Beyond land grabs: new insights on land struggles and global agrarian change

This introductory chapter provides the context of India’s “land wars” and growing global interest in “land grabs.” It then details and critiques the three main theories of the relationship between dispossession and capitalism, which it calls the modernization, proletarian redemption, and predatory theories of dispossession. After documenting the shortcoming of each, it argues that dispossession is a social relation of coercive redistribution that it is organized into socially and historically specific regimes. The key to a comparative sociology of dispossession is to examine how distinct regimes of dispossession interact with diverse agrarian milieux. The book studies the interaction between India’s neoliberal regime of dispossession and the agrarian milieu of “Rajpura,” and argues that the result is dispossession without development. After explaining the book’s methodology and fieldsite, the chapter concludes with an overview of the book.

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Agrarian Change and Structural Transformation: Drivers and Distributional Outcomes

10.1093/oso/9780198799283.003.0005 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Agnes Andersson Djurfeldt ◽

Göran Djurfeldt ◽

Ola Hall ◽

Maria Archila Bustos

Keyword(s):

Structural Transformation ◽

Domestic Demand ◽

Agrarian Change ◽

Institutional Changes ◽

Crop Diversification ◽

Market Participation ◽

Farm Diversification ◽

Agricultural Diversification ◽

Multi Level ◽

Gender Profile

This chapter examines agrarian changes triggered by the structural transformation of the overall economy, focusing on their drivers and distributional outcomes. By means of multi-level modelling of three processes—intensification of grain yields, diversification of cropping, and non-farm diversification (pluriactivity)—it concludes that intensification has moderately accelerated and is getting more important than its twin process. Similarly, crop diversification has accelerated, while non-farm diversification seems to be more pull- than push-driven. The most important drivers of the two first-mentioned processes are commercial ones: increasing local and domestic demand for grains and for other crops and institutional changes promoting market participation of smallholders. The chapter concludes that these processes are not pro-poor, but neither are they pro-rich; middling smallholder households tend to be more involved. The gender profile of agricultural diversification seems to involve and benefit male-managed farms, whereas non-farm diversification is gender neutral.

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Political and Economic History of Land-Grabs in India

10.1093/oso/9780199477616.003.0003 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Peer Ghulam Nabi Suhail

Keyword(s):

Economic History ◽

The State ◽

Developmental Approach ◽

Land Grabs ◽

Indian State ◽

History Of ◽

The Media

This chapter begins with tracing the roots of colonialism in India, followed by understanding its various structures and processes of resource-grabbing. It argues, that India has largely followed the colonial approach towards land appropriation. After independence, although the Indian state followed a nationalistic path of development, the developmental approach of the state was far from being pro-peasant and/or pro-ecology. In a similar fashion, hydroelectricity projects in Kashmir, developed by NHPC from 1970s, have been displacing thousands of peasants from their lands and houses. Despite this, they are yet to become a major debate in the media, in the policy circles, or in academia in India.

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Capital in a Disputed Land

10.1093/oso/9780199477616.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Peer Ghulam Nabi Suhail

Keyword(s):

Detailed Account ◽

Land Grabbing ◽

Water Politics ◽

Conflict Zones ◽

The World ◽

Land Grabs ◽

Water Treaty

This chapter provides a detailed account of the Indus Water Treaty and hydropower politics in Kashmir. It argues, that peasants’ narratives are engulfed and ignored in India and Pakistan water-politics and provides a brief account of land-grabs around the world and land-grabbing in conflict zones. Land-grabs in Kashmir cannot only be understood through contemporary land-grabbing framework, hence this chapter also explains the processes, methodology, and significance of this research.

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