"The companies are powerful, people are weak": India's solar energy ambitions and the legitimation of dispossession in Rajasthan

Abstract

Ecological degradation and climate change have led to widespread calls for altering sociotechnical practices. A sector in which this is particularly visible is energy; more specifically, in efforts to displace conventional sources of energy (e.g., thermal) in favor of lower-carbon alternatives (e.g., solar power). Despite the liberatory potentials of lower-carbon energy sources, a growing body of political ecology scholarship suggests that energy "transitions" perpetuate fossil fuel dynamics of extractivism, land dispossession, and commodification processes. More specifically, incumbent actors and ideas prevent otherwise socially, economically, and technically just alternatives from materializing through legitimating socioecologically unjust practices. Amidst these developments, India eyes global leadership on solar energy; with Rajasthan, in its western desert reaches, hosting the largest installed capacity in the nation and largest solar plant in the world, Bhadla. Drawing from qualitative field research including site visits, over 70 semi-structured and informal interviews, and discourse analysis of solar policy documents, we interrogate how the deployment of solar "parks" are legitimated by state-level political and technocratic powers, despite their socioecological implications for local residents, especially agropastoralists, and endangered other-than-humans. Grounding our work in political ecology and reflecting on the politics behind energy policies, we counter depoliticizing narratives of solar development, concluding that solar "parks", though presented as apolitical, are rooted in a political paradigm which combines ecological modernization and the ongoing neoliberalization of the Indian political economy.

Keywords

• solar energy
• political ecology
• renewable energy
• energy transitions
• postdevelopment
• India