Land wars in India: Contestations, social forces and evolving neoliberal urban transformation

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaper

Abstract

Land wars in India: Contestations, social forces and evolving neoliberal urban transformation
The recent incidents of ‘land wars’ in India have highlighted the contradictions and challenges of the neoliberal urban transformation through a range of issues across governance, equity and empowerment in the development agenda. Simply put, a strong top down approach and corporate-political nexus have determined the modality of land acquisition, compensation and ultimately the nature of its consumption leaving out majority urban poor from its benefits. The paper focuses on the concept of neoliberalism as a modality of urban governance and emergence of the grassroots activism as a countermagnate to neoliberalist hegemony by examining the inequity and marginalization that embody these ‘land wars’ in India and the forms of resistance from the grassroots - their capacity, relationship and modus operandi. Emerging lessons suggest the potential for advancing governance from the bottoms up leading to more equitable distribution of resources. It is however argued that there is a need for a stronger conception of the ‘grassroots’ in both epistemological and empirical context. In particular, the preconditions for the ‘grassroots organisations’ to foster and play a more effective role requires a more inclusive notion of ‘institutionality and plurality’ within the current political economic context. The empirical focus of the paper is ‘land wars’ observed in Kolkata, West Bengal, however references to other examples across the country have also been made.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 28 Nov 2014
Event15th N-AERUS Conference: Real Change? Exploring and Assessing ways to co-produce knowledge for tangible transformations in the cities of the South - Faculty of Architecture La Cambre-Horta (ULB), Brussels, United Kingdom
Duration: 27 Nov 201429 Nov 2014

Conference

Conference15th N-AERUS Conference: Real Change? Exploring and Assessing ways to co-produce knowledge for tangible transformations in the cities of the South
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityBrussels
Period27/11/201429/11/2014

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Land wars in India: Contestations, social forces and evolving neoliberal urban transformation'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this