Over the period of economic liberalisation, more than 5 million hectares of India’s land has transitioned from agriculture, pasture, ‘waste’ and other common property uses to industry, infrastructure, mining and real estate for servicing the new economy.
Industrial corridors, Special Economic Zones, massive infrastructure projects like highways and power stations, huge townships within and outside our burgeoning cities are all testament to this massive urge to expand.
However, this urge must be grounded in the land.
The land is the base of our development model. Transitions in the land that are needed for development can be voluntary and on the market, and/or they can involve the might of the state and political actors that facilitate the market.
Yet, the vision of land as a base to be developed, captured, built over, and viewed through the prism of utilitarian value, is hardly the only perspective of land.
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