ABSTRACT
Th e issue of ideology is relevant here in the context of development ethnography (Watts 2001) and neo-classical economics that signify the homogenizing and modernizing agenda of capitalism. At the cost of repetition, it behoves us to mention that the (neo-) liberalist polity, which the advent of capitalism has fostered and enjoined in its service, has brought about a profound change in the traditional pre-industrial social values regarding life and nature. Th e advent of modernity dissociated humans from the rest of nature. Civilization meant forging economic use values extracted from a pristine, inert, ‘virgin’ nature, only to be subjugated, investigated, reined and reigned by the humankind, especially humans in power. Ravaging nature for harvesting raw materials for industry is necessary to enable the march of progress from the state of wilderness to that of civilization. Th e capitalist mantra of profi t has turned every component of the non-human world into ‘raw material’ for fuelling economic growth. It has depicted effi ciency
of economy in terms of faster and more intensive extraction of the resource rather than its conservation for future generations. Accordingly, it propels an unsustainable economic growth in terms of short-term yield rather than long-term productivity.
