Murder, money, fear and charity : the making of “Mafya Dons” in the coal capital of India

Abstract

observation with a variety of mafia and non-mafia actors in the Jharia coal basin. I will attempt to ground
the phenomenon under study in ethnographic material by presenting the sociological backgrounds of
certain mafia members who specialize on a daily basis in the various coercive tasks (extortion, corruption,
kidnapping) necessary for the monopolistic control of the large-scale coal trade. By detailing the
biographies of two of my privileged interlocutors and interviewees, two mafia figures from Dhanbad, and
their economic and coercive practices, I will attempt to ground the mafia phenomenon in empirical
material in order to account, as closely as possible to the field, for the despotic, improvised, and
precarious nature of this vernacular form of authority. Following Mafia Raj: The Rule of Bosses in South
Asia, (2019), I will show how mafia sovereignty is constituted and maintained in a daily assemblage of
domination and mystification, but also of danger, uncertainty, and vulnerability.
In relation to the theory of predation, I will try to show how all these apparent crimes and
disorders do not negatively affect the consolidation of capitalism, but how on the contrary, it collides in its
practices and interests with coercion, violence and domination as they act as incentives for its
development. If accepted, I will accompany this presentation with photographs taken during the fieldwork in
order to give the ethnographic data presented an acuity and “effet de réel”.