrasekhar

Seminar: "The New Colonisers of the Commons: The Rise of the Contract Raj and Shooting From The Shoulders of the Poor"

Speaker: Aruna Chandrasekhar, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford 

Date: Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Time: 11h

Venue: Z-032

The topic I'd like to speak on is the changing nature of colonisation of natural resources in India and abroad by Indians, specifically around energy. The talk will look at how this has shifted in the last half-decade from private companies seeking captive resources, to their rise as crony contractors, where state-owned enterprises are pushed, weakened and undermined by them, passing on the costs of corruption to the state and citizens. This state capture benefits from the persistent and systemic colonialism of denying marginalised groups development and rights. The deregulation of policies around land, power and environment benefits from their entrenched poverty, uses it to justify 'ease of doing business' reforms, international energy deals and its inaction on climate change. How will this shape up in a decade when the threat to the commons are being increasingly felt?



Biography

Aruna Chandrasekhar is an independent journalist and researcher from Bangalore, India. She tries to tell difficult stories differently and as a means to answer collective questions around development, energy and the future of frontline communities at risk in a fast-warming world. These questions have lead her on a journey from Central India's coalfields to the Conference of Parties on climate change and now to Environmental Change Institute @ Oxford.



Since 2011, she's tried to shine light on underreported land and environmental conflicts in India. She worked with a nation-wide alliance of mining-affected communities and then joined Amnesty International India as a senior researcher on business and human rights, with a focus on indigenous land grab by state-owned coal companies. As an independent journalist, Aruna looks at private coal and power companies, fossil fuel subsidies and corruption, climate negotiations and finance, people impacted by state and extremist violence, extreme weather events and air pollution. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, The Hindu, The Caravan, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Scroll.in and The Wire, and recognised by the Mumbai Press Club, the Shriram Financial Journalism Awards and anti-bribery non-profit TRACE International.