Dr. Vasudha Chhotray, Professor of Politics and Development in the School of Global Development, University of East Anglia gave a talk on A super-cyclone, landscapes of “emptiness” and shrimp aquaculture: the lesser-known trajectories of disaster recovery in coastal Odisha, India at the Human Sciences Research Group (HSRG)’s Weekly Talk Series on 9 August. Dr. Chhotray examined the construction of a block on coastal Odhisa called Ersama, as a space that had been rendered ‘empty’ and ‘unproductive’ after the devastating super cyclone of 1999. She traced how this changed perception of space paved the way for the introduction of highly precarious shrimp aquaculture by a coalition of interests drawn from both the state and private shrimp exporting companies.
Her paper, which had been researched over ten years, documented how disaster recovery had become the business of ‘entrepreneurial’ citizens resulting in the dangerous normalisation of risk and new forms of differentiation and exclusion for poor, small and marginal cultivators. She presented the views of various stakeholders in the area and how some pushed the trend of shrimp aquaculture, while others took it up as their empty land seemed unfit for much else anyway. The presentation considered the economic, environmental, developmental and societal effects of this phenomenon, which has been promoted as the best option for the devastated and empty land in post-cyclone Ersama.
August 2023