Miner threat: Premature death to prefigurative politics for unearthing solar-grade silica

Abstract

Polycrystalline silicon is an essential input for solar photovoltaic technologies, commonly found in quartz and sand. India's headlong lunge into solar power will require an immense amount of domestically sourced polycrystalline silicon from Uttar Pradesh. Drawing on mixed-methods fieldwork, this study asks the following research question: Which factors produce the precarity of silica miners? This study found that Dalit miners are being dispossessed of their livelihoods through the mechanization of silica mining. Miners were also victims of workplace hazards, accidents, and ecological degradation. The dead labor of silica and the living laborers facing premature death from mining injustices will haunt India's low-carbon futures. Silica territorialities of India are a palimpsest, where precarity written in the sand is transposed by prefigurative politics that can author an emancipatory solar manifesto. Against the grains, exhumed miners of silica extraction for solar power will assume their place in the sun.