Spaces of Opportunity: State-Oustee Relations in the Context of Conservation-Induced Displacement in Central India

This article draws from detailed fieldwork on the recent conservationinduced displacement of a Maharashtrian village in central India to contest the simplicity of conventional treatments of such displacement as a straightforward enactment of state power. Reflecting certain broader theories of power, agency and the state, the case of Botezari village presents a more nuanced reality in which state-society relations were transformed and retransformed. In the village’s pre-relocation phase, a set of conducive factors came together to create a small opening which enabled a fundamental reworking of familiar state-oustee power relationships. This opening was ultimately short-lived, with spaces of oustee opportunity to direct change largely closed off in the post-relocation context. However, the villagers’ memories of their pre-relocation liberating moment, and the strategic capacity, confidence and expectations honed in that moment, persisted to an extent that challenges the permanency and inevitability of displacementinduced marginalization in the conservation setting.