ABSTRACT
This chapter centres around the question of land, its ownership and conflicts over the commons. Drawing from historical sources and interviews, the chapter challenges a popular notion of the temporary shelter area being a “wasteland” before the 2001 earthquake and illustrates how the disaster recovery infrastructures and urban development put pressure on ecology and pastoralist life. The chapter elaborates the role of the area historically in connecting the administrative capital Bhuj with the surrounding villages militarily, ecologically, economically, religiously, and socially. The chapter suggests that the destiny of the Haṅgāmī Āvās, as an unfinished fourth formal relocation site, follows the overall trend in Kachchh towards new resource frontiers, capital accumulation, and land speculation, and as a result conflicts between commons and pastoralism, and that of the disaster recovery paradigm.
