ABSTRACT
Chapter III represents three ethnographic cases of politics-land interface at Bardhaman, Paschim Medinipur and Purba Medinipur districts of the state. These three revolve around farming, industrialisation and real-estate linked corruptions respectively – the three major locale where land politics interface with the state. The first case from Bardhaman deals with elite “spill over” effects on the small and marginal farmers. It shows in what ways local storage and rice mill-based networks of local elites have effectively withstood the disruption with political change. The second case deals with the dynamics of acquisition of large tracts of land for heavy industrialisation. It focuses on the livelihood issues of local tribal people near the proposed but now abandoned five-thousand-acre Jindal Steel Works, Salboni, Paschim Medinipur. The third case deals with the nexus of corrupt practices between local politics, Gram Panchayat and a section of local land mafias in Purba Medinipur. It gives detailed narratives to the development of land-related corrupt practices and forced displacement of the families living nearby the popular sea-facing tourist destination of West Bengal, Digha. This chapter concludes itself with an attempt to conceptualise the importance of land in the local politics of the state.
