Land Dispossession and Rural Transformation : The Case of Fringe Villages of Kolkata

Abstract

Traditional understanding of rural transformation, although pertains to processes associated with agricultural development, rural poverty or urbanisation, the recent times have witnessed additional micro-processes in relation to state policies that not only affect rural lives but also compel them to undergo far-reaching changes. State- perpetrated land acquisition offers perhaps the most unambiguous shock to the rural lives as it directly impinges upon the economic base of the rural population. The recent massive land acquisition for the Rajarhat New Town project in West Bengal near Kolkata offers a pertinent case for the study of the nature of rural transformation invigorated by land dispossession. Attempting to analyse the trajectory of occupational transformation following land loss of the farmers (land owners as well as pure tenants) on one hand and on the other hand the role of access to assets in determining it, the paper has succinctly pointed out the following: firstly, a rapid de-stabilisation of the self-contained peasantry and their subsequent absorption into the manual jobs on one hand and business enterprises on the other the trajectory being guided by base asset position, access to land in specific, prior to land loss; secondly, a remarkable downward occupational mobility for the land dispossessed farmers in general and more so in case the pure tenants completely lost land households; and thirdly, a clear mismatch between the skill endowment of the land dispossessed farmers and the emerging activities in the study region that thrust the farmers into a tumultuous condition. It therefore, prompts one to question the route to urbanisation-industrialisation embarked upon by the Government that unambiguously impoverishes the peasantry and triggers a peculiar type of rural transformation that promises adversity.