Promises of Development, Land Acquisition, and Dispossession

Abstract

This article examines how the futures promised by the postcolonial state through various projects leave peasants sceptical about a new government project at the rural margin of India. Focusing on a car factory project undertaken in 2006 by the government of the West Bengal Indian state, I explore how a half century-long project of land reforms shaped the dispossession politics of the peasants whose lands have been acquired for a car factory project. Based on an ethnography in Singur, this article explores how a car factory project at the very onset of its implementation instilled a sense of harm to life and livelihoods. Consequently, that project produced forms of spatiotemporal inequality between different socioeconomic groups in connection, not only with their ownership of land, but also with their respective vision of their work futures. Keywords: project form, dispossession, land acquisition, peasantry, India