‘Our wetland is our mother, you cannot take her away from us’: Reconstructing the political space of reclaiming a coastal wetland in Sompeta, Andhra Pradesh, India

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article is a case study of state-mediated wetland grabbing and dispossession and the people’s struggle to reclaim a coastal wetland at Sompeta in India. It examines the nature and mechanisms of dispossession as well as the resistance to wetland grabbing. The study shows that the apparatuses used by the state to capture the wetland, unleash a coercive process of land dispossession from above. It also uncovers a composite dispossessory politics, which is a convergence of the physical loss of wetland used as commons, loss of livelihoods and exclusion based on socio-cultural identities of gender, caste and class. Resistance from below counteracted both the coercive process and the dimensions of dispossession. We find that wetland commons is a geography of social embeddedness and ecological sustainability which has to be protected from commercial exploitation. Moreover, wetland conversion implies water scarcity and loss of social safety net for the disadvantaged communities dependent on the wetland. As long as the state continues to neglect this social reality, the rural communities will resist. To break the impasse, it is imperative to have ‘a dialogue’ among resource users with competing claims encompassing equity and sustainability.