Land Dispossession and Everyday Politics in Rural Eastern India

(Hardback)

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Over the past decade India has witnessed a number of land wars that have centred crucially on the often forcible transfer of land from small farmers or indigenous groups to private companies. Among these, the land war that erupted in Singur, West Bengal, in 2006, went on to make national headlines and become paradigmatic of many of the challenges and social conflicts that arise when a state-led policy of swiftly transferring land to private sector companies encounters resistance on the ground. Land Dispossession and Everyday Politics in Rural Eastern India analyses the movement by Singur's so-called unwilling farmers to retain and reclaim their farmland. By foregrounding the everyday politics of popular mobilization, the book sheds new light on the movement's internal politics as well as on contentious issues rooted in everyday caste, class and gender relations.

Reviews

Nielsen is also very good at depicting the complex ecology of political parties, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and activists from whom the Singur farmers and workers took support, and the behind-the-scenes deliberations and negotiations this involved. This is a must read for anyone interested in social movements and the politics of land and development in contemporary India.
Michael Levien (2019): Land Dispossession and Everyday Politics in Rural Eastern India, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, DOI:10.1080/00856401.2019.1557827

Nielsens work is both ambitious in scale and innovative in approach. The book will offer new theoretical and methodological directions for scholars working not only on displacement-dispossession and land wars, but also for a wider audience interested in the development paradoxes of the global South.
Ritanjan Das (2019): Land Dispossession and Everyday Politics in Rural Eastern India, Forum for Development Studies, DOI: 10.1080/08039410.2019.1575006

"Nielsens book gives a rich account of the internal dynamics and politics of a social movement revealing its ambivalences and ambiguities"
Sirpa Tenhunen (2018): 'Land Dispossession and Everyday Politics in Rural Eastern India,' "Journal of Contemporary Asia," DOI: 10.1080/00472336.2018.1526961

Author Bio

Kenneth Bo Nielsen is associate professor of South Asia Studies at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, Norway.