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The researcher aims to analyse Kamala Markandaya’s The Coffer Dams with special reference to development, tourism and economic sustainability. The novel presents a development-driven critique of postcolonial India. Transformation of the landscape, displacement of the tribal indigenous people, labour migration, racial prejudices, exploitation of natural resources, these form the centrality of the novel. This kind of development is pseudo-development and ethically should not be manifested. The dam project depicted in the novel symbolically anticipates economic and tourism-led development; which came at the cost of ecological disruption. The primary aim of the researcher was to expose development and economic stability manifested in the novel and the extent in which they have affected nature and the lives of the indigenous tribal people of the region portrayed in the novel, along with the Western conception of modernity. The commodification of landscape is not a development on ethical or moral framework; rather it acts as a curse for nature, which destabilises nature and natural elements. The indigenous land region depicted in the novel becomes the victim of commodification. Commencement of the cofferdam project has put environmental sustainability at stake. Clash between traditional indigenous values and capitalist modern approach in life are apparent in the novel. The prevalent power dynamics and the superior-inferior binary from Edward Said’s Oriental considerations have also been taken in the proposed study. The economic sustainability and development with its possible impact on the tribal people of the jungle region which led to their displacement and eventually resulted in forced migration portrayed in the novel, these arguments remain primary to the proposed discussion. Postcolonial aspects of Racism and Oriental distinctions and ecocritical facets have given secondary focus.
Mr. Maharshi Vyas. “Kamala Markandaya’s The Coffer Dams: Critiquing the Perspectives of Development, Tourism and Economic Sustainability.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 4, August 2026, pp. 1048-1057. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n4.64.
Open Access · CC BY 4.0 · Crossref DOI ·
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