This study challenges scholarly claims about the unity of vision and purpose shared by elites in the making of neoliberal projects. As a critical history of the Karnataka Golf Association (KGA) suggests, social, political, and economic elites do not always pursue the same interests when using public land and other vital resources in service of private gain. Founding members at the club—among them industrialists, agriculture landowners, and salaried professionals—simply wanted to recreate an exclusive members-only space like the ones they inhabited elsewhere in the city, except with an international standard golf course as the main feature. Government officials without prior membership in these social and economic circles used their control of land and other resources as leverage in winning access to the club as permanent members. This chapter draws on a combination of interviews and archival material, including minutes to meetings, annual reports, and other memoranda, in order to reveal the strained negotiations that followed, and which ultimately produced a club divided by competing interests and loyalties.
History of Public Land Law Development