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- Convenors:
-
Eva Gerharz
(Ruhr-University Bochum)
Katy Gardner (London School of Economics)
- Location:
- 25H38
- Start time:
- 26 July, 2014 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
Focusing on land dispossession in contemporary South Asia, this panel examines discourses of 'development' and changing power relations in the struggle over land. We particularly invite speakers who investigate these issues based on original ethnographic research.
Long Abstract:
Despite the rampant industrialisation and urbanisation that has transformed much of South Asia, land - and the access that different groups have to it - remains a central arbiter of power, wealth and well-being over much of the subcontinent. Yet whilst during the 20th Century the predominant use of land was agricultural more recently it is valued by those who appropriate it, usually either corporate or private actors or state institutions, as a commodity, to be used for property development, industrial sites or, as prices spiral, a financial investment. Often the most marginal groups in society, those who lose it face the loss of their livelihoods. Meanwhile those who appropriate it take recourse in discourses of 'development', the market, or national security to stake their claims. Struggles are thus ideological as well as material; what is at stake is not only access to resources but also the nature of economic development, the role of the state, the place of subaltern peoples in the 'modern' nation and deepening social inequalities.
In this panel, we will interrogate these processes through papers which address the following urgent questions:
- What are the processes whereby land dispossession takes place in contemporary South Asia in the name of 'development', national interests or security?
- What role does the state, the military, development cooperation and private corporations play and how are these interests interrelated?
- How do marginal groups and activists contest and struggle against these processes?
- How are discourses of 'development', 'belonging', indigeneity and security played out in these struggles?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
In the middle Indian Maikal Hills a process of ongoing relocation legitimated with the label of “development” can be analyzed out of the perspective of the indigenous Baigas: Problems of Naxalite terrorism and “primitivity” should be solved by approaches of “development”.
Paper long abstract:
The Maikal Hills are a mountain range on the Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh border. The region is rich in forested areas, natural resource deposits in copper, bauxite etc. and rivers like the Narmada and its several tributaries. The traditional land rights of the indigenous Baigas have neither by the British, nor the Indian Government been acknowledged. Instead of, they try to "develop" the as "primitive" considered people with their subsistence mode of production of slash-and-burn cultivation.
British started to resettle Baigas for agricultural extension and forest protection. Nowadays Baigas are again relocated for National Parks, opening up of copper and bauxite sources and big dam projects for irrigation and power production. The British introduced their abstract and concrete ideas of property, which are in contrary to Baigas ideas of Nature. Today the relocational processes are again legitimated by "Development". Simultaneously these approaches should tie the Baigas to the mainstream society and fight the growing influence of Naxalite activity in the whole region.
The State uses different Labels of "Wilderness" connected with "Primitivity" of the local Baigas and the naxal Terrorism to fight with "Development" approaches. In these way national (economical) interests seems to be more important than local: Current developmental approaches are sharpening existing problems and issues.
What different ideas of nature and property are involved in these ongoing processes of relocation? How are these imaginations related to "Development" and naxal Terrorism?
Paper short abstract:
Land dispossession generated through establishing army cantonments is a missing aspect of the contemporary land grab debate in Bangladesh. In my paper I will focus therefore on two empirical cases where local people lost their land because of establishment of cantonments.
Paper long abstract:
Bangladesh has one of the highest population densities in the world and subsistence farming is still the primary way of life for the majority of people. Consequently, access to land and to natural resources is hotly contested and land expropriations in rural and urban areas by state and non-governmental actors are crucial to domestic politics. Urbanization and neo-liberal development programs massively contribute to this dynamic and are widely recognised causes of land dispossession. While land appropriation generated through establishing army cantonments is less discussed aspect of the contemporary land grab debate in Bangladesh.
In my paper I will focus therefore on two particular empirical cases in Bangladesh where local people lost their land because of establishment of army cantonments. The danger of losing further land is ongoing, since the cantonments are continuously expending. In the paper I will discuss what it means for local farmers and their families to live in close proximity to a military establishment. I will also analyse the role of the army in the contemporary politics of Bangladesh, and to show the latent and continuous influence of the army on politics and society in spite of the fact that a 'transition' from military regime to procedural democracy took place in 1990 in the country.
Paper short abstract:
The empirical findings in this paper reveal the critical role of tree plantations in accessing land in the study villages. It critically highlights tenure dynamics behind the process of tree farming and accessing land by households and farms.
Paper long abstract:
The most evident agrarian change in the post-conflict Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh is the expansion of tree plantations. Tree plantations are expanding in a hybrid land governance context in CHT, where land tenure is insecure, land ownership is contested between tribal and migrants and large-scale acquisition and incremental land grabbing is occurring. This paper uses the results of extensive field research to analyse the local dynamics of tree plantations and how this form of (agrarian) change is closely connected to the process of land (dis)possession. The process and objectives of land access in CHT have changed over decades, amounting the process of primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession seems to be dominated by the ways local actors access land markets and their speculative incorporation into the Cadastral Survey. The paper presents cases to analyse different motives households and small-scale farms are likely to participate plantation activities without holding secured title. We also discuss the market logic of plantations and show that tree planation development in CHT is not only driven by profit motivation rather a new opportunity for (dis)possession.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines shifts in the management and use of a single grazing pasture in Chamba District of Himachal Pradesh. It focuses on conflicts between user groups and the changing ways that local norms of use are socially justified through discourses of development and of Indian nationalism.
Paper long abstract:
Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted over a period of ten years this paper examines shifts in the management and use of a single grazing pasture in Chamba District of Himachal Pradesh. Access to grazing resources by the nomadic Gaddi shepherds and Gujjar buffalo herders are supposedly governed by a complex system of official rights, permits and quotas. Where previous analysis has tended to suggest cooperation between nomadic graziers in the face of oppressive state regulation, the focus of this paper is on conflicts between different users and the changing ways that local norms of access and exclusion may be socially justified through discourses of Indian nationalism and new understandings of the relationship between citizens, state and market in post-liberalisation India. Outlining the interaction of different users and the changing ways in which they make and justify their claims reveals a range of access and use arrangements. Doing so brings into question traditional ideas of community and demonstrates a more fluid basis for the workings of common property resource management institutions.
Paper short abstract:
India’s ‘development as security’ strategy in mineral-rich, conflict-stricken Jharkhand is questioned. Using practices of assemblage, gaps between the will to govern and ground reality are analysed. A development plan is critiqued using secondary sources; empirical material informs improved praxis.
Paper long abstract:
This paper engages with the strategy of 'development as security' that India is employing in insurgency-affected regions. It focusses on the Saranda Action Plan as an example of this strategy for security/development in the resource-rich but politically-volatile state of Jharkhand. Its official aim is welfare service provision for indigenous groups, alleviating poverty while simultaneously rendering them pro-state. Promoted as a counter-insurgency measure against local support for Maoist groups, its effectiveness and intent have been challenged. Some suspect the underlying motivation to be to facilitate land acquisition and infrastructure development for iron ore mining companies. Outdated land tenure laws, despite recent changes, make state acquisition and subsequent transfer to companies a common practice. Empirical findings from five villages, largely comparable to the 56 action plan villages, are combined with policy analysis, recent mainstream media coverage, and insights from existing regional and thematic studies. These are discussed employing an analytic proposed by Tania Murray Li (2007) in 'Practices of assemblage and community forest management', "to explore the practices that fill the gap between the will to govern and the refractory processes that make government so difficult". The attempt, rather than a political indictment of current development efforts, is to understand and explicate what the will to govern does and what it tries (or at least claims) to do in present day Jharkhand. The hope is that this contribution may aid development planning that is more contextually relevant and holistic in outlook, and less susceptible to critiques of being reductionist, or worse, deceptive.
Paper short abstract:
This paper re-examines the widely debated development-displacement narratives of Singur-Nandigram, contextualising these against the contradictions embedded in the political negotiation tactics adopted by the West Bengal government to engineer a pro-market transition in its development policy.
Paper long abstract:
The India growth story has frequently been marred by increasing struggles over land acquisition-displacement, ranging from the ongoing struggles around the Posco site in Orissa to the protests over the Yamuna expressway in Uttar Pradesh and many more. This paper re-examines with one story that has attained a cult status in such development-displacement narratives - that of Singur-Nandigram in West Bengal¬. Between 2006-2008, state government initiatives to acquire land in these areas for developmental projects led to a series of protests that not only gathered political momentum to bring the government down in the subsequent elections, but also coalesced into a nationwide discourse against large scale displacement of peasantry in the name of development. The Singur-Nandigram incidents occupy a unique position in this discourse, as these happened in a state that was ruled by a communist government from 1977 to 2011, with a substantial development record of initiating large scale land reforms and democratic decentralisation.
This paper tries to present these incidents in a new light. It examines the process of negotiation that was spearheaded by political cadres of the Communist Party of India, Marxist (CPIM), trying to maximise local political benefits. It also attempts to contextualise such negotiations against a much larger process of the state trying to engineer a transition from its erstwhile development policy to a market-centric one, and argues that the celebrated failures of Singur-Nandigram are a culmination of the contradictory political character of the entire transition process, and an ideological deviation of the communist state government.