Studying the multi-nodal network of petroleum manufacturing, circulation and use in India, Sarandha’s research examines petroleum as an infrastructure for the Indian state and society. To understand the politics of petroleum in the everyday, she studies the modes of government, forms of sociality and constellations of power petroleum produces, and is produced by, both in its manufacturing and in its use. Sarandha explores what makes petroleum products leak out of the logics of government and capital, that brought them into being, be apprehended in unintended ways, and create alternate networks of power that resist state discipline. Her previous work was on rivers and the Indian state. She is interested in unravelling structures of power, and how fluvial substances interact with them: how they acquire varied and opposing meanings that get attributed to them, the politics they get mired in, and how they allow for or escape the trappings different sets of humans try to bind them in.
