The Political Construction of Extractive Regimes in Two Newly Created Indian States:A Comparative Analysis of Jharkand and Chattisgarh

This article presents a multidimensional account of the politics of resource extraction in two subnational regions of India in response to the question: what are the political conditions that facilitate extraction? Emerging from the same moment of state creation in 2000, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are adjacent mineral-rich states with similar demographic profiles and comparable levels of economic development. The article argues that despite these similarities and India’s highly centralised legislative framework for natural resource governance, the two states have developed distinctive ‘extractive regimes’ in the years since statehood, which have important contrasts across three dimensions; political organisation and history, institutional effectiveness and the nature and management of social resistance. It offers the first in-depth, comparative account of how subnational territorial reorganisation in India acts as a critical juncture enabling the formation of extractive regimes, which have also converged in important ways in recent years.