book Review
Accumulation by Dispossession
in India
Ramaa Vasudevan
T
here is a rich intellectual tradition
of engaged scholarship, where re-
search is sparked by the issues
and concerns of ordinary people and in-
formed by a commitment to their strug-
gles. This slim volume brought out by
Perspectives, a non-funded independent
research group started by some students
and teachers in Delhi University, belongs
to this tradition.1 It is a thoughtful and
provocative critique of the dominant
paradigm that shapes developmental
policy in India. Displacement has been
an integral constitutive component of
the process of development in India. The
Perspectives Team (hereinafter Perspec-
tives) seeks to address and refute the
premise that development necessarily
and inevitably involves costs in terms
of displacement.
To do this, the group explores the way
in which the process of development
syste­matically expropriated sections of
the population even as others – the
powerful and dominant section – cor-
nered the gains and benefits. The pro­
cess is fostered through forest laws, in
the name of preser­vation of wildlife
sanctuaries, the rush to exploit mineral
resources, the large dams, the jugger-
naut of urbani­sation and more recently
through the promotion of special eco-
nomic zones. As part of this investigation
they also visited a resettlement colony
in Delhi, coal mines and the villages
where land acquisition is imminent in
Asansol and Durgapur, the Chandil dam
site, sites for the proposed iron and
steel factories in Tentoposi, villages
affected by Turamidih uranium mines,
and the Dalma elephant sanctuary in
Jharkhand. So the analysis is firmly
rooted in an attempt to comprehend the
actual experiences of the people on
whom sacrifices are imposed in the name
of “development”, peoples at the margin
of society for whom it is a matter of life
and livelihood.
Economic & Political Weekly  EPW   march 15, 2008
Abandoned: Development and Displacement
by The Perspectives Team; Perspectives, New Delhi, 2007;
pp 196, Rs 50.
The book begins by refuting the argu-
ment that the link between development
and displacement is an outcome of faulty
legal structures. Beginning with a discus-
sion of the legal framework, Perspectives
looks at a whole range of laws from the
Forest (Conservation) Act and the Wild-
life (Protection) Act, to the Panchayats
(Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act,
and the Special Economic Zones Act (the
SEZs Act, in short) to show how the
social context of the enactment and im-
plementation of laws leads to the in-
fringements of the rights and interests of
already marginalised people – landless
labourers, small peasants, tribals and
dalits. At the same time, legal safeguards
and protections for these sections are in
practice subverted.
One of the most powerful legal princi-
ples that have been deployed to effect the
displacement of people is that of “eminent
domain”. The principle enshrined in the
colonial Land Acquisition Act of 1894
was used to take over land for mines,
plantations and railways while cement-
ing the strategic position of the Indian
colony as a supplier for cheap raw mate-
rials for the British industrial revolution.
The law allows the state to acquire land
for “public purpose” by executive fiat
while disregarding considerations of the
life and livelihood of those dependent on
these lands. It was deployed in the pursuit
of the goals of developmental planning
that was to realise the Nehruvian vision
of a modern industrial India. The law con-
tinues to enjoy legitimacy and sanction in
the period of liberalisation where it is
used to make land resources avail­able to
corporate capital. It is for instance at the
heart of land acquisition under the SEZs
Act. Public purpose in this Act is stretched
to include real estate development, leisure
and entertainment, and a vaguely defined
social infrastructure.
One of the most pressing issues raised
by Perspectives is the need to critique
this colonial relic. Through this principle
the power of the state is pitted against
interests of the people not for wider pub-
lic good but to facilitate the pursuit of
private profits. It is the lever that enables
the dispossession and displacement of
the labouring poor, turning over land
and the common property resources that
have formed the basis of their livelihood
to industrialists and corporations. The
magnitude of the problem of displace-
ment, the abysmal record of rehabilita-
tion, especially in the context of the
protests around the Narmada Valley
project, forced the issue into public de-
bates. But even the recently notified
National Rehabilitation and Resettle-
ment Policy of 2007 – meant to safeguard
the interests of those displaced by the de-
velopment projects – is built around the
sanctity of the principle of eminent do-
main (and the amended Land Acquisition
Act that further extends the meaning of
“public purpose”).
The 1894 Act was the product of a
colonial state that had wrought its own
industrial revolution through the enclo-
sure of the commons – a process that
threw masses of the peasantry out of its
traditional lands, creating the industrial
working class. The enclosure movement
was an integral part of the historical
process of plunder and expropriation –
“primitive accumulation” – that forged
capitalist relations.2 From the account of
India‘s developmental pro­cess presented
by the Perspectives team, it would appear
that the spirit of this Act has been
preserved and is now being deployed to
promote the neoliberal agenda that
has drawn India more securely into the
embrace of global corporate capitalism.
Accumulation by Dispossession
Harvey3 has argued that imperialism in
the age of neoliberalism has rediscovered
“the original sin of simple robbery”. Global
capitalism continues to recreate, preserve
and extend itself through an ongoing
process of primitive accumulation. In
Harvey’s exposition this process of
“accumulation by dispossession” is actively
41
book Review

promoted through the neoliberal agenda.
In India this process has been driven in
particular through privatisation of re-
sources held in common and state redistri-
butions in favour of capital (for instance,
tax exemptions). The investigations and
fact findings of Perspectives are a stark
testimony to the process of accumulation
by dispossession in India.
The book chronicles the various pre-
texts by which the Indian state has dis-
placed people while serving the interests
of corporate capital. Liberalisation has
for instance entailed the active promo-
tion of mining interests in the regions of
Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa,
both through the privatisation of public
sector enterprises and by opening theses
regions to foreign capital (for instance,
the Utkal Alumina refinery at Kashipur
and the POSCO plant at Jagatsighpur). Land
is taken over, natural resources, including
forests and rivers, denuded and exploited
by big corporate capital while the ordinary
people living in these regions face
the loss of their lands and livelihood.
The team’s report of their visit to coal
mines around Asansol bears witness to
some of these devastating effects. The
marginalisation of tribals under the forest
laws now subsumed in the recent initia-
tives to court industry by granting rights
to degraded forest lands and wastelands
– the so-called “multi-stakeholder partner-
ship for forestation” that is simply another
means of commercialising forests. Again,
dams have been one of the major causes
of displacement in India. The policy debate
on the efficacy, performance, environmen-
tal consequences and cost effectiveness of
these large river valley projects continues
in the face of social movements opposing
such projects and empirical research dis-
puting their benefits. What is indisputable
is the fact of the 40 million people, largely
dalits, adivasis, and small and landless
peasants, displaced due to such projects in
India. It is equally clear that the biggest
bene­ficiaries are large landowners and
organised industry.
Apart from seizing land to enable
corporate capital to set up mines, dams,
infrastructure and other industrial
projects, the state is now deploying the
SEZs Act to takeover vast tracts of land for
the same end of boosting corporate prof-
its. As states vie with each other in their
aggressive pursuit of foreign capital,
farmlands are being handed over to
private capital for infrastructure deve­
lopment in these enclaves with stream-
lined procedures, tax breaks and good
infrastructure that aim to lure investors in
export-oriented industries.
Even as the state seeks to facilitate the
procedures and concessions for corporate
capital the mechanisms of redress and
rehabilitation for those dispossessed by
these acquisitions remains opaque, inade-
quate and tortuous. Ignoring the recom-
mendations of the National Advisory
Council, the proposed national rehabilita-
tion and relief policy provides for “fast-
track exercise for land acquisition” and
does not incorporate transparent, equi-
table and adequate procedures for con-
sultation, contestation and compensa-
tion. Millions of the labouring poor are
driven out of their lands by this relentless
logic of accumulation by dispossession
and in the absence of any meaningful
rehabilitation policy, seek a livelihood in
the proliferating urban centres. Here too,
they bear the brunt of the forces of dis-
placement through closures, demolitions
and sealing operations in the name of
refashioning the urban landscape into

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42 march 15, 2008  EPW   Economic & Political Weekly


“global, investor-friendly havens” – the so-
called “urban renewal missions”.
Neoliberal Development Vision
In the face of this evidence of the system-
atic and relentless logic of accumulation
by dispossession, the book argues that the
“issues of displacement cannot be looked
at in isolation” but are integral to the dis-
torted developmental model that is being
espoused – the basis of the unprecedented
growth performance (with the rate of
growth of real gross domestic product
expected to cross 9 per cent). This growth
performance has been characterised by
agrarian stagnation on the one hand and
the disproportionate growth of the services
sector. A major impetus to industrial per-
formance in the period of reforms came
from the surge in the growth of consumer
durables demanded by the large upper
middle class. The developmental model,
based on the logic of global corporate cap-
ital, derives its impetus from the expro-
priation of the rural poor, the exploitation
of natural and common property resources.
While documenting the phenomena of
“developmental terrorism”, Perspectives
stresses that the repeated instances of
state repression are not stray aberrations
but are pivotal to the exclusionary devel-
opmental model that preserves itself by
restricting democratic space (p 155).
Neoliberal reforms heralded the retreat
of the developmental state, but it has not
ousted the state from its crucial role in the
Indian macroeconomy. While in the earlier
phase of “development planning”, public
investment was crucial in extending the
home market, in the present phase the
state has played an active role primarily as a
facilitator of “accumulation through dis-
possession”. This connection reflects the on-
going mechanisms of primitive accumula-
tion in India that the state machinery is
enforcing through the liberalisation agen-
da. Dispossession has enabled this trans-
formation and India’s recent spectacular
growth performance.
The question that arises is what are the
macroeconomic constraints facing the
Indian economy? How have recent eco-
nomic developments circumvented or
redefined the principal constraints on
development? The Indian economy has
been characterised as being faced with a
Economic & Political Weekly  EPW   march 15, 2008
binding agricultural constraint, which re-
stricts the supply of the most important
wage good, and raw materials on the one
hand, and on the other, demand due to
low income levels. The phase of liberalisa-
tion has seen an exacerbation of inequality
alongside the slow growth of employment
(particularly in rural areas) and a redistri-
bution of income in favour of profits and
rentier incomes. This has stimulated the
demand for both consumer durables and
specific services, which have been the
more dynamic sectors through this peri-
od, but at the same time, the sectoral pat-
tern of growth has allowed the effective
easing of the agrarian constraint. That
this rapid transformation was taking place
while nearly 1,50,000 farmers committed
suicide between 1997 and 2006, and in
2006 alone there were about 17,000
farmer suicides, is a stark manifestation
of this structural change.4
But the core developmental issue re-
mains that of fostering industrial develop-
ment by absorbing the labour surplus of
the stagnating agrarian sector. If one is to
develop a critique and alternative to the
model of development and displacement
that dominates policy discourse we need
to address this issue. This is in a sense the
same problem of primitive accumulation –
the expropriation of the peasantry to pave
the way for industrialisation. It was “primi-
tive socialist accumulation” that was at
stake in the course of the New Economic
Policy in the Soviet Union where the im-
peratives of fuelling industrial transforma-
tion was the justification for squeezing the
peasantry through the use of state power.
This is also the premise on which the sei-
zure of agricultural lands and handover to
corporate capital is being justified. Aban-
doned brings this issue sharply to the fore.
The Politic of Resistance
But the process of displacement and margi­
nalisation has also engendered resistances
in different parts of India. Nandigram
where the Left Front government of West
Bengal had proposed to set up a chemical
hub under the Salim group has been the
site of a brave resistance of villagers to the
seizure of their lands. Following the re-
currence of violence in the wake of the
state backed attempts to reoccupy the
lands, Nandigram has become a symbol of
book Review
the extent to which state power is commit-
ted to the repressive defence of this neo-
liberal developmental model. But it is
equally a manifestation of the irrepressi-
ble groundswell of opposition to the re-
lentless logic of the neoliberal juggernaut.
As political parties across the spectrum
embrace the neoliberal development vision,
the distinctions in the economic pro-
grammes of different parliamentary par-
ties becomes increasingly blurred. The
widespread anger and outrage that the
Nandigram violence inspired is not a
symptom of a revolt against politics. It is
in fact a reflection of the coalescing of
political opposition to the collusion of
state and capital that lies at the heart of
the politics of accumulation by disposses-
sion, of a search for forms of struggle and
organisation that could effectively chal-
lenge the neoliberal hegemony. It is not an
accident that the diverse social move-
ments engendered by displacement are
becoming increasingly important in the
politics of people’s resistance in India. So
even though instances of resistances, as
Perspectives suggests, have been primarily
localised mobilisations against specific
projects, it is in the coalescing of these
mobilisations that the hope for alternative
sustainable developmental models will
emerge. The Perspectives Team does not
claim to have the answer to how the path
to alternatives may be traversed, but this
volume is essential reading for those who
would like to engage with this process.
Email: Ramaa.Vasudevan@colostate.edu
Notes
1 A revised edition of the book has come out in
January 2008.
2 Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I, Penguin, 1973,
Part VIII.
3 David Harvey, The New Imperialism, Oxford
University Press, 2003.
4 ‘Farm Suicides Worse after 2001’, The Hindu,
November 13, 2007.
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