Disassembling Coal: Finance Capital, Environmental Law, and the Right to Information in South India

• In Event: Turning (More) Things into Assets: Techno-economic TRANSformations

Abstract

This article calls for an analysis of how coal is assembled and disassembled as an object of global financial investment. Since the liberalization of India’s energy sector began in the 1990s, the government has developed a range of technologies to make coal an attractive asset for investors. The pharaonic Ultra Mega Power Plant Project (UMPP) program is one such technology which assembles finance capital, land and environmental clearances by creating opaque structures called Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs). Coastal fishing villages in south India are challenging the UMPP program through environmental litigation and Right to Information (RTI) activism that has far reaching consequences in global financial markets. Based upon fieldwork with a collective of fishers, lawyers, and activists, I argue that disassembling coal requires not only challenging the land and environmental clearances of coal infrastructures, but also disrupting the assemblage of elements that constitute coal as frontier of global finance capital.

Author

• Mukul Kumar