Member Book: D'Costa and Chakraborty (eds) The Land Question in India: State, Dispossession, and Capitalist Transition

Anthony D'Costa Discussion

 I am happy to announce that D'Costa, A.P. and Chakraborty, A. (eds) The Land Question in India: State, Dispossession, and Capitalist Transition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 368, 4 Figures and 36 Tables, ISBN: 9780198792444 has been published. Additional details can be found
here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-land-question-in-india-9780198792444?q=D%27Costa&lang=en&cc=gb#


The editors takes a fresh look at the land question in India. Instead of
re-engaging in the rich transition debate in which the transformation of
agriculture is seen as a necessary historical step to usher in dynamic
capitalist (or socialist) development, this collection critically examines
the centrality of land in contemporary development discourse in India.
Consequently, the focus is on the role of the state in pushing a process of
dispossession of peasants through direct expropriation for developmental
purposes such as acquisition of land by (local) states for infrastructure
development and to support accumulation strategies of private business
through industrialization. Thus land, notwithstanding its role in the accumulation process, has been, and
continues to be, a turbulent arena in which classes, castes, and
communities are in conflict with each other, with the state, and with
capital, jockeying to determine the terms and conditions of land
transactions or their prevention, through both market and non-market
mechanisms. The volume goes beyond the traditional political economy of the
agrarian transition question, and deals with, *inter alia*, distributional
conflicts arising from acquisition of land by the state for capital
accumulation on the one hand and its commodification on the other. It
provides new analytical insights into the land acquisition processes, their
legal-institutional and ethical implications, and the multifaceted regional
diversity of acquisition experiences in India.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prelude: Land and the Political Management of Primitive Accumulation, *Partha
Chatterjee*

1: The Land Question in India: State, Dispossession, and Capitalist
Transition, *Anthony P. D'Costa and Achin Chakraborty*

*Part I: Primitive and Contemporary Accumulation*
2: From Primitive Accumulation to Regimes of Dispossession: Theses on
India's Land Question, *Michael Levien*
3: Land Grabs, Primitive Accumulation, and Resistance in Neoliberal India:
Persistence of the Self-Employed and Divergence from the 'Transition to
Capitalism'?, *Shapan Adnan*
4: Agrarian Crisis and Accumulation in Rural India: Locating the Land
Question within the Agrarian Question, *Arindam Banerjee*

*Part II: Legal-institutional Dimensions of 'Regimes of Dispossession'*
5: Law Struggles, Lawmaking, and the Politics of Hegemony in Neoliberal
India: Towards a Critical Perspective on the 2013 Land Acquisition
Act, *Kenneth
Bo Nielsen and Alf Gunvald Nilsen*
6: Land Acquisition and 'Fair Compensation' of the 'Project Affected':
Scrutiny of the Law and its Interpretation, *Malabika Pal*
7: The *Adivasi* Land Question in the Neoliberal Era, *Rajesh Bhattacharya,
Snehashish Bhattacharya, and Kaveri Gill*

*Part III: Regional Perspectives*
8: Noncultivating Households Owning Land in an Agrarian Economy: Some
Observations from Andhra Pradesh, *R. Vijay*
9: Land and/or Labor? Predicament of Petty Commodity Producers among South
Indian Villages, *R.V. Ramana Murthy*
10: Land Reform in Kerala and West Bengal: Two Stories of Left Reformism
and Development, *Anirban Dasgupta*
11: How Much Land Does a Capitalist Need? Historical Patterns of Land
Acquisition and Indian Industrialization, *Mircea Raianu*
12: An Ethnographer's Journey through Land Grab for Capitalists by the Left
Front Government in West Bengal, *Abhijit Guha*
13: Land and Dispossession: The Criticalities in the Hills of Northeast
India, *Gorky Chakraborty and Asok Kumar Ray*

Postscript: Land, Livelihoods, and Late Capitalist Development, *Anthony P.
D'Costa*

Best wishes. Anthony

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Anthony P. D'Costa, Chair & Professor of Contemporary Indian Studies
Development Studies, School of Social & Political Sciences
University of Melbourne, John Medley Building (W406), Parkville VIC 3010, AUSTRALIA
Ph: +61 3 9035 6161
2015: After-Development Dynamics (on South Korea)
 
Book Series (Dynamics of Asian Development) http://www.springer.com/series/13342
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