Geopolitics and Biopolitics in India’s High Natural Background Radiation Zone

This article explores the tensions between the statist project of securing national bodies—geopolitics—and the governmental project of securing populations—biopolitics. It is based on historical, public health, and ethnographic evidence from a coastal region of India with high background radiation, due to large deposits of thorium in beach sands. Thorium is a critical resource in the Indian state’s long-term programme of energy independence; long-term exposure to radiation is also what comes to define this community as a biomedically-induced population. This article shows that once thorium becomes identified as a state resource, the social meaning of place decays and the ability to imagine local futures becomes increasingly strained. The article concludes that the imperative of establishing a secure future for the nation–state requires that the future of this community be rendered in terms of sacrifice, an increasingly unstable trope of Indian nation-building.