Two regimes of waste and value: 'Post-disaster' landscapes in a New India

In this age of ‘disaster capitalism’, catastrophes are neither ‘natural’ nor ‘external’. They are political events mediating and vitally shaping the unequal and exploitative use of environmental resources. India's ‘post-disaster’ landscapes at the turn of the new millennium powerfully demonstrate how visions of the new-normal can be imposed in the aftermath of a catastrophe by indomitable state–capital alliances. Insidious ideas of entrepreneurship and a muscular Hindutva-tinged liberalization have served as the main tropes of post-disaster recovery and management interventions in India over the past two decades. The article demonstrates how these post-disaster landscapes, as seen in the cases of the 2001 Gujarat earthquake and 1999 Odisha super-cyclone, can be understood through regimes of waste and value, which redefine the meanings of space and nature. At their core, these regimes rely on the purposive use of institutions, laws and discourses by powerful actors at multiple levels. The article suggests that the post-disaster landscape offers a unique perspective into the everyday environmental authoritarianism unfolding throughout India today.