Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the tension between two forms of social justice – land and welfare programmes – and intervenes in the scholarship that most often treats them separately. The paper does this through an ethnographic study of the demands for land by Adivasis (indigenous peoples) of Kerala, India.

Paper long abstract:

Landless Adivasis in Kerala, India, have been demanding land for over three decades, engaging in sporadic, but persistent, land struggles. They have been agricultural labourers for more than three centuries and are now hit by the larger agrarian crisis, pushing them into a severe crisis of reproduction. The state in Kerala, well-known in the literature for its welfare experiments, has been responding to these demands under pressure from social movements through the piecemeal distribution of land and the showering of welfare programmes in Adivasi settlements. The paper puts forth two key arguments, drawing on Polanyian analyses of countermovements and critical agrarian studies: (1) The piecemeal distribution of land is aimed at appeasing land struggles. This is a part of a world-wide trend that I call ‘landfare’, which moves away from radical land redistribution and addresses land demands through ad-hoc land distribution, (2) Land and welfare are in tension with each other in two ways. First, while the Adivasis demand land on which they can have substantive social and political control, the state tries to subsidise reproduction through welfare programmes. Second, the distributed land, by providing only a place to stay, is itself reduced to a welfare measure. The paper calls for rethinking the celebration of social justice experiments from the perspective of landless labourers in the global South. The paper draws on an ethnographic study conducted over 12 months (and continuing) in sites of land struggles, state bureaucracies, Adivasi settlements and sites of migration by the Adivasi labourers.