Full Description
Since the mid-2000s, India has been beset by widespread farmer protests against land dispossession. Dispossession Without Development demonstrates that beneath these conflicts lay a profound shift in regimes of dispossession. While the postcolonial Indian state dispossessed land mostly for public-sector industry and infrastructure, since the 1990s state governments have become land brokers for private real estate capital. Using the case of a village in Rajasthan that was dispossessed for a private Special Economic Zone, the book ethnographically illustrates the exclusionary trajectory of capitalism driving dispossession in contemporary India. Taking us into the lives of diverse villagers in "Rajpura," the book meticulously documents the destruction of agricultural livelihoods, the marginalization of rural labor, the spatial uneveness of infrastructure provision, and the dramatic consequences of real estate speculation for social inequality and village politics. Illuminating the structural underpinnings of land struggles in contemporary India, this book will resonate in any place where "land grabs" have fueled conflict in recent years.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Map
Personae Dramatis
Preface: From Narmada to Rajpura
1. Introduction
2. Genesis of the Land Broker State
3. Rajpura
4. Dispossession
5. Differentiation by Speculation
6. Peasants in a Knowledge Economy
7. On the Margins of a World City
8. Politics After Dispossession
9. Conclusion: "Land Wars" and Development
Notes
References
