Neoliberalism, State and Territory

"Land Wars" in India

Abstract

This paper critically discusses the implementation of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and the construction of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) as projects that resulted in a regressive redistribution of land ownership in India after the 1991 liberalizing reforms. Based on official documents, land legislation and the discussion of protests against deterritorialization, I propose a re-reading of the strategies designed by the Government of India to make land available for capitalist infrastructure. Against the notion of “domestic regimes of dispossession”, I show that SEZ, CIDM and the most recent ‘Make in India’ are programs to attract foreign investment, transform the country into a ‘manufacturing hub’ and increase the volume of exports. In this way, I argue for a rearticulation of the “interior-exterior dialectic”, in which the coercive measures for the dispossession of the peasantry are not analytically separated from the strategies to promote India’s insertion and competitiveness in the global scenario.