ABSTRACT
Theories of distributive justice may seem like unnecessarily abstract concepts which are disconnected from people’s lived reality. However, consciously or unconsciously all of us apply these theories when we make judgements about rights and entitlements, what we deserve to get and what we consider to be a fair distribution of society’s resources. The legitimacy of law and policy primarily derives from how people share the reasoning and logic of justice principles behind this governmentality. This chapter reports how adivasis (members of scheduled tribe communities) and settlers (people from central and south Kerala who bought/occupied adivasi land) express their notions of theories of justice in the concrete case of land alienation in a village in Kerala. The study suggests that in the case of land transactions both the settlers and the adivasis have a strong sense of private ownership and they combine Robert Nozick and Ronald Dworkin’s philosophies to formulate what they perceive to be a just solution to the land alienation. In the case of allocation of government benefits, the adivasis, who receive the major share of benefits, apply John Rawls’ difference principle to justify the continued allocation of these benefits. The settlers feel that they are being neglected by the government because of the application of ‘want’ principles in the policies, and are inclined towards Dworkin’s equality of resources.
