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Land grabs and primitive accumulation in deltaic Bangladesh: Interactions between neoliberal globalization, state interventions, power relations and peasant resistance
Abstract
This essay provides theoretical and empirical analysis of the interrelationships between land grabs, primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession (ABD) in the context of capitalist development. Evidence from a multi-class peasant formation in deltaic Bangladesh indicates that land grabs have been propelled by interactions between neoliberal globalization, state interventions, power relations and peasant resistance. Key roles have been played by illegal violence and de-linking of poor peasants from production organization and clientelist relations providing access to land. Establishment of a shrimp zone for export production has led to systematic eviction of the poor, backed by state power. Poor peasant resistance has shifted towards overt forms involving coalition-building and collective action. It is argued that the concept of primitive accumulation can subsume both market and non-market mechanisms as well as voluntary and involuntary transactions involving different degrees of intentionality, inclusive of deliberate dispossession, unintended consequences and negative externalities. Primitive accumulation and ABD correspond to distinct historical phases of capitalism and are subsumable under a generic concept of ongoing capitalism-facilitating accumulation. The dynamics of ‘actually existing capitalism’ display a two-way and recursive causal relationship in which continuing primitive accumulation is as much a consequence of expanding capitalist production as its precondition.
... Primitive accumulation is practised in transitional economies either through the use of force, coercion, abuse of state power, or accumulation through encroachment. Moreover, in such a context, land grabbing can also be analysed as the process of primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession (Adnan, 2013). In particular, land alienation along with grabbing is produced by a variety of actors, processes and mechanisms, as part of the complex interactions of neo-liberal globalisation, state policies and interventions, and involving power struggles, threats, violence and resistance (Adnan, 2016). ...
... Note For more clear understandings about the concepts can see: Kelly (2011), Benjaminsen & Bryceson (2012), Adnan (2013Adnan ( , 2016 Source Prepared by the authors based on Adnan (2013Adnan ( , 2016 however, does not suggest any measures to solve the problem. Moreover, it could not internalise the 'human-nature' relations into the resource governance framework. ...
... Note For more clear understandings about the concepts can see: Kelly (2011), Benjaminsen & Bryceson (2012), Adnan (2013Adnan ( , 2016 Source Prepared by the authors based on Adnan (2013Adnan ( , 2016 however, does not suggest any measures to solve the problem. Moreover, it could not internalise the 'human-nature' relations into the resource governance framework. ...
This chapter considers the case of the Sundarbans in Bangladesh—the largest mangrove ecosystem in the world and a hotspot of biodiversity resources—to explore the underlying causes behind the continuous and unabated loss of those resources. The chapter also seeks viable means or measures for halting the degradation process, revitalising the conservation process and ensuring the sustainability of the resources. By challenging the mainstream approaches, the chapter presents an alternative analysis to the sustainability of biodiversity resource management by means of a harmonious human–nature relationship. The findings exhibit that the fragile institutions, lax regulatory regime, nature of political settlement, unequal power sharing arrangements and the exclusion of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) in the conservation framework cause the degradation of biodiversity resources of the Sundarbans. The chapter, at its core, argues that the well-being of the biodiverse ecosystem essentially depends on human sociality constructed by norms, values and other formal and informal institutions.
... In Bangladesh, the complicity of political leaders, unscrupulous bureaucrats, government officials, law enforcement agents, and large landowners is increasingly evident in capturing and grabbing char (state-owned degraded land) lands (Feldman and Geisler, 2012) where they often build shrimp farms (Adnan, 2013). Instead of resolving conflicts and violence, officials of local civil administration in Noakhali (e.g., the Deputy Commissioner and Superintendent of Police) not only served the interest of rich and powerful political groups but also they became one of the influential beneficiaries by allotting shrimp farming land for themselves (Adnan, 2013). ...
... In Bangladesh, the complicity of political leaders, unscrupulous bureaucrats, government officials, law enforcement agents, and large landowners is increasingly evident in capturing and grabbing char (state-owned degraded land) lands (Feldman and Geisler, 2012) where they often build shrimp farms (Adnan, 2013). Instead of resolving conflicts and violence, officials of local civil administration in Noakhali (e.g., the Deputy Commissioner and Superintendent of Police) not only served the interest of rich and powerful political groups but also they became one of the influential beneficiaries by allotting shrimp farming land for themselves (Adnan, 2013). Although land grabbing for shrimp production is increasingly reported by national media, few actions have been taken by law-enforcing agencies or local civil administration against the 'manipulation of land records by powerful interest groups' (Adnan, 2013, p. 106). ...
... Though shrimp aquaculture has been contributed to economic growth, agricultural diversification, and coastal livelihoods' development (Rahman and Hossain, 2009), it has resulted in land grabbing and dispossession of poor peasants by vested interest groups. In southeastern coast of Bangladesh (e.g., Noakhali), grabbing of local char land to construct shrimp farms was led by political leaders (e.g. the Member of Parliament and Minister), bosses of local political parties, and chairmen and members of Union Parishad (smallest administrative unit) (Adnan, 2013). Under the Shrimp Mohal Management Policy, the Deputy Commissioner of Noakhali declared a total of 11955.59 ...
... In coordination with the international partners, the government exploits the bureaucratic system in getting the control over local natural resources for economic growth which are termed as green grabbing (Benjaminsen and Bryceson 2012) including land grabbing (Adnan 2013). In this context, bureaucracy is a coercive force (Gouldner 1954) against the nature, natural resources, and community livelihood. ...
... The government executed eight mega projects for 30 kilometers embankment rehabilitation and 1647 meters permanent slope protection in these three districts (Robin et al. 2018). Neoliberal globalization provides better opportunities in privatization process of state resources in favor of local rich people (Adnan 2013). ...
... Charland or newly emerged land in a riverbed is the consequences of inappropriate water development activities and defined by law as state property and the government has the major responsibilities to protect this land for environmental and community sustainability. Unfortunately, the government favors the rich people in gaining the control over this land (Adnan 2013). ...
Population displacement is closely connected with environmental violence in the coastal area of Bangladesh. Livelihood of local people depends on riverine culture, freshwater resources, and agroecological system. However the racially profiled development perspective, capitalism, under the grand narratives of modernity influences the eco-social relations. State machineries and international agencies promote the controlling of local natural resources to increase capital accumulation. One example of this development perspective is the Flood Control, Drainage and Irrigation (FCDI) program that was executed to reduce flood problems and promote agricultural modernization in Bangladesh. This FCDI program under the capitalist development perspective transformed local environmental conditions that create the survival challenges for the marginalized groups of people. Grounded on this environmental transformation and livelihood condition, this paper would like to explore the linkage between environmental violence and displacement based on the data of a research project entitled, Sustainable Development and Food Security: Assessing the Interface between Global and Local perspective on Environmental Sustainability in Bangladesh in 2021-2022. The data for this project is collected with social survey, focus group discussion, and key informant interview from a coastal district of Sathkhira in Bangladesh. The findings of the paper argue that flood control activities decrease environmental resources and agroecological practices and deteriorate which are responsible for environmental violence and displacement in the coastal area of Bangladesh.
... Harvey (2003,2005,2007) endorses all the elements of dispossession put forward in Marx's PA, say for example, the commodification of land and labor power, forceful eviction and proletarianization of peasants, and the suppression of indigenous mode of production. For Harvey, there is a need to repackage PA to become AbD to catch allongoing processes of capital accumulation; otherwise, he and other scholars underline the relevance of PA in modern times (Adnan, 2013;Carbonella and Kasmir, 2014;Chatterjee, 2017;Hall, 2013;Harvey, 2003;Kasmir and Carbonella, 2015;Li, 2009;Mishra and Nayak, 2020;Perelman, 2000). AbD is a process by which a surplus capital or overaccumulation in one place flows into the demanding territorial region in order to create more profit. ...
... He clarifies the role of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization in capital accumulation under the banner of aid and grant provided to the developing nations. Adnan (2013) supports the idea that the alienation of land and the eviction of peasants from their property is influenced by global factors such as the promotion of development interventions by international financial agencies. ...
... Nothing had been said about how PA does or does not work after the transition. Adnan (2013) illustrates that PA is both a precondition for capitalism to emerge and an ongoing process of capitalist production. As Perelman (2000) aptly puts it, PA should not be relegated to pre-capitalist past, rather it plays a continuing role in capitalist development. ...
In this article, I explore some of the implications of state land policy as an approach to analyzing the double dispossession – land and labor dispossessions. Despite a growing interest in the study of land dispossession in the global South, especially after the post-2008 financial crisis, examining the complexities between the land policy, land and labor dispossessions have relatively been overlooked. I discuss how the state’s land policy contributes to coercive land dispossession and how this aspect of dispossession becomes the precondition for the second dispossession – labor. The people who lost their land to investments concurrently lost their employment, and a new class of landless and jobless farmers is emerging.
... One group of scholars argue that primitive accumulation is an ongoing process that contributes to generating or expanding capitalism as well as redistributing existing surpluses (Adnan 2013(Adnan , 2016Baird 2011;Borras and Franco 2012;De Angelis 2001;Hall 2013;Harriss-White 2012;Harvey 2003;Luxemburg 2003;White et al. 2012). Luxemburg (2003) critiques Marx's narrow understanding of primitive accumulation by arguing that the idea of expanded reproduction does not alone contribute to expanding or sustaining capitalism; it is dispossession-driven by imperial force, war, fraud, and plunder-that continuously provides capital (raw materials and labor force) to the production sites. ...
... For Adnan (2013), primitive accumulation creates capitalist social relationships, but when capitalism further deploys primitive accumulation for its own expansion, both primitive accumulation and capitalist accumulation maintain a recursive causal relationship between them. However, this causal model ultimately breaks down in a loop of circular reasoning. ...
... The analyses above show that an interactive relationship is present among various kinds of dispossession, thus contributing to capitalist accumulation or to the reproduction of capitalism. As discussed in the theory section, Bin's (2016Bin's ( , 2017) three types of dispossession or Adnan's (2013Adnan's ( , 2015 idea of "reverse causal relation" between primitive accumulation and capitalism both fall short of understanding this dialectical interaction. While Marx (1995) finds no such function of dispossession under the condition of mature capitalism, this article has shown how dispossession is simultaneously present at the dawn of capitalism and during the developed stage of capitalism. ...
One particular focus of world-systems analysis is to examine the historical trajectory of capitalist transformation in peripheral regions. This paper investigates the capitalist transformation in a specific peripheral area—the country of Bangladesh. In particular, it examines the role of dispossession in transforming an agricultural society into a neoliberal capitalist society by looking at the transformation of Panthapath Street in Dhaka, Bangladesh, since 1947. Building on the existing literature of dispossession, this article proposes an approach that explains the contribution of dispossession in capitalist accumulation. The proposed theory consists of four logics of dispossession: transformative, exploitative, redistributive, and hegemonic. These four logics of dispossession, both individually and dialectically reinforcing one another, work to privatize the commons, proletarianize subsistence laborers, create antagonistic class relations, redistribute wealth upward, and commodify sociopolitical and cultural aspects of urban life. This paper’s central argument is that dispossession not only converted an agricultural society into a capitalist society in Bangladesh, but that dispossession continues to reproduce the country’s existing capitalist system. This research draws on a wide range of empirical and historical evidence collected from Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2017 and 2018.
... 3 Khas land refers to state-owned and other reclaimed lands. Adnan (2013) shows that the government allocates khas land to rich, powerful and large shrimp producers since the 1980s. This regulatory change dispossesses the landless people and facilitates land-grabbing process by the powerful actors. ...
... An everyday form of resistance is a common type of resistance in the study area as well as in the country. In the everyday form of resistance, what Scott says 'weapons of the weak', both identity and action of the protesters remain invisible (as cited in Adnan, 2013). In the context of this research, for example, the landholders now struggle with the corporate investors since they search land for their industrial/commercial project. ...
... However, this area now belongs to the commercial shrimp culture zone according to the Land Zoning of Bangladesh. This shrimp culture was initiated in the study area under the Structural Adjustment Program during the 1980s, due to the intrusion of saline water (Adnan, 2013). By producing exportable shrimp, this area is connected to the global commodity chain. ...
Transformations of land rights and access appear as a key element in the recently emerged contestations regarding the Rampal Power Plant project of Bangladesh. The government of Bangladesh in cooperation with corporate investors and vested interest groups transform land rights and access in the name of development. Under this development model, the government and vested interest groups take control of the local land by dispossessing and evicting the landholders, shrimp cultivators and landless poor. In line with this, the government shifts from its priority in allocating or granting a lease of the state-owned khas land. Thus, the government now allocates khas land to the corporate investors rather than the landless poor or shrimp cultivators. These land transformations necessarily bring divers consequences for livelihoods of concerned actors. Actors, therefore, react to the land transformations in terms of their own livelihood goals/agenda. Thus, the ruling party powerful actors, mastaans and vested interest groups align together and support the project or land transformations. On the contrary, the poor, powerless and dispossessed landholders protest. The local level contestations, later on, find its ally at the national level, and thereby the contestations receive an 'environmental label'. The concern for environmental deterioration then takes a reverse shift to the local area and eventually adds another element to the local level contestations.
... Nevertheless, challenges continue to increase in southern countries. In Bangladesh, industrial shrimp farming has resulted in conflicts over controlling and grabbing resources (land and water) and distributing profits (Adnan, 2013;Afroz et al., 2017). The cascading effects of such conflicts include violence, robbery, abduction, murder, and the dispossession of landowners and poor peasants in the coastal shrimp zones of Bangladesh (Saha and Kamal, 2023). ...
... In addition to the variance of the standards in corresponding to the FSF's constituents, they (Naturland, GlobalGAP, and FOS) also differ by the exclusion of sociocultural issues, particularly forced labor, human trafficking, equality, fairness, harassment, community relationships and conflicts, and labor rights and freedoms (Fig. 1). Moreover, none of the standards (which are used in certifying farms in the global south 5 ) explicitly consider several crucial social problems prevailing in the south that include land grabbing, marginalization, forcible eviction, and dispossession of poor peasants (Adnan, 2013;Afroz et al., 2017). These standards also disregard the well-being and interests of smallholders (Saha, 2022) subjected to exclusion from the global seafood value chain (Pauwelussen and Bush, 2020), who face food insecurity and poverty (da Silva et al., 2020) and financial constraints in terms of adopting advanced production technologies (Yi et al., 2018) and deem transnational eco-certification schemes "very expensive" (Schouten et al., 2016). ...
... Expropriation of farmland and its channelization to capital under neoliberalism has happened to be a central 'locus' of perpetual debate and conflicts between the states/capitalists and peasants regionally, nationally (Cernea, 1997;Fernandes, 2007;Sarkar, 2007;Sau, 2008;Sud, 2009;Nielsen, 2010;Padhi & Sadangi, 2020;Balaton-Chrimes & Pattnaik, 2021) and transnationally (Li, 2011;Millar, 2016;Adnan, 2013;Walker, 2006Walker, , 2008Chung, 2017). A flock of critics have sought to unfold the rapacity of these state-mediated expropriation of lands for capital by using some synonymous lucotionaries, such as 'land grab' (Li, 2011;Levien, 2012Levien, , 2013, 'land seizure' (Walker, 2008), 'land war' (Levien, 2012(Levien, , 2013 and 'land rush' (Millar, 2016), denoting thereby the state's forceful seizing of private lands and commons by exercising its 'eminent domain power'. ...
... While one strand of scholarships argues that the dispossession of peasants from their means of production (land) results in destruction of traditional livelihoods, deprivation of the property rights and marginalization (Cernea, 1997;Fernandes, 2007;Hui & Bao, 2013;Millar, 2016), the other one considers it an engine of oppression that leads to social exclusion, tearing social capital, unemployment and eventually destitution (Pantoja, 2000;Sau, 2008;Council for social Development, 2008;Venkatesan, 2011;Penz et al., 2011;Mallik, 2016). A third riposte (Walker, 2006;Banerjee-Guha, 2010;Arrighi et al., 2010;Levien, 2012;Adnan, 2013;Roy, 2022), on the other hand, has productively analyse the state's logical 'modus operandi' involved in expropriating lands and commons through the lens of Marx's 'primitive accumulation' (1976) and Harvey's 'accumulation by dispossession' (2003). The fourth set (Levien, 2012;Agarwal & Levien, 2020;Das, 2020) focusing on India also demonstrates the debilitating outcome of land dispossession through the lens of caste or social categories. ...
Building on a long-term qualitative field research and satellite imageries, this essay aims to illuminate how the local political economy and progressively mounting neoliberal capitalism have led to a process of shrinking rural land through grabbing of land and commons in order to build a neoliberal transformative global city and are causing a perturbing environmental degradation. It also aims to elaborate on how the local and national media played a central part in covering and bringing up these issues to the attention of the citizenries and state authorities.
... shrimp aquaculture; Adduci (2009) makes a similar argument in her study of the Chilika Lake in Odisha, but also alludes to a burgeoning "rentier class." Studies on Bangladesh by Abdullah (2016), Adnan (2013), and Paprocki and Cons (2014) all argue that higher income households derive the greatest income from aquaculture though Adnan (2013) speaks of de facto access through clientelism by small farmers and Abdullah (2016) acknowledges that small farmers too take up aquaculture but benefit less due to smaller operational holdings. Vandergeest et al. (1999) argue, in the context of Thailand, that the role of corporations was limited in the early phases of brackish water aquaculture in the 1990s and that in some regions of the country smaller farmers did take up aquaculture significantly, making it hard to generalize as to whom the main beneficiaries are. ...
... shrimp aquaculture; Adduci (2009) makes a similar argument in her study of the Chilika Lake in Odisha, but also alludes to a burgeoning "rentier class." Studies on Bangladesh by Abdullah (2016), Adnan (2013), and Paprocki and Cons (2014) all argue that higher income households derive the greatest income from aquaculture though Adnan (2013) speaks of de facto access through clientelism by small farmers and Abdullah (2016) acknowledges that small farmers too take up aquaculture but benefit less due to smaller operational holdings. Vandergeest et al. (1999) argue, in the context of Thailand, that the role of corporations was limited in the early phases of brackish water aquaculture in the 1990s and that in some regions of the country smaller farmers did take up aquaculture significantly, making it hard to generalize as to whom the main beneficiaries are. ...
The growth of brackish water aquaculture globally and in India is driven by a discourse that naturalizes salinity and sees aquaculture as an alternate livelihood and a good source of food and nutrition in coastal areas. In this paper, we take issue with such a discourse and argue in particular that brackish water shrimp aquaculture is as much a cause of increased salinity as it is a response to it. We also highlight, through a case study of two villages in south India, that aquaculture farmers are relatively influential in political and economic capital and are mostly not small farmers. The paper further claims the growth of shrimp farms in the region has resulted in a declining area under productivity of paddy cultivation and pollution of fishing grounds and drinking water as well. Our findings suggest the need for policy makers to take a more critical look at brackish water aquaculture and the possible irreversible costs that they might have on coastal lands and rural livelihoods.
... 290)similar to those in the ill-fated American strategy in Vietnam in the 1960s; and second, to pursue a policy of gradual extermination of the communities through a demographic change in the CHT. Adnan (2013) reports that, in consequence, many incidents of massacres, killing, rape, sexual violence, indiscriminate arrest, and abduction took place, which were mainly committed by the Bengali 'settlers', who had been moved to the CHT by the successive governments with the help of the military. notes that the government's other key aim was to Islamise the region by establishing mosques, terrorising people to convert to Islam, forced marriages, or impregnating women to slow down the natural growth of the people. ...
... notes that the government's other key aim was to Islamise the region by establishing mosques, terrorising people to convert to Islam, forced marriages, or impregnating women to slow down the natural growth of the people. Although after much negotiation, the Peace Accord was signed in December 1997, many researchers (Adnan, 2013; strongly argue that the political situation is far from being peaceful in the CHT to date. This is primarily due to the altered demographic character caused by the continued Bengali settlement programme in the CHT and the strong presence of the military posts, which were supposed to be removed as per the CHT Peace Accord, 1997. ...
... While one strand of scholars (Cernea, 1997;Chakrabarty et al., 2015;Fernandes, 2007;Hui & Bao, 2013;Millar, 2016;Nayak, 2019) focusing on developing countries impute the alienation of traditional livelihoods, deprivation of property rights, social exclusion and marginalization to largely these expropriations, a second riposte considers them engines of oppression, unemployment, and eventually destitution (Council for Social Development, 2008;Sau, 2008;Venkatesan, 2011). A third riposte (Adnan, 2013;Arrighi et al., 2010;Banerjee-Guha, 2010;Levien, 2012;Walker, 2006Walker, , 2008White et al., 2012), on the other hand, productively analyses these processes for the purpose of capital accumulation in the Global South through the lens of Marx's 'primitive accumulation' (1976), and Harvey's 'accumulation by dispossession' (2003)-a concept which is, as argued by Glassman (2006, p. 608), a reconstruction and redeployment of the former within the capitalist countries of the Global North. These studies have, however, linked the state-driven neoliberal 'new enclosures' (White et al., 2012, p. 621) and dispossessed labour force to the pre-industrial expropriation of land from the English peasantry who contributed to the reserve army of labour and ultimately ended up becoming urban industrial proletariat that virtually remained central to centuries of imperialism, and creation, expansion and reproduction of capitalist social relations (Hall, 2013(Hall, , p. 1583. ...
... The land-based neoliberal development ventures, on the other hand, unlike the post-colonial Nehruvian state developmentalism, undoubtedly exemplify a nonlabour-intensive and exclusionary growth model that has, as evidenced in many scholarships (Adnan, 2013;Banerjee-Guha, 2010;Dey et al., 2011;Guha, 2004;Hui & Bao 2013;Kamei & Sharma, 2017;Levien, 2012;Sanyal, 2007;Sau, 2008;Roy, 2019b), largely marginalised the dispossessed labour force. The neoliberal regime of dispossession has deprioritized the absorption of dispossessed labourers who are '"permanently excluded" and trapped outside the circuit of capital', resembling Marx's 'stagnant reserve' of the unemployed (Bardhan, 2018, p. 19). ...
The article attempts to understand and illustrate why state-mediated land
dispossession in India on a large-scale under the colonial, post-colonial and
neoliberal regimes became inevitably necessary, and how dispossession under
these politico-economic regimes broadly metamorphosed the structure
of dispossessed labour force. It, however, argues that the colonial regime
dispossessed peasants and tribals from their means of subsistence primarily to
exploit and extract resources in order to expand its unabated political power and
retain its industrial growth trajectory in England while the post-colonial regime
embarked on massive dispossession to obviate acute indigence of the Indian
citizenries by building state-controlled dams and industries for production, and
institutions for developing knowledge. The neoliberal regime contrarily aimed to
accelerate economic growth largely on capitalist lines. Both colonial and postcolonial regimes partly absorbed the dispossessed labour force in the production
processes, whereas neoliberal regime deprioritized its absorption, exemplifying
therefore an `exclusionary’, non-labour intensive growth model.
... Where the productive agrarian lands are getting converted (Maiti 2019;Rajakumari et al. 2020), and the process of massive depeasantization comes into the picture (Paprocki and Cons 2014). The depeasantization 1 or occupational transformation has two-way recursive primitive accumulation; firstly, it is the negative repercussions and at the same time a precondition for expansion of capitalist shrimp production (Adnan 2013). In the present study area (Bhagwanpur II block, East Medinipur), such landscape conversion-led depeasantization is very common. ...
... In a few years, the harvesting is becoming minimal, mainly because of the unlawful and intensive aggression of the farmers towards the enormous accumulation of wealth. Studies also have mentioned that the invested land cannot be reformed for any other use (Rajarshi and Santra 2011;Adnan 2013;Maiti 2019;Maity 2019;Rajakumari et al. 2020). This study also found the same consequences. ...
The present study attempted to understand the dimensions of changing agrarian livelihoods
because of haphazard adaptation of capitalistic shrimp aquaculture. Specifically,
using multi-temporal Google-based geodatabase, we quantified the artificial
conversion of agrarian landscape in an inland freshwater region of coastal Bengal.
Further, we examined the long-term viability of transformed livelihoods by adopting
a modified version of the Sustainable Livelihood Approach (SLA). The assessment
of changing livelihoods was based on empirical information acquired through field
surveys, focus group discussion (FGD) and key informant interviews (KII). Results
from the geostatistical analysis depicted that the shrimp culture in the research area
was very recent. In 2010, only 0.03 percent of the total area was occupied by shrimp
ponds. However, within a decade and an expansion rate of 18 percent/annum, the
conversion spread to 1/3 of the total study area. The findings also clarified that the
adaptation of shrimp cultivation increased the overall profit by 6400 USD/ha/year
over agricultural output, and resulted in a quick rise in the standard of living for the
shrimp farmers. However, in the long run, due to decreasing productivity and salinization
of the surrounding land, the conversion resulted in massive depeasantization,
augmentation of wasteland, and biased wealth accumulation led to a wide rich-poor
gap. Therefore, the entire ecosystem will suffer in the near future, if the local government
does not strictly impose Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
... The perceived distance between the jungle sarkar and the people motivated the prashasan (police and paramilitary forces) to intensify the anti-Maoist operations in the region. This episode is reminiscent of Adnan's (2013) rich account of multi-faceted roles of the state in land grabbing in deltaic frontier of Bangladesh. Adnan highlights how the state functionaries, on the one hand, used the promise of de jure land rights to the landless peasants to break their clientelist ties with the forest bandits; and, on the other, the police and security forces decimated the bases of the forest bandits only to transfer the bandit-controlled lands to political and commercial interest groups for the establishment of the shrimp framing zone. ...
... But, we have found that the AOC was consciously engineered during the course of the project implementation to carry out three main functions: erosion of labor's collective bargaining power, suppression and delegitimization of anti-mining voices, and the replacement of primordial loyalties by the market rationality. These essentially political functions of the AOC make it a mechanism of dispossession that feeds into what Adnan (2013) terms 'the expansionary dynamics of capitalist production.' Our findings suggest that development planning is a dynamic process as the volatile nature of social realities necessitates constant revision of both the components and strategies of any development project. ...
This paper examines how intra- and inter-class relations mold the development process. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the bauxite-rich, plateau of Gumla district in Jharkhand, a state in the eastern part of India, this paper uses an historical approach to trace the evolution of the relationship between a mining company and the local adivasi (indigenous) communities over the last three decades. It portrays how development in this mining region is operationalized through the use of compensation. This makes financial resources available to landowners, and in turn provides private capital an access to natural resources. Compensation, thus, unifies the opposing interests of capital and labor in their strife to maximize their share in the wealth generated by bauxite mining. Against the associational power of labor, private capital forges multiple alliances with power elites including the state. These alliances coalesce multiple power structures into what we term the architecture of control (AOC). Three main functions of the AOC are identified: erosion of labor’s collective bargaining power, suppression and delegitimization of anti-mining voices, and the replacement of primordial loyalties by the market rationality, which facilitate capital accumulation. This paper argues that the tension between capital accumulation and reproduction of household constantly reconfigures the development process which essentially increases dependency of the local population on the market. The paper warns that the benefit-sharing mechanism will justify and deepen the exploitation of labor in mining industries, unless the working class reinvents its politics to free development thinking from the concerns of capital.
... The eroded silt is carried towards the coast where its gradual deposition leads to the formation of new land masses called 'chars '. 4 These low-lying areas are composed of soil with comparatively high salinity and low volume of other minerals (Hobley, 2003). Historical population trends show that landless peasants and households who have lost their land to river erosion elsewhere migrate to these new chars (Adnan, 2013). This type of migration is quite common due to widespread landlessness and poverty in the country. ...
... The isolation of the chars from the mainland and the scarcity of proper infrastructure impedes the functioning of the public administration and the implementation of laws. The lack of legal enforcement and government control in the chars provides scope for land disputes and manipulations in the char areas (Adnan, 2013;Wilde, 2011). The jotedars, who are rich peasants and dominant power holders in their localities, generally on the mainland coastal areas, establish control over these landless people, by using gangs of lathyals. ...
Recent evidence highlights that integrated interventions have sustainable impacts on household welfare. This paper evaluates the ‘Char Development and Settlement Program,’ which targets marginalized, coastal populations of Bangladesh and is implemented by the NGO BRAC, which pioneers integrated programs in over 20 countries. The analysis exploits household panel data (2012, 2016) for over 2500 households living in 11 chars to measure the impact of a programme, comprising microfinance, health services and legal aid. Employing a difference‐in‐difference approach, we find considerable, programme‐induced increases in consumption, food security and legal awareness suggesting that an integrated ‘big push’ is efficient for poverty alleviation.
... Land acquired and destined for neoliberal development activities by the state, inter alia, reflects a fundamental utilitarian transmutation from a mineral and raw material 'extractive space' of colonial exploitation to an industrial 'productive space' of the postcolonial state developmentalism-what Nehru called 'temples to India's industrial modernity' (Parry & Struempell, 2008, p. 47)-to a private capital-driven 'speculative and consumptive space', spurring huge domestic and foreign investments and anticipating higher economic growth (Banerjee-Guha, 2010;Chakravorty, 2013;Levien, 2012Levien, , 2013a. Whether for linear or cluster development, dispossession of land for capital today is seemingly a fickle sociopolitical issue in India, and many other developing countries in the Global South including China (Li, 2014;Walker, 2006Walker, , 2008, Bangladesh (Adnan, 2013), Central and Southern African and Latin American countries (Arrighi et al., 2010;Borras et al., 2012;Chung, 2017;Millar, 2016). It is a manifestation of the 'hegemony of predatory neoliberal capitalism in the globalised Indian economy' and a connivance between the state and capitalists, where the former promotes an intrusion of the latter by dispossessing peasants from their means of production (Nielsen, 2010, pp. ...
... A second riposte considers them engines of oppression, unemployment and eventually destitution (Council for Social Development, 2008;Penz et al., 2011;Sau, 2008;Venkatesan, 2011). A third riposte (Adnan, 2013;Arrighi et al., 2010;Banerjee-Guha, 2010;Borras et al., 2012;Levien, 2012;Walker, 2006Walker, , 2008White et al., 2012), on the other hand, productively analyses these processes for the purpose of capital accumulation in the Global South through the lens of Marx's (1976) 'primitive accumulation', and Harvey's (2003) 'accumulation by dispossession' -a concept which is, as argued by Glassman (2006, p. 608), a reconstruction and redeployment of the former within the capitalist countries of the Global North. These studies have, however, linked the state-mediated neoliberal 'new enclosures' (White et al., 2012, p. 621) and dispossessed labour force to the preindustrial (seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries) expropriation of land from the English peasantry who contributed to the 'reserve army of labour' and ultimately ended up becoming urban industrial proletariat that virtually remained central to centuries of imperialism and creation, expansion and reproduction of capitalist social relations (Hall, 2013(Hall, , p. 1583. ...
Based on household surveys conducted in Rajarhat in West Bengal (India) in 2009 and 2016, this article illuminates how a large-scale dispossession of farmers from land for a neoliberal planned urban centre adjoining Kolkata Metropolis leads to a process of economic change and rural transformation, giving birth to diverse non-farm livelihood activities for the dispossessed households and contravening 'primitive accumulation'. It also argues that the benefits of speculative land value arising from neoliberalisation of spaces in the post-acquisition stage actuate the partially dispossessed households to sell off their remaining land and produce a basis for social differentiations and asset inequalities within the dispossessed households.
... It is indeed a fact that power relations and social position play a key role in Bangladesh with regard to access to the resources and services provided by the government (Adnan 2013). ...
... Prevailing socio-political contexts may also create specific impacts on landless people and their adaptation attempts. For instance, the absence of ownership of primary resources, particularly land, is very common among the minority and ethnic communities of Bangladesh (CCC 2009;Adnan 2013). The poor representation of these groups in social and political spheres further marginalizes their landless counterparts, making adaptation a major concern for them. ...
Bangladesh is ranked top among the locations most affected locations by extreme weather events over the last two decades and one of the potential victims of the consequences of climate change. Around 3.26 million rural Bangladeshi households are landless. These landless households usually constitute the poorest and most vulnerable groups in Bangladesh and are the first victims of climatic hazards. Despite the adaptation measures taken by the government and non-governmental organizations, landlessness generates constraints to adapt to the changing environment. Taking the above premises, this paper principally aims to unveil how landlessness poses challenges for the rural poor of Bangladesh in their endeavor to adapt to already emerging conditions of climate change. Based on qualitative interviews of relevant stakeholders, this paper finds that landlessness is a key challenge to the climate change adaptation process as it hinders livelihoods and income-generating activities of the people living in rural and coastal regions. Moreover, this study finds that landless people living near urban spaces are better placed to migrate to the cities for livelihoods and shelter. This study also adds insightful evidence suggesting that lack of access to land or land entitlement is a major setback to the existing climate change adaptation policy in Bangladesh.
... Similar outcomes have been discussed in work on other environmental mobilisations in the region (Adaman and Arsel 2010; Gürel, Küçük, and Taş 2019). The outcome is not surprising and in line with the global policies of structural adjustment and large-scale commercialisation that have subjected peasants to forced commoditisation and land loss, undermining their capability for self-employment (Adnan 2013). However, the resistance managed to revive, with broader support from various groups, broader alliances and coalition-building patterns alongside effective and innovative framing. ...
This article explores the complexities of agency in contemporary territory-based mobilisations in the countryside by focusing on water struggles in Turkey. Using a historical-spatial approach, it combines agrarian political economy analysis with human-nature interactions. Through an analysis of cash crop production and urban-rural interactions, this contribution argues that capitalist agrarian transformation in Turkey led to the emergence of an 'urban middle class with peasant characteristics', with a strong capacity for mobilisation and alliance-building. It also argues that this group enabled abstraction, place-framing and aestheticised resistance, common elements we observe in contemporary territorial mobilisations.
... Thus, land dispossessions may be caused by market relations, alongside a variety of other mechanisms for grabbing control that often involve extra-economic coercion (Grajales, 2011;Levien, 2018), as in cases where rural villagers are not expelled from the land at all and are subsumed in the emerging capitalist enterprises. All of these dynamics have revived old and provoked new axes of political conflict, and generated a range of political reactions from below (Adnan, 2013;Borras and Franco, 2013;Hall et al., 2015;Fameree, 2016). When land deals hit the ground, they impact already socially diverse and differentiated communities. ...
This book is about scholar-activism and political struggles for land. Scholar-activism is a way of working that tries to change society by combining the best features of radical academic and political activist traditions, despite the many contradictions and challenges that this entails. The role played by scholar-activists in land struggles is important, but is not straightforward. This book unapologetically celebrates the contributions of scholar-activism in land struggles and scholarship, but more than this, it is about exploring the contradictions and challenges facing scholar-activism. It is neither a glorification of the achievements of scholar-activism, nor a set of prescriptive propositions on how to ‘do’ scholar-activism. Rather, it addresses contentious issues in scholar-activism, many of which are rarely discussed, or are discussed only gingerly and awkwardly when they cannot be avoided. It is a book written by two scholar-activists who have focused their individual and collaborative research and activist works on the politics of land and the role played by radical agrarian movements. Insights in this book are drawn on the experiences of the authors working in the three main sites of global knowledge circuits: academic institutions, independent research institutions oriented to practical politics, and left-wing agrarian movements.
... Baqee (1998) describes similar processes of power and social relations affecting the settling of chars. Adnan (2013) relates local land grabs and peasant resistance in the coastal zone to national and international developments, such as neoliberal globalization; he shows how the establishment of a shrimp zone for export production led to systematic eviction of the poor, backed by state power. Critical analysis is not a recent development, as evidenced by Zaman's work. ...
This chapter examines the emergence and problems of current dominant policy narratives which naturalize 'climate migration'. By this we mean the portrayal of migration from (largely) rural to urban areas as a direct effect of increased flood risk induced by climate change. Instead, we argue that migration is one of the possible-potentially positive-outcomes resulting from the complex interactions and feedbacks between human and water systems, in which the role of local governance structures, policy responses and socioeconomic factors are key mediators. To denaturalize and re-politicize climate migration processes, we ground our discussion in the ongoing events in Bangladesh. We examine the current narratives on migration and climate change at the international level to analyse what general problem framings circulate and compare this to the numerous migration focused research projects in the Bangladesh.
... However, a factor that could pose danger to investment in property is Omo-Onile activities. Studies that have probed the adverse effect of Omo-Onile on real estate investment activities include Khan (2022), Mondal (2022), Obuene et al. (2021), Adnan (2013), Dabara et al. (2019). For instance Khan (2022) and Mondal (2022) Obuene et al. (2021) examined the occurrence of illicit activities in Ibadan with focus on Ajoda New Town. ...
... For example, the land-grabbing literature has documented cases of economically marginalized communities, such as wage labourers, marginal peasants, sharecroppers, agricultural labourers, migrant labourers, petty commodity producers, minority, and indigenous communities, involved in resisting a wide range of large-scale projects such as hydropower projects, special economic zones (SEZ), agribusiness, and commercial shrimp cultivation implemented by state agencies and powerful corporate actors (Chowdhury 2014;Bedi 2015;McAllister 2015;Sampat 2015;Adnan 2013). ...
Land-grabbing is an international issue closely associated with conflict and violence, as communities confront, through prolonged struggles, powerful elite networks involved in the illicit transformation of space. Resistance to land confiscations can be a life-and-death struggle especially for poor rural and urban communities whose livelihoods are tied to the targeted land. Because these struggles are often marked by corruption, state violence, and the persecution of already marginalized populations, they have become an area of emerging interest for state crime and state-corporate crime scholars. However, there is only introductory data mapping how communities resist land-grabs engineered through illegitimate state-corporate activity. Against this backdrop the following paper analyses a case of community resistance to land-grabs in Bangladesh using a contentious politics framework and the concept of land-laundering. The structure and activity of this resistance has been mapped through interviews with stakeholders involved in this struggle, complemented by documentary research.
... The classic example of primitive accumulation is when peasants living outside the capitalist system are dispossessed and their land expropriated, thereby turning them into wage labourers. On the empirical side, the range of studies assessing the process of accumulation by dispossession is relatively narrow with most studies focused on the developing world and concerned primarily with land grabs or water (Adnan, 2013;Arrighi et al., 2010). Nevertheless, there are a number of studies with an explicitly urban focus which relates either directly or indirectly to the role of the planning system. ...
... To take an iconic example, Bangladesh is constantly mentioned in the international arena as uniquely vulnerable to climate change (Adnan 2013). Flooding in 2022 left 7.2 million in need of aid, according to the International Red Crescent. ...
The politics of food, climate, energy, and the yet unfinished work of ending colonialism run square through questions of land. The classical agrarian question has taken on new forms, and a new intensity. We look at four dimensions of the agrarian question today: urbanization and labor; care and social reproduction; financialization and global food systems; and social movements. On this 50th anniversary of JPS, we as the journal's editors invite more research, vigorous debate, and scholar-activism on these issues in agrarian politics and beyond. We move into the journal’s next era hoping we might continue to better interpret the world in order to change it..
... Because of the loss of agricultural lands from the hardening of coastlines, the expansion of aquaculture, and concrete embankments that keep the land salty, the residents of Sundarbans have lost many traditional forms of work, such as fishing and agriculture (Ahmed 2018). The shrimp and crab aquaculture industry is known for creating, maintaining, and profiting from salinity intrusion (Guhathakurta 2008, Adnan 2013, Paprocki and Cons 2014. Both products are marketed for export, while the region they are extracted from struggles with food insecurity. ...
The relationship between everyday lives and the climate changed present is layered, complex, and deeply embedded in social context. In the Sundarban region of India and Bangladesh, the entangled web of development, anthropogenic climate change, and so-called climate change adaptation projects (such as concrete embankments, the hardening of coastlines, and brackish aquaculture) have interrupted natural adaptation processes and caused environmental degradation that negatively impacts those who live there. Scholars have called for better frameworks to link between everyday struggles and macro-level processes of climate change and development. Building on a long-term ethnographic engagement and existing theories of everyday adaptations to climate change, I utilize salinity intrusion as a case study showcasing the complicated interlinkages of climate change and development on daily life. I argue that there are three interlinked processes of increases and accumulations of salt: naturally occurring, exacerbated by capitalism and development, and exacerbated by climate change. Residents describe the consequences of salinity intrusion as they materialize in their bodies, evidence of the external imposition on their lives. I argue that although climate change is the cause of environmental transformation, it interacts with local conditions in diffuse ways that social science needs to pay attention to. Looking at the causes and consequences of salinity intrusion in tandem allows us to see past hegemonic thought and makes way for understanding climate adaptation outside of the constraints of neoliberal development paradigms.
... This is particularly alarming because private land which is lost to sea/river erosion is a personal loss that is not covered under any scheme of compensation or rehabilitation. In the Bangladeshi Sundarbans, if a new 'char' land emerges in the same location where an earlier private land had existed and was eroded, it would be considered as a case of re-emergence of the same private land (Adnan, 2013). In the Indian Sundarbans, however, even though cyclical occurrence of accretion-led char formation and erosion prevails unabated, the resurfacing of any charland is still considered state property . ...
The analytical inseparability of natural environment and society is reiterated by the findings of this study which contributes to a genre of studies that centre-stages the socio-ecological system. This study seeks to understand the interplay of state-related and other modes of securing property rights in the context of pervasive coastal hazards through a case study from the Indian Sundarbans region (Sagar Island in West Bengal). This paper also contributes to research pertaining to slow-onset disasters and attempts to examine emerging dimensions of land scarcity as well as diverse modes of access to land in the context of progressive ecological vulnerability. The analysis highlights the varying shades of declining land access and investigates how existing land policies and disaster management mechanisms remain far from extending security to communities experiencing environmental crisis. The paper thereby examines how community and state agencies adopting means to allocate property may in fact refute legality and perpetuate informality.
[] Mallik, C., Bandyopadhyay, S., Bandyopadhyay, S., 2023. Land scarcity and land access in a hazard-prone island: Sagar, Indian Sundarbans. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 44(2): 255–276. doi: 10.1111/sjtg.12493
[] Full text here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/BAACSFIXXM4GJWMTPJRS?target=10.1111/sjtg.12493
... For instance, in Bangladesh, violation of property rights through corruption and coercion has led to the displacement of owners and tenants (Feldman and Geisler 2011). The shrimp processing zone in the southern part of the country forced many poor farmers out of their land (Adnan 2013). Significantly, Indigenous Peoples' land rights are systematically being disregarded (Kapaeeng Foundation 2010). ...
This paper examines the challenges and opportunities faced by critical agrarian scholars in and from the Global South. We argue that despite the historical and structural limitations, the critical juncture of convergence of crises and renewed interest in agrarian political economies offers an opportunity for fostering a diverse research agenda that opens space for critical perspectives about, from and by the Global South, which is mostly absent in mainstream scholarship dominated by the Global North. We also propose doing so by enhancing solidarity to transform injustices within academia and other spaces of knowledge production and dissemination. To develop the argument, first, we reflect on the multiplicity of crises in rural areas and the changing character of social struggles, as well as the interlinkages between environmental crises and the re-emergence of critical agrarian studies that are reshaping the agrarian question. Then, we discuss the implications and conditions of the political agenda carried out by a scholar-activist movement working on agrarian studies from the Global South. Drawing on our experience as the Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists from the South (CASAS), we conclude by proposing three ways forward for enhancing solidarity through networks of scholar-activists: knowledge accessibility, cooperative organization, and co-production of knowledge.
... For instance, in Bangladesh, violation of property rights through corruption and coercion has led to the displacement of owners and tenants (Feldman and Geisler 2011). The shrimp processing zone in the southern part of the country forced many poor farmers out of their land (Adnan 2013). Significantly, Indigenous Peoples' land rights are systematically being disregarded (Kapaeeng Foundation 2010). ...
This paper examines the challenges and opportunities faced by critical agrarian scholars in and from the Global South. We argue that despite the historical and structural limitations, the critical juncture of convergence of crises and renewed interest in agrarian political economies offers an opportunity for fostering a diverse research agenda that opens space for critical perspectives about, from and by the Global South, which is mostly absent in mainstream scholarship dominated by the Global North. We also propose doing so by enhancing solidarity to transform injustices within academia and other spaces of knowledge production and dissemination. To develop the argument, first, we reflect on the multiplicity of crises in rural areas and the changing character of social struggles, as well as the interlinkages between environmental crises and the re-emergence of critical agrarian studies that are reshaping the agrarian question. Then, we discuss the implications and conditions of the political agenda carried out by a scholar-activist movement working on agrarian studies from the Global South. Drawing on our experience as the Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists from the South (CASAS), we conclude by proposing three ways forward for enhancing solidarity through networks of scholar-activists: knowledge accessibility, cooperative organization, and co-production of knowledge.
... Consequently, value chains require interaction, cooperation, and coordination of value chain practices to create more value and avoid the risk of opportunistic behaviour by individual value chain actors seeking to capture more value for themselves (Provan et al., 2007). At the same time, agri-food value chains are rapidly changing with globalisation, often dominated by one or a few powerful players (Adnan, 2013;Fitter and Kaplinksy, 2001;Foley, 2017;Reardon et al., 2009), and affected by the rapid development of digital techniques for data sharing and exchange (Barrett, 2020;Jakku et al., 2019;Reardon et al., 2019). Consequently, increased complexity of value chain cooperation and shifting power relations among actors are witnessed (Clapp, 2018;Clapp and Purugganan, 2020;Meuwissen et al., 2019). ...
Agri-food value chains are complex systems comprising of a network of interlinked and interdependent actors. To foster collaboration between these actors, trust between actors and in value chains is considered to be key. Despite growing scholarly attention an overview of to what extent and how trust is the role of trust in agri-food value chains is lacking. Employing a systematic review, this paper aims to explore the literature on trust in agri-food value chains to provide a solid knowledge basis for future studies into more specific aspects of trust. For our results, 139 papers were analysed published between 2001 and 2020. Studies were mainly conducted in Africa and Europe focussing on meat and vegetable chains. The results show a growing but dispersed field as studies hold a great conceptual diversity and theory building within the field of agri-food value chains is lacking. Based on our analysis we call for developing a coherent body of knowledge exploring the role of trust in agri-food value chains by: (1) employing a dynamic perspective on trust; (2) focussing on trust in agri-food value chain systems; and (3) focussing on the increasing importance of digitalisation for trust relations.
... For example, widespread and new capital investments in land in the Global South enable the acquisition of large areas of land and lead to new forms of landlessness, alienation, expropriation, and dispossession (Borras et al 2012). This involves both local, national, and global stakeholders and defies explanations in terms of the North or West taking over land in the South (Adnan 2013;Borras et al. 2012;Wachira, Stacey, and Adela 2020). In turn, processes of finance-driven resource accumulation result in changes in land ownership from small-scale producers under customary land tenure systems with negotiated access to land, to more restrictive, exclusive, and expansive forms of private land ownership (see Chapter 4). ...
Abstract:
Global Power and Local Struggles comprises nine empirical chapters and case studies from Latin America (Haiti, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Brazil); Sub-Saharan Africa (Ghana, Mozambique); Asia (Indonesia), and the Pacific Islands (Samoa), and which are inspired by 2022 marking the 40th anniversary of the first publication of the ground-breaking anthropology of global history by Eric R. Wolf 'Europe and the People without History' (EPWH). The chapters explain relationships between global economic and political power, and contemporary processes of exclusion and local agency playing out in the case countries, which are discussed and explained using theoretical and conceptual insights developed by Wolf. Key questions addressed by the empirical investigations include: How do contemporary dynamics of global political and economic organization shape local processes of social exclusion? Who are the present-day People without History and what role do they play in global forms of accumulation and production? And how do contemporary and historical economic and political power relations influence the production of local cultural and social norms? Broadly, the contributions attest to the making of people without history today from combinations of two forces: local struggles against unfavourable historical positioning in power relations which limit present-day avenues for social, political, and economic certainty; and destabilization and conditioning of social organization due to current imperatives of developing capitalism. The conjunctures of history and contemporary power mean that engrained processes of marginalization are often reproduced in new forms, which, in turn, give rise to new avenues and expressions of social struggle and organization as dimensions of political development and state formation. The theoretical contribution of the anthology is therefore its foregrounding in original, in-depth empirical analysis of contrasting contemporary contexts of exclusion, mobilization, and crisis, all explained and discussed in relation to Wolf’s theories and concepts. To set the scene for the empirical investigations, the introduction provides an overview of Europe and the People Without History; an outline of the main developments in Marxist anthropology since the publication EPWH in 1982; a discussion of contemporary developmental contexts in the Global north and Global south that produce different kinds of people without history; and a summary of the empirical contexts for each chapter.
... According to Lavers (Lavers 2012) and Regassa et al. (2018), large-scale investment in the Ethiopian lowlands, which are predominantly occupied by the pastoralists and semi-pastoralist communities, was prompted by a desire to consolidate the power of central government in the region and establish control over local people and their resources. It is believed that land grabbing resulted in the transformation of local agrarian environments through displacement of small-scale farmers, resulting in the "global depeasantization" and the "proletarianization" of dispossessed peasants (Adnan 2013;McMichael 2010). Ethiopia's continuing development, which is transforming previously self-sufficient farmers into a dependent workforce under an agenda of economic transformation in fact represents a localized example of stateinstigated land grabs. ...
This article explores the recent increase in the demand for sugar in Ethiopia, and the ways in which the distribution and sale of sugar have been manipulated for political gain after the country’s demand outstripped production and supply. It also examines how agro-industrial expansion programs have resulted in land dispossession and the resettlement of smallholder farmers in the southern Ethiopian lowlands who were promised better living standards through modernization. The results of this study indicate that the expansion of Ethiopian sugar projects took place not only because of the increased demand for sugar in the country, but also because of the global political economy that shapes the nature of development projects in Global South.
... The tidal ecology of the coast is particularly conducive to floodplain rice agriculture, which has been practiced in the region for hundreds of years. In the 1980s, major donors including USAID and the World Bank began to fund and promote the development of commercial shrimp aquaculture in this region under structural adjustment programs (Adnan, 2013). While artisanal aquaculture had been practiced locally during the rainy season in rotation with rice, these new programs involved the enclosure of large land masses previously used to cultivate rice, flooding tracts of land with brackish water required by shrimp. ...
Growing attention to the impacts of climate change around the world has been accompanied by the profusion of discourses about the lives, livelihoods, and geographies that are "viable" and those that are not in the time of climate change. These discourses of viability often invoke concrete physical limits and tipping points suggesting a transcendent natural order. Conversely, I demonstrate how viability is co-produced through political economic structures that exercise power at multiple scales in shaping the environment and understandings of how it is changing. I describe three dialectics of this co-production: epistemic/material (between ideas about viability and their biophysical and political economic conditions), epistemic/normative (between how the world is understood to be and ideas about how we should live in it), and inter-scalar (between geographic scales, where action at one scale shapes both ecologies and understandings of possible action at another). Each of these dialectics shapes the knowledge regimes that govern the ambiguous social and biophysical process of disappearance and foreclosure of livelihood possibilities in the time of climate change. I examine these discourses of viability through narratives of unviable agrarian livelihoods in coastal Bangladesh, as a lens through which to examine the dialectics of viability more broadly. I situate these discourses concretely in relation to an analysis of interdisciplinary social and natural scientific research on ecological and agrarian viability in coastal Bangladesh now and in the future. Across a broad interdisciplinary spectrum, I find that scientific attention to political economy shapes the politics of possibility. Finally, I demonstrate how discourses of viability limit alternative possible economic and ecological futures. I do this through a concrete examination of the co-production of viable agrarian futures within communities in coastal Bangladesh. These alternative visions indicate that the viability of agriculture is shaped by historical and ongoing decisions in the present about cultivation, water management, and development intervention.
... Much of the resurgent critical literature on dispossession draws in one way or another on David Harvey's (2004) influential theory of 'accumulation by dispossession' (e.g. Adnan, 2013;Gardner, 2012;Kasmir and Carbonella, 2008;Münster and Strümpell, 2014). Building on Marx, Harvey's concept treats dispossession as an intrinsic, continuous aspect of advanced capitalism, tantamount to plunder of agrarian communities for the ever-expanding interests of capital. ...
Ethnographic studies in sites of land dispossession for large capital projects have revealed the diversity of local political responses to this process, from fierce resistance to compliance. The theoretical challenge, in this context, is to trace the particular factors that affect this politics, and the conditions under which different reactions to dispossession unfold. Drawing on fieldwork in an Adivasi (tribal) village adjacent to an opencast coal mine in Jharkhand, India, this article seeks to contribute to this inquiry. It illustrates how, in a predominantly precarious labour environment, the possibility of formal employment as compensation for expropriated land, and the ways in which such employment enables class mobility, can play a salient role in shaping local political dynamics around dispossession. The analysis shows how, in the community studied, compensatory jobs for dispossession gave rise to new class differentiation and shifts in political relations that have acted to curb potentialities of resistance – precisely in a context in which opposition to dispossession could have otherwise been considered likelier to emerge.
... Shrimp farming has been framed as an activity that disregards local people's needs (Paprocki and Huq, 2018), and was propelled initially through land grabs by wealthy outsiders, exacerbating disparities (Adnan, 2013). Earlier reports (Swapan and Gavin, 2011) of external investors gaining monetary benefits at the expense of local people were not observed in the current study, suggesting these might be more exceptional than normative outcomes. ...
Export-orientated shrimp and prawn farming in coastal ghers has been associated with negative environmental, social, and nutritional impacts. This study challenges these perceptions based on field observations from four communities in South West Bangladesh. Most households observed (>60%) were either directly involved in seafood farming or engaged elsewhere in the seafood value chain. Our study set out to establish how the type and location of aquaculture impacted on access to and consumption of aquatic animals. Additionally, we assessed the effects of both household socioeconomic status and intra-household food allocation on individual diet and nutritional outcomes. We used a blended approach, including a 24-h consumption recall on two occasions, analysis of the proximate composition of aquatic animals and biomarkers from whole blood from a sample of the target population. The diverse polyculture systems generated broad social benefits, where “export-oriented” production actually supplied more food locally than to global markets. Key findings: (1) worse-off households achieved higher productivity of farmed aquatic animals on smaller landholding than better-off households with larger landholdings; (2) vegetable production on gher dikes was a significant source of nutrition and income in lower saline gradients; (3) more fish was eaten in lower saline gradients although fish consumption was highly variable within and between households; (4) intra-household allocation of specific foods within diets were similar across communities; (5) recommended nutrient intakes of protein and zinc exceeded daily requirements for adolescent females, but energy, calcium, and iron were below recommended intake levels; (6) n-3 LC-PUFA, expressed as percentage of total fatty acids, in whole blood samples of adolescent females declined with ambient salinity level regardless of household socioeconomic status; (7) analysis of aquatic animals consumed found that mangrove species and tilapia harvested from higher saline ghers contained high levels of desirable PUFAs. These findings suggest that export-driven, extensive coastal aquaculture can be nutrition sensitive when co-products are retained for local consumption.
... This perspective, that the ontology embedded in embankment theory and policy is at odds with the specific context of North Bihar itself, is loosely related to other studies of the intermingling of water and land in India, such as the flourishing studies of land-water disputes (Adnan 2013;Basu 2007;Cohn 1965;Ramanathan 2011), mining and water pollution (Alvares 2002;Mishra & Das 2017), and over-extraction and allocation conflicts (Cortesi & Joy 2021;Joy, Paranjape, Gujja, Goud & Vispute 2008). Closer interlocutors are Rasmussen (2016), who identifies in the Andes the collision of multiple ways of knowing water; Yates, Harris, and Wilson (2017), who talk about water infrastructure as a product of multiple ontologies; and, even more so, Mathur and da Cunha (2009). ...
The floodplain of the Himalayas is a land formed and destroyed incessantly by the water of its rivers. Measures intended for flood control, aimed at separating productive land from river water through earth levees, have instead worsened the inundations, disrupting the beneficial flow of soil through floodwaters, obstructing water drainage, and resulting in enormous waterlogged areas. This article proposes that the failure of flood control in Bihar, India, is due to misunderstanding the river as a matter of water only, hence attempting the conceptual naturalization of an otherwise relative ontological distinction between water and land. Local knowledge of water reveals that neither water nor land can even be named, let alone understood, without the other. Informed by ethnographic fieldwork and multidisciplinary research in North Bihar, this article presents land and water as being in intimate correspondence with each other. By virtue of comparison, the ethnographic encounter is held to defy other ontologies of water that see the two substances as being in opposition. As a result, this article posits ontologies of natural substances as ‘watertight’, sclerotic, mutually exclusive, unable to adapt, and prone to be caught in a semiotic conflict.
This paper explores the close interaction between environmental hazards and non-environmental factors inducing people to leave their areas of origin, augmented by the struggles they face and their urban survival strategies. Focusing on Aila-induced migrants in a slum in Khulna city, the study questions the conventional notion that environmental hazards singularly propel coastal inhabitants' migration. Instead, it asserts that migration results from a convergence of multi-causal factors, notably, the interplay between environmental hazards, socio-political and economic vulnerabilities, and proximity to ecologically fragile regions. Initially driven by subsistence needs, migration has transformed into something greater for many marginalized individuals. These migrants develop strong bonds with specific locations and location-specific networks, which facilitate their transition to urban life and allow them to mitigate the challenges associated with urban living. This study sheds light on the nuanced dynamics of climate-induced migration, emphasizing the necessity for comprehensive policy responses.
Going beyond the conventional understanding and debates in both academic literature and popular activism regarding peasants’ resistance, this chapter aims to explore the objectives of rural communities in their land rights movement. The focus is on understanding the meaning behind the peasants’ renowned chant, “ownership or death.” Does it solely refer to the ownership of agricultural land, or does it encompass something more profound? Are the peasants willing to sacrifice their lives for the denial of agricultural land alone, or does it symbolize a larger denial for which they are prepared to make such sacrifices? The central argument of this chapter is that the peasants’ struggles concerning agricultural land extend beyond resisting perceived attempts of eviction. Instead, these struggles aim to achieve or safeguard the ownership of the peasants’ collective social life within their village community. This chapter analyzes the culture of resistance among the peasants of Okara district in Pakistani Punjab against military landlordism. This unique form of landlordism involves the military’s control over agricultural land, which was inherited from the British military after the partition of India in 1947. The peasants’ resistance emerged in post-colonial Pakistan following the military coup by General Pervez Musharraf in 1999, which aimed to introduce a new system of revenue collection through cash rent, replacing the long-standing share-cropping system. The military’s imposition of this new rent-in-cash system became the catalyst for the peasants’ resistance. The peasants’ political resistance, organized under the banner of Anjuman Muzareen Punjab (Tenants Association of Punjab), advocates for the ownership of agricultural land. This resistance movement has given rise to a culture of resistance that liberated the peasants’ social life from military landlordism.
This paper aims to examine the nature of loan schemes for the urban informal sector workers (UISWs). This paper believes that examining loan schemes is an effective way of understanding the conditions of UISWs. Moreover, analyzing the perception of UISWs and loan providing agencies (LPAs) to each other is also significant in this regard. An important objective of this study was to find out the challenges that faced by UISWs. This study finds that negative perception (18.82%) towards loan providing agencies, lack of trust (22.35%), no need of taking loan (4.71%), possibility of being failure of paying back loan (17.25%), taking loan is a bad practice (23.75%) are some reasons of not taking loan. Present study finds that having political networks and socio-economic status have relations to get loan. Besides, loan providing agencies give importance to economic benefit of the agency instead of social development of UISWs.
This chapter analyses the Phulbari Movement, the largest ever anti-mining resistance in Bangladesh, and which forced the government to jettison a multi-billion dollar open-pit coal mining project in Phulbari, a region known for its significant ecological diversity. The proposed project would have affected a hundred villages, impacted Indigenous communities, dispossessed hundreds of thousands, harmed the environment, and distressed thousands of acres of fertile land. Drawing on land dispossession and environmental justice scholarship and analysing data from documents, reports, published interviews, and the first author’s direct observation of several movement activities, this chapter demonstrates the ways in which a successful grassroots mobilisation creates a new kind of politics by turning against the so-called development promise of extractive industries. The chapter advances our understanding of the process of and fight against marginalisation by underscoring how local communities mobilised themselves against neoliberal market forces attempting to destroy their livelihood and the environment. The chapter thus holds implications for scholars and policymakers discussing green potential in the global South.
Climate reductive translations of migration attract international attention, but result in three problematic misreadings of Bangladesh’s socioecological landscape. First, attributing migration to climate change misreads coastal vulnerabilities and the importance of migration as a gendered livelihood strategy to deal with rural precarity and debt- both in the past and present. Second, misreading migration caused by brackish tiger-prawn cultivation, infrastructure-related waterlogging and riverbank erosion as ‘climate-induced’ hinders a discussion of long-term solutions for rural underemployment, salinisation, siltation and land loss. Lastly, framing climate change as causing ‘gendered displacement’ ignores the importance of affective kinship migration in shaping single women’s migration choices.
Critical Agrarian Studies has three actual and aspirational interlocking features which together connect the worlds of academic research and practical politics: it is politically engaged, pluralist and internationalist. These features also defined the older generation of agrarian studies that gave birth to the Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS) 50 years ago, in 1973. Within a decade or so of the journal's inauguration, the agrarian world had been transformed radically amid neoliberal globalization. An altered world did not render agrarian studies less relevant; on the contrary, it has become even more so, but within a different context in which political engagement, pluralism and internationalism develop new meanings and manifest in new ways.
The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how a lack of policy attention has exacerbated the extreme circumstances faced by the Rohingya and how they can contribute to deterioration of their health, livelihood, and education, as well as their repatriation to their homeland. This article is based on data collected from field observations and interviews prior to and during the pandemic. This study confirms that the Rohingya refugee populations endure a higher level of suffering from lack of food security and livelihood, lack of basic amenities and financial resources, and accommodation is overcrowded compared with the pre‐pandemic period. The lack of a specific policy for the Rohingya has compounded the current situation in Bangladesh. This research is crucial for countries receiving refugees as well as the countries from which they flee and other actors.
This paper explores the 71-year (1947–2018) history of land expropriation in urban Bangladesh. It examines three interrelated questions regarding land occupation. First, how does the state and market pursue their mutual and competing class interests by expropriating land? Next, how does the state and market deploy primarily extra-economic means to seize land? Finally, how do actors, strategies and purposes of land expropriation vary from one political regime to another? This article addresses these questions by engaging with extant theories of land dispossession and class analysis and collecting a wide range of empirical evidence from Dhaka, Bangladesh. It argues that state and market actors in different political regimes use extra-economic means to accumulate land, creating preconditions for capitalism and expanding the existing capitalist system. To elaborate on this argument, it examines three factors of land expropriation: class, power and structure. The class dimension examines state and market actors who pursue their respective class interests by grabbing land. The power dimension explores land occupation strategies: who can use what forms of legal or illegal means to expropriate land. The structural factor shows how actors, methods, and purposes of land accumulation vary from regime to regime. Overall, this paper examines historical and contemporary forms of class interests attached to land accumulation, distinct mechanisms and purposes of land expropriation, and the nature of capitalist transformation under various political regimes.
The volume challenges dominant narratives of progress with a rich range of
investigations of local struggles from the Global south which are based on original
ethnographic research. The chapters take a point of departure in ideas and concepts
developed by the pioneering anthropologist Eric R. Wolf in ‘Europe and the
People Without History’, and emphasize the relevance and usefulness of applying
Wolf to contemporary contexts. As such, the collection contributes to knowledge
of dynamic relationships between local agency in the Global south, and broader
political and economic processes that make ‘people without history.’ This shows
global power as both excluding local groups at the same time as conditioning local
struggles and the forms that social organization takes.
This article intends to showcase that land grabbing of gauchar (pastureland) at the village level affects women and men in differing ways, along the variables of gender and caste. The article uncovers the notion that the link among gender, caste and access to common property resources (CPRs) are deeply rooted in the power dynamics of the caste-based operating system at the informal level. Drawing on intersectionality perspective, the article explains through ethnographic data collected over a period of time, in a small rural community in Gujarat, India, that women’s social location/standing leads them to have multiple identities, which defines and alters their gender relations, norms, negotiations and access to resources, in context to land grab of CPRs. Consequently, the article argues that group-based social differences and power structures ultimately determine access to natural resources and institutional base for women from different strata of society wherein the governance structure may fall short of addressing these issues.
Unlike the rest of Bangladesh, the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) has a substantial population of indigenous peoples (IP), known as the Paharis, against whom the state had conducted counter-insurgency operations until the signing of a Peace Accord in 1997. This chapter aims to provide a brief analysis of the factors determining the changing livelihood options and food security of the Pahari peoples over the preceding decades (1960–2020). The Pahari communities face acute food shortages due to episodic or one-shot disasters, as well as recurrent or periodic crises. Traditionally, they have coped with these by making adjustments in household consumption and extracting ‘wild’ food from forests and wetlands. However, these survival strategies have come under increasing pressure because ecological reserves have been subject to agro-ecological degradation since the disruptive impacts of the Kaptai hydroelectric project in the 1960s. Superimposed upon these aggregate trends of declining resources have been the adverse distributive impacts of land grabs taking place through state acquisition and private encroachment. In addition, distress borrowing by the IP, entailing payment of exorbitant interest, has reduced familial consumption, if not also loss of land held as collateral for debt settlement. These varied processes of primitive accumulation have deprived the Paharis of access to their means of livelihood and food security.Correlatively, lack of access to adequate education and medical facilities has undermined not only the capability of Paharis to enhance current incomes and food security, but also their long-term strategy of intergenerational upward mobility. While their solidary organization and egalitarian redistributive norms have historically enabled them to cope with food shortages and insecurity, its social bases has been gradually undercut by loss of common lands and resources, as well as the emergence of self-interested behaviour among their elites. The structure of causation underlying the deteriorating livelihood options and food security of the IP is therefore multi-factorial, subsuming social, economic and political factors, with state repression, ethnic discrimination, and direct and structural violence constituting the key antecedent determinants. The crises of livelihoods and food security facing the Pahari ethnic groups of the CHT is likely to persist, if not worsen, in the foreseeable future. If the IP communities now sheltering in the remote Reserve Forests are displaced yet again by ethnic violence and land grabs, they may be compelled yet again to flee across the international border into adjoining areas of India and Myanmar.
As a dominant trajectory animating global capitalism, neoliberalism affects, in multiple ways, land and agriculture across the African continent, including the lives of the peasantry. Though its effects are uneven and differentiated, it generally tends to marginalise the peasantry further or incorporates them into the global political economy in a subordinate manner while also generating new rural inequalities. In large part, this is because neoliberalism (as a class project) facilitates and entrenches capital penetration into the agrarian economies of African nations. In focusing on the land and agricultural sector in primarily southern and eastern Africa, this chapter examines key dimensions of the neoliberal project in the land and agricultural sector in primarily southern and eastern Africa as the means for framing the following case study (or nation-based) chapters in this volume. This includes discussions around a reconfigured land reform programme, a new wave of land dispossession called ‘land grabs’, and restructured agricultural and marketing arrangements such as contract farming, all of which have ongoing implications for levels of food security and poverty amongst the peasantry. However, the chapter also shows that capital penetration and the subordination of the peasantry under neoliberalism in Africa is prone to crisis and resistance.KeywordsNeoliberalismPeasantryLand reformAgricultureCapital penetrationAfrica
A discourse analysis of land grabbing literature, in general, reveals that it is dominated by the political economy approach, and that dispossession remains a governing theme. But dispossession due to land grabbing in India is not that simple. It is contingent upon the cultural subjectivities such as gender, caste, indigeneity, region and religion, which are local relations of power impacting land use and possession. In fact, the empirical studies prove the inseparability of the sociocultural realm with the economics of state-led land expropriation or market compulsion in the country. Thus, it is imperative to understand that the experiences of land grabbing and dispossession are highly contextual and diverse with an assemblage of perceptions over land.
In their introduction to this journal issue, the Land Research Action Network warns that a new global wave of land grabbing is underway. The current trend of investments is triggered by the interrelated crises in food, finance, energy and climate that have been spurred by decades of corporate driven globalization, neo-liberal policy regimes and natural resource exploitation. They argue that one positive outcome of the multiple crises is a renewed interest among peoples, academics, entrepreneurs, scientists and policymakers in alternative models of production, consumption and using energy and resources. They look forward to measures that will redistribute, protect and nurture land and water resources paving the way for a new framework of governance of land and the natural commons, which puts local communities in control of their own territories and livelihoods.
The concept of land reform has two different aspects, land tenure reform and land operation, or use, reform. Land tenure reform refers to a change in the pattern of ownership of land; distribution from large to smaller owners is only one aspect of this type of change. Land use reform refers to changes in the pattern of cultivation, or terms of holding and scale of operations, and reform in this area may be independent of, or only indirectly related to, land tenure reform. In this paper various reform measure since the early 1950s have been reviewed critically highlighting their positive outcomes and limitations.
This paper examines land grabbing in Bangladesh and views such seizures through the lens of displacement and land encroachment. Two different but potentially interacting displacement processes are examined. The first, the char riverine and coastal sediment regions that are in a constant state of formation and erosion, are contested sites ripe for power plays that uproot small producers on their rich alluvial soils. The second examines new patterns of land capture by elites who engage gangs, corrupted public servants and the military to coerce small producers into relinquishing titles to their ever more valuable lands in and near urban areas. These historically specific and contingent land grabs draw attention to in situ displacement, where people may remain in place or experience a prolonged multi-stage process of removal. This contrasts with ex situ displacement, a decisive expulsion of people from their homes, communities and livelihoods. In both the char and peri-urban case, we signal new forms of collective action in response to involuntary alienation of land resources in a rapidly and violently transforming political economy. We conclude with a caution against naturalizing displacement, casting it as an ‘inevitable’ consequence of changing weather conditions in the former and population dynamics in the latter.
Politics in peasant societies is mostly the everyday, quotidian sort. Hence, if one looks only for politics in conventional places and forms, much would be missed about villagers' political thought and actions as well as relationships between political life in rural communities and the political systems in which they are located. To make this case, the paper explains the meaning of everyday politics by distinguishing it from two other realms of politics and then discusses four types of everyday politics. The paper concludes by suggesting that, in addition to better understanding peasant societies, the concept of everyday politics makes us – researchers – further aware of, and realise the importance of, our own everyday political behaviour.
Unlike conventional economic theory, the paradigm of capitalist development contrasts peasant and capitalist production in terms of (i) the market-mediation of production and (ii) the relations of production and forms of exploitation. The structure of causation underlying the capitalist transformation of peasant production has been the object of much discussion and debate; however, there remain problems which are not entirely resolved or taken up. These have to do with the part-market economy of peasant agriculture, the complex and varying relationships between production and the market and the relative significance of market growth and class forces in propelling the process of capitalist development. The thesis aims at reconstructing some of these problems from first principles, drawing upon, in particular, the classical texts. It is argued that in peasant agriculture, production and distribution are interlinked by market and non-market sectors with specifiable properties. Such properties are compatible with different relations of production, so that the latter cannot be deduced from the former. Capitalist development, therefore, is not simply a matter of the growth of the market, nor can such change in the relations of production be adequately explained at the level of circulation processes. In fact, there are complex variations in the relationship between production and the market, manifested in distinct patterns of market participation by peasant classes. Analysis of the conditions of reproduction as a whole endows such patterns with a certain coherence and helps to identify the variable range of 'production problems' which differentiate classes of peasant producers. It is argued that capitalist production may not be undertaken either because it is not feasible, or because it is not systematically necessitated. Furthermore, the reproduction of non-capitalist producers cannot be fully explained without taking account of the relations of production, and corresponding forms of exploitation, to which they are subject. In particular, relations of production which systematically retard the generation of wage labour can constrain capitalist development because of the peculiar properties of land as a means of production. The problem, therefore, has to be posed in terms of the transformation of the pre-existing relations of production rather than choices made by individual agents/enterprises to maximize surplus or to switch to avenues with higher rates of profit. These illustrated arguments are with evidence developed in terms of a model which from Bangladesh, supplemented by that is from India. It is, however, not intended to be an empirical study of peasant production and capitalist development in Bangladesh.
How historians think about empire is important, because the study of empire in all disciplines depends upon historical reconstruction. Historians typically stress particularity, making each empire appear unique, anchored in its time and place, with its own distinct ideas, conditions, institutions and personalities. Yet historians also deploy standard frames of structural analysis which describe each empire as an exemplar of a type of political system, operating coercively, top-down, expanding outward from its central core to dominate subordinate peripheries, running through a lifecycle of birth, growth, decline and death, turning points to identify and explain. These standard features of empire histories facilitate comparison and generalisation about empire as a political form.1
The appearance of systematic barriers to economic advance in the course of capitalist expansion—the “development of under-development”—has posed difficult problems for Marxist theory. There has arisen, in response, a strong tendency sharply to revise Marx’s conceptions regarding economic development. In part, this has been a healthy reaction to the Marx of the Manifesto, who envisioned a more or less direct and inevitable process of capitalist expansion: undermining old modes of production, replacing them with capitalist social productive relations and, on this basis, setting off a process of capital accumulation and economic development more or less following the pattern of the original homelands of capitalism. […].
The core of class struggle in agrarian society lies in 'everyday forms of resistance', footdragging, dissimulation, pilfering, sabotage, arson, desertion, slander, not in organized movements and revolts. Argues for a wider understanding of peasant resistance, and applied this perspective to contemporary class relations in rural Malaysia, where the introduction of combine-harvesting has heighted class tensions, but where open protest is virtually ruled out. - from Author
Over the last two decades or so, the two most populous large countries in the world. China and India, have been growing at rates considerably higher than the world average. In recent years the growth rate of the national product of China has been about three times, and that of India approximately two times, that of the world average. This has led to a clever defence of globalization by a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (Fisher 2003). Although China and India feature as only two among some 150 countries for which data are available, he reminds us that together they account for the majority of the poor in the world. This means that even if the rich and the poor countries of the world are not converging in terms of per capita income, the well above world average rate of growth of these two large countries implies that the current phase of globalization is reducing global inequality and poverty at a rate like never before. Statistical half truths can be more misleading at times than untruths. And this might be one of them, insofar as the experiences of ordinary Indians contradict such statistical artefacts. Since citizens in India can reasonably freely express their views at least at the time of elections, their electoral verdicts on the regime of high growth should be indicative. They have invariably been negative. Not only did the ‘shining India’ image crash badly in the last general election, even the present prime minister, widely presented as the ‘guru’ of India's economic liberalization in the media, could never personally win an election in his life.
Since independence, landholdings in Southern Africa have remained highly skewed between the rich and poor, reflecting the land and agricultural policies adopted in colonial times and after independence. More recently, agricultural policies have been prescribed by the World Bank as conditionalities of multilateral loans which have both facilitated and also driven the growing integration of such countries in the world economy. This article argues that such integration is being played out on an increasingly unequal global playing field, structured by global agricultural commodity chains and international trade, and strengthened by those very policy prescriptions of the World Bank. Instead of overcoming the dual economies and regulatory systems created in colonial times, people living in the region have only seen growing poverty and deepening inequality. This provides the context necessary for analysing the World Bank’s recently published policy position on land reform. It argues that the approach taken by the Bank does not address the structural reasons for the distortions of land-holdings in the region, and moreover that such inequality is likely to be reaffirmed and reproduced by the Bank’s proposals. It further argues that the model of market-based land redistribution favoured by the Bank will be insufficient to dissipate the pressures of this ever-growing inequality. With considerations of ‘efficiency’ given prominence over other concerns, it concludes that the Bank’s policies are unlikely to meet both of its overarching goals of poverty reduction and growth.
This report aims to strengthen the effectiveness of land policy insupport of development and poverty reduction by setting out theresults of recent research in a way that is accessible to a wide audience ofpolicymakers, nongovernmental organizations, academics in WorldBank client countries, donor agency officials, and the broader developmentcommunity. Its main message rests on three principles
Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have become the epicenters of ‘land wars’ across India, with farmers resisting the state's forcible transfer of their land to capitalists. Based on 18 months of research focused on an SEZ in Rajasthan, this paper illuminates the role of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (ABD) in Indian capitalism today and its consequences for rural India. It argues that the existing theories of land grabs do not adequately explain why dispossession becomes necessary to accumulation at particular times and places, and seeks to reconstruct Harvey's theory of ABD to adequately account for it. It then shows the specific kind of rentier- and IT-driven accumulation that dispossession is making possible in SEZs and the non–labor-absorbing, real-estate–driven agrarian transformation this generates in the surrounding countryside. Land speculation amplifies class and caste inequalities in novel ways, marginalizes women and creates an involutionary dynamic of agrarian change that is ultimately impoverishing for the rural poor. Given the minimal benefits for rural India in this model of development, farmer resistance to land dispossession is likely to continue and pose the most serious obstacle to capitalist growth in India. The agrarian questions of labor and capital are, consequently, now rejoined in ‘the land question.’
Millions of Javanese peasants live alongside state-controlled forest lands in one of the world's most densely populated agricultural regions. Because their legal access and customary rights to the forest have been severely limited, these peasants have been pushed toward illegal use of forest resources. This book untangles the complex of peasant and state politics that has developed in Java over three centuries. Drawing on historical materials and intensive field research, including two contemporary case studies, the text presents the story of the forest and its people. Without major changes in forest policy, the book contends, the situation is portentous. Economic, social, and political costs to the government will increase. Development efforts will by stymied and forest destruction will continue. Mindful that a dramatic shift is unlikely, the book suggests how tension between foresters and villagers can be alleviated while giving peasants a greater stake in local forest management.
This article first reviews the alliance of money and power in post-socialist China, arguing that it has generated a peculiar form of the (so-called) primitive accumulation of capital–‘gangster capitalism’ – based primarily on a plundering of public wealth by power-holders and their hangers-on. It then examines the tidal wave of peasant protest in China over the last twenty years. It analyzes this rural social movement, however, as not simply a reaction to the power of the market, but also an independent elaboration of community, articulation of socialist/non-capitalist vision, and critique of urban-centered development.
Focusing on the countryside and rural poor, this article delineates the contours and considers the effects of the Indian state's adoption of neoliberal policies in the early 1990s. It argues that the shift to neoliberalism has produced a pattern of predatory growth that has privileged urban India, entailed a withdrawal of state support for the agrarian sector, and increasingly involved the forcible expropriation of the land and resources of the rural poor. This pattern and the neoliberal policies underpinning it have precipitated an agrarian crisis, while domestic and international capital have been the principal beneficiaries of the ‘internal colonization’ of the poor through dispossession and suppression. At the same time, the shift to neoliberalism has formed the specific context for an intensification of agrarian class conflict that has included the mobilization of rural elites as well as the rural poor.
