Book Review Journal of Land and Rural Studies

7(2) 195–199, 2019

 2019 Centre for Rural
Studies, LBSNAA
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DOI: 10.1177/2321024919844427
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Anthony P. D’Costa and Achin Chakraborty, The Land Question in India:

State, Dispossession and Capitalist Transition. 2017, Oxford University
Press, New Delhi, `695.00, ISBN 978-0-19-881529-7.

The edited work brings out many interesting papers on the contemporary land
question in India that has brought out a ‘fresh look at the land questions’ in India.
Most of the contributors have focused on the process of primitive accumulation
and the role of the state in India facilitating such process. The book is forwarded
by Partha Chatterjee who perceives that the neoliberal political economy in
India will continue to aggravate primitive accumulation process due to opening
up of India’s economy for domestic and foreign capital. As per his views, ‘… as
industry, mining, commercial farming, exploitation of forest resources, and
urban development proceed rapidly in Asian and African countries, primitive
accumulation will also continue unabated’ (p. 14). The new Land Acquisition and
Rehabilitation Act in 2013 offers only better compensation but under the pressure
of corporate classes, it was made easier for facilitating land acquisition. Michael
Levien’s essay ‘From Primitive Accumulation to Regimes of Dispossession’
brings out how the dispossession of farm land has become central to the political
economy in India. The private industry and service sectors now lead the
dispossession process. Violent resistances to land acquisition have ushered in
‘land tensions’ in different parts of India, which have been able to significantly
obstruct the capital investment. The Indian state is caught between the compulsions
of electoral democracy and the pressure on farm land for the capitalist growth.
Michael Levien in his essay has argued that the Marxian theory of primitive
accumulation or David Harvey’s theory of accumulation by dispossession does
not provide a complete picture in explaining the contemporary ‘regimes of
dispossession’ in India. The contemporary dispossession organised by the Indian
state is based on ‘fundamentally a social relations of coercive production’. The
earlier phase of land acquisition in the 1950s were for public sector for production
of commodities. In addition, the contemporary phase of land acquisition for
domestic and foreign capital is for commodification of land where the state plays
its role as ‘land brokers for private capital’. Shapan Adnan’s and Arindam
Banerjee’s articles have not been able to address the emerging political economy
in land in India.
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The paper ‘The Adivasi Land questions in the Neoliberal Era’ rightly observes
that ‘the land question in adivasi areas is more complex than in other places as the
adivasis have historically remained outside the private property relations and their
community ethics often resist inclusion within the generalised commodity space.
Thus a new mode of governance recognising non-standard rights (community,
traditional and customary) and institutionalising consultation in lieu of or as a
supplement to market exchange was called for. The significance of the laws like
PESA and FRA should be understood in this context’ (p. 191). The failures of
these acts to achieve their objectives are due to the contradiction in recognising
the rights of tribals and the pressure of the capital to dilute the implementation
of the act. R. Vijay’s study revealed emerging trends of agrarian relations in the
liberal economic regime, viz. an increase in non-cultivating classes who own land
but do not self-cultivate. He found that there has been an increase in the numbers
of non-cultivating households over time so much that people who were previously
cultivators are turning into non-cultivating land holding peasant households. The
most irrigated district in India has the lowest cultivating households. For the non-
cultivating peasant households, land still continues to remain as a store of value
and a productive asset. The hunger for land of agricultural labour households for
their livelihood and keeping land as an asset of the non-cultivating households
have given rise to tenancy practices. Hence, in coastal Andhra Pradesh, there has
been a rise in absentee landlords and revival of tenancy. Such developments call
for restructuring land reforms strategy (Vijay, pp. 213–214). These developments
brought out by R. Vijay have a bearing on the Indian state’s recent policy
orientation to legalise the tenancy. R. V. Ramana Murthy’s study of three villages
in three regions of Andhra Pradesh offers a very significant development in the
nature of agrarian transitions and its impact on land questions. The subsistence
farmers in India are turning to petty commodity producers due to the influence of
market. The decline in size of land holding and land concentration, pressure of
urbanisation and industrialisation have given boost to non-farm employment. The
findings of the study will have a bearing on the Indian state’s policy orientation to
legalise concealed tenancy (Ramana Murthy, p. 217). The Marxian perspective of
progressive decline of petty commodity producers under the pressure of capitalist
development does not happen in the countryside. The persistence of petty
commodity producers despite their pauperisation and poverty explains the uneven
and complex nature of capitalist development. Its dependence on land continues,
and most of them are in below poverty line categories (Ramana Murthy, p. 236).
Mircea Raianu’s piece on the role of the state in promoting private capital is
significant. The Indian state continues its colonial practice of acquiring land for
private capital, though dominance of state in acquisition for state-led projects.
The negotiations of capitalists with multiple levels of sovereignty to further their
land acquisitions drive remain a factor in determining the outcome. Anirban
Dasgupta’s paper on the comparative study of the different trajectories of land
reform under the left front government in Kerala and West Bengal fails to provide
definite conclusions to his questions that were raised at the beginning of his
paper. It is a fact that the parliamentary leftist parties’ government in Kerala and
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West Bengal had failed to bring out a modicum of land reform goals, especially
the abolition of tenancy and ceiling on land holding, which speaks of the class
nature of the Indian state and its asymmetric social order. His conclusion is
that the land reforms in Kerala and West Bengal had failed to bolster capitalist
development in India, whereas in Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh,
the capitalist farming took place without having any land reform measures. But
he fails to take into account the role of the state-led green revolution and the
existence of propertied intermediate castes in promoting capitalist development
of agriculture in Punjab and north-western India. Gorky Chakraborty’s and Ashok
Kumar Ray’s papers bring out once again the emerging land relations in the north-
east India which is quite distinct from the tribal regions in other parts of India.
The contested nature of the political economy around land in the region has been
due to the state’s interventionist policy and the socio-economic and political
developments in the regions. The absence of land records, the community-owned
land ownership and development of individualisation of land holdings within
community land tenures have led to growing internal land alienations among the
tribals, inequality of assets and dispossessions. The opening of the north-east part
to domestic capital has brought out interesting developments, such as weakening
hold of the community institutions and traditional customary land ownership,
opportunistic interpretation of customary land ownership by the tribal elites and
demand for the extension of the Sixth Schedule provisions in the Constitution of
India their inhabited areas (Chakraborty & Roy, pp. 319–320). The authors have
not substantiated their arguments of the nature of internal land alienation, the
changing nature of shifting cultivation and growth of absentee landlordism and
rise in middle-class urban dwellers in north-east.
Abhijit Guha’s so-called ethnographic study has not brought to light the
attitude of the Bargadars (share croppers) and landholders to the land reform
policy enacted by the then left front government. His study has failed to inform
us the social roots of violent resistance to land acquisition for industrial purpose
in Nandigram and Singur and the rise of opposition to the left front government
and its eventual fall. Had he given attention to such basic land issues, we could
have got an idea whether the tenant cultivators or owner cultivators or both had
led the resistance to land acquisition there. However, his study brings out the
policy shift on land reform from land to the tillers to industrialisation through
land reform by highlighting the invitations to domestic capital and diversion of
farmland to nonfarm purposes by the left front government. Arindam Banerjee’s
paper on agrarian crisis and accumulation in rural area has failed to adequately
locate the so-called land question in his micro-study in the states of Telangana
and West Bengal. It is hard to find the so-called primitive accumulation in his
field work, the extent of dispossession and deprivation. Malabika Pal’s article
on the scrutiny of law and its interpretation offers an important analysis in the
context of violent resistance to land acquisitions. She argues that the only ‘test’
for justification of land acquisition is the procedure of fairness. Her perspective is
important as the Indian state pursues a strategy of industrialisation by acting as an
agent to facilitate the investment of domestic and foreign capital. She has raised
198 Book Review

issues on land questions likewise, whether acquisition should take place at all,
when compensation should be paid and what constitutes ‘fair’ compensation in
the context of the two most politically contentious questions. Kenneth Bo Nilesen
and Alf Gunvald Nilesen’s paper focused on ‘how law mediates India’s current
land struggles and to what effect’ (p. 130). They discuss how the RFCTLA & RR
Act, 2013 has sought to carve out a middle path or a compromise between the
interests of capital and subaltern groups. Though the Act has made concessions
to the demands of social movements, yet it has consolidated restructuring of
India’s political economy as neoliberal state. In sum, the primitive accumulation
or accumulation by dispossession does take place in India but not in the classical
Marxist framework, and the agrarian questions have not been bypassed in the
contemporary India.
Anthony P. D’Costa in his postscript writes that the neoliberal economy has
changed the value of the land. India today witness a different kind of primitive
accumulation in which the dispossession and decline of peasantry take place in
different forms, and the state plays a very critical role in the process. India still
continues to be an agrarian society in transition despite being on the path of rapid
industrialisation. Land, to him, does not play a source of capital accumulation,
though the dispossession continues. The emergence of non-cultivating peasant
households, persistence of petty commodity producers for subsistence living,
commodification of land and urbanisation, the failure of the absorption of labour
in urban rentier economy in the areas where land acquisition has taken place
and rise of middle class would all shape the contemporary land and agrarian
relations. Significantly, the democratic compulsion has forced the Indian state to
respond to the pressure of land losers and marginalised sections. The enactment
of the Land Acquisition Act (known as RFCTLA&RR, Act, 2013) is an example
of accommodating the pressure of the land losers and capital. The Indian
neoliberalism is ‘a curious mix of lagging primitive accumulation, leapfrogging
industries, and a vast persistent petty commodity sector’ (D’Costa, p. 328). An
interesting finding in the papers on land question is that the Indian state’s drive for
land acquisition and its democratic compulsion has come face to face, and hence
the compromise and accommodation strategy as evident in the Land Acquisition
and Rehabilitation Act, 2013.
Overall, many contributors have done a very good analysis in addressing
the contemporary concerns. However, the book fails to properly contextualise
how the Indian state started opening up the land regime for the domestic and
international capital. The volume brings out many interesting developments
such as the emerging political economy in land in the north-east, the persistence
of petty commodity producers and emergence of land-hungry non-cultivating
peasant households in coastal Andhra Pradesh, etc.; but, a systematic analysis
of the larger policy shifts from redistributive agenda of land reform to ushering
the regime of land liberalisation regime has not been made. This would have
helped the readers to contextualise how the Indian state is making a reorientation
in her land policy. The emerging political economy in land in rural and urban
areas have raised compelling questions like the very rationale for redistributive
Book Review 199

land reforms policy, demand for a right-based agenda of land reform by social
groups and the ‘reform by stealth’ approach by the Indian state in abandoning the
land reform and adopting the secure property regime (guaranteed title to land)
through modernising land records for growth of land market. The land questions
for the neoliberal state is how to produce the so-called legible land records and
clear property rights which can facilitate the transaction of land. The World
Bank’s report on Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction, 2007 and the
land policies of the Indian state in Five Year Plans since the 1990s have become
surprisingly similar so far as promoting neoliberal notion of secure property rights
in land is concerned.

Pradeep Nayak
Chief General Manager
Odisha State Disaster Management Authority
Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
E-mail: pradeepoas@gmail.com