Land Rights in India Policies, movements and challenges

This volume engages with the topical issue of land rights in neoliberal India. It examines government policies, laws, land governance and land reforms from the perspective of social justice and people?s response to dispossession of land.

Looking beyond the dominant discourse of land acquisition and the conception of land as a commodity for economic growth, the book explores critical themes including issues of social identity, culture, livelihood and food security through a study of land reform; reviews existing land policies and legal dimensions; and discusses issues and challenges of land governance and land dependents as well as perspectives from people?s movements.

Lucidly written, based on empirical research, and comprehensive in its treatment of a contentious concern, this volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of economics and public policy, development studies, political science, and political economy. It will also interest scholars of South Asian studies and sociology.

List of abbreviations. List of tables. Foreword. Acknowledgements.1. Introduction Varsha Bhagat-Ganguly Part 1: Issues of Land Dependents2. ‘If we have land, we would be human’: The implications of landlessness in a Bihar village Anand Chakravarti3. Reconfiguring ideas of land, river and forest in the context of the Indira Sagar Polavaram National Project on the Godavari R Umamaheshwari4. Politics of Commons: Power relations and intersecting gender, caste and tribe contestations in Rajasthan Soma Parthasarthy 5. Is there no alternative?: Land laws and tribals’ rights in Orissa Vidhya Das 6. Examining nature and composition of land lease arrangements in India: Exploratory analysis R Vijay and Y SreenivasuluPart 2:Revisiting Land Reforms from Social Justice Perspective 7. The political economy of land reforms in India: Retrospect and Prospect Mangesh Kulkarni8. Land rights through land reforms: A shift in the vision and social transformation in Karnataka Chandrashekhar Damle9. Issues and challenges of land dependents: The case of dalits in Uttar Pradesh Prashant Trivedi10. Revisiting Land reforms: Kerala Experience Suma Scaria Part: 3: Reviewing Existing Policies and Laws 11. Questioning Eminent Domain: Expanding the ambit of land rightsAnusha 12. The Land Acquisition Act 2013 and livelihood losersWalter Fernandes 13. Asserting community forest rights on forest land in India: Emergence of paradigms under the forest right actMeenal Tatpati and Neema Pathak-Broome Part 4: People’s Movements on Land Question 14. People’s response to Land dispossession: Comparative analysis of movements across IndiaSujit Kumar15. Revisiting Bhoodan and Gramdan in the context of land rights and social transformationParag Cholkar Part 5: Issues and Challenges of Land Governance 16. Land governance: Issues, challenges and way forwardB B Srivastava 17. The State and land records modernisation: Issues and challengesPradeep Nayak Afterword. Note on contributors.Glossary. Index.

Varsha Bhagat-Ganguly is Professor at the Centre for Rural Studies, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie. Previously, she was Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla. At present, her work deals with land administration and rural studies, focusing on development and social issues. Some of her seminal works on marginalised communities include Unnatural Death of Women in Gujarat (1989); Vihoni: Situation of Rural Widows in Gujarat (1994); Land Alienation among Tribals in Gujarat (co-author, 2000); Conservation, Displacement and Deprivation: Maldhari of Gir Forest of Gujarat (2004) and Changing Contours of Gujarati Society: Identity Formation and Communal Violence (co-author, 2006).