Law of the landless : the Dalit bid for land redistribution in Gujarat, India

This study examines how government's implementation of land reforms in Gujarat, India informs Dalit (i.e., 'Outcaste') activism for land redistribution. It takes as a case study the Navsarjan Trust (or simply Navsarjan), a non-profit group that advocates for Dalit land rights in Surendranagar district, Gujarat. I contend that the Dalit land movement has implicitly recognized a complex reality: the outcomes of state policy on the ground are the products of a struggle between competing caste interests located within a nested hierarchy of local government institutions. I argue that Navsarjan's strategy is to modify the strength of the links between levels in this nested game--oftentimes by allowing Dalit land appeals to bypass lower, less progressive levels of government in favor of higher ones--in order to produce favorable results for the Dalit land rights movement. This strategy explodes the myth of a monolithic, intransigent state, and portrays government rather as a framework that structures social struggle. Section 1 argues that land redistribution is seen by the Dalit activist movement as a means of verticalizing horizontal ethnic stratifications. In Section 2, I quantitatively analyze the role and effects of local government offices charged with the implementation of land reform legislation.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• McDougal, Topher L. (Topher Leinberger)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Balakrishnan Rajagopal.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39853

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/39853