Pembangunan: whose agenda?

After reading Farmer's account, I stayed silent for a long time; it pushed me into deep introspection. It reminded me of the displacement colony in Koraput. There are some unique tribal families living there in the colony. They were once very prosperous with acres of land and beautiful home in the ravine land irrigated by the Kolab river. Then came "Pembangunan". Orissa constructed the Upper Kolab hydroelectric project to electrify the capital towns and business hubs thousands of miles away and these families' houses, lands and villages were submerged by the Kolab dam reservoir. The villages are still visible when the water goes down, an eerie, beautiful sight. The families moved to a nearby place. They again dug up foundations and built their houses. "Pembangunan" came again in form of a huge factory which manufactured aircraft parts; the proud leaders declared that we have been blessed with the important project by the Indian government. It produced jobs, thousands and most of them needing skilled labour and a smattering of education, english, western education. The local tribals did not have that qualification, most qualified as daily laborers, at least they knew how to communicate with nature and so they worked to break earth, cut trees, make roads, buildings. The families had to make way for the factory and they were resettled in another hamlet. They again busied themselves in rebuilding their lives, some moved elsewhere, some went deeper into inaccessible jungles. The "resettled" families made good of their land and homes till the government decided to exploit the minerals in the mountain ranges. "Pembangunan" took over; the behemoth NALCO (National Aluminium Company) decided to exploit the Bauxite deposits in the mountains. Now there is a huge township, metalled roads, lights, electricity, english medium schools, modern markets, internet cafes and so on, all accoutrements of modernity. The tribal families have concrete roads, brick houses with fans, piped water, and stay in a huge colony called Nalco resettlement colony which they share with other resettled refugees from Bangladesh and migrants from neighbouring state Andhrapradesh. The colony is a hotbed of crime, disease, prostitution, gambling, liquor and so on. Certainly, "pembangunan" has done wonders. The area abounds with Acephies and Chouchous.

I still do not have the answer after reading all the excellent readings about culture, structure, marginalization, agency, privileging a medical approach, constitutive strategies, traditional medicines, embodiment etc..The current flavour is getting everyone on the table to agree on common approaches and framing strategies for the "poor", the "deprived"; and who is the "everyone"? All the dominant actors, the policy makers, implementers, (government, donor agencies, NGOs, UN organizations, learned academics, local intelligentsia, tribal leaders)....In today's society where do we effect the change? I do not think there is any meaning in articulating words like "center" and "periphery". These are for us, educated in critical theory and reading these excellent erudition. Quo Vadis...

I leave this unfinished as I am lost..lost in my search for answers however contested...

The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe

The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe An Indian in Aotearoa reflects on resistance, complicity, and the solidarities we have yet to build Mohan Jyoti Dutta I watched the haka. I watched it several times, in fact. Each time, I tried to sit with what I was feeling before reaching for what I was supposed to think. Let me be honest about who I am in this conversation, because that matters. I am an upper caste, upwardly mobile Indian man. I am a professor at a university in Aotearoa. I carry the accumulated privileges of Brahminical socialisation, of English-medium education, of institutional access that was never designed for the communities I now write about and alongside. I say this not as confession but as orientation — because where you stand shapes what you see, and I have learned, through years of working with communities at the margins, that the refusal to name your own location is itself a colonial habit. The haka directed at Parmjeet Parmar did not offend me. It ...

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems with w...

The Substack and the Slur: How a Manufactured Crisis Toppled a Wahine Māori Political Editor

The Substack and the Slur: How a Manufactured Crisis Toppled a Wahine Māori Political Editor On the architecture of the Aotearoa culture-war machine, and the danger it poses to a democracy heading into 2026 There is a particular cadence to the afternoon on which the career of a senior Māori journalist at TVNZ is finished. It is unhurried. It begins with a tweet — in this case, a single image of a typed statement, posted by Maiki Sherman, the now-former political editor of TVNZ, on the afternoon of Friday, 8 May 2026, announcing that she had parted ways with the broadcaster. The post was terse, dignified, and final. As RNZ later reported , Sherman wrote that the scrutiny of the previous week had placed enormous pressure on her and rendered her role "untenable." The first wahine Māori to lead a major broadcaster's political team was gone. The story that finished her had not, ten days earlier, existed in any newspaper, on any wire, on any website you would consider mai...

The Margins Review · Culture-Centered Approach

Search This Blog