Speculation in Land and the Predicament of Capitalist Urbanization

Abstract

The technocratic interventions in agrarian economy, since late 1960s, have consolidated the position of large landowners and farmers in north western India, and made them prosperous. However, there was virtually no land market in this rural society up till now; land was possessed and transferred within the extended family or kinship. The expansions of the National Capital Region of Delhi and the entry of speculative finance capital in the real-estate market have transformed land from being a means of production and premise of their being to a scarce commodity. Lured by this high price, the landowners have started to sell their land, or are holding on to it expecting further price escalation. The paper studies this reconstituted ‘rural’ society, and shifts the anthropological gaze from reproduction to emergence, as people move from the terrain of domesticated uncertainty of nature (i.e. agriculture) to the uncontrollability of the market. The transformation of land into a commodity has created a dilemma: the new money obtained by selling land can either be converted into capital by employing productively in an unknown and uncharted market, or to purchase land elsewhere for renting out and thereby convert themselves into a renter class. Either way, the landowners and farmers are forced to re-organise their being in the new political economy.