The eastern state of Jharkhand in India has been the site of contention between Adivasi communities, like the Munda, and the national government. This is a relationship between these communities and centralized, outside power that has existed for centuries in different forms. To understand this ongoing conflict, we need to understand the root causes of contention. Various scholars have traced this to a general rejection by Adivasis of State-sanctioned neoliberal development projects like land-grabbing and mining. I analyze, based on a fifteen month long ethnographic study conducted from May 2017 to December 2018, the meaning of land for the Munda community, and how these meanings underlie the Adivasi-State conflict, based on several forms of qualitative data. I argue that at the core of this ongoing conflict lie questions of identity construction and representation, neoliberal market forces, gender, and a historical narrative of resistance against outsiders. Importantly, to best understand Adivasi politics and their relationship to their local environment, one must actively listen to how these communities represent themselves. / Doctor of Philosophy / The eastern state of Jharkhand in India has been the site of an ongoing conflict between the Munda Adivasi (indigenous) community and the State. This contentious relationship has existed for several centuries and continues until now. Various scholars describe the conflict as the general rejection of the attempts of State and corporate actors to grab lands in order to carry out neoliberal development projects such as mining and hydroelectricity dams in the region. I analyze, based on a fifteen-month long ethnographic study conducted from May 2017 to December 2018, the meaning of land for the Munda community, and how these meanings underlie the Adivasi-State conflict. I argue that the current ongoing conflict underlie questions of identity construction and representation embedded in the historical narrative of resistance against outsiders. More specifically, one must understand the subaltern communities, such as the Munda Adivasi, through their discourses.

Starting from the overall Revitalizing Small Millets in South Asia (RESMISA) project objective and question, how to increase millet production and consumption, I will use the same to enter Chintaguda and understand how that can be accomplished in the village. As millets do not occupy a significant aspect of the lives of people in Chintaguda, I essentially sought to understand the general decision-making logics that operate therein. This objective will help me understand which factors and their interactions influence activities around socio-ecological engagements. I aim to devise a framework to comprehend these logics and the complexities found in Chintaguda by using social theories. These will help me stitch together a narrative for Chintaguda that will contextualize the people’s relationship to millets. This study will show the various ways people can and do relate to millets. / February 2016

Im Jahre 1954 verkündete Indiens erster Premierminister Jawaharlal Nehru, dass Staudämme die “Tempel des modernen Indiens” seien. Ausgehend von der These, dass dieser Aussage eine „developmental imagination“ zugrunde liegt, die bis heute ein auffälliges Merkmal vieler Diskurse zu Großprojekten in Indien ist, und dass die Medien eine wichtige Rolle darin spielen, diese Diskurse zu zeichnen, betrachtet die Dissertation die Frage, wie große Wasserinfrastrukturprojekte in der indischen Medienlandschaft dargestellt werden. Um diese Frage zu beantworten, wird in der Dissertation eine Medienanalyse durchgeführt, bei welcher die Berichterstattung zum Indischen River Linking Projekt (NRLP) und zu zwei Vorhaben, die im Rahmen des NRLP stattfinden (Ken-Betwa und Polavaram), im Fokus stehen. Das 168-Milliarden Dollar teure NRLP Projekt ist das weltweit größte sich im Bau befindliche Wasserprojekt und sieht den Bau vieler Staudämme und Verbindungskanäle vor. Kontrovers debattiert wird das NRLP insbesondere in Bezug auf die hohen ökologischen und sozialen Kosten: Nach einer historischen Einbettung des Themas wird die Medienanalyse anhand einer Auswahl an Zeitungs- und Zeitschriftenartikeln aus dem Zeitraum 2000 bis 2016 durchgeführt. Darüber hinaus beinhaltet die Arbeit ein Kapitel, welches sich auf Feldforschung im Polavaram Staudammgebiet bezieht, um Perspektiven, die ansonsten in Mediendiskursen häufig marginalisiert werden, aufzuzeigen; die der von Umsiedelung betroffenen Communities. Die Dissertation zeigt das Kontinuum der „developmental imaginations“ in Indiens Diskursen zu großen Infrastrukturprojekten auf, weist auf die Machthierarchien hin, die ausschlaggebend dafür sind, wem die Möglichkeit zukommt sich überhaupt an Diskursen zu beteiligen, und hebt politische Narrative hervor, die in dem Kontext eine starke Verbindung zu „Nationbuilding“ oder „Statebuilding“ Diskursen aufweisen. / In 1954 India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru proclaimed dams to be the “temples of modern India”. Based on the theses that this “developmental imagination” so visible in Nehru’s statement continues to be a prominent feature in discourses on large scale infrastructure projects in India until today, and that the media plays an important role in shaping these public discourses, the dissertation considers the question of how large scale water infrastructure schemes are covered within the Indian media landscape. To answer that question, a media analysis is conducted which focuses on the reporting on the Indian National River Linking Project (NRLP) and on two schemes being implemented under the NRLP: The Ken-Betwa and the Polavaram Dam Projects. The 168-billion-dollar NRLP project is the world’s largest water project in the making and includes the construction of several dams. It is designed to connect the majority of Indian rivers to a gigantic water grid. It is controversially debated, especially with regard of ecological and social costs. After a historical embedding of the topic, the media analysis is conducted through a choice of magazines and newspapers in a time period from 2000 until 2016. Furthermore, the dissertation incorporates a chapter based on field work in the Polavaram Dam area in order to shed light on perspectives often marginalised in the media discourses: those of the affected communities. The dissertation reveals the continuum of developmental imaginations in the discourses on India’s large scale infrastructure projects until today, points out how power hierarchies are at work with regard to who is able to participate in the discourses and who is not, and highlights narratives closely linked to ideas of nation- or statebuilding that are used by politicians within the media discourses.