From Bottled Profits to Barren Wells: Plachimada as Neoliberal Accumulation by Dispossession

Abstract

The agitation of the Adivasi’s in Plachimada, in the Palakkad district of Kerala, India, against the massive extraction of groundwater by the Coca-Cola bottling unit is known as the Plachimada struggle. It brought to the public notice the livelihood challenges faced by the marginalised resident Adivasi’s, who faced scarcity, pollution, and water depletion after the operation of the plant within a short period. Devoid of cultural capital, the Adivasis are heavily dependent on the natural resources for sustenance. This paper aims to locate Plachimada as a site of the Neoliberal development model with accumulation by dispossession as a strategy. The destruction of ecology by the operation of the plant and its reflections on the lives of the communities dependent on common property resources are analysed using the ethnographic data collected between 2018 and 19 from Plachimada. The dispossession of the Adivasi’s and the subsequent struggle in Plachimada has brought out a critique of development called Plachimada critique of development. This paper will attempt to explain the features of this model development vis a vis the Adivasi life to elaborate on how the Adivasi critique of Plachimada, emanated from their life experiences, would question the essential principles of the Neoliberal idea of development advanced by the state in Neoliberal times.