Law of The Landless

The Law and Development Review
Volume 4, Number 1 2011 Article 4
Law of the Landless: The Dalit Bid for Land

Redistribution in Gujarat, India
Topher McDougal, University of San Diego
Recommended Citation:
McDougal, Topher (2011) "Law of the Landless: The Dalit Bid for Land Redistribution in
Gujarat, India," The Law and Development Review: Vol. 4: No. 1, Article 4.
DOI: 10.2202/1943-3867.1127
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Law of the Landless: The Dalit Bid for Land
Redistribution in Gujarat, India
Topher McDougal
Abstract
Tenuous land access contributes to food and livelihood insecurity, and fuels conflicts in many
rural societies. In such cases, the ability of government legal institutions to structure and
ultimately transform the conflict depends not just on the adoption of laws favorable to progressive
land redistribution, but also the effective implementation of those laws in the face of elite
influence in local government. This paper presents a case study of an identity-based social
movement for Outcastes in India (the Navsarjan Trust) struggling to bring about the successful
implementation of land redistribution laws in Gujarat, India. I contend the Dalit land movement
recognizes outcomes of state policy as products of caste struggles within a nested hierarchy of
local government institutions. I argue Navsarjan’s strategy is to modify the strength of links
between levels in this hierarchy in order to produce favorable results for the Dalit land rights
movement. This strategy explodes the myth of human rights movements as necessarily
antagonistic to government function, portraying government rather as a framework that structures
social struggle.
KEYWORDS: land redistribution, legal implementation, local government, activism, social

movements, caste, India
Author Notes: This paper is risen from the author's previous master's thesis under the same title.
This research would not have been possible without the enthusiastic support—both logistical and
intellectual—of Navsarjan’s administration and Land Redistribution Programme fieldworkers. In
particular, I would like to thank Manjula Pradeep, and Martin Macwan, Navsarjan’s director and
founder respectively, for their insight, humor and inspiring commitment to the Dalit human rights
struggle. In this hemisphere, I am grateful to Balakrishnan Rajagopal, director of the Program on
Human Rights & Justice at MIT’s Center for International Studies, and to Bishwapriya Sanyal,
professor in the International Development Group in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies &
Planning. For this project’s financial support, I am grateful to the MIT Program on Human Rights
& Justice fellowship, the International Development Initiative grant awarded by MIT’s Public
Service Centre, and the Emerson Travel Award, disbursed by MIT’s Department of Urban Studies
& Planning. I am also grateful for the comments and suggestions of attendees at the conference
“After Empire: Global Governance Today” (Watson Center for International Studies, Brown
University, Providence, RI, 13 June 2008) and the Workshop on Globalization, Social Movements
and Peacebuilding (Kroc Institute of Peace, Notre Dame University, South Bend, IN, 29-30
October 2009).

McDougal: Law of the Landless
You know in South Africa our people are fighting for their rights. Here in
India there are no laws depriving the people of the right of owning land or
living wherever they please. It is true we have reduced Harijans [Dalits] to
some such condition, but for the rest of society that is not so.
Mahatma Gandhi
Speaking at a prayer meeting in New Delhi
28 January, 1948
I. INTRODUCTION
Tenuous land access contributes to food and livelihood insecurity, and fuels
conflicts in many rural societies.1 In such cases, the ability of government legal
institutions to structure and ultimately transform the conflict depends not just on
the adoption of laws favorable to progressive land redistribution, but also the
effective implementation of those laws in the face of elite influence in local
government.2 This study examines how Dalit (i.e., ‘Outcaste’) activism in India
brings about government-mandated land redistribution in the face of caste-based
violence intended to enforce a socioeconomic status quo. For millennia, Dalits
have been a landless people, and their struggle speaks to the problem of
mobilizing effectively for equitable development. This study examines the efforts
of the Navsarjan Trust, the NGO face of a transnational pro-Dalit social
movement, in promoting Dalit land rights in Surendranagar district, Gujarat.
Navsarjan contend that land tenure patterns underpin socioeconomic stratification
by systematically marginalizing agricultural laborers and rendering the asset-
building process slow or impossible.
The case is an important one because it demonstrates that transnational
social movements arising in reaction to neoliberal globalization3 need not in all
cases undermine the legitimacy of the state after the fashion described by Armao.
Armao asserts that states are now self-deconstructing in the reverse order of Stein
1
Catherine André and Jean-Philippe Platteau, Land Relations Under Unbearable Stress: Rwanda
Caught in the Malthusian Trap, 34 Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (1998), 1-47;
Ward Anseeuw and Chris Alden, The Struggles over Land in Africa: Conflicts, Politics & Change
(Cape Town: HSRC, 2010); Ravi S. Srivastava, Land Reforms, Employment and Poverty in India,
International Conference on Land, Poverty, Social justice & Development, 9-14 January (The
Hague 2006); Liz Alden Wily, The Tragedy of Public Lands: The Fate of the Commons Under
Global Commercial Pressure (Rome: International Land Coalition, 2011).
2
Committee on State Agrarian Relations and Unfinished Task of Land Reforms, Draft Report to
the Ministry of Rural Development,, vol. 1 (New Delhi, 2009).
3
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, General Introduction: Reinventing Social Emancipation: Toward
New Manifestos, in B. de Sousa Santos (ed.), Democratizing Democracy: Beyond the Liberal
Democratic Canon (New York: Verso, 2005), pp. xvii-xxxiii.
141

The Law and Development Review, Vol. 4 [2011], Iss. 1, Art. 4
Rokkan’s model of state formation, expelling the masses and inviting parasitical
participation of interest groups. While this description may characterize some
social movements, the transnational Dalit movement actually reinforces the
hegemony of the central state, albeit a state reinterpreted as a more proactive and
socially progressive entity.
Accordingly, I argue that Gujarati land reform activism does not follow the
intuitively sensible model of activist movements in which political actions of the
state have a centralizing effect, provoking countervailing reactions from the
marginalized periphery, or “movement and counter-movement”.4 Theories of
central action and peripheral reaction cannot adequately explain the purposive
formation of the Dalit land movement in the face of (a) progressive federal and
state laws ostensibly fostering Dalit claims to land, and (b) a robust bureaucracy
charged with their implementation. Rather, I contend that the Dalit land
movement recognizes the outcomes of state policy as products of a struggle
among caste interests structured within a nested hierarchy of local government
institutions. To borrow a phrase from Rajagopal, local government institutions
constitute a “terrain of contestation”.5 Since, in this case, the social movement is
not trying to shape the law from below (as Rajagopal describes), but to assure its
implementation from above, I contend the battleground shifts from Rajagopal’s
courts and legislative institutions to the hierarchy of local governments charged
with implementing legislation favorable to the social movement. Navsarjan’s
strategy is to modify the strength of the links between levels in this nested
game—oftentimes by allowing Dalit land appeals to bypass lower, less
progressive levels of government in favor of higher ones—in order to produce
positive results for the Dalit land rights movement.
There are two primary reasons why Navsarjan, and the Dalit movement
more generally, strengthen, and not undermine, the felt presence of the central
state in India. The first is that the problem the Dalit movement addresses is not
geographically restricted to a certain area of the country. Caste-based oppression
exists in all areas of India, and indeed across South Asia as a whole (including the
non-Hindu majority countries of Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, not to
mention Nepal). The society in which the struggle is taking place is one that
4
See, e.g., Peter Anthony Ercegovac, Competing National Ideologies, Cyclical Responses: The
Mobilisation of the Irish, Basque and Croat National Movements to Rebellion Against the State
(Sydney: University of Sydney, 1998) and Kenneth T. Andrews, Movement-Countermovement
Dynamics and the Emergence of New Institutions: The Case of "White Flight" Schools in
Mississippi, 80 Social Forces 3 (2002), 911-936.
5
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Limits of Law in Counter-Hegemonic Globalization: The Indian
Supreme Court and the Narmada Valley Struggle, in B. de Sousa Santa and C. A. Rodríguez-
Garavito (eds.), Law and Globalization from Below: Towards a Cosmopolitan Legality
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 183-217.
142

Horowitz6 would term “ranked.” Across the region (and especially in rural areas),
Dalits generally find themselves at the bottom of a socioeconomic hierarchy
characterized by horizontal social cleavages. They do not form a nationally
cohesive political identity group capable of acting in relative unity against
competing groups or an exploitative political system (as might tribes in West
African “unranked” societies characterized by vertical social cleavages). Spread
thinly and evenly across South Asia, Dalits cannot hope to achieve secession from
society. The lower layers in a stratified agrarian society will not likely be
independently politically represented, but rather will share leaders with the strata
above them.7 When lower strata do have political leaders, Horowitz8 suggests
that they must ultimately satisfy the criterion of acceptability to superordinate
groups. He contends that for oppressed strata in a ranked society, there are a
finite number of strategies for redress: (a) displace one’s superiors, (b) dissolve
ethnic distinctions between strata completely, (c) raise one’s position objectively,
or (d) attempt to transform the society into an unranked system. Unable to
attempt strategies (a) or (b), the Dalit movement is split between (c) and, in the
case of Navsarjan, (d) – working toward its radical restructuring. For this reason,
this study does not deal with a violent social movement eroding state legitimacy,
but rather a legalistic, human rights-based one that combats low-grade chronic
violence intended to conserve a rigid socioeconomic status quo by effectively
allying itself with an aspirational legitimacy of the state (even while questioning
the present basis of that legitimacy).
The second reason that the Dalit movement – and particularly the
Navsarjan-led push for land redistribution – is a cohesive force in the Indian state
is that Navsarjan has found it effective to structure itself as a mirror image of state
and local governments. In this way, Navsarjan provides friendly parallel channels
for Dalits to access the same federal and state services – and in so doing, increases
central authoritative oversight over local governments. This structure serves
constantly to remind central authorities of ground realities – a strategy that would
not be nearly as effective if a neoliberal ideology had always been central to
national identity. In fact, however, post-Independence India was far from the
liberalized, emerging capitalist polity it has become over the past 20 years. It had
adopted early pro-Human Rights stances on apartheid.9 In 1949, it adopted the
most progressive constitution ever seen, seeking to redress the radical economic,
social and political disparities that persisted between castes in a visionary
presaging of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
of 1966. Progressive constitutional intentions were impeded in reality, however,
6
Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
7
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983).
8
Horowitz, supra note 6, p. 22 et seq.
9
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, “The caste system — India’s apartheid?” , The Hindu (2007).
143

by the compromise struck with conservatives demanding “states rights.” Thus,

when the federal government adopted land redistribution legislation in 1960,
states were allowed, not mandated, to adopt some version of it, and
implementation varied widely. With the gradual opening of the economy in the
1980s, the state’s proactive development stance weakened, and a laissez-faire
industrial policy slowly began to take hold.
For these two reasons, the Navsarjan-led Dalit movement is not, as Lynch10
has accurately described many social movements in the age of economic
globalization as relegated to monitoring civil and political rights, while the
neoliberal project advances unchecked. In fact, India’s own state land
redistribution schemes have had a generally negative impact on agricultural
productivity.11 Instead, the movement serves as a clarion call to the state to take
up again the mantle of economic, social and cultural rights that it had championed
in its youth, showcasing the disconnect between those discursive symbols of
popular state legitimacy and local government inaction in present-day rural India.
Navsarjan’s strategy – garnering funds and technical support from
transnational networks of donors, academics and activists, while functioning as
parallel local governments for rural Dalits – belies the “monolithic” state as a
somewhat disarticulated, Foucaultian complex of savoirs and functions, many of
which are performed at numerous spatial scales, both above and below the level
of the state itself.12 However, the fact that Navsarjan’s strategy continually places
the ultimate responsibility for the implementation of adopted law on the state and
federal government serves as implicit endorsement of central authority over local
governments, which tend to be much more tightly bound to local elite interests.
Navsarjan’s experience hints that the role of a social movement in relation to the
state is not always purely antagonistic, but may be facultative.
The chapter is structured as follows. In the remainder of Section 1, I lay out
the historical and legal context of Gujarati land reforms. In Section 2, I assess the
effects of proximity of sub-state government offices to one another on the
implementation of land reform legislation, thereby highlighting a nested
battleground of competing caste interests. In Section 3, I examine Navsarjan’s
tactics in the land redistribution movement, arguing that the organization
implicitly recognizes the nested game being played out in the government
hierarchy.
10
Cecilia Lynch, Social Movements and the Problem of Globalization, 23 Alternatives 2 (1998),
149-193.
11
Maitreesh Ghatak and Sanchari Roy, Land Reform and Agricultural Productivity in India: A
Review of the Evidence, 23 Oxford Review of Economic Policy 2 (2007), 251-269.
12
Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller, The Foucault Effect: Studies in
Governmentality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
144

This study bases its quantitative analyses on two surveys administered by

the Navsarjan Trust in 1995-6 and 2006 respectively.13 It draws qualitative
conclusions from interviews with officials in Surendranagar district and
Navsarjan fieldworkers, and focus group discussions with Dalits who applied for
redistributable lands. I administered these interviews and focus groups
discussions in July of 2006 and January of 2007.
A. Gujarati Land Reform Legislation
The history of legal reform in Gujarat is Janus-faced; the state is famed for its
progressive land policies, and notorious for its recalcitrance in enforcing those
policies.14 Today, two principal pieces of legislation shape the process of land
redistribution: the Agricultural Land Ceiling Act (1960), and the Government
Lands Programme. The 1960 Gujarat Agricultural Land Ceiling Act fixed the
maximum land area tenable by a single rural owner at 132 acres (reduced in 1976
to 54 acres)15 and dictated that the surplus be allotted to Dalits, tribal peoples, and
Other Backward Castes (OBCs). The Act came early in a period of similar
legislation passed in other states.16
The state Agricultural Land Ceiling Acts have, on paper, generally worked
to various degrees, boosting inter-caste land equity.17 Gujarat ranks poorly
against its state competitors in ALCA redistribution: it is only around one-fourth
as effective as other states in terms of Dalit beneficiaries per total population
(Ibid.).
To be redistributed under the ALCA, lands must first be declared surplus
before navigating a complex bureaucracy, greatly reducing their chances of
successful cultivation by intended beneficiaries. This study deals with
bureaucratic implementation, but does not address the question of a parcel’s
original declaration as surplus. In India as a whole, just 2.5% of lands originally
13
Navsarjan administered two surveys to Dalit recipients of redistributed land: one in 1995-1996
written by Navsarjan staff, the second written by me in July of 2006 in consultation with
Navsarjan’s Land Redistribution Programme fieldworkers. Both surveys concentrated on
Surendranagar district. This survey’s intended function was to assess the impact of the High
Court’s ruling of 1999, mandating local governments’ expedited handover of lands officially
redistributed to Dalits, but which were, in reality, not in their possession. For more details, see the
author’s previous master’s thesis under the same title, McDougal, Topher L., Law of the Landless:
The Dalit Bid for Land Redistribution in Gujarat, India (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2007).
14
Navsarjan Trust, The Story of Land Reforms in Gujarat (Ahmedabad, 2000).
15
M.L. Jindal, Gujarat Local Acts: 1827-1983 (Jodhpur: India Publishing House, 1985).
16
See Srivastava, supra note 1.
17
See McDougal, supra note 13, p. 28.
145

estimated as eligible for redistribution were declared surplus by 1995.18 In

Gujarat, that number rose to just 7.5% by 2000.19
The Government Lands Programme, a parallel state-run program granting
long-term leases, authorizes local governments to allot “government wastelands”
to priority demographics (including Dalits). In Gujarat, the scale of this program
has far outstripped that of the ALCA. The allotment of state leaseholds is less
politically contentious than the systematic stripping of private property from
powerful upper-caste members, as well as being less permanent. Navsarjan
contends that a substitution of wastelands for ALCA lands therefore takes place,
which is broadly considered unfavorable to Dalits. Survey results and interviews
for this study suggest that intensive improvement investments required for
government lands deter Dalits from cultivating.
B. Navsarjan’s Public Interest Litigation
In April 1999, Navsarjan galvanized the local Dalit communities in four talukas
(i.e., sub-district administrative blocks) of Surendranagar district in Saurashtra
(namely Sayla, Vadhwan, Limbdi, and Lakhtar) to file a PIL (Public Interest
Litigation) in the Gujarat High Court against various local and state offices. In
the PIL, Navsarjan documented over 6,000 acres of lands in Surendranagar
district that had been officially allotted to 700 Dalit families according to the
District Collector’s office, but which their 1995-6 survey had found to be either
unaccompanied by the necessary title documentation, or not actually in the hands
of the intended beneficiaries. The Court ruled that the state must complete its
survey and distribution of the surplus lands by 15 June 2000. Navsarjan
suspected that the Court’s ruling went largely unheeded. The group recently
completed a follow-up survey, with help from the author, to obtain a portrait of
the status of land-holdings in the wake of the ruling.
C. Land Reform Implementation
Various levels of the Indian government jointly carry out land reforms.
Governmental subdivisions at sub-state levels form a Weberian hierarchy of three
ascending tiers: village, taluka, and district. Information and influence do not
simply flow down from top to bottom, but also percolate up from the ground level
18
Aloysius Irudayam, Black Paper: Broken Promises and Dalits Betrayed (Bangalore: NCDHR,
1999).
19
See Navsarjan Trust, supra note 14.
146

– the hierarchy is, in effect, contested ground. Navsarjan20 reported in 2000 that
only around one-third of those lands officially redistributed on paper (or roughly
50,000 of 150,000 acres were in fact in the possession of the intended recipients.
Two possible explanations might account for this low success rate: (1) the
government bureaucracy is failing Dalit applicants in the implementation stages,
or (2) social pressures exerted on the ground by upper-caste members prevent
Dalits from claiming their rights. In fact, the two are not independent of one
another. I argue below that the hierarchy of local governments is an institutional
framework in which the interests of large landholders contest Dalit land claims
and attempt to undermine the intended effects of progressive legislation.
The responsibilities of officials collectively responsible for land
redistribution are given in Table 1. Officials in the first category
(village/panchayat level) are elected, while officials in the latter two categories
(taluka and district levels) are appointed. At the taluka level, the (elected) state
government appoints local politicians and technocrats, while at the district level,
the central government appoints a mix of local and out-of-state bureaucrats.
Thus, the chain of command would suggest a gradient of contact and alignment
with local interests.
20
147

Table 1. Government officials key to the implementation of land redistribution legislation
Level Official/Office Function

3. District District Collector Aggregates revenue and taxes collected at the taluka
level
Oversees planning process and implementation of land
reforms
District Inspector Precisely surveys lands at the behest of the Mamlatdar’s
of Land Records office
Deputy Collector Decides which government lands to distribute
Conducts regular surveys of potential lands in
cooperation with the Agriculture Department
2. Taluka Block Magistrate Gives public notice of all available lands
(Mamlatdar) Capable of identifying available Ceiling lands
Technically capable of setting the land ceiling
Revenue Circle Revenue and tax collection at the taluka level
Officer
Surveyor Measures out the metes and bounds of allotted acreages
(does not use precise instruments)
Government Lands Decides which applicants will receive government
Committee lands according to a prioritization hierarchy
1. Village/ Talati Identifies lands in excess of the land ceiling
Panchayat Collects property tax (“land revenue”)
Maintains village 7-12 forms, which detail to what use
redistributed lands have been put
Source: the author
The process for selecting parcels for redistribution, which falls outside the
purview of this study, differs depending on whether lands are distributed under
the ALCA or Government Lands Programme.21 This study concentrates on the
implementation process, which is identical for both land types and is enumerated
in Table 2.
21
See McDougal supra note 13, p. 31 et seq.
148

Table 2. The process of implementing land reforms is shared by both the ALCA and the
Government Lands programs
Step Description
1 Mamlatdar informs the recipients of land awarded to them, as well as its approximate
location.
2 Recipient confirms to the Mamlatdar his intention to cultivate the land.
3 The Revenue Circle Officer, Surveyor and Talati convene at the parcel to mark the
bounds and notify the successful applicant(s) of the exact measurements taken.22
4 The Talati conveys the khatavahi, or land ledger, to the land recipients.
5 Recipients take possession and begin to pay land revenue to the Circle Revenue Officer.
6 In the case of a boundary dispute or need of more precise clarification on metes and
bounds, the Mamlatdar requests the office of the District Inspector of Land Records to
send a more highly trained surveyor.
Source: the author
II. DETERMINANTS OF LAND REDISTRIBUTION SUCCESS

This section uses the abridged results of regression analyses performed on the
2006 survey data23 to argue that the government hierarchy is a contested terrain,
with entrenched local interests at the ground level pushing upward through nested
local governments against central redistributive legislation. From this idea flow a
couple of testable hypotheses:
1. The farther away appointed officials (at the district level) responsible for
land redistribution are geographically, the more difficulties the land
redistribution process will encounter at the local government level and on
the ground due to transaction costs in rural Gujarat;
2. The farther away locally elected government officials (at the village level)
or those appointed by locally-elected officials (at the taluka level) are
geographically, the fewer difficulties will be encountered on the ground,
because local large landholders will have greater difficulty bringing
pressure to bear on them;
3. The more recalcitrant the supervisory level of government (i.e., the taluka
or the panchayat), the greater will be the number of hurdles to cultivation
faced by Dalits at the local government and ground levels.
22
This is a controversial moment, and can draw a hostile crowd. Therefore, the Mamlatdar’s
office may bring a police escort to see that possession is transferred peacefully. Navsarjan
employees contend that police escorts are not provided nearly often enough.
23
See McDougal, supra note 13, pp. 59-88 for full results.
149

The first two hypotheses depend on a correlation between geographical and

bureaucratic distances that was repeatedly described in interviews and focus
groups. Explored in order are: this study’s design, the determinants of land
redistribution breakdowns, and a short exposition on the differential treatment of
ALCA and government wasteland redistribution. Not covered are the positive
and negative socioeconomic outcomes of land redistribution.24
A. Study Design
I designed the survey to focus on what types of bureaucratic breakdowns occurred

in each case of land redistribution to Dalit recipients. Each breakdown is
associated with a level of local government. Table 3 categorizes the most
important “breakdowns” by level of government, from Level 0 (ground level) to
Level 1 (village level) to Level 2 (taluka level). The district level is not
considered here because it falls outside this study’s scope to make inter-district
comparisons.25
Table 3. Levels of Sub-District Government and Their Potential for Implementation Breakdown
Government Level Breakdown
2: Taluka The survey was not performed*

Title was not conveyed
(An easement was never established)
1: Village/Panchayat Khatavahi, or land ledger, was not conveyed

Khatavahi was not amended to reflect new land allotment
An encroachment exists on paper*
(An easement was never established)
0: Ground A hostile incident while taking possession

An encroachment exists in reality*
Source: the author.
Government-level breakdowns are defined as failures of the government

bureaucracy to fulfill the functions of its mandated role in the redistribution
process. Breakdowns on the ground level, by contrast, consist of social and
community pressures that are actively brought to bear for the purpose of
discouraging Dalit land possession. I argue that violence “on the ground”
emerges under institutional conditions favorable to the persistence of
24
For consideration of social outcomes, see McDougal, supra note 13, pp. 81-88.
25
See McDougal, supra note 13.
150

socioeconomic caste disparities. A certain positive circular reinforcement is at

work: institutions may allow for continued de facto “patrimonialism,” and in turn
powerful landlords benefiting from the social arrangement push for their brand of
local government.26 The trick, then, is to understand how the cycle can be
reversed.
The first type of ground-level breakdown listed in Table 3 occurs if hostility
erupts at the scene of a survey where the Circle Revenue Officer, Talati, and
taluka Surveyor arrive to mete out the land. This is more often the case with
ALCA lands than government wastelands, since there is almost always a de facto
upper-caste “encroacher” (the original owner). However, government lands may
already be under cultivation by others, often upper-caste members. For instance,
in one village, Dalits reported that the village Darbars (local elites) allowed other
upper-caste members to cultivate government lands, but forbade Dalits to do
likewise. The second type of ground-level breakdown occurs when a hostile
encroacher prevents the Dalit title recipient from making beneficial use of his/her
land. The encroachers were often the owners or de facto cultivators of the land
prior to redistribution.
B. Results for Breakdown Predictors
This section will briefly report the results of a series of statistical analyses testing
hypotheses 1-3 above at the ground, village and taluka levels. The explanatory
power of the models fell as they analyzed consecutively higher levels of
government, suggesting that local conditions and interests have less influence on
policy implementation efforts that occur at higher levels of government.
Shortcomings of the models used are discussed in McDougal.27
1. Ground-Level Breakdowns
Village-level governments that present many obstacles for Dalits during the
redistribution process are strongly associated with a fraught environment on the
26
See K.L. Sharuna, Caste, Feudalism & Peasantry: The Social Foundation of Shekhawati (New
Delhi: Manohar Publishers & Distributors, 1998). He argues that the transition from feudalism, as
embodied in the Zamindari system, to what he terms the “patrimonialism” that characterized post-
independence land relations consisted of a shift from the supremacy of those skilled in war to
those who require, and take advantage of, the legal system and government officials to legitimize
their power. Thus, while the Zamindari system was a system of production in which Zamindars
depended upon the Marxian appropriation of a peasant surplus, patrimonialism can be seen in a
more Weberian tradition as a social system, too.
27
See McDougal, supra note 13, pp. 98-99.
151

ground. Ceteris paribus, for every ten obstacles that a village-level government
presents, another 4.5 obstacles are generated at the ground level. In the course of
the interviews for this study the most common explanation for this synergistic
phenomenon is the fact that strong village elites often control the local
government, aligning political interests with those of large landholders and
creating a favorable environment for further Dalit oppression on the ground. In
one village, for example, the powerful Darbar “village king” has strong
connections to the local government. He bemoaned the partial devolution of
economic power to lower castes. Asked to describe his relationship with the
talati, the “village king” offered to order him to attend our interview. He added
that he (the Darbar landholder) retains enough social standing to dictate to local
voters who will be sarpanch (village mayor). Although the latter position is
technically elected, it is not unusual in small villages for the descendents of
Zamindars (feudal landholders) to instruct villagers on whom they should vote
for.
Geographic distance between government offices plays a key role in
establishing the administrative hierarchy as contested terrain. On the one hand,
greater distances between local taluka headquarters and district headquarters are
associated with redistribution failures due to local violence. Navsarjan
fieldworkers claim long travel times lead to reduced district-level supervision,
which in turn breeds corruption at taluka headquarters. Fieldworkers contend that
taluka magistrates are thus less likely to use scarce resources to pay for police
escorts during surveys and easement allotments, and local mobs may influence the
survey procedure or prevent the Dalit beneficiary from taking possession. This is
evidence in favor of Hypothesis 1, above.
Conversely, greater distances between the village and taluka headquarters
are generally associated an even larger decrease in breakdowns occurring on the
ground – evidence for hypothesis 2 above. Assessing the situation under the
paradigm of top-down administration, this finding appears counter-intuitive:
shouldn’t one expect to find that as the distance grows, it becomes harder for
taluka officials to ensure redistribution measures are carried out on the ground?
Actually, this finding may be evidence for the view that influence in the
administrative structure runs bi-directionally. The farther away the taluka
headquarters, the less pressure can be brought to bear on taluka officials by
powerful landholders. The taluka officials interviewed admitted to being under
constant pressure to balance the interests of “the community” against their
mandates. By contrast, the Deputy Collector interviewed, further removed from
local interests and appointed by the federal government, took offense at any
implication he might be subject to social pressures compromising his neutrality.
Other significant variables that affected ground-level breakdowns, but which
nonetheless fall outside of this study’s primary focus, include the incidence of
152

poverty, labor market thickness, land type, and land value. Village poverty
incidence is positively correlated with ground-level breakdowns, possibly because
generally poor Dalit farmers have little capacity to improve and irrigate land, or
store agricultural produce to wait out price troughs. They are economically more
vulnerable, and are more easily bullied off the land – especially when the land
itself is marginal. Interestingly, thick agricultural labor markets were
significantly associated with ground-level breakdowns, conceivably because
marginal (often migrant) laborers depress agricultural wages, allowing outmoded
socioeconomic institutions to persist and raising the burden of debt shouldered by
this Dalit-dominated demographic. The type – and therefore desirability – of land
also affects the incidence of implementation failures due to violence. Recipients
of government land have, holding other variables constant, 22% fewer violent
incidents to contend with than recipients of ALCA lands. Presumably, this is
because, in addition to social taboos against Dalit land ownership, ALCA land
recipients have to contend with former landowners seeking to retain control over
their former properties. Finally, the higher the value of the parcel in question, the
more likely obstacles to Dalit cultivation will arise in the community. This fact
probably reflects the great desirability of fertile lands in a semi-arid area.
2. Village-Level Breakdowns
As when assessing breakdowns at the ground level, breakdowns at the village

level are most strongly associated with breakdowns one level up – now at the
taluka level – corroborating Hypothesis 3. Like before, the presence of poverty
also correlates positively with breakdowns.
Geographic distance again plays an important role in village-level land
redistribution, corroborating our Hypotheses 1 and 2. The farther the taluka
headquarters is from the district headquarters, the more barriers the village
government puts up to redistribution measures, presumably owing to weaker state
oversight. Likewise, long distances from village to taluka headquarters also
contribute to village-level breakdowns. Here, we may want to pause for
reflection, though: previously, we saw that increasing distance between village
and taluka decreased breakdowns at the ground level. Why should the village
level be any different? I would argue that we are observing two distinct pathways
of influence, each running in the opposite direction. That is, the effects at the
ground level stem from the ability (albeit decaying over distance) of community
members to influence taluka government through personal petition – a right they
are entitled to, and do, exercise. However, the verticalized influence pathways
within the nested structure of local government are not designed to flow upward.
Information may flow upward, as in the case of talatis alerting mamlatdars to the
153

presence of ALCA-eligible lands, who in turn then alert the Deputy and District
Collector. However, policy only flows downward.
3. Taluka-Level Breakdowns
Breakdowns in land reform implementation at the taluka level take the form of
either a failure to supply a title to the land in question, or a failure to survey the
land. The latter point is more nuanced than it first seems. Survey-related threats
to the redistribution process typically occur in two major variants:
A failure to survey, in whole or in part. This problem occurs more

frequently in the case of government lands than with ALCA lands. An
astonishing 35% of government lands recipients in Surendranagar district
reported an unperformed or incomplete survey of their lands, as opposed
to only 18% among recipients of ALCA lands. One possible explanation
for the variance in survey enforceability is that lands falling under ALCA
jurisdiction are presumably less likely to be designated eligible for
redistribution in the first place, since this involves the talati or mamlatdar
identifying them as such. Therefore, the comparison is skewed from the
beginning, and prospective ALCA lands that might have brought out the
armed encroachers upon survey, are still safe in the hands of the original
landowners;
A failure to provide a necessary easement. Many Dalit farmers (29%
among ALCA recipients, 15% among government lands recipients)
reported receiving land unaccompanied by an easement necessary either to
access or irrigate it. Interviews with Dalit land recipients suggest that the
reason for this is that any prospective easement for their land would
necessarily run through upper-caste property, and thus was not granted.
Navsarjan field staff claim ALCA lands exhibit this characteristic more
often simply because redistributed private land tends to be located near
un-redistributed private land, whereas government lands tend to be near
other government lands. Critically, this issue is related to survey failures,
in that upper-caste landowners often choose which part of their land will
be surveyed for redistribution. Not only does this practice ensure that the
worst of private lands is conveyed by the redistribution mechanism, but
also makes it likely that the parcel will be inaccessible from public roads,
further decreasing the likelihood of actual possession. Despite its strong
connection with the first survey-related problem, Navsarjan staff claim
that taluka officials do not often take up the easement question, and it is
thus not included in the first analysis.
154

Fewer local factors have impacts on taluka-level implementation

breakdowns than on those at the village level, and the model loses much of its
explanatory power. Again, consonant with Hypotheses 1 and 2, great distances
between taluka and district headquarters are related to implementation failures.
Interestingly, while the proportion of the population designated as Scheduled
Castes (Dalits) did not influence outcomes at lower levels, at the taluka level,
applications from Dalit-heavy villages are more likely to encounter problems. We
might hypothesize that villages with many Dalits produce many applications,
overwhelming the taluka’s capacity to cope. One taluka surveyor stated that he
was the only surveyor for 75 villages, and that his office was seriously
understaffed. Finally, small parcels appear to encounter problems at the taluka
level, possibly because survey errors have a larger impact on small parcels.
When easement-related problems are attributed to the taluka government,
geographical distances (village-to-district, village-to-taluka, and taluka-to-district)
account for the three strongest predictive factors. As the distances between
villages and taluka headquarters, and taluka and district headquarters, rise, so to
do the costs of covering those distances. On issues of surveying and title
allotment, the mamlatdar’s office (and particularly the surveyor and Revenue
Circle Officer) is directly accountable to the Deputy and District Collectors.
Therefore, it is reasonable to suppose that greater distances lower accountability
and increase discretion. Similarly, as the distance rises between the taluka office
and the village, it becomes less likely for the survey process to be performed with
all three mandated participants: Revenue Circle Officer, surveyor, and talati.
Since the two most likely not to be present as a result of great distances are the
Revenue Circle Officer and the taluka surveyor, the process may be relatively
more influenced by the talati (who, as we have established, often serves at the
pleasure of the local large landholder) and the gathering villagers. Even if both
taluka officials are present to mete out the property, the taluka police may be less
likely come great distances, and mobs of encroachers may intimidate the officials.
Conversely, the closer the village is to the district headquarters, the less likely
taluka-level breakdowns are to occur. The likely explanation for this
phenomenon is that the survey does not ask which institution performed the land
survey. Most often, it is the taluka surveyor, but in the case of a dispute or
complaint, the matter goes to the district land surveyor in Surendranagar.
Therefore, the lower the transaction costs involved in notifying the district land
surveyor and getting him or her to resurvey the land, the likelier it is that taluka-
level problems can be remedied. Again, we see that the local government
hierarchy is host to multiple competing interests that in turn have multiple
avenues for advancing their interests.
155

C. Differential Treatment of ALCA and Government Lands
The implementation of the land reforms impacts ALCA and government lands
differentially. Generally speaking, recipients of ALCA lands are plagued with
more and greater hurdles to cultivation than government land cultivators when
dealing with their local governments or their communities. Surveyors perform
their mandated duties less frequently. Talatis will more easily allow the
distribution of lands without access easements, as well as the persistence of
encroachments on official village records. On the ground, community members
are more likely to resort to threats, violence, and intimidation to keep Dalits from
farming, and encroachers are more likely to resist ejection.
Two notable exceptions prove the rule: official title is more often granted to
ALCA recipients than to government land farmers, and the khatavahis, or land
ledgers, are more reliably provided to them. This may be because most ALCA
parcels were redistributed earlier than most government wastelands, at a time
when less overall demand for agricultural land existed. Thus, district, taluka, and
village land offices may not have found themselves in the state of over-taxation to
which many interviewed bureaucrats alluded. Another, more cynical, explanation
is that, since the ALCA is the state government’s flagship land reform programme
and is consequently subject to a incessant public scrutiny, it behooves district
collectors to distribute the largest possible proportion of the officially-declared
ALCA land titles. Under this alternative explanation, whether lower government
offices take the necessary steps to ensure those titles are more than empty
promises is of less concern. Whatever the reason, it is interesting to note that
despite the greater desirability of ALCA lands with respect to government lands,
the incidences of encroachment are quite comparable—perhaps because the
selection process of ALCA lands tends not to redistribute the majority of eligible
properties.
156

Figure 1. Breakdowns by land type at the taluka, village, and ground levels
*** = 99% confidence level; ** = 95% confidence level; * = 90% confidence level.
Source: Navsarjan 2006 survey, author’s calculations
III. ACTIVISM AND INTERVENTION

In the following section, I describe Navsarjan’s organizational strategy as a
reflection of the land redistribution process. I argue that Navsarjan implicitly
understands the nested game that plays out at various levels of government, and
accordingly gears its strategy to modifying the linkages between levels such that
Dalit farmers benefit. I conclude with reflection on implications for our
understanding of contemporary state-civil society relations.
157

A. Navsarjan’s Three-Pronged Strategy
In Navsarjan’s December 1996 letter to the Surendranagar District Collector’s

office detailing cases of failure in land redistribution implementation (the
precursor to the suit filed with the High Court of Gujarat in Ahmedabad in April
of 1999), the group describes itself as follows: “Navsarjan Trust” is a voluntary
organization which provides assistance, education and legal aid to the poor people
and also on the issues of violation of human rights [sic].”28 This statement
encapsulates not only the organization’s purpose, but also its operational strategy.
Rearranging the stated aspects of this strategy to align with the forgoing analysis
of nested government (i.e., starting at the ground level and working up), we may
state that the prongs of Navsarjan’s advocacy offensive are:
Education. Navsarjan employs fieldworkers whose primary

responsibility is to inform Dalit villagers of their legal rights with respect
to the land reforms and the other relevant legislation, such as the
Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989.
Bureaucratic facilitation. Navsarjan fieldworkers inform village Dalits
of lands that have been made available for redistribution, and help them to
fill out and return the appropriate land redistribution forms.
Legal aid. Navsarjan brings, or threatens to bring, legal actions against
non-performing government bodies.
These three prongs may roughly equate to three tiers of engagement: at the
ground level, at the level of local government, and at the level of state government
(through the court system). Because Navsarjan works simultaneously on these
three tiers, the organization is able to choose at what level it will expend its
limited resources for a particular challenge.
1. Education
Education consists of a mundane and a radical component. The mundane

component involves the diffusion of legal knowledge to reduce information
asymmetries in the struggle for socioeconomic equality. Rural Gujarat has a
literacy rate of just 51.4%, as compared to urban Gujarat’s 71.2%.29 These
numbers drop drastically for various minority groups. For instance, the literacy
28
29
Government of India, Census of India (New Delhi, 2001).
158

rate among Dalit women in India was just under 24% in 2001.30 Dalit farmers
may not have easy access to, or even the ability to read, the local periodicals in
which parcel availability is published.
The radical component to education is as necessary as it is difficult to
quantify: bolstering the will of the Dalit community to stand up for their rights.
As Navsarjan workers repeated told a group of Dalit farmers in one village upon
receiving a host of land-related complaints, “You must stand up and fight for your
own issues – don’t just tell us your woes.” This “fighting spirit” has little to do
with the size of the Dalit population – indeed, the percentage of Scheduled Castes
per the India Census 2001 never once proved a statistically significant
determinant of breakdowns at any level. In one village surveyed, for example,
Dalits comprised around 8.1% of the total village population in 200031 – 1.2
percentage points higher than the rural Gujarati average. And yet, that village is
notorious for the firm grip its Darbars keep on the reins of power. Tragic recent
episodes illustrated that small Dalit populations may not be the cause but rather
the effect of land relations. In March of 2003, according to local Dalits, a brother
of one local “village king” got into an altercation with a local Dalit who
complained the brother was stealing large, construction-worthy stones from his
land. The Darbar formed a small band of friends who stabbed and killed the Dalit
later that afternoon – a crime that has gone untried. Since then, local Dalits report
anecdotally that about half of the Dalit residents fled for larger, nearby urban
centers. A stroll through the former Dalit quarter confirms that many of the
houses are still abandoned, or appropriated by other caste groups.
Navsarjan attributes many successes on the ground to the mindset of local
Dalits, which, they contend, is fortified by knowledge of their legal rights and
recourses. When asked why Darbars in Ori choose to bribe Dalits not to take
possession of their rightful land, whereas Darbars in Talsana need only resort to
open threats of physical violence, Navsarjan fieldworkers point to historical
idiosyncrasies peculiar to each region that in turn manifest in differing
expectations of what is possible in the minds of Dalits. In Talsana, they say, the
Grahak, or bonded labor, system was particularly prevalent during Zamindari
times, and landowner clout thus carries over into the present. Today’s landowners
still have many Dalits in their employ as bonded laborers, and it is to the latter
that the landowners legally conceded their surplus lands upon the passage of the
ALCA. The Dalits might legally own the surplus lands, but the Darbars
essentially own the Dalits themselves through debt bondage. Thus, neither
Darbar nor Dalit ever expected that the Dalits would ever truly receive
possession.
30
Sanjay Paswan and Paramanshi Jaideva, Encyclopaedia of Dalits in India, vol. 10: Education
(New Delhi: Gyan Books Pvt. Ltd., 2002).
31
159

Navsarjan employees also marshal other examples to emphasize the

importance of Dalit mindsets in successful land redistribution. They say that in
some villages, when Navsarjan originally brought the affidavit to Dalit farmers so
that they could sign it and put their complaints on public record, the Dalits
brought the documents straight to their landlord and asked him whether they
should in fact sign. He advised them against it, and they backed down. In
Ghanejada village, the taluka issued three consecutive orders to the Dalits to take
possession of their allotted lands, but the Dalits refused. On the other hand, in
Khadi village, one man fought for his rights and successfully took possession—an
act that galvanized his peers to do likewise. As important as courage, will, and
determination are, though, it is extremely difficult to measure them, nor did this
survey even attempt to do so. Furthermore, even one could find an accurate
metric for it, “strong will” may still be a confounding variable for knowledge of
one’s legal rights, or for Navsarjan’s willingness to prosecute atrocities
committed against Dalits.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Navsarjan employees downplay the importance of
Dalit mindset when speaking to local government officials, though. When one
talati asserted a very similar theory to that previously expressed by Navsarjan
(“[t]he subservient mindset of the Dalits themselves is the cause of their
unwillingness to take possession of their lands”), Navsarjan employees countered
that the primary responsibility lay with the Taluka government and their powers
of police protection during the delicate period of title transfer.
2. Bureaucratic Facilitation
Navsarjan also functions to reduce Dalit transaction costs in navigating the

bureaucracy of land administration. They do this first by informing Dalits of the
land, and second by helping Dalits to fill out and submit the application
paperwork, and to confirm title receipt (thereby notifying the surveyor the land is
ready to be meted out). In some cases during the mid-1990s, when Navsarjan was
just beginning to work on the land redistribution issue, District Collectors and
Mamlatdars had recorded the award of land titles to Dalit beneficiaries, but the so-
called “beneficiaries” themselves had not ever received word of the award. In
such cases, Navsarjan also served to facilitate the flow of information down to the
ground level. Thus, Navsarjan’s efficacy is not only linked to its antagonistic role
vis-à-vis the state, but also to its embeddedness with the state that increase the
access to and effectiveness of government institutions for Dalits.
160

3. Legal Aid
The PIL filed in 1999 illustrates that Navsarjan gives Dalits recourse to the law
that they probably would not otherwise have. Furthermore, the suit was lent extra
weight by the fact that Navsarjan was co-petitioner with “Jamin Hakk Rakshan
Samiti,” a group of affected citizens who banded together at Navsarjan’s
suggestion. In this way, Navsarjan’s PIL carried the authenticity of a spontaneous
local movement. While Navsarjan staff contend that they always aim to work
alongside local communities in equal partnership, they also claim that Hamin
Hakk Rakshan Samiti would never have been born without public awareness
campaigns carried out by Navsarjan.
Of the 6,000 acres that the PIL originally singled out as not having been in
the possession of the intended Dalit beneficiaries, around 2,000 still remained in
January of 2007. Of course, the almost 4,000 acres that have since been restored
to Dalits are not necessary under their cultivation, for a host of reasons discussed
above. Nevertheless, the improvement appears to be drastic by all accounts. It is
difficult to discern how much of this shift is due directly to the PIL, though. It
could be argued that state government was making progress on land reforms even
in the absence of Navsarjan. Most of the Dalits interviewed, though, had received
land titles or promises of land titles long before Navsarjan became involved in
Surendrangar district in 1995. Most testified to the crucial role Navsarjan played
in overcoming bureaucratic inertia or local community resistance. Some Dalits in
Kanpur had effectively been in a holding pattern since their original application in
1967 when Navsarjan intervened in 1995, getting the promised land surveyed that
same year. Likewise in one village, a man claimed that he originally faced
resistance from the former landlord until Navsarjan interceded with the local
government.
Navsarjan’s role as bureaucratic facilitator also bleeds into its role as legal
activist. For officially filing suit in the Gujarat High Court is merely at one
(adversarial) extreme end of a spectrum of strategies that make use of government
institutions. It also exemplifies one of Navsarjan’s key strategies: bypassing local
governments less amenable to their cause for higher-level governments that may
bring pressure to bear on them. Navsarjan staff have observed that threatening to
take legal action can oftentimes be as effective as actually taking it. This, they
claim, is the case in one taluka formerly notorious for its regressive government,
but whose officials now consult Navsarjan before taking action on land reform
issues and invite their fieldworkers to attend land surveys. Presumably, the
mamlatdar, himself an upper caste-member, prefers dealing with Navsarjan
directly to dealing with reproaches from the District Collector. The threat of legal
action can also embolden Dalits to make use of Navsarjan’s land rights education,
legal support in the case of an atrocity.
161

4. Land Reform Progress
Whatever the reason, there has been a noticeable improvement in local

governments’ performance of those functions constituting land reform
implementation from 1996 to 2006 (see Figure 2).32 Taluka and village
governments showed remarkable improvement in all comparable categories, save
granting title to ALCA lands, in which 1996 and 2006 exhibited roughly similar
numbers. Most strikingly, the general change trend (as depicted by red midpoint
lines) seems to drift farther into positive territory at higher levels of government.
The least amount of progress has been made at the ground level, with actual
possession making modest but tangible gains, and non-encroachment (counting
partial encroachments) remaining more or less unchanged.
32
The 1996 and 2006 surveys had few directly corresponding questions. Furthermore, for reasons
relating to 1996 data reporting, it is impossible to compare the same four talukas. Rather, the
1996 data refers to four talukas located nearby, but in different districts: Viramgam taluka in
Ahmedabad district, Vallabhipur taluka in Bhavnagar district, Degham taluka in Gandhinagar
district, and Jasdan taluka in Rajkot district. Nevertheless, Surendranagar district has the worst
reputation in terms of land reform implementation (the reason Navsarjan started working there in
the first place), and so if there is a regional bias, it will likely be against, rather than for,
improvement in government performance during the intervening years.
The method of data reporting for the 1996 Navsarjan survey in the four Surendranagar talukas
surveyed in 2006 was to report the absolute number of instances of government failures in the land
reform implementation process. There was no sense of a denominator, and so failure rates as
percentages were impossible to derive. This omission in itself may say something about
Navsarjan’s early approach to the issue, in that it seems part of a “name and shame” strategy
designed to spur the government into action,. In other words, rather gauging the relative extent of
the various problems, Navsarjan was more interested in pointing out that the problems existed at
all. This “zero tolerance” view is echoed in their stance on manual scavenging, which does not
seek to diminish the practice, but to abolish it altogether.
162

Figure 2. A comparison of survey responses for selected questions from 1996 and 2006.
*** = 99% confidence level; ** = 95% confidence level; * = 90% confidence level. These
confidence levels refer to Chi-Square statistics between land types for the same year.
Source: Navsarjan 1996,2006 survey, author’s calculations.
These change trends hint at two underlying phenomena. First, as I have

argued, the government hierarchy represents contested terrain, on which offices
geographically and institutionally closer to local elites may be more resistant to
land reform, and offices more distant from local elites will be more susceptible to
reform. Second, assuming that Navsarjan is the primary catalyst of change in the
region, the trend may also reflect Navsarjan’s strategy of selective engagement
with various tiers of government. For while Navsarjan’s tactics are not primarily
top-down in nature, the aforementioned recalcitrance at lower levels of
government (as well as the cost of trying to reform each of the hundreds of village
governments in any given district) has the inevitable effect of driving the
organization to focus increasingly on taluka, district, and state-level government
interventions. This shift of focus may then come to resemble the “trickle-down”
effect suggested by Figure 2.33
33
None of the effects of Navsarjan’s own three-pronged efforts were assessed, whether
disaggregated by prong or bundled. Simple lack of information on Navsarjan’s program foci over
the past 12 years is the principal cause of this omission. When asked if he would have been able
to obtain his land without Navsarjan’s help, though, one village Dalit said, “One hand needs the
other to clap,” hinting at Navsarjan’s instrumental role in land reform.
163

B. Concluding Remarks
The line between the state and civil society in Gujarat is blurred with respect to
land reform policy implementation. Instead of a neoliberal, monolithic state, we
see that the state is a framework in which interests compete and in which groups
like Navsarjan attempt to tip the scales in their cause’s favor. They do this by co-
opting the process of “discursive demobilization,” as described by Lynch,34 such
that the violent means of coercion employed by local large landholders are
portrayed as being dissonant with the central state’s internationally projected self-
image. As such, upper caste violence becomes a threat to the internal consistency
and legitimacy of the Indian state. In effect, political mutualism grows between
the Dalit movement and the Indian state, facilitated by the transnational resources
of the Dalit movement itself. This has the intended effect of slowly cutting off
local government offices dominated by upper-caste interests from each other, and
breaking up their “state-within-a-state.”
The equation between Navsarjan and the communities in which it works is
not perfect, either, for while the group claims to be an organic outgrowth of the
Dalit community, it does not merely reflect and communicate Dalit concerns.
Rather, through transnational connections with other human rights organizations,
Navsarjan continually pushes the edge of the envelope in formulating Dalit
demands, while encouraging Dalit farmers to follow suit – often an act of defiance
well outside the comfort zone of the community it purports to represent. While
Navsarjan administration sometimes portray caste conflict over land as occurring
between righteous Dalits and activist groups on the one hand, and nefarious upper
castes and a complicit government on the other, in fact activists, farmers, and
government form an uneasy triangle defined by their intercalation and what
Sanyal terms “antagonistic cooperation.”35
Although this study only examined one social movement in India, some
tentative conclusions can be drawn about social movements in conflicted societies
more generally. For one, the degree to which a social movement will undermine
or reinforce the legitimacy of the state may be a function of whether the state is
perceived as being a sufficient vehicle for advancing and recognizing a social
claim, and what other mechanisms for doing so are available. This is most salient
when considering that Dalits, though traditionally considered outcaste and thus
outside of Hindu society, have in fact always been crucial to its functioning.
Their hereditary occupations, while oppressive, became implicitly monetizeable
in the expanding Indian economy. A radical socioeconomic reapportionment of
34
See Lynch, supra note 10, p. 149.
35
Bishwapriya Sanyal, Antagonistic Cooperation: A Case Study of Nongovernmental
Organization, Government and Donors' Relationship in Income-Generating projets in
Bangladesh, 19 World Development 10 (1991), 1367-1379.
164

private property did not necessarily entail a corresponding political upheaval in a

government that ostensibly espoused social and economic rights for all. By
contrast, tribal people of India have traditionally had little commerce or
interdependence with wider Indian society, and their resources have been largely
communal and non-monetized. The Maoist insurrection in which tribal people
take part can, in that sense, be seen as a radical attempt at overthrowing neoliberal
capitalism entirely and thus, in the words of Pugh, Cooper and Turner, at setting
“their economic priorities including protection of economic activities from
negative effects of global integration”.36
Lastly, it bears noting that to the extent that progressive transnational
movements like the Dalit movement may iron out conflicts between central
government policy and local government implementation, and begin to win over
the “contested terrain” of state apparatuses, radical actors sanctioned and even
supported by complicit local governments may increasingly operate outside the
structure of state bureaucracy. For instance, the rightwing Hindu anti-Muslim
riots that exploded in Gujarati cities in 2002, the notorious anti-Dalit Ranvir Sena
militia in Bihar, and the brutal anti-Maoist Salwa Judum militia in Chhattisgarh
all benefit from government-sponsorship at the sub-federal level. Each of them
represents an outsourcing of regressive violence to disaffected privileged classes
who are no longer able to manipulate the state apparatus to their advantage. It is
these forces that, supported by some arm of the state, may most seriously
challenge the integrity of the state in the long run.
36
Michael Pugh, Neil Cooper and Mandy Turner, Conclusion: The Political Economy of
Peacebuilding - Whose Peace? Where Next?, In M. Pugh, N. Cooper and M. Turner
(eds.), Whose Peace? Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 390-397.
165

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The Law and Development Review

Volume 4, Number 1 2011 Article 4

Law of the Landless: The Dalit Bid for Land

Topher McDougal, University of San Diego

Brought to you by | Oregon State University

KEYWORDS: land redistribution, legal implementation, local government, activism, social

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Brought to you by | Oregon State University

Brought to you by | Oregon State University

Brought to you by | Oregon State University

by the compromise struck with conservatives demanding “states rights.” Thus,

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This study bases its quantitative analyses on two surveys administered by

A. Gujarati Land Reform Legislation

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estimated as eligible for redistribution were declared surplus by 1995.18 In

B. Navsarjan’s Public Interest Litigation

C. Land Reform Implementation

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Brought to you by | Oregon State University

Table 1. Government officials key to the implementation of land redistribution legislation

Level Official/Office Function

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II. DETERMINANTS OF LAND REDISTRIBUTION SUCCESS

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The first two hypotheses depend on a correlation between geographical and

I designed the survey to focus on what types of bureaucratic breakdowns occurred

Government Level Breakdown

2: Taluka The survey was not performed*

1: Village/Panchayat Khatavahi, or land ledger, was not conveyed

0: Ground A hostile incident while taking possession

Government-level breakdowns are defined as failures of the government

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socioeconomic caste disparities. A certain positive circular reinforcement is at

B. Results for Breakdown Predictors

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Brought to you by | Oregon State University

As when assessing breakdowns at the ground level, breakdowns at the village

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 A failure to survey, in whole or in part. This problem occurs more

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Fewer local factors have impacts on taluka-level implementation

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C. Differential Treatment of ALCA and Government Lands

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III. ACTIVISM AND INTERVENTION

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A. Navsarjan’s Three-Pronged Strategy

In Navsarjan’s December 1996 letter to the Surendranagar District Collector’s

 Education. Navsarjan employs fieldworkers whose primary

Education consists of a mundane and a radical component. The mundane

Brought to you by | Oregon State University

Brought to you by | Oregon State University

Navsarjan employees also marshal other examples to emphasize the

Navsarjan also functions to reduce Dalit transaction costs in navigating the

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Brought to you by | Oregon State University

4. Land Reform Progress

A failure to survey, in whole or in part. This problem occurs more

Education. Navsarjan employs fieldworkers whose primary