Publication date: 23 September 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787353237

Number of pages: 380

Number of illustrations: 1

The Wild East

Criminal Political Economies in South Asia

Barbara Harriss-White (Editor), Lucia Michelutti (Editor)

The Wild East bridges political economy and anthropology to examine a variety of il/legal economic sectors and businesses such as red sanders, coal, fire, oil, sand, air spectrum, land, water, real estate, procurement and industrial labour. The eleven case studies, based across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, explore how state regulative law is often ignored and/or selectively manipulated. The emerging collective narrative shows the workings of regulated criminal economic systems where criminal formations, politicians, police, judges and bureaucrats are deeply intertwined.

By pioneering the field-study of the politicisation of economic crime, and disrupting the wider literature on South Asia’s informal economy, The Wild East aims to influence future research agendas through its case for the study of mafia-enterprises and their engagement with governance in South Asia and outside. Its empirical and theoretical contribution to debates about economic crimes in democratic regimes will be of critical value to researchers in Economics, Anthropology, Sociology, Comparative Politics, Political Science and International Relations, Criminologists and Development Studies, as well as to those inside and outside academia interested in current affairs and the relationship between crime, politics and mafia enterprises.

Introduction
Barbara Harriss-White and Lucia Michelutti

1. The criminal economics and politics of black coal in Jharkhand, 2014
Nigel Singh and Barbara Harriss-White
2. Jharia’s century-old fire kept ablaze by crime and politics
Smita Gupta
3. Sand and the Politics of Plunder in Tamil Nadu, India
J. Jeyaranjan
4. Himalayan Hydro-criminality: Dams, Development and Politics in Arunachal Pradesh, India
Deepak K Mishra5. Crime in the Air: Spectrum Markets and the Telecommunications Sector in India
Jai Bhatia6. The inter-State criminal life of sand and oil in North India, western Uttar Pradesh
Lucia Michelutti7. Red sanders mafia’ in South India Violence, electoral democracy and labour
David Picherit8. ‘The Land and Real Estate Mafia’, East India, West Bengal
Tone K. Sissener
9. Politics, Capital, and Land Grabs in Punjab, India
Nicolas Martin
10. The Politics of Contracting inProvincial Bangladesh
Arild Engelsen Ruud
11. Putting Out the Baldia Factory Fire: How the Trial of Karachi’s Industrial Capitalism Did Not Happen
Laurent Gayer

DOI: 10.14324/111.9781787353237

Number of pages: 380

Number of illustrations: 1

Publication date: 23 September 2019

PDF ISBN: 9781787353237

EPUB ISBN: 9781787353268

Hardback ISBN: 9781787353251

Paperback ISBN: 9781787353244

Barbara Harriss-White (Editor)

Barbara Harriss-White is Emeritus Professor of Development Studies, Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, Professorial Research Associate at SOAS and Visiting Professor at JNU. She has written, edited or co-edited and published 40 books and major reports, published over 250 scholarly papers and chapters and over 80 working papers. Her book, Rural Commercial Capital, won the Edgar Graham prize. Through field research, she works on India’s political economy, in particular the agricultural and informal economy and aspects of deprivation and of waste.

Lucia Michelutti (Editor)

Lucia Michelutti is Professor of Anthropology at University College London (UCL). Her research expertise spans from political and legal anthropology to the ethnographic study of informal economies as well as the anthropology of caste, kingship and ritual. She has carried out extensive fieldwork in North India and has worked in Venezuela and on South Asia and Latin America in comparative contexts. She is currently the Principal Investigator of the project ‘Anthropologies of Extortion’ (2021-2026) funded by the European Research Council.

‘This volume is a useful corrective to narratives, oriented on the corporate sector and national politics, which do not tell the full story of the Indian economy. The Wild East reminds us, forcefully, that India’s economy and politics have regional and local aspects that need to be kept in view.’
Commonwealth & Comparative Politics

‘This grimly fascinating book showcases cutting-edge research on the close links between criminality and capitalism in contemporary South Asia. These searing accounts of “the normalization of criminal accumulation” need to be read and understood as much by citizens as by those claiming to represent them.’ – Jayati Ghosh, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

‘A fascinating grasp of the symbiosis of state and criminal power. Eleven case studies across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh allow us to delve into unwritten rules and open secrets of everyday criminal economies and political machineries of the Wild East. Conceptual framing of the book, reminding the Wild West of its own trajectories, will certainly appeal to those disenchanted with normative, top-down, Washington consensus based discourses.’ – Alena Ledeneva, Founder of the UCL Global Informality Project

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The Wild East

Criminal Political Economies in South Asia

Publication date: September 23, 2019

Open Access PDF ISBN: 9781787353237

Paperback ISBN: 9781787353244

Hardback ISBN: 9781787353251

Trim size (hardback): 23.4cm x 15.6cm

Trim size (paperback): 23.4cm x 15.6cm

Page count (hardback): 380

Download free PDF online

https://uclpress.co.uk/book/the-wild-east/

The Wild East bridges political economy and anthropology to examine a variety of il/legal economic sectors and businesses such as red sanders, coal, fire, oil, sand, air spectrum, land, water, real estate, procurement and industrial labour. The eleven case studies, based across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, explore how state regulative law is often ignored and/or selectively manipulated. The emerging collective narrative shows the workings of regulated criminal economic systems where criminal formations, politicians, police, judges and bureaucrats are deeply intertwined.

By pioneering the field-study of the politicisation of economic crime, and disrupting the wider literature on South Asia’s informal economy, The Wild East aims to influence future research agendas through its case for the study of mafia-enterprises and their engagement with governance in South Asia and outside. Its empirical and theoretical contribution to debates about economic crimes in democratic regimes will be of critical value to researchers in Economics, Anthropology, Sociology, Comparative Politics, Political Science and International Relations, Criminologists and Development Studies, as well as to those inside and outside academia interested in current affairs and the relationship between crime, politics and mafia enterprises.

‘This volume is a useful corrective to narratives, oriented on the corporate sector and national politics, which do not tell the full story of the Indian economy. The Wild East reminds us, forcefully, that India’s economy and politics have regional and local aspects that need to be kept in view.’
Commonwealth & Comparative Politics

‘This grimly fascinating book showcases cutting-edge research on the close links between criminality and capitalism in contemporary South Asia. These searing accounts of “the normalization of criminal accumulation” need to be read and understood as much by citizens as by those claiming to represent them.’ – Jayati Ghosh, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

‘A fascinating grasp of the symbiosis of state and criminal power. Eleven case studies across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh allow us to delve into unwritten rules and open secrets of everyday criminal economies and political machineries of the Wild East. Conceptual framing of the book, reminding the Wild West of its own trajectories, will certainly appeal to those disenchanted with normative, top-down, Washington consensus based discourses.’ – Alena Ledeneva, Founder of the UCL Global Informality Project

Barbara Harriss-White (B01)

Barbara Harriss-White is Emeritus Professor of Development Studies, Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, Professorial Research Associate at SOAS and Visiting Professor at JNU. She has written, edited or co-edited and published 40 books and major reports, published over 250 scholarly papers and chapters and over 80 working papers. Her book, Rural Commercial Capital, won the Edgar Graham prize. Through field research, she works on India’s political economy, in particular the agricultural and informal economy and aspects of deprivation and of waste.

Lucia Michelutti (B01)

Lucia Michelutti is Professor of Anthropology at University College London (UCL). Her research expertise spans from political and legal anthropology to the ethnographic study of informal economies as well as the anthropology of caste, kingship and ritual. She has carried out extensive fieldwork in North India and has worked in Venezuela and on South Asia and Latin America in comparative contexts. She is currently the Principal Investigator of the project ‘Anthropologies of Extortion’ (2021-2026) funded by the European Research Council.