Land Politics:Processes And Resistance Over Corporate Land Grabbing In Indian Kashmir

This thesis is an effort on understanding political processes surrounding land for water grabbing in Kashmir and how the benefits and costs are distributed among the actors.Using Kishanganga Hydroelectric Project as a case study, this work focuses on the question of land for water grabs in Kashmir. The dispossession and displacement caused by the Hydroelectric Projects; and the power dynamics and struggles against the land grabs. It talks about the meanings, relations and connections of the peasants with the land, water and natural habitat. It is about the actions, reactions to the political and elite power from the below. It also explains the intricacies of owning and losing the material and non-material resources. And it does so, by understanding the people’s narratives.Understanding the processes, impacts, resistance and politics of land grabbing, this research elicits that land grabbing by the domestic capital supported by the State led to an adverse impact on the peasantry, ecology, and overall political economy of the region. In this process of land grabbing, what was revealed is that the elites rule the roost, while peasants live the life of subalternity, in terms of life standards and decision making powers. In this scheme, it is the poor peasants who face the brunt of dispossession and expulsion. Besides adversely affecting the economic resources and livelihood options land grabbing had a telling impact on culture, tradition, private and common property resources, ecology, social ties and eventually de-peasantization and forced commoditization of beleaguered peasantry. While’kickbacks’ and ’compensation’ are being used as tools to lure the peasants to give up their demands, however the corporations does not refrain from indulging into bribery and corruption to get unfair advantage. Nevertheless, the corporation oscillated its attitude, sympathetic and reconciliatory during the phase of construction work and an indifferent attitude thereafter. In this scheme, the corporate initially provided the jobs, albeit temporary, to the affected peasants, however, when the construction work is completed, these workers are laid-off, thus creates a phenomenon where land is needed but labor is not. Likewise, while peasants are displaced to hundreds of kilometers away, however, a sizable chunk of their land is not acquired, which creates another phenomenon:when neither their land is needed nor the labor.In this process of land grabbing, people exert their voice through overt and covert resistance. While the State and the corporation construct the narrative that Hydroelectric Projects are a remedy to the power crisis in the country, the peasants deconstruct this narrative by arguing that these "development projects" are to address the needs of the energy hungry capitalist and not that of the people living in the villages in Kashmir. Here the peasants do not see themselves as a monolith community, who would only fight for their material interest, but they also associate themselves with the larger Kashmiri community to exert their pressure for the solution of Kashmir problem. Thus development-induced dispossession and displacement is bracketed as the outcome of the Kashmir’s very nature of being controlled by India and solution of these problems are seen by respondents only through the solution of this political situation. The research argues that the resistance of the peasants has to been seen in the political structure they are living in, and in this process, role of the State needs be closely examined. What is witnessed here both the State and the Corporate together with the support of elites (absentee landlords) play the role in land grabbing through ’carrot and stick’ policy. While the State adopts ’Stick policy’ when the people resist land grabs, the corporation brings people in ’compensation trap’ to make them to agree to give up their land. Here the State identifies, facilitates, controls the land of the peasants under the guise of ’public purpose’ and then transfers it to the corporation. This forcible control of the land-with-formal-rights establishes that merely having ownership rights of the land does not guarantee that land grabs will not take place.Therefore, understanding the questions of narratives and discourses surrounding these HEPs, this research further investigated how different actors mobilize support to legitimize their claims. By bringing perspectives of different actors on the land for water grabs, this work addresses the tensions between developmentalism, environmentalism and the national interest on the one hand,, national sovereignty, subnational identity and resistance surrounding these grabs on the other.