NB: Congratulations to Bonojit, a former Ramjas College student; for his groundbreaking research and activism. DS
The handbook casts the Northeast as a mineral-rich periphery, that is “underexplored” and ideal for private investment. Since March this year, around 55,000 bighas of land across Assam have either been cleared or marked for eviction. Of this, only about 6,000 bighas involve Miya Muslim inhabitants. The remaining 49,000 bighas are indigenous tribal commons – grazing grounds, community-managed forests, and ancestral lands – cleared or marked for dispossession. barring Akhil Gogoi’s party, all major opposition parties in Assam – including the Congress – have remained largely silent on the eviction issue, fearing they would be branded as Bangladeshi sympathizers. But these two articles have provided a new narrative to oppose evictions, and as a result, all of them have now spoken out and are connecting the issue to corporate land acquisition.
The language of geology, when wielded by neo-liberal states, is never ‘neutral’. Terms like “geologically mapped”, “auction-ready”, and “investment-ready frontier” are not simply technical descriptors – they function ideologically, reshaping landscapes from homes and forests into reservoirs of future profit.
The June 2025 ‘Geological Survey of India (GSI) Handbook on Geological Potential of Northeast India: A hidden trove of mineral prospect beneath majestic landscape’ is a case in point. Its bureaucratic and scientific veneer masks an underlying logic of extraction. The handbook quietly redraws the region – not as a complex tapestry of Indigenous people, histories and ecologies, but as a mineral-rich frontier primed for exploitation. GSI in the handbook admits that:
“Despite [its] potential, mineral development in the NER has historically been limited by challenges such as difficult terrain, ecological sensitivity, limited infrastructure, and socio-political sensitivities.”
That final phrase – socio-political sensitivities – is a code word for Indigenous assertions of land rights, fragile ecologies and a long history of resistance. In naming them, the document does not acknowledge them; it seeks to bypass them.
The handbook casts the Northeast as a mineral-rich periphery, “underexplored” and ideal for private investment. Since the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2015, the GSI has aggressively produced auction-ready data. It boasts:
“GSI has augmented resource for commodities like Rare-Earth Elements, graphite, vanadium, limestone, iron ore etc. and handed over 38 Geological blocks since MMDR Amendment Act, 2015 across various states in the NER, contributing to the growing interest of stakeholders in the region’s mineral sector.”
This handbook is an instrument of enclosure – reducing ancestral territories to acreage and ore grades. Corporations such as Vedanta, Oil India, Dalmia, Ambuja etc. are positioned not as partners in development but as beneficiaries of a ‘state-led assault on local sovereignty’….
https://thewire.in/rights/gsis-handbook-on-northeast-india-masks-extraction-behind-technicalities
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Will half-truths in the Parliament bring peace to Manipur?
India’s subdivision of criminality (how one massacre deserves another)
How Manipur Is Forced to Parade Their Losses To An Ignorant India
Slavoj Žizek: Manipur is not only in India
Police in Indian state of Uttar Pradesh accused of unlawful killings
After the truth-shower 