Developmental discourses of transition in the Indian transport sector: A corpus linguistic survey of the literature

Abstract

India is a large nation state facing the twin challenges of economic development and the need to transition away from its path dependence on coal towards a low-carbon infrastructure. By applying corpus linguistics to a sampled literature on decarbonising India's transport sector, we explore three motifs of difference, viz. ‘change’, ‘decarbonisation’ and ‘transition’, and how these motifs are applied within the context of this academic literature to refer to potential opportunities to transform India's developmental trajectory. We find that rather than exploring such opportunities, the sampled papers tend to recirculate discourses influenced by eco-modernisation which, although proposing change to India's carbon footprint, leave the fundamental structure of India's neo-liberal economic model unchallenged, even though, from a developmental discourse perspective, this lies at the root of climate change, and for meaningful change to occur it must be addressed.