The Many Faces of Labouring and a “24 × 7” Union: (Re)Imagining Workers in Just Transition Narratives in India
Radhika Krishnan
Capitalism Nature Socialism, CaNSo, 2026
@inproceedings{bib_The__2026, AUTHOR = {Krishnan, Radhika }, TITLE = {The Many Faces of Labouring and a “24 × 7” Union: (Re)Imagining Workers in Just Transition Narratives in India}, BOOKTITLE = {Capitalism Nature Socialism}. YEAR = {2026}}
The coal sector remains a significant provider of employment in coal-rich regions. Consequently the conundrum of the future of labour in a post-coal economy features in just transition narratives. Post-coal futures envisaged in policy documents tend to define “labour” as workers employed in the coal sector and aligned industries. Recommendations for labour focus on “reskilling” and on creating “green” jobs. This definition of labour, also articulated by trade unions, is limited by its lack of engagement with the interconnections between various sources of livelihood in coal-rich regions in India. It fails to recognize the multiple ways in which communities navigate life between formal and informal economies, between agrarian, land-based livelihoods, temporary jobs within the coal economy, and other non-farm employment in the Global South. Drawing on ideas of “pluriactivity” and on neo-Marxist conceptualizations of “class” as a social relation, this paper suggests that a “24 × 7” engagement of trade unions with labour, an engagement which encompasses all facets of labouring in coal regions, could facilitate a more locally grounded and socially sensitive approach to just transition. Such approaches could in turn allow for the reframing of trade union praxis and better integration of workers’ voices in just transition narratives.
Evolving Landscape of Environmental Disputes in India: A Quantitative Analysis of Litigation Trends
Srijan Chakraborty,Radhika Krishnan
International Conference on Law and Politics, ICLP, 2025
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@inproceedings{bib_Evol_2025, AUTHOR = {Chakraborty, Srijan and Krishnan, Radhika }, TITLE = {Evolving Landscape of Environmental Disputes in India: A Quantitative Analysis of Litigation Trends}, BOOKTITLE = {International Conference on Law and Politics}. YEAR = {2025}}
This study investigates the landscape of environmental litigation in India, analyzing how environmental disputes unfold within the judiciary. It aims to identify significant patterns in case subject matter, types of appellants, and regional distribution of such cases. By examining the broader socio-legal context, the research explores how various stakeholders interact with the legal system to address environmental issues. The methodology involves assembling a dataset of legal cases and applying computational techniques to extract metadata and detect trends across multiple dimensions. Statistical analysis was used to assess correlations between case topics and appellant categories, while spatial data provided insights into regional variations in environmental disputes. Additionally, a qualitative review of relevant legislation and policies cited in key rulings helped contextualize the legal reasoning behind environmental judgments. Through a computational lens, this study uncovers the institutional dynamics that shape environmental justice in India, emphasizing the value of data-driven approaches in understanding the interplay between law, governance, and civic engagement in environmental policymaking.
“Do you think that coal will finish?”: The (Im)possibilities of living with and without coal in a central Indian coalfield
Radhika Krishnan,Patrik Oskarsson,Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt
Energy Research & Social Science, ERSS, 2025
@inproceedings{bib_“D_2025, AUTHOR = {Krishnan, Radhika and Oskarsson, Patrik and Lahiri-Dutt, Kuntala }, TITLE = {“Do you think that coal will finish?”: The (Im)possibilities of living with and without coal in a central Indian coalfield}, BOOKTITLE = {Energy Research & Social Science}. YEAR = {2025}}
This article seeks to understand how experiences of coal extraction and use shape local perspectives on energy transitions. It does this by exploring community struggles over land and labour in India's largest coalfield Korba in Chhattisgarh state. While the Indian government has announced that the country will have net zero emissions by 2070, continuing coal mine expansions built on the dispossession of rural poor and indigenous groups dramatically shape lives, economies and aspirations, and with them expectations around a potential transition away from coal. At the moment coal provides stability and continuity in the context of a depressed agricultural sector and limited non-farm employment opportunities. The coal sector is in this manner a source of hope and aspirations for many, while simultaneously creating enormous social and ecological disruptions. In the article we place specific focus on the interlinked roles of land and labour in the production of fossil-free futures situated within agrarian relations. Long-term resistance to land acquisition for coal mining is in recent years accompanied by the emergence of new relationships that coal communities are forging around land as a transactional asset, to be bartered for mining company jobs, or simply used as a speculative asset which may yield future pay-off as mining continues to expand. Based on a close reading of everyday micro-level negotiations, this paper argues that the possibilities for justice in a post-coal future is rendered complicated by existing coal economy dependencies and narrow conceptions of compensation.
Shankar Guha Niyogi: A Politics in Red and Green
Radhika Krishnan
Orient BlackSwan, OBS, 2025
@inproceedings{bib_Shan_2025, AUTHOR = {Krishnan, Radhika }, TITLE = {Shankar Guha Niyogi: A Politics in Red and Green}, BOOKTITLE = {Orient BlackSwan}. YEAR = {2025}}
The industrial worker has been portrayed in environmental and technological discourses as unconcerned with environmental questions, a passive recipient of technology or as harbouring an illogical aversion to modern technology.
Shankar Guha Niyogi: A Politics in Red and Green delves into the rich ideas and experiences of a movement born in Chhattisgarh in 1977 to argue for the possibility of a radically different engagement of labour with questions of ecology and technology. Founded by Shankar Guha Niyogi as a union for the miners of the Bhilai Steel Plant, the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha (CMM) established itself as a uniquely diverse organisation, representing mineworkers, factory workers, and agricultural workers across Chhattisgarh.
The CMM represented a visionary politics concerned not only with multiple livelihoods, but also the interrelationships between them. The author studies how this trade union grappled with wide-ranging ecological changes in the region, bringing about, in the process, a transformed understanding of the role of a ‘trade union’.
Through this recovery of Niyogi and the CMM, the author addresses crucial questions: What are the ideological frameworks, structures and processes that encourage an involved conversation between labour and environment? Can the worker be part of the process of democratising technology, of blurring the boundaries between the ‘user’ environment and the ‘developer’ environment of technology? Can we engage with questions of nationality and sub-nationality, ethnicity and identity even as we imagine a definition of identity deeply rooted in labour? Finally, are these conversations around technology, environment, and nationality an aberration, a disavowal of class-based trade union practice?
In addressing these questions, this book will be recommended reading for students and scholars of environment studies and labour studies.
Unraveling the Dynamic Landscape: Geospatial Analysis of Land Use-Land Cover Change in Manuguru, Telangana, India (1987-2020)
Anvita Reddy Katipelly,Radhika Krishnan
International Conference on Energy and Environmental Science, ICEES, 2024
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@inproceedings{bib_Unra_2024, AUTHOR = {Katipelly, Anvita Reddy and Krishnan, Radhika }, TITLE = {Unraveling the Dynamic Landscape: Geospatial Analysis of Land Use-Land Cover Change in Manuguru, Telangana, India (1987-2020)}, BOOKTITLE = {International Conference on Energy and Environmental Science}. YEAR = {2024}}
Manuguru, located in Telangana, India, is a significant coal mining hub in the Godavari Valley Coalfield, with over a century of mining history. The region, experiencing rapid industrialization and urbanization, undergoes comprehensive landscape changes, impacting natural ecosystems, agricultural lands, and water resources beyond the coal-bearing areas. This study presents an analysis of the dynamic land use and land cover (LULC) patterns in Manuguru, utilizing multi-spectral/multi-temporal Landsat satellite imagery from 1987 to 2020. Focused on understanding the impact of mining activities on the region's landscape, advanced band indices, namely, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index( NDVI) and Normalized Difference Water Index(NDWI) are employed alongside visual interpretation techniques helps validate these indices by visually inspecting the actual features on the ground.. The interpretation of Landsat images helped delineate 8 land cover categories: agricultural land, barren land, forest, mining sites, built-up areas, rivers, stagnant water bodies, and dried water bodies. In addition to traditional analysis methods, the study incorporates rate of change calculations and transition matrices to quantify and understand the temporal dynamics of LULC composition. Comparative analysis reveals significant shifts in LULC composition over the study period where the expansion of coal mining activities emerges as a dominant driver of change. This resulted in the loss of ecologically rich forests and the proliferation of overburden hills. Despite the prevalent industrial activities, there is a visible dedication to environmental stewardship by reclaiming overburden dumps through reforestation efforts of open scrub areas. The transition of agricultural lands to built-up areas signifies rapid urban expansion, driven by burgeoning population and economic activities. Similarly, the transformation of water bodies into agricultural lands underscores the human demand for arable land, often at the expense of natural ecosystems. The combined effect of transitions within the land use classes can be attributed to the increase of extractive industries and urbanization.
Living with coal in India: A temporal study of livelihood changes
Patrik Oskarsson,Radhika Krishnan,Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt
The Extractive Industries and Society, EIS-J, 2024
@inproceedings{bib_Livi_2024, AUTHOR = {Oskarsson, Patrik and Krishnan, Radhika and Lahiri-Dutt, Kuntala }, TITLE = {Living with coal in India: A temporal study of livelihood changes}, BOOKTITLE = {The Extractive Industries and Society}. YEAR = {2024}}
This article asks what it is like for the rural poor to live with coal over time as mines expand and agriculture and forest-dependent ways of living inevitably become more restricted. Research on the expansion of open pit coal mining in India shows a widespread inability to appropriately compensate the rural poor for lost land and access to common property resources. Yet it is simultaneously clear that the growth of coal extraction over time ensures increased community dependence on mainly informal, coal-based livelihoods. What then happens over the long-term for people who live in and around the coalfields? Drawing on evidence from 2011 to 2022, this article explores longer term changes for mine-affected people next to major coal mines in Telangana state, India. Specifically, it examines a) the acquisition of forest and agricultural lands for the expanding mines, b) the operating mines and their environmental implications, but also improved job opportunities, and c) mine closure as an opportunity to rehabilitate the landscape and return the land for alternative community uses post mining. The results add to the understanding of the long-term changes that large-scale mining brings to rural communities, and the challenges to a just transition once coal mining inevitably comes to an end.
Digital Transformation and Labour: Locating Continuity and Change
Anirban Dasgupta,Radhika Krishnan
Indian Journal of Labour Economics, IJLE, 2024
@inproceedings{bib_Digi_2024, AUTHOR = {Dasgupta, Anirban and Krishnan, Radhika }, TITLE = {Digital Transformation and Labour: Locating Continuity and Change}, BOOKTITLE = {Indian Journal of Labour Economics}. YEAR = {2024}}
This paper is a short intervention in locating the concerns about labour in the present phase of digital transformation within the longer history of technological change. It engages with some key analytical frameworks in technology studies and development economics to identify the continuities in the present digital revolution with previous moments of equivalent technological change. It also highlights some crucial differences with the current digital turn. Finally, the paper uses available data and information to deliberate on the possible impact of the ongoing digital transformation on the employment question and the nature of work in India.
Examining the Supreme Courts Interpretation of Environmental Law in India
Srijan Chakraborty,Radhika Krishnan
Turkey Computational Social Science Conference, TCSS, 2024
@inproceedings{bib_Exam_2024, AUTHOR = {Chakraborty, Srijan and Krishnan, Radhika }, TITLE = {Examining the Supreme Courts Interpretation of Environmental Law in India}, BOOKTITLE = {Turkey Computational Social Science Conference}. YEAR = {2024}}
This research explores the foundational frameworks and conceptual arguments
shaping environmental litigation in the Supreme Court of India. Our central aim
was to systematically analyze the legal language used to construct environmental
arguments within the court. We sought to identify the recurring frameworks
employed and understand how these frameworks integrate fundamental concepts
like the right to life and freedom with environmental concerns.
Bureaucracy and Ideologies of Control in British India
Radhika Krishnan
The Imperial Underbelly, IU, 2022
@inproceedings{bib_Bure_2022, AUTHOR = {Krishnan, Radhika }, TITLE = {Bureaucracy and Ideologies of Control in British India}, BOOKTITLE = {The Imperial Underbelly}. YEAR = {2022}}
Historians and economists working on the Indian railways refer to what they term the ‘railway mania’ of Britain in the 1840s, resulting ultimately in two principal achievements of the industrial revolution (the steamship and the steam engine) being brought to the colonies.1 Multiple rationales have been ofered to explain the spread of this ‘mania’ to India. Recounting the debate around the Indian railways, Bipan Chandra reminds us of the ‘strong political and economic pressure’ from textile manufacturers in Lancashire, who wished to access the vast supplies of cotton and wheat in India.2 Apart from being a source of opulent raw materials, India could also become a huge consumer of textile and other products manufactured in Britain, Daniel Thorner points out.3 In addition to the commercial and economic advantages, once put in place, the railways could be used to transport military personnel from one part of the vast colony to another in a relatively short time.4 These economic and political justifcations apart—many of which have been dealt with in great detail by a number of scholars of colonial India—we are left with the undeniable fact that railway construction remained a crucial endeavour of colonial rule in British India. The frst passenger railway line in India, covering 34 km between Bori Bunder (Bombay) and Thane, was opened to trafc on 16 April 1853, barely 28 years after the world’s frst successful train ran between Stockton and Darlington in England in 1825. This was one of the frst railway lines in the country. Before passenger trains were introduced, there were a few trains used to transport stone and other material, such as on the Red Hill line in Chennai in South India. The frst short lines were followed by a rapid escalation of railway construction.5 In Ian Kerr’s estimate, by 1870, ‘excluding Russia (and thus Russian Asia), ffty-fve per cent of all operating railway mileage in Africa, Asia, and Latin America combined was located in India’. The fact that neither China nor Japan had operating lines at the time stresses the unique nature of railway construction in India.6 During these initial tumultuous years, the railway building project was
New IT Rules, 2021 Crucial Landmark in Digital Governance
Radhika Krishnan
Econimic and political weekly, EAPW, 2021
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@inproceedings{bib_New__2021, AUTHOR = {Krishnan, Radhika }, TITLE = {New IT Rules, 2021 Crucial Landmark in Digital Governance}, BOOKTITLE = {Econimic and political weekly}. YEAR = {2021}}
The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 are designed to further empower the state and allow the executive considerable powers to shape public discourses. On the one hand, the state now demands access to all information about the content and origins of every digital communication, a measure that will weaken the right to privacy. On the other hand, digital content is now subject to both self-regulation as well as extensive surveillance and regulation designed to allow substantial control by the executive over content.
Multi-label Categorization of Accounts of Sexism using a Neural Framework
PARIKH PULKIT TRUSHANT KUMAR,Harika Abburi,PINKESH BADJATIYA,Radhika Krishnan,Niyati Chhaya,Manish,Vasudeva Varma Kalidindi
Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, EMNLP, 2019
@inproceedings{bib_Mult_2019, AUTHOR = {KUMAR, PARIKH PULKIT TRUSHANT and Abburi, Harika and BADJATIYA, PINKESH and Krishnan, Radhika and Chhaya, Niyati and Manish, and Kalidindi, Vasudeva Varma }, TITLE = {Multi-label Categorization of Accounts of Sexism using a Neural Framework}, BOOKTITLE = {Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing}. YEAR = {2019}}
Sexism, an injustice that subjects women and girls to enormous suffering, manifests in blatant as well as subtle ways. In the wake of growing documentation of experiences of sexism on the web, the automatic categorization of accounts of sexism has the potential to assist social scientists and policy makers in utilizing such data to study and counter sexism better. The existing work on sexism classification, which is different from sexism detection, has certain limitations in terms of the categories of sexism used and/or whether they can co-occur. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work on the multi-label classification of sexism of any kind(s), and we contribute the largest dataset for sexism categorization. We develop a neural solution for this multilabel classification that can combine sentence representations obtained using models such as BERT with distributional and linguistic word embeddings using a flexible, hierarchical architecture involving recurrent components and optional convolutional ones. Further, we leverage unlabeled accounts of sexism to infuse domain-specific elements into our framework. The best proposed method outperforms several deep learning as well as traditional machine learning baselines by an appreciable margin.
‘Ecological Warriors’ versus ‘Indigenous Performers’: Understanding State Responses to Resistance Movements in Jagatsinghpur and Niyamgiri in Odisha
Radhika Krishnan,Rama Naga
Journal of South Asian Studies, JSAS, 2017
@inproceedings{bib_‘E_2017, AUTHOR = {Krishnan, Radhika and Naga, Rama }, TITLE = {‘Ecological Warriors’ versus ‘Indigenous Performers’: Understanding State Responses to Resistance Movements in Jagatsinghpur and Niyamgiri in Odisha}, BOOKTITLE = {Journal of South Asian Studies}. YEAR = {2017}}
This paper traces the nature of resistance in movements against land acquisition in Jagatsinghpur and Niyamgiri in the state of Odisha in India. At both sites, the movements were united in their opposition to the respective industrial projects, and to the state's notion of ‘development’ premised on resource extraction and large industry. At certain key junctures, the Niyamgiri resistance placed stress on the ‘sacred’ and the spiritual, while the resistance in Jagatsinghpur emphasised ‘traditional’ land- and water-based economic livelihoods. This paper uses these case studies to understand the role of overt and covert ‘performances’ of indigeneity in shaping environmental discourse as well as the state's response to resistance movements.
The Industrial Project and Organised Labour
Radhika Krishnan
Economic and Political Weekly, EPW, 2017
@inproceedings{bib_The__2017, AUTHOR = {Krishnan, Radhika }, TITLE = {The Industrial Project and Organised Labour}, BOOKTITLE = {Economic and Political Weekly}. YEAR = {2017}}
This paper looks at the responses of organised labour to
the “development” project exemplified by the steel
plant, the big dam and the power plant. More precisely,
it analyses the presence (or not) of an ecological critique
in trade union/labour responses to industrial projects.
The paper explores theoretical connections between
class-based politics and ecological questions. It
delineates some of the specific processes and conditions
which can facilitate the entry of ecological issues into the
imaginations of a trade union, using the experiences of
the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha in central India in the
process. It argues that “class consciousness” is hardly a
deterrent for an engagement with ecology, if one
adequately understands the definitions of “class,” labour
and production. In India’s specific context, the coming
together of the concerns and imaginations of the
industrial worker and the Adivasi peasant/farmer can
facilitate this conversation between “red” and
“green” imaginations.
