Land and Livelihoods in Neoliberal India PDF
Preview Land and Livelihoods in Neoliberal India
Edited by Deepak K. Mishra Pradeep Nayak Land and Livelihoods in Neoliberal India Land and Livelihoods in Neoliberal India Deepak K. Mishra • Pradeep Nayak Editors Land and Livelihoods in Neoliberal India Editors Deepak K. Mishra Pradeep Nayak Centre for the Study of Regional Odisha State Disaster Management Development Authority School of Social Sciences Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi, Delhi, India ISBN 978-981-15-3510-9 ISBN 978-981-15-3511-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3511-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. 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Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21- 01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore P a reface and cknowledgements Land is not just a valuable economic resource; people relate to land at multiple levels. It is often seen as a source of identity and belongingness. With the gradual decline in the significance of agriculture in the economy and the associated changes in the structure of output and employment, the non-farm drivers of growth are expected to be the critical force behind the process of economic development. The slow shift of labour out of agriculture on the one hand and the ‘jobless’ character of the growth pro- cess, in countries like India, on the other hand, have brought the question of livelihood security of the populations dependent upon agriculture to the forefront of academic and policy discourse. As more and more people move out of agriculture and the rural areas, the prospect of employment, particularly decent employment with social security, appears to have declined—many of those who have found employment in the informal economy work under precarious conditions. At the same time, economic growth has ensured new investment and earning opportunities for a sec- tion of the people. Thus, the process of economic transformation has led to highly unequal outcomes for different classes and groups of people. The process of neoliberal economic growth has necessitated changes in the pattern of land utilisation. Not only that there has been a need for conversion of land to non-agricultural uses, for real estate and infrastruc- ture development, industrial projects and so on, but there has also been a move to shift the pattern of land use from food to non-food crops within agriculture. These processes have unfolded in different ways in different countries or even in different regions within the country, but these have heightened the conflicts around land. Apart from the specific features of v vi PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ‘land’ as a resource and as a commodity, the institutional histories of land management have also created specific challenges for developing an equi- table and efficient land policy. Land is also a source of power and wealth in many rural, agrarian contexts. The legacies of unequal access to and control over land are being renewed under the new circumstances, often leading to adverse consequences for traditionally marginalised groups. With the consolidation of neoliberal ideas, the power relations that govern and mediate access to land, mainly through the state institutions, have undergone significant changes. As governments compete with each other to attract domestic and internal capital, the ability to provide land cheaply, with reduced transaction costs, and without much delay has emerged as a critical aspect of being attractive to capital. The challenge of meeting the expectations of capital in an electoral democracy, where those who are involuntarily displaced from their land or livelihoods also have a voice, is formidable. The studies included in this book attempt to explore the unravelling of these questions in India in specific regional contexts. Most of these studies were initially presented and discussed at a seminar in 2017 at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. We express our gratitude to the authorities and the staff of the institute for providing us with all the necessary support. The conversations around the theme of land and livelihood continued in the following months, and the chapters have been revised and updated for the volume. We are immensely thankful to the authors who have contributed to the edited volume for their patience and support throughout the process of developing this volume. We are grateful to Prof. Raju Das, York University, Toronto, and the anonymous referees of Palgrave Macmillan whose insightful comments on previous drafts have been helpful to revise the chapters. We appreciate the editorial and academic support of Mr. Krishna Surjya Das, a research scholar at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, JNU. The editors are grateful to their respective colleagues and friends for the formal and informal discussions which have helped to shape some of the arguments presented here. We thank our respective families for all the sup- port and encouragement. It has been our pleasure to work with the Palgrave Macmillan team. We thank them for their professionalism and very competent assistance at every stage in bringing out this volume. New Delhi, India Deepak K. Mishra Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India Pradeep Nayak c ontents 1 Introduction: The Political Economy Land and Livelihoods in Contemporary India 1 Deepak K. Mishra and Pradeep Nayak 2 Land Titling or Land Reforms: India’s Policy Dilemma 35 Pradeep Nayak 3 Ownership Versus Control: The Changing Dynamics of Land Use in Liberalised Agricultural Context of India 57 Sukhpal Singh 4 Contextualizing Land Question in a Green Revolution Area: Agrarian Transformation and Politics in Western Uttar Pradesh 71 Jagpal Singh 5 Landowners as Non-farm Workers: A Case of Small Farmer Migrants in Karnataka 85 Sheetal Patil and Seema Purushothaman 6 Globalising Agrarian Markets and Changing Production Relations: Village-Level Evidence from India 103 Anish Gupta vii viii CONTENTS 7 Land, Caste and Class in Rural West Bengal 123 Dayabati Roy 8 Agricultural Land Markets in India: A Case of Maharashtra 141 Ch. Sankar Rao 9 Dispossession, Neoliberal Urbanism and Societal Transformation: Insight into Rajarhat New Township in West Bengal 169 Animesh Roy 10 Land, Labour and Industrialisation in Rural and Urban Areas: A Case Study of Reliance SEZ in Gujarat 195 Amita Shah, Aditi Patil, and Dipak Nandani 11 Neoliberal Governing as Production of Fantasy: Contemporary Transformations in Ahmedabad’s Landscape 221 Navdeep Mathur and Harsh Mittal 12 The Expressway to Agra—Two Roads, Same Destination: Land Acquisition under Old and New Land Acquisition Regimes 235 Prashant K. Trivedi 13 LARR 2013: What Does It Deliver? 249 Dhanmanjiri Sathe 14 Land Issues and Liberalisation in Northeast India 265 Walter Fernandes 15 The Gendered Transformation of Land Rights and Feminisation of Hill Agriculture in Arunachal Pradesh: Insights from Field Survey 283 Vandana Upadhyay Index 309 n c otes on ontributors Walter Fernandes founded the North Eastern Social Research Centre in 2000 and served as its director till 2011. As a Senior Fellow, Dr. Fernandes continues to pursue diverse research topics. He is involved in the study of development-induced displacement in Northeast India. Formerly, he was the director of the Indian Social Institute, Delhi, and the editor of its quarterly, Social Action. He has done extensive studies on tribal rights, livelihood issues, land rights, climate justice and peace initiatives and writ- ten and edited several books and articles. Some of his recent books are Search for Peace with Justice, Relations Across Borders, and Uprooted for Whose Cost? Anish Gupta teaches at the University of Delhi. He has a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University. His work has appeared in reputed academic journals including the Economic and Political Weekly. Navdeep Mathur is Associate Professor in the Public Systems Group at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. He is founding co- editor of Critical Policy Studies and serves on the editorial board of Public Administration and Development. Before joining IIM Ahmedabad, Navdeep was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Local Government Studies, School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham, UK. Along with two co-authors he was awarded the UK Public Administration Consortium Prize. He is a Fellow at the Dr. Seaker Chan Centre, School of International Relations and Public Administration, and Indian repre- sentative on the BRICS Governance and Development Scientific Committee at Fudan University, Shanghai. He conducts research on ix x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS urbanism, resistance and alternatives to top-down urban planning and institutional design, and teaches courses on social justice, politics, inter- pretive methods, and public policy. Deepak K. Mishra is Professor of Economics at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research interests are in the areas of the politi- cal economy of agrarian change, rural livelihoods and agrarian institutions, migration, gender, and human development. He has co-authored The Unfolding Crisis in Assam’s Tea Plantations: Employment and Occupational Mobility (2012) and has edited Internal Migration in Contemporary India (2016). Recently, he has co-edited Rethinking Economic Development in Northeast India: The Emerging Dynamics (2017). Harsh Mittal is a doctoral candidate at the Public Systems Group, IIM Ahmedabad. His thesis conducts a post-structural examination of India’s urban policy-making, focusing on how practices of knowledge production shape and influence urban decision-making. His broader research interests are in advancing Deleuzian assemblage thinking and STS perspectives in policy analysis. Dipak Nandani holds a postgraduate degree in Rural Management. He has sound research experience and has a number of research papers in journals of repute. Earlier, he was associated with the Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmedabad. He works as an independent researcher on issues like migration, rural development, agriculture, natural resource management, land issues, industrial development. A journalist of repute, he has contributed close to 100 columns in Gujarati newspapers like Gujarat Samachar, Sandesh, Jansatta and Loksatta. He is also associ- ated with a number of NGOs, wherein he focuses on inequality, poverty and class conflicts. Pradeep Nayak is a civil servant in the Odisha Government. He holds a PhD in law and governance studies from JNU. He is a former Fellow at Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. His recent book is The State and Land Records Modernisation (2015). He has also authored Party Politics and Communalism: A Study of Ram Janamabhoomi and Babri Masjid Dispute (1993) and co-edited a book Communalisation and Tenth Lok Sabha Elections. (1993). He has contributed several papers to journals and edited books.
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