Making the political, and doing politics: unfixed land in an Amoebal Zone in India

Abstract

India’s largest SEZ–an Amoebal Zone–has constantly changed shape, name, and purpose. The material, regulatory, cartographic, and classificatory flexibility of ‘unfixed land’ underlies these contortions. The multiplicity of land also informs political adversariality towards the Zone. Over 2.5 decades, a heterogeneous group of farmers, fishworkers, pastoralists, and local to global NGOs have contested the takeover of lands along registers of access, use, property, environmental sustainability, and more. This multiplicity is somewhat ordered through the coercions, mediations, and compromises of everyday and Party politics. Politics temporarily and imperfectly settles the making, distribution and use of unfixed land.