Darly and Her Battle with the Sand-Mining Mafia: Tracing a Feminist Geopolitics of Fear in the Production of Nature

Abstract

This paper draws on the testimonials and writings of Darly and other environmental activists based in the South Indian state of Kerala to illuminate the workings of the sand mining industry in contemporary India. Darly is a 65-year-old woman from Olathani, a village located along the Neyyar River in Southern Kerala, who has voiced her opposition to the operations of the sand mining industry for several years. Due to her actions, she endured several years of physical and psychological abuse from local authorities and individuals affiliated with the industry, which had taken a serious toll on her mental and physical health. I draw upon Darly's testimonial and writings on the effects of sand mining in the Neyyar, along with the work of Anitha Sharma, an environmentalist based in Kerala, to argue for the need to understand uneven development, and the production of nature, as conceptualized by Neil Smith (2010) in the context of contemporary India through lived, embodied articulations and experiences of fear wrought by this process. Darly's own work I argue, illuminates the ways in which the production of nature as an abstract concept is actually experienced, lived and struggled with through an everyday emotional geopolitics of fear; an emotional geopolitics that is not only reflective of the crucial affective dimensions of the production of nature facilitated by capitalist accumulation, but also reflective of struggles and practices that claim ecological citizenship. Here I draw on Tolia-Kelly's (2008) concept of ecological citizenship to contextualize from Darly's practices and lived experiences of trying to fight and stand in opposition entities involved in the sand-mining business in Olathani.