Introduction: The Political Economy of Land and Livelihoods in Contemporary India

Abstract

This chapter presents an overview of the significant issues concerning land, labour and the state in contemporary India. The major theoretical and empirical debates concerning the land questions under neoliberalism have been reviewed selectively from the perspective of a developing country like India. The debates around the land-livelihoods linkages have been discussed from the vantage point of the political economy of agrarian change and rural transformation under contemporary capitalism. The changing nature of state intervention, in the form of land acquisition, land reforms and land-use changes, has also been outlined to provide a backdrop to the diverse issues raised by the contributions to the volume and points to the interconnections among the issues raised by the authors in different chapters.