Pakistan is one of the fastest urbanising countries in South Asia; yet there is not that much literature on urbanisation. There is a paucity of research particularly on how urbanisation impacts the downtrodden and how people living in the peri-urban areas are dispossessed of their land and livelihoods to make way for the sprawling urban housing societies.
The new book “Marginalisation, Contestation, and Change in South Asian Cities", edited by academic Nida Kirmani and published by Oxford University Press, fills this gap. The book consists of case studies on dispossession and resistance from both Pakistan and India. We are going to refer to a chapter on the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) City (a housing scheme) and how in this case a public-private partnership “fractured” farmers’ collective resistance in the outskirts of Lahore.
Kirmani makes a strong case in her Introduction that neoliberal model of development is leading to dispossession, displacement, and marginalisation of people; yet she is nuanced enough to qualify that there is also a struggle against these processes in varied ways including “organised and everyday resistance, quiet encroachment, forced acquiescence, overt acceptance, and even an embrace of neoliberal models by some, depending on circumstances”. Displacement is “intertwined” with hope.
The case study chapter on the LDA City has been written by Hashim bin Rashid and Zainab Moulvi. LDA City marked seven villages in the outskirts of Lahore acquisition and it is going to lead to displacement of villagers. The majority of villagers have small to medium farmers with 8-12 acres of land on average. They depend on precolonial waterways to grow crops. The Punjab government turned the tap off their waterways, so that the farmers could not irrigate their lands and are forced to sell their lands to LDA City. Though the farmers were against selling their lands to LDA City, yet their responses were much more “complex” than a simple black and white case of “villagers-against-developers”.
This form of creation of value by acquiring rural land cheaply and converting it into high-priced urban real estate for the housing societies is “speculative urbanism”. Fictitious capital is created through these means. This form of speculation has been in practice in the past decades as well but acquired a fast spreading character since the 1990s.
The case study describes that initially LDA used brute force to evict the villagers of their lands, but the LDA had to back off when it was met with stiff resistance. The villagers treated their land not as a commodity but as the source of its sustenance. The LDA then re-strategised its dispossession policy and introduced some private sector companies to act as the intermediaries and buy the land from the villagers at a somewhat higher price than offered by the government under the Land Acquisition Act and make the farmers sell their land to LDA City. This public-private model proved successful in setting up villagers to transfer their lands.
The researchers found “subtle shifts” in the attitude of villagers during their subsequent visits despite the fact that villagers remained opposed to selling their land. The carrot and stick induced by the LDA seemed to be working on the villagers.
According to the authors, it was, “the erosion of choice, the closure of possibilities, the manipulation of outcomes, the threat of force, the assent of authority or the inviting gestures of seductive presence” that seemed to work its magic on the villagers.
Although, LDA had banned the sale of land after they announced the scheme; yet the influential and powerful local actors were buying up the land that they would sell at a higher price to the LDA.
David Harvey who has come up with the concept of “accumulation by dispossession” has also presented a nuanced analysis whereby it is not always the capital versus the peasants that are at odds with each other. Rather the process creates a “whole chain of rentiership ” whereby the well-off factions of the peasantry take up the role of collaborators. The local property dealers and those selling land and being part of the private companies that were buying up the land played their part as facilitators in the process.
A key informant from one of the seven villages to be acquired by the LDA was of the opinion that 90% of people in his village are not landowners and they would be simply displaced, as they are not entitled to any compensation. This describes the extent of dispossession of the rural poor that takes place due to the spread of sprawling housing societies.
In two villages, the local numberdars became property agents and they were trying to convince people to sell their land to LDA City. According to the authors, “the inevitability of the process of acquisition has converted institutions critical to sustaining the colonial agrarian structure, such as the numberdar, into active agents for the break-up of the agrarian economy of the area”.
A key informant from one of the seven villages to be acquired by the LDA was of the opinion that 90% of people in his village are not landowners and they would be simply displaced, as they are not entitled to any compensation. This describes the extent of dispossession of the rural poor that takes place due to the spread of sprawling housing societies.
The profits were made through massive speculation as files of the LDA City were being sold and bought even before the land acquisition for the housing society was complete. The farmers made a rational decision to sell their lands at a somewhat better price to the private companies than what the LDA was offering as they were confronted with the structural barrier of the law, the Land Acquisition Act, through which the government can buy up any land in the country. That is how those living on the fringes of Lahore have been turned to “market subject”.
The case study shows the process of dispossession and displacement facilitated by insider and outsider intermediaries who through carrot and stick induce the villagers to dispose off their land and the rural poor are uprooted in the process. There is a need to study these processes and give voice to the voiceless.