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ENCIRCLING THE SUN: A POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF SOLAR DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA BY RYAN STOCK DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography with a minor in Gender Relations in International Development in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2019 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Trevor Birkenholtz, Chair Emeritus Professor Thomas Bassett Associate Professor Susan Koshy Professor Jesse Ribot, American University ABSTRACT Renewable energy transitions are accelerating in the Global South, nowhere more quickly than in semi-arid rural India. Expanding energy production in India is seen as necessary to raise the 363 million poor out of poverty. India is swiftly transitioning to low-carbon electricity generation through solar park development. Indeed, solar parks comprise the lion’s share of India’s Nationally Determined Contributions to the 2015 UN Paris Climate Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Despite exceeding emissions reduction targets, many social development claims remain unrealized on the ground. Using two solar parks as case studies (Gujarat Solar Park and Kurnool Solar Park), this dissertation asks the following 4 research questions: 1) How are solar development and project-associated land enclosures discursively rationalized by the state?; 2) How and through what processes are the costs and benefits of the Gujarat Solar Park and Kurnool Solar Park distributed across differently situated individuals?; 3) How are project-associated land enclosures resisted by adjacent resource-dependent people? 4) Does the Gujarat Solar Park influence already gendered social-economic-political asymmetries? To answer these questions, this dissertation draws on and seeks to advance scholarship from feminist political ecology and critical development studies focused on gendered agrarian change, land enclosures and renewable energy development. I conducted fieldwork in India in 2018 using mixed methods and field-based research., including critical discourse analysis, household surveys, semi-structured interviews and participant observation. This dissertation argues that solar parks are rationalized via discursive formations of the climate crisis, economic development and ecological modernization. These discursive formations rationalize greener capital accumulation in neoliberal India that don’t address asymmetric power ii relations, despite discourses otherwise (research question 1). This study identifies regimes of dispossession via an ascendant resource/state looking to capitalize on ‘wasteland’ geographies. The modalities by which solar development transpires dispossesses smallholder peasants of land and livelihoods, creating a surplus population without employment opportunities (research question 2). Resistance against solar park development ‘from below’ takes diverse forms, including protests, blockades, lawsuits, slander and even suicide. Resistance among affected populations is often contingent on social positionality (research question 3). Land enclosures have also dispossessed resource-dependent women of access to firewood, producing new patterns of gendered social differentiation. Intersectional subject-positions are (re)produced vis-à-vis the exclusion of access to firewood in the land enclosed for the solar park, lack of employment at the solar park, and exclusionary Corporate Social Responsibility activities. Lower-caste and lower- class women from adjacent villages affectively express their resistance in emotional geographies (research question 4). India has become a global power broker for solar development. Through its new leadership in the International Solar Alliance, India will seek to latitudinally export its large-scale dispossessive model of solar development throughout the Global South. Ergo, India’s solar state has become a major geopolitical force that is reshaping relations of production in agrarian systems globally. The vast dispossession experienced by smallholding peasants in these case studies has implications throughout the Global South and reestablishes the importance of answering the classical agrarian question in the neoliberal Anthropocene. Indisputably, a breakneck transition to renewable energy generation in India is necessary to stave off additional emissions driving a changing climate system that delivers unforetold present and future natural and political hazards in this underdeveloped nation. However, low-carbon electricity generation doesn’t positively iii “transform the lives” of adjacent residents, a raison d'être for solar park development. While the Government of India develops more solar parks to profitably mitigate climate change and generate much-needed renewable energy, marginalized populations shouldn’t be left in the dark. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I am indebted to Shilpa, Shyan and Lakshay for tolerating the interminable time horizons, late nights, stressful deadlines, mood swings and financial uncertainty that accompanies graduate school. The two hardest things I’ve ever done in my life I’m doing concurrently: parenting and PhD. Your daily sacrifices and constant encouragement allowed me to thrive as a student and evolve into a professor. I love you with all my heart. To Trevor Birkenholtz, you are more than an advisor. You are my compass. I am deeply grateful for your mentorship and compassion. I am inspired by your critical and applied scholarship. Thanks for the gracious and sustained gift of time devoted towards my academic success. I strive to emulate your work-life balance! Tom Bassett, I am grateful for your support and reviewing countless drafts of countless manuscripts, proposals and applications. Additionally, thanks for your lifetime of scholarship and critical presence within political ecology. I am lucky to have benefitted from your insights and experience. Jesse Ribot, I am indebted to your intellectual contribution to my academic growth. No matter where you are geographically, I can always count on the presence of your support. I will miss our great conversations over food. Susan Koshy, thank you for your guidance, warmth and patience. My immense gratitude goes to the following funding agencies who believed in this project: US Department of Education (Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship, P022A170064); UIUC’s Women and Gender in Global Perspectives program (Due and Ferber International Award, Barbara Yates International Award). Writing this dissertation was made possible by the gracious support of the following institutions: Department of Geography and GIS (Marion G. Russell Fellowship); UIUC’s Survey Research Lab (Robert Ferber Dissertation Award). Thanks to the unknown individuals on selection committees who reviewed my proposals v and provided helpful comments. Fieldwork in India was conducted with administrative support from the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad’s (IIM-A) Public Systems Group. Amit Garg, thanks for facilitating my research at IIM-A and providing me professional connections that enriched my research experiences in India. Thanks also to Mahendrasinh Chauhan, Shrutika Parmar and Jaypalsinh Chauhan. I am grateful to the United States-India Educational Foundation for ensuring that my fieldwork in India went smoothly. Enormous gratitude to the McGuire and Jhobalia families for supporting my family through graduate school and fieldwork. I cherish the many months spent with Pradipsinh Dolatsinh Parmar, Vasae Mohammed Munawar and Lakshmi Reddy Yeruva and am so thankful for their companionship, knowledge and assistance during fieldwork. Thanks to T. Anji Reddy for renting us that great apartment in Kalwa! To all my informants and friends from study villages and solar institutions, your perspectives and knowledge built this dissertation. धन्यवाद. To all my friends and colleagues in India who haven’t been previously mentioned, I’m returning soon to visit. Thanks to Colleen Murphy and Anita Kaiser in the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives program for your wonderful programming and support these past few years. Additionally, thanks to The Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory for providing me a community of kindred spirits and excellent events to attend each semester. Thanks to Colleen Vojak and Ken Vickery at the Office of External Fellowships for reviewing drafts of grants that eventually funded my fieldwork. Thanks to UIUC’s Graduate Employees Organization for fighting to ensure equitable working conditions and adequate benefits for graduate students campus-wide. Thanks to Matt Cohn and Miranda Czerwonka for witty banter and for every tedious administrative task that accompanied my graduate tenure. Thanks to Lucas Anderson and CITL for inspiring me to become a better educator and embodying what that looks like. Immense gratitude to Karan vi Misquitta, Shilpa Jhobalia, Denise Fernandes and participants of UW-Madison’s Nature Society Workshop 2018 for reviewing early drafts of Chapter 5. Thanks to Karen O’Brien for her thoughtful comments on an extremely rudimentary outline of Chapter 4 in 2016. To the innocent creatures who will slowly consume an analogue version of this dissertation, whose fate may rest on the ability of a solar moon-shot to reverse the course of a warming planet, may these pages be a formidable feast! vii To Shilpa, Shyan and Lakshay viii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................1