Justice at Sea: Fishers’ politics and marine conservation in coastal Odisha, India

This is a paper about the politics of fishing rights in and around the Gahirmatha marine sanctuary in coastal Odisha, in eastern India. Claims to the resources of this sanctuary are politicised through the creation of a particularly damaging narrative by influential Odiya environmental actors about Bengalis, as illegal immigrants who have hurt the ecosystem through their fishing practices. Anchored within a theoretical framework of justice as recognition, the paper considers the making of a regional Odiya environmentalism that is, potentially, deeply exclusionary. It details how an argument about ‘illegal Bengalis’ depriving ‘indigenous Odiyas’ of their legitimate ‘traditional fishing rights’ derives from particular notions of indigeneity and territory. But the paper also shows that such environmentalism is tenuous, and fits uneasily with the everyday social landscape of fishing in coastal Odisha. It concludes that a wider class conflict between small fishers and the state over a sanctuary sets the context in which questions about legitimate resource rights are raised, sometimes with important effects, like when out at sea

Maritime labour, transnational political trajectories and decolonisation from below: the opposition to the 1935 British Shipping Assistance Act

This paper uses a discussion of struggles over attempts by the National Union of Seamen to exclude seafarers form the maritime labour market in the inter-war period to contribute todebates at the intersection of maritime spaces and transnational labour geographies (cf Balachandran, 2012, Hogsbjerg, 2013). Through a focus on struggles over the British Shipping Assistance Act of 1935 it explores some of the transnational dynamics through which racialized forms of trade unionism were contested. I argue that the political trajectories, solidarities and spaces of organising constructed through the alliances which were produced to oppose the effects of the Act shaped articulations of ‘decolonisation from below’ (James, 2015). Engaging with the political trajectories and activity of activists from organisaions like the Colonial Seamen’s Association can open up both new ways of understanding the spatial politics of decolonisation and new accounts of who or how such processes were articulated and contested. The paper concludes by arguing that engagement with these struggles can help assert the importance of forms of subaltern agency in shaping processes of decolonisation

INVESTIGATION OF SURFACE TEXTURED CUTTING TOOLS FOR SUSTAINABLE MACHINING

Abstract The profligate use of cutting fluids in machining causes serious health issues for operators; additionally, there are increasing economic and environmental costs associated with managing cutting fluid systems. To improve the sustainability of machining processes researchers are making efforts to eliminate or reduce the use of cutting fluids during machining through several means: development of improved tool coatings, materials and cutting fluids, hybrid machining processes, process optimization, etc. More recently, some researchers have studied the application of controlled surface micro textures on cutting tool surfaces to improve machining performance through alteration of tribological conditions at the tool-chip and tool-workpiece interfaces. This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation involving dry and near-dry intermittent orthogonal cutting of AISI 1045 steel using uncoated P30 grade cemented tungsten carbide cutting tools with various surface textures applied on the cutting tools' rake surfaces via grinding. The results show the significant effects of the cutting tool's rake surface roughness on machining forces and surface roughness of workpieces. Based on the observed trends some areas for further research in cutting tool development are identified

Performing Citizenship: Acts of writing

This chapter examines the performative quality of writing by drawing upon speech act theory and literary criticism. Focusing on Arundhati Roy and Mahasweta Devi’s acts of collecting people’s stories and deeds, I explore the subject formation of activist writers as a result of the process of facilitating the passage from oral accounts to written texts. Marginalized subjects and their acts, disqualified from the domain of politics proper, find in literature a field of struggle. After addressing how Roy and Devi’s literature promotes the visibility of ‘unimagined communities’, I turn to the performative quality of their writing, which shapes and supports citizenship struggles. ‘Small dreams’, ‘small talks’, and ‘small gods’ counteract the capitalist imperative to have ‘big’ revenues and ‘big’ development projects. Their transformation of the language of rights reveals how indigenous political subjectivity exceeds the capture of law