The “Politics of Ant-Mining Movements” and Mainstream Politics

Anti-mining movements are gaining momentum in mineral-rich regions of India, often led by local and tribal communities who resist the negative environmental and social impacts of mining. While governments promote mining as a crucial economic development tool, many mining areas remain underdeveloped compared to non-mining regions. Local resistance to mining is often framed within broader environmental and social justice struggles, particularly in the Global South. Many of these movements, termed the “environmentalism of the poor,” emerge as marginalized communities fight to protect their resources, livelihoods, and rights. The ideological foundation of these movements centers around opposition to capitalist exploitation, focusing on “accumulation by dispossession”—the privatization and destruction of local resources for profit. Such movements articulate alternative development models and often highlight the failure of industrial projects to improve the quality of life for local communities. The chapter offers a detailed discussion on anti-POSCO and later anti-JSW projects in Odisha, and it offers theoretical debate on the anti-capital local movement and cartel politics in the global south and its ideological challenges.