Dalits and Dispossession: A Comparison

Agarwal, Samantha; Levien, Michael

doi:10.1080/00472336.2019.1597145

Cited by 34 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…At the same time, this case demonstrates the difficulty faced by lower castes in gaining (and retaining) even low-paying wage labour in the SEZ. 39 See 'Dalits and Dispossession: A Comparison' (Agarwal & Levien, 2020) for an extensive comparative analysis of the Rajpura and Polepally cases.…”

Section: Dalit Debt Trapmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the same time, in the empirical discussion I show how the specific outcomes in Polepally differ from those identified by Levien in substantial ways and explain how those differences are rooted in the varying nature of project characteristics and pre-existing agrarian hierarchies particular to each region. I argue that the much lower compensation for a relatively labour-intensive SEZ in Polepally leads to more proletarianization and labour market incorporation, whereas in Levien's case, the Rajasthan government's policy of providing a stake in the real estate boom brings about more instances of upward mobility and petty asset management among the dispossessed (see also Agarwal & Levien, 2020). In addition to adding an important case to our comparative understanding of dispossession, this paper calls attention to an under-examined aspect of dispossession in the political economic literature: its effect on rural debt.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Indebted by dispossession: The long‐term impacts of a Special Economic Zone on caste inequality in rural Telangana

Agarwal

2021

Journal of Agrarian Change

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This paper contributes to a growing scholarship examining the ways in which dispossession in neoliberal India is reinforcing and reconfiguring agrarian social hierarchies. Existing studies have focussed on the differential successes of villagers in Special Economic Zone (SEZ)-generated real estate markets, incorporation of land losers into stratified labour markets and the caste-based politics of dispossession. Few studies, however, have systematically explored the long-term implications of state-orchestrated dispossession on agrarian credit and debt relations. Based on longterm fieldwork on a village partially expropriated for a SEZ in the South Indian state of Telangana, this study shows how dispossession has led to a sharp rise of overindebtedness within the land losing population. Dispossession deprived villagers of land and livestock; low compensation was inadequate to obtain replacement assets; and labour inside the SEZ was insufficient to ensure

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Section: Dalit Debt Trapmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Indebted by dispossession: The long‐term impacts of a Special Economic Zone on caste inequality in rural Telangana

Agarwal

2021

Journal of Agrarian Change

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“…Rural individuals and households with even small advantages in education, income, and social networksall highly bound up with caste statusare able to negotiate new opportunities for real estate speculation and construction contracts from which others are locked out (cf. Levien 2018;Agarwal and Levien 2020). This uneven terrain often produces compliance from the better placed, diminishing the potency of resistance, or it generates dominant-caste led protests with narrow aims of compensation that shut-out the interests of tenants and landless.…”

Section: Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Resistance to dispossession is often most fierce in mining areas, where both the displaced as well as those in neighboring villages face disastrous social and environmental effects from extractive projects; the results can take the form of a kind of paralysis, as Oskarsson (2018) puts it, with seemingly no settlement possible. Relatively generalized impoverishment has also been occurring in the case of some public sector SEZs, such as Polepally in Telangana, where largely Dalit semi-proletarians have been dispossessed with scandalously low compensation (Agarwal and Levien 2020).…”

Section: Outcomes Of Dispossession Under Various Compensation Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rural land dispossession in China and India

Andreas¹,

Kale

Levien³

et al. 2020

The Journal of Peasant Studies

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The twelve articles in this special issue feature the work of scholars studying the dispossession of rural land in China and India. Each offers new insights about the extent and patterns of dispossession, the complex dynamics driving it, the consequences for farmers, as well as the factors shaping resistance or compliance. Although each article treats developments within one country, the collection helps uncover features common to rural land dispossession in China and India, and illuminates differences that shape the processes of dispossession in each country. Comparison of the two countries helps us to not only understand the future implications of this enormously important issue for economic growth, social inequality and politics in both countries, but also contributes insights useful for understanding this issue elsewhere in the world.

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“…On the other hand, as we saw in Kurnool, bureaucrats also subscribe to the notion that the state has very few obligations to Dalit recipients of conditional titles like Kailash, and the land they received is a benefit rather than a right. Dalit land is frequently expropriated for large-scale development projects with the promise of economic development and social upliftment (Agarwal and Levien, 2020). However, although it seems as if governments have delimited a juridical field where land for subaltern groups cannot push past the discursive limits of paternalistic 'land assignment' and individuated claims, this governmentalizing process is belied by robust discourses of possession and entitlement.…”

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confidence: 99%