Who wants a ‘development’ that doesn’t recognise alternatives?

Jagatsinghpur, a district in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, has attracted media attention for a lengthy fight over land between a community of betel-farmers, fisher folk and livestock herders on one side, and the state and state patronized corporations seeking to build a steel plant, port and captive power plant on the other. The struggle has lasted over a decade amidst reports of killings, arrests and gross human rights violations. In 2017, after 12 years, Korean steel giantPOSCO withdrew, only to be replaced by Indian corporations seeking the same land. In this chapter, we examine the anti-POSCO People’s Movement (POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti) as an example of post-development in practice. The movement’s anticorporate stance, and its defence of a sustainable and dignified land-based livelihood and the right to self-governance align with key tenets of post-development. However, in other areas the movement’s stance is more aligned with a traditional development paradigm, including desire for markets for petty commodities, and belief in the state as the inevitable, appropriate site of self-governance, and an agent of development. We conclude that to work towards a pluriverse, we must attend to aspirations that entail tensions between post-development and more traditional development principles.