ABSTRACT
Given the widespread coal extraction to fuel rapid industrialisation to energise the country, displacement seems an inevitable part of India’s growth story. Literature suggests that perspective on development-induced displacement have been mainly done through a Risks and Reconstruction (IRR) model. While displacement due to coal mines have been extensively studied from the gender and environment perspective, however, the present chapter attempts to analyse the impact of the rapidly growing coal capitalism on the social lives of the displaced people of Talcher, Odisha. This chapter uses the Marxian framework of social reproduction of labour. The chapter highlights the process around which coal capitalism was founded and how it created conditions for the establishment of a market-based economy. Due to this, the young generations were socially reproduced to join the labour force of the capitalist system and thus become part of coal capitalism. It has been found that the livelihoods and social life of the displaced people have been altered in such a way that they are forced to depend on the capitalist industries by becoming both unit of production and its consumer. Although it is widely debated in academics that the impact of displacement is multidimensional, this chapter emphasizes the impact of displacement on the social coordinates, given the fact that displacement leaves a long-standing social cost as part of everyday survival for the displaced people. The study is based on the fieldwork carried out in four villages of Talcher. Both quantitative and qualitative data has been collected, and basic tools of statistics have been adopted for analysis, taking an approach of a case-control study. The chapter brings out the organic narratives of the displaced people and narrates the forceful intervention by the capitalistic forces by introducing market mechanisms, which changes the social structures of the displaced people in Talcher.
