Mining, Agriculture Change and Resilience: Reflections from Indigenous Knowledge in the Anthropocene

Abstract

This chapter highlights the impact of iron mining on the subsistence-based agricultural practices of Ho people in Noamundi, Jharkhand. Historically, the Ho’s relationship with natural environment has been shaped by their specific existence as subsistence cultivators and has been termed locally as ‘Ho Honko of Hodesum’ (the Ho people of Ho country). The unregulated and rapid pace of mining today has transformed this territory into a capitalistic ‘resource frontier’. Iron mining has irreversibly damaged the subsistence economy, as well as the eco-cosmological associations of people with the natural environment. The impact of mining on local agricultural economy is being negotiated on an everyday basis. The chapter describes the Ho’s subsistence-based agricultural activities to delineate the indigenous endurance mechanism within mining-induced environmental constraints. The chapter narrates the case of mining and agricultural coexistence in the major iron mining regions of India and presents an ethnographic understanding of people’s engagements with the mining-driven ecological changes. This ethnographic study attempts to critically outline how the Ho people have shown resilience and capacity to survive amidst socioecological perturbations.