Land is life. It is the basis of livelihoods for peasants and indigenous people across the Third World and is also becoming the most vital asset in the global economy. As the resource demands of globalisation increase, land has emerged as a key source of conflict. At the same time a global economy wants the land for mining and for industry, for towns, highways, and biofuel plantations.
And now, globalisation as recolonisation is leading to a massive land grab in India, in Africa, in Latin America. Land is being grabbed for investment, for urban sprawl, for mines and factories, for highways and expressways. Land is being grabbed from farmers after trapping them in debt and pushing them to suicide.
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Over the last decade India has experienced an unprecedented amount of land being concessioned, leased or sold to business, corporations or foreign sovereign capital. From the Americas to Africa to India, more peasants are being forcefully evicted from land. These dispossessions are justified in development terms, increased productivity, mechanized farming to feed more people, job creation, and attract foreign direct investment. The assumption is that leasing or selling land to investors who bring in foreign capital will create jobs and help the host country. In practice, this form of investment revolves around the acquisition of large areas of land on a doubtful legal basis, often labeled ‘land grab’. Investors can be private but are often made up of states. Examples thereof are China, India, Saudi Arabia and other states of the Persian Gulf region, but also European and American investment funds are particularly active. Although these types of acquisitions occur often in the global South, it also takes place in other parts of the world.Land is life. It is the basis of livelihoods for peasants and indigenous people across the Third World and is also becoming the most vital asset in the global economy. As the resource demands of globalisation increase, land has emerged as a key source of conflict. However, this conflict surrounding land has existed since the Colonial ages.
Colonisation was based on the violent takeover of land.
The colonial conquest of the Americas, Africa and the South Asian sub-continent went hand in hand with a discourse on the nature of those that lived on the continent. In justifying dispossession of land, the British colonisers beleived that to leave the natives in posession of their country and land was to leave the country in wilderness, and of course it would make governance of the nation impossible. The logic informing the decision was framed in development discourse. According to this reasoning, leaving Indians in possession of land was to render the land unproductive.
Colonial governance in India, with its civilizing and modernizing discourse, had a contradictory outcome on the ground. Modernization combined constructive growth (wealth accumulation and increased productivity), with destruction, reducing labor to the state of a commodity sold on the market, often destroying the natural ecological basis needed for the reproduction of life and production.
The colonial state brought immensely far reaching changes to colonised peoples which undermined their structures of authority; their relationships to land; their relationships to other peoples; gender and generational relationships in their communities; and usually completely changed the economic world within which they lived.
Today, the land grab phenomenon is also presented as way to modernize agriculture, to develop a country’s industries, and framed in a narrative of promoting Foreign Direct Investment which will stimulate the modernization of the agricultural sector through large scale commercial farming, and thus ensure development and food security. Essentially, land grabbing is then is rationalized through a development discourse.
This rapid land acquisition is driven by a number of factors: governments securing food and fuel exports, Multinational Corporations and financiers speculating on commodities as well as actors interested in natural resource explorations. The confluence of all these factors has generated increased interests in land. All these factors are rooted in the colonial legacy of conquest, accumulation through dispossession.
The losers of land grab in the Indian context are namely, peasants, nomad and pastoral communities, internally displaced population, and migrants who move around in search for a better living condition.
In many countries around India, land has more than economic values to its owners. People’s identity is linked to land and acts as a source of livelihood, wealth, social peace, and in some cases hold ceremonial and religious values. For pastoralists and sedentary/agriculturalist communities, and peasant societies, land is key to livelihood. Without it they cannot farm. Without grazing land, pastoral communities cannot feed their animals. The struggle over land is a struggle for a vital source of livelihood. In most countries in South-East Asia, two regimes of land tenure can be found, one based on private property rights and the second based on customary rights.
Security of tenure is built into customary law. A peasant doesn’t have to have a land title to make a living off the land. It is this security that is eroded by the marketization, privatization, and commodification of land. The outcome of this leaves peasants without land and livelihood.
The increasing marketization of land, is followed by eviction of producers who lose the right to work the land and forceful displacement and relocation of entire communities. In this case, the victims have been poor peasants, communities who use customary land system but do not have written titles, agro-pastoral communities, nomads and other trans-boundary communities who move around seasonally.
British Government in the colonial period passed a series of law governing land with profound implication for Indian small farmers, peasants, and pastoral communities.
The challenge faced by most communities is that communal land is not registered land. For centuries communities manage land for usage by all members and that land is accessed communally or through lineage. Access to land use is often more important to peasants than titles. For pastoral and nomadic communities, this is more important given their seasonal movement. They need the right to use the land for grazing and water. Traditionally they have shared the land without resorting to titling it with sedentary farmers and other pastoralist groups.
It is important if we want to understand the land-grabbing phenomenon that we look back at the legacy of colonial conquest. Colonial powers advanced two justifications for conquest, civilization and modernity. The latter often presented in development language of increased productivity, modernization of industries, and wealth accumulation. This left a violent legacy of forcefully evicting population from their areas.
These acts have provided a justification to the state to displace entire population under the guise of improving agriculture productivity. The victims of land grab or forceful eviction and dispossession of communal land has been peasants, pastoralists, nomadic and trans-boundary communities whose land management is based on customary land tenure. In conclusion, the biggest challenge in India is how to manage and protect social democracy while balancing rights with social justice and safeguarding against an increasing market fundamentalism.