Neoliberal economic policies and private construction projects on dispossessed land are responsible for contentious land wars and inequitable development in rural India, said Michael Levien at a recent Center for India and South Asia event.

“People's ability to speculate on land became the chief determinant of their social trajectory and a major factor in their upward or downward mobility."

by Kevin Sprague (UCLA 2018)

UCLA International Institute, June 1, 2018 — On May 14, Michael Levien, assistant professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University, joined the UCLA Center for India and South Asia to speak about his new book, “Dispossession without Development: Land Grabs in Neoliberal India.” The book addresses India’s economic liberalization in the 1990s and the ensuing collaboration between economic elites, private brokers and state governments which caused “land wars” in rural areas.

Levien detailed his ethnographic research in the rural Indian state of Rajasthan, where private land was purchased for the purpose of constructing Special Economic Zones (SEZs), areas governed by pro-business commercial and trade laws. SEZs and similar private construction projects, explained Levien, led to non–labor-intensive development rather than productive growth and worsened existing inequalities.

Resistance to dispossession

“There was a feudal land system in place in [Rajasthan] until the 1950s… when the Indian government dispossessed citizens and farmers from land for the purpose of developing public-sector industry and public infrastructure,” said Levien.

The connections to the state enjoyed by the Indian upper class allowed people in this class to emerge from the dispossession process with significant holdings, he explained. This land redistribution provided a basis for economic diversification in the decades following India’s independence in 1947. But Levien argued that the process was also partially responsible for subsequent differences among castes and classes with respect to levels of business ownership, education, job quality and the reach of social networks.

For the second half of the 20th century, most land seized by the state was used for the construction of infrastructure, dams or other public projects, said the speaker. This changed in the 1990s, however, when the Indian federal government liberalized many of its economic policies. As a result, the demand for land on the part of private IT companies and the real estate sector boomed. The situation, explained Levien, incentivized the state to take land from farmers for any project that, according to traditional modernization theory, seemed to represent growth.

“Around 2007, there was a proliferation of land struggles across rural India prompted by projects bearing the stamp of India's new neoliberal growth model,” said Levien. Privately developed SEZs, private housing projects and privatized infrastructure were among the projects that caused disagreements — popularly dubbed “land wars” — in rural areas. Such projects were often financed via wealth that flowed from distant Indian state capitals and foreign countries.

“Something really seemed to shift in the mid-2000s,” said the speaker, pointing to the increased effectiveness of local protests against privatized projects on dispossessed land at that juncture. “The land wars are now actually stopping many of these projects… as opposed to the 1990s, when protesters were unsuccessful in their efforts and tarnished as ‘anti-development’ and ‘anti-national’ for opposing SEZs,” he added.

One such successful protest occurred in the state of West Bengal. In 2007, 14 individuals were murdered by police forces while they were protesting against the state government’s forceful acquisition of land in Nandigram for an SEZ. The tragedy sparked an escalation of citizen protests and the ensuing insurgency ultimately led the SEZ plans to be scrapped completely.

Akhil Gupta, director of the Center for India and South Asia, with Michael Levien.

(Photo: Kevin Sprague/UCLA.)

Consequences of SEZ construction

To understand the shifting relationship between development and dispossession, Levien conducted research in Rajasthan in 2011. There, he surveyed three rural villages where land had been dispossessed by private brokers working in conjunction with the state government in order to create a new Special Economic Zone. The SEZ in the area was planned to host the headquarters of an IT company and private residential buildings financed by brokers from Mumbai and Dubai.

“In the villages there was an expectation that jobs and infrastructure improvements would accompany the SEZ, but neither was realized,” said Levien. Villagers’ land was bought by wealthy developers who worked in tandem with state officials and offered varying purchasing rates per hectare, depending on the class status and caste association of the locals.

Construction of the SEZ created a water and fuel scarcity in the villages, caused the sell-off of livestock herds by both upper- and lower-class farmers due to lack of fodder and prompted skyrocketing local land prices. Very few locals were able to gain employment in the SEZ and those who did worked in low-level custodial and security jobs.

Levien’s interviews with villagers indicated that a majority of the profits that citizens had made from land sales in the dispossession process had been invested in other villages where land was less expensive. Additionally, locals reported feeling less fulfilled and less financially secure after the construction of the SEZ.  

Organized resistance to the SEZ was minimal and did not include the participation of those people most negatively affected by the project. The protests observed by the speaker amounted to a group of wealthy brokers who had been cut out of the development deal and sought remuneration.

“People’s ability to speculate on land became the chief determinant of their social trajectory and a major factor in their upward or downward mobility,” Levien said. Yet an individual’s ability to speculate on land relied on social connections and access to people of influence. “This system exacerbated pre-existing inequalities... making this development project a poor model for inclusive growth,” he concluded.

Despite minimal resistance in the villages he surveyed, Levien hypothesized that land wars were likely to be a long-term feature of India's political economy so long as dispossession without labor-intensive development remains a defining feature of Indian capitalism. Future protests, he hoped, might be successful and increase inclusion in development projects, limit land dispossession to cases with broad public benefits or even spark a political project that sought to reverse dispossession.

“[Protests and protestors against SEZs] should be seen as agents of development, not obstructions to development,” said Levien. He argued that what opponents were obstructing was not development, but rather a trajectory of capitalism that did not contribute to broad-based development.