Abstract
Land alienation and the process of dispossession are linked to rural–urban transformations and urbanization—from a self-sustaining rural economy which rests on production to a surplus-generating industrial and service economy, based on consumerism. In this process of land alienation and transformations, labour undergoes a transformation reflected in the transfer of the labour process—labour power within the control of the producers to the control of local and even global capitalism, with labour going from being permanent and subsistent to being temporary and subservient. In this chapter, an attempt is made to critically examine land alienation and dispossession in the process of urbanization in Siliguri, a city in eastern India. In the process of urbanization in Siliguri and adjoining areas in north Bengal, the indigenous landholders of the region, the Rajbansis, are being alienated from their ancestral lands, taking up casual wage employment in the informal economy in the urban areas. The process of alienation is undertaken, either through consent or by coercion, in the name of urban development under various political and economic compulsions. Land loss is accompanied by impoverishment, shifts in livelihood and gradual or sudden occupational transformations among these peoples who historically have depended on land and land-based livelihoods. Because of this forcible land alienation, labour property and labour process are also undergoing significant shifts. Previously, owner-cultivators in their own lands took pride in the ownership of their labour power. However, owing to the socio-economic and political circumstances that led to land alienation since the middle of the twentieth century, present generations are bereft of not only land ownership but also control over their own labour power, earning meagre livelihoods in casual wage work in informal service sectors such as construction, petty trading and domestic work, setting in motion a process of proletarianization of this indigenous community.
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Notes
- 1.
Ektiasal, Fokdibari, Kawakhari-Daknikata, Chota Phapri and Bada Phapri are the names of these neighbourhoods, which are located on the city’s urban peripheries along the city’s Eastern Metropolitan Bypass.
- 2.
Khotians imply the land ownership document which bears the name of the owner, the type of land under occupancy (agricultural or fallow or low-lying land) and the amount of land.
- 3.
Khasra implies a government document or bookkeeping, which includes the names of the owners and amount of land under his or her occupancy.
- 4.
Eastern Bengali refers to people who had migrated from erstwhile East Pakistan.
- 5.
Bengal District Gazet eer (Dash 1947) defined a jotdar as one who held land under the government and paid taxes directly to the government. The existence of jotdars predated the British administration, which could not deny the hereditary rights of the jotdars. Based on heterogeneity in the size of land, there were large, moderate and small holders. The large jotdars had a large part of their land cultivated by their fellow kinsmen, the adhiars, while the moderate jotdars cultivated some part of the land by themselves and employed adhiars to cultivate the rest. The smallholders were almost all owner-cultivators. To facilitate the rent-seeking process, the Brits divided the system based on the amount of self-cultivated (by the jotdars) and sharecropped lands (to the adhiars) into a system of tenants and subtenants. Adhiars were given lands to cultivate in exchange for a contract by which they could retain 50 per cent of the gross produce.
- 6.
Pattas imply rights of use (agricultural and non-agricultural) and ownership; beneficiaries can sell it off only after it has been in their possession for ten years.
- 7.
In West Bengal, in the British period, 1 bigha was equal to 0.1338 hectares or 0.3306 acres.
- 8.
1 bigha= 33 decimals or 20 kathas.
- 9.
The Tebhaga movement was the first peasant movement in India led by leftist ideology. It sought to secure two-thirds rights over gross product of the adhiars or actual tillers in place of one-half.
- 10.
The Bangladesh War of Liberation, which ended in 1971, was followed by the assassination of President Sheikh Mujibar; this created political instability alongside massive political insecurity for the Hindu families and therefore forced migration (Datta 2004).
- 11.
Information obtained from the website of Siliguri Municipal Corporation at http://www.siligurismc.com
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
Service class; refers to people employed in tea gardens as clerks (babus), people in management who bought lands in and around Siliguri to settle.
- 15.
Toto cars are battery-driven cars used intra city and employ a significant number of young people.
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Basu, H. (2017). Urbanization, Land Alienation and Proletarianization: A Study of Rajbansis in North Bengal. In: Xaxa, V., Saha, D., Singha, R. (eds) Work, Institutions and Sustainable Livelihood. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5756-4_8
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