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Dispossession by neglect: Agricultural land sales in Southern India
Author(s) -
Vijayabaskar M.,
Me Ajit
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of agrarian change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.63
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1471-0366
pISSN - 1471-0358
DOI - 10.1111/joac.12256
Subject(s) - speculation , agriculture , financialization , neglect , agricultural land , state (computer science) , economics , land tenure , land reform , land grabbing , land use , geography , natural resource economics , market economy , agricultural economics , development economics , finance , ecology , archaeology , medicine , nursing , algorithm , computer science , biology
Active land markets in the periphery of Chennai have resulted in large tracts of agricultural land being bought by non‐agricultural actors seeking returns primarily from speculation. We argue in this paper that the financialization of land and consequent spurt of agricultural land sales are central to what scholars have termed land grab. Recent literature on land grabs has focused primarily on processes of accumulation by dispossession and the coercive role of the state. Our contention is that land grabs more commonly occur due to the state underinvesting in agriculture, resulting in “dispossession by neglect” of especially marginal and small farmers. Dispossession by neglect better captures the fluid boundary between the coercive and voluntary in contemporary land grabs.