Land questions in the 21st Century Postcolony

Abstract

AbstractThe question of land, its commodification and role in capital accumulation has come to occupy centre stage in political economy since the last decade of the 20th century. Such concerns are however not confined to the agrarian question as in classical political economy but have emerged primarily in the wake of land being integrated into circuits of speculative capital accumulation constituting novel processes of dispossession. This financialization of land and accompanying processes of dispossession, often justified through neoliberal developmentalism, not only has consequences for agrarian actors and ecologies but also poses questions about the role of land in current accumulation dynamic, especially in transitioning economies in the global South. Based on a review of three recently published books on the contemporary land question and politics around it in India, this essay explores how such incorporations and dispossessions are driven by multiple developmental imperatives and asks what such logics mean for conceptualizing the land question in the 21st century.