Final Project Report Submitted to Azim Premji University

WORLD-CITY PLANNING IN ANDHRA PRADESH: A NEW MODEL FOR URBANISATION?

Final Project Report submitted to Azim Premji University

5 March 2021 Bengaluru

Carol Upadhya School of Social Sciences National Institute of Advanced Studies Indian Institute of Science Campus Bengaluru 560012 [email protected]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction 2. Coastal Andhra: Regional Political Economy, Identity and Social Structure 3. Spectacular Urbanism: Imaginaries and Realities of Development 4. Speculative Urbanism: Financialisation, Accumulation and Dislocation 5. Agrarian Urbanism: Recasting Land 6. Conclusion

Acknowledgements References Appendices: 1. Research methodology 2. Research archive 3. Project outputs

1. INTRODUCTION

On June 2, 2014, Andhra Pradesh (AP) was divided to create the new state of Telangana, the result of a long-drawn movement for a separate state. Under the terms of the bifurcation, Hyderabad would remain the joint capital of both states for ten years, but the newly elected Chief Minister of the residual state, N. Chandrababu Naidu, wanted to construct a new capital city and shift the administration out of Hyderabad as soon as possible. After much debate, a centrally located site in Guntur district was selected for the project – an agricultural area just across the Krishna River from Vijayawada (the second largest city in residual AP). To achieve his ambition of creating a well-planned, ‘world-class’ city, Naidu requested the Singapore government to help design the master plan. By February 2015, over 30,000 acres of agricultural land had been assembled through a land pooling scheme, and by early 2016 six large administrative blocks had already been completed and the process of moving government staff to ‘Amaravati’, as the new capital has been named, had begun. The Amaravati project represented a significant experiment in urban planning and development, employing a relatively novel mode of land acquisition and aspiring to create a modern city from scratch. This research project was initiated to track the unfolding of this ‘world- city’ project and the dramatic social and economic changes that it set in motion, focusing on the impacts on local communities. The aim was to document the variable outcomes of this ambitious ‘greenfield city’ project for different social classes and castes in the affected villages, especially for their livelihoods, prospects of social and economic mobility, and aspirations. The study also explored the wider implications of this model of planned (or forced) urbanisation and of the rapid transformation of agricultural land into urban real estate. The project, carried out over a period of 3½ years, was an in-depth, longitudinal study of the Amaravati project and its outcomes, building on work done by the author in the region from 2013.

Objectives The specific objectives of the study, as delineated in the proposal, were: 1) To map the dynamics of urbanisation and land transformation in the new capital region of Andhra Pradesh, and the implications of this model of urban planning for the livelihoods, social welfare, and economic security of the affected communities: The study will document how rural communities and local economies are affected by land pooling and speculative investment, the disruption of agriculture, and urban development, focusing on the variable impacts of the

capital city project across social strata (especially landowning versus non-landowning classes). It will also explore how different groups or actors negotiate with the state and market, and how the project is shaping people’s visions for their futures and strategies for remaking their lives. 2) To understand the implications of ‘world-city’ planning and the land-based finance model for sustainable and equitable urban development: The study will examine the diverse processes and networks through which agricultural land is converted into urban real estate, within and outside the capital zone, the land pooling scheme and its impact on the land market, and the larger consequences of speculative investment in the region. To trace the complex intersections between state planning and real estate markets, the research will map the networks of local, regional and transnational actors that control land conversion and structure land markets.1

The project was carried out between July 2016 and December 2019. A mixed-methods research design was employed, combining extended ethnographic research and semi-structured and unstructured interviews with a wide range of respondents and interlocutors and collection of socio-economic data, policy documents and other sources. Field research was conducted by the principal investigator for periods of one to two weeks at regular intervals to track changes and developments over time, with the help of research assistants, who also carried out independent research in the region. (See Appendix 1 for research methods and Appendix 2 for a summary of the data collected.)

Key findings and themes During the course of fieldwork, several themes emerged that appeared to be important for understanding the socio-economic impacts of the Amaravati project. These themes were pursued as particular foci of the research from the second year onwards, changing the course of the work somewhat and sharpening the research questions and findings:

(1) Land and finance capital Documenting the financial architecture of the Amaravati project is key to understanding its implications for urban governance as well as processes of accumulation -- particularly how value is (or was supposed to be) extracted from land and captured, and by which actors. This is a

1 From the proposal submitted to Azim Premji Foundation.

2 complicated topic requiring information that is difficult to access. We tapped available data sources and used key informant interviews to document the land-based financing model employed by the state government, to trace how land was monetised through the land pooling system, and to understand the financial model for the project overall and how it was linked to the operations of the land market. The final analysis will also explore the implications of these forms of infrastructure financing for various actors and for the state exchequer. Part of this work has been published, while a comprehensive paper on this theme is in process. The paper is built around three case studies: a) the agreement signed between Ascendas-Sembcorp and ADCL to develop the ‘startup area’ of the new city (the deal subsequently fell apart but it remains an important case to examine); b) the terms of land allocation by the CRDA (Capital Region Development Authority) to private entities within the capital zone; c) the controversy over loans from multilateral institutions, especially the World Bank (which withdrew from the project).

The paper will examine how the financial model for the Amaravati project unfolded on the ground, against unanticipated political-economic realities – particularly unruly land markets, the operations of speculative capital, and the quotidian modalities through which land was financialised.

(2) Land, caste and differential accumulation During the course of the research, caste emerged as central to the planning and execution of the Amaravati project as well as to its social consequences, operating as a major axis of accumulation as well as marginalisation and inequality. This theme represents a refinement of objective 1 as outlined in the research proposal, but based on fieldwork findings we focused more closely on caste as a social structure of accumulation and how it is reworked in the context of urbanisation. The study explored in detail how caste structured transactions around land, enabling different groups to extract different levels and forms of value from land while disabling others. The local power of Kammas, their monopoly over land, and their close connections with the (former) state government enabled this community to extract the most benefits from the Amaravati project, through the land pooling scheme as well as the soaring land market and the new opportunities that were opened up by urbanisation. In contrast, Dalits were systematically excluded from

3 participating in or benefitting from the project, in different ways. To substantiate this argument, the analysis concentrates on two main sub-themes:

a) Kamma caste and political networks and control over land: Through their caste and political networks and dominant position in terms of landholding in most capital region villages, members of the Kamma community derived the most advantage from the Amaravati project, indicating that caste-based control over land opens up new paths of accumulation in the context of urbanisation. However, with the defeat of the Telugu Desam Party in the May 2019 Assembly election, the social power of Kammas was severely undermined, providing a telling twist to the processes that we were studying. A forthcoming paper will explore how Kamma ‘land pooling farmers’ have responded to the decision of the new state government (led by the YSR Congress Party) to change the capital location and deprive them of their expected future gains from the Amaravati project. It will also discuss how Dalits and other castes have sought to reassert themselves in the changed political context.

b) Dalit land struggles: Dalits in several capital region villages were engaged in different kinds of struggles – to get just compensation for their lands under the land pooling scheme, or to recoup land that had been ‘sold’ to upper caste actors at low rates prior to the announcement of land pooling. Since many Dalits held only assigned lands, they were marginalised as beneficiaries of the project and had to engage in a protracted struggle with the state government, district authorities and the CRDA for recognition of their rights. Moreover, because they often did not have the documents needed to prove ownership and avail of the land pooling package, many had sold their lands to Kammas at low prices. The analysis of these struggles is set against the history of caste-structured agrarian relations in the region. The paper (under review) focuses on case studies of conflicts around lanka lands and assigned lands in two villages.

This report elaborates on these key findings and discusses their wider implications for policy and future research. The following section (2) provides background on the history, political economy, social profile and development trajectory of the Coastal Andhra region, to contextualise how the Amaravati project was imagined and implemented and its outcomes. Section 3 explores the state’s imagination of urbanisation as development in the case of Amaravati and its consequences for the

4 one million residents of the 29 capital zone villages. Section 4 describes the modes of accumulation and processes of dislocation and dispossession that were initiated by the activation of a speculative land market in and around the project site. Section 5 examines the caste politics of the land transition, focusing on Dalits struggles around land pooling and dispossession and building on recent literature on ‘agrarian urbanism’. The Conclusion reflects on the significance and policy implications of the study and outlines the gaps and directions for future research.

2. COASTAL ANDHRA: REGIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY, IDENTITY AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE

This section provides some background on the history, political economy and social structure of the coastal Andhra region and the politics of regionalism that led to the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, to contextualise the imagination and development of the Amaravati project discussed in the remainder of the report.

Coastal Andhra: History, identity, political economy The region of Coastal Andhra, which is usually understood to include the districts of Guntur, Krishna, and East and West Godavari, encompasses the agriculturally productive canal-irrigated deltas of the Krishna and Godavari rivers as well as upland areas with ‘dry’ (unirrigated) lands. The region formed part of Madras Presidency during the colonial period and became the economic, cultural and political core of the new state of Andhra Pradesh (AP) when it was created in 1956 by joining the districts of Coastal Andhra (‘Costa’) and Rayalaseema (the ‘Ceded Districts’) with the Telugu-speaking districts of erstwhile Hyderabad princely state.2 Although these three regions were not official administrative units and never formed part of a single political entity until the formation of the state (Keiko 2010: 58), they had distinct regional identities, formed through their divergent political and administrative histories, agro-ecological conditions and caste-class structures. The identity of the Andhra region was further strengthened by the political consolidation of the dominant landowning castes – especially Reddys and Kammas – through the Non-Brahmin movement of the 1920s (Baker 1976; Keiko 2008; Washbrook 1973, 1976). Political developments of the late colonial period point to the crafting of a ‘regional modernity’ (Sivaramakrishnan and Agrawal 2003) in Coastal Andhra, as a rediscovered cultural history and regional/ linguistic identity embedded in territory intersected with democratic aspirations, leading to the popular demand for regional autonomy.

2 These three regions have historically been dominated, politically and economically, by different caste groups or alliances of castes – Reddys (a large caste category that includes a range of endogamous groups) in Rayalaseema, Reddys and Velamas in Telangana, and Kammas and other ‘peasant’ castes such as Kapus and Rajus in Coastal Andhra. Alliances and contestations between these groups have shaped party politics in the state, with Reddys embedding themselves in the Congress Party from the 1950s (along with Brahmins, Dalits and other groups) while Kammas supported a series of opposition parties. These caste alignments were reflected in regionalist politics and political rivalry in the undivided state between the two major dominant castes, Reddys and Kammas, which had different regional bases. See Elliott (1970), Mantena (2014), Mitchell (2009) and Srinivasulu (2002).

The movement for a separate Telugu-speaking state during the late colonial period, which arose in part due to contestations over access to development resources and state power within Madras Presidency, partially submerged these separate regional identities. A larger language-based identity was forged, which married linguistic community with a particular territory and a new language of political rights (Mantena 2013, 2014; Mitchell 2009), leading to the formation of a united Andhra Pradesh. However, language ideology was ultimately insufficient to bind these regions together – autonomy movements erupted periodically from the 1960s in Telangana as well as other regions as well (Srinivas 2008). The upsurge of the Telangana movement more recently led to the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, leaving the residual state without a capital city (Maringanti 2010).

Formation of a regional economy Coastal Andhra’s regional identity was shaped by the particularities of its political economy and historical development, creating a popular narrative of state-led economic progress (Upadhya 2017). The construction of dams on the Krishna and Godavari rivers and canal irrigation systems in the late nineteenth century led to the commercialisation of agriculture and the growth of trade, and a distinctive regional economy crystallised from the 1920s, especially in the irrigated rice belt of the river deltas. By the 1930s, prosperous farmers were investing their agricultural profits in the grain trade, moneylending and agro-industries and also channelling profits from business back into the accumulation of agrarian land, creating a circular flow of capital between the rural economy and growing market towns such as Vijayawada and Guntur and a well-integrated regional economy (Ananth 2007; Baker 1976: 133). The development of strong rural-urban networks of trade and mobility created a marked urban orientation amongst rich peasants, and especially the dominant landowning caste – the Kammas.3 These developments gave rise to a powerful regional business class with its roots in agrarian land. From the 1960s, this class began to diversify into other commercial and industrial ventures within the region and beyond, such as small industry, trade, finance, construction contracting, transport, and especially the Telugu film industry (Ananth 2007; Srinivas 2013; Upadhya 1988). The business class, or ‘provincial capital’ (Parthasarathy 2015), continues to control the regional economy even as it has expanded its investments across India and abroad (Damodaran 2008) while retaining control over land. As they accumulated resources and vied for

3 The consolidation of Kammas’ reputation as an ‘enterprising community’ was reinforced by a strong pattern of outward mobility, starting in the 1930s, as agriculturalists settled in other regions of south India where they purchased newly irrigated lands (Benbabaali 2013, 2018).

7 political power and influence, the regional elite also began to pursue modern education for their children, many of whom moved into professional and white-collar occupations and entered the urban middle class (Upadhya 1997). Because of this history, Coastal Andhra is widely identified with a particular caste group, the Kammas, who owned a large proportion of the land and controlled much of the business in the region (Damodaran 2008; Keiko 2010).4 Kammas also later became a major political force in the state. Consequently, the region’s political and cultural identity has been centred on the Kamma- dominated core delta districts, which explains the strong demand to build the new capital in the Guntur-Vijayawada region.5 This framing of regional identity helps to understand how the future of the ‘new Andhra’ is being crafted and imagined, as well as the level of popular participation in this imagination (section 3).

Caste, region and political power With the formation of united Andhra Pradesh with Hyderabad as its capital, the regional elite of Coastal Andhra – provincial capital and the urban middle classes, both constituted mainly by members of the dominant landowning castes – became highly mobile while remaining closely connected socially and economically with the region. Farmers, businessmen and educated professionals began to migrate to other parts of the state and beyond, in search of new lands, education, business opportunities and employment (Benbabaali 2013). The growing dominance of Coastal Andhra people in business and formal sector employment in Hyderabad (Kamat, Mir, and Mathew 2004) later became a key factor behind the Telangana movement. The political and economic ascendance of Andhra provincial capital in the state culminated in the 1983 victory of the Telugu Desam Party led by the popular film star N.T. Rama Rao (‘NTR’, a Kamma from Krishna district), who upset the long-standing political dominance of Reddys in the state through the Congress Party. The incorporation of Hyderabad into networks of capital and caste emanating from Coastal Andhra was greatly strengthened when Chandrababu Naidu (also a Kamma, and NTR’s son-in-law) was Chief Minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh when the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) was in power between 1995 and 2004. Naidu became the ‘poster boy’ for India’s economic reforms

4 The particular ways in which caste and class structure intersect in this region is a complex topic that cannot be fully unraveled here. But it is important to point out that caste ties are central to the operations of provincial capital as well as political pursuits – interests that often overlap (Upadhya 1997, 2016). 5 The districts of northern Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema hardly figured in the re-imagined state under the regime of Chandrababu Naidu.

8 programme – he initiated far-reaching economic and governance reforms (supported by a World Bank loan, the first to be given directly to a state government) and made it easier for foreign companies to invest in the state (Mooij 2007; Sunder Rajan 2006). Naidu is also credited with turning Hyderabad into a ‘global city’ by investing in infrastructure development and inviting major IT companies to set up operations in the city. Naidu’s neoliberal agenda found substantial support from the Andhra business class as well as the expanding ‘new middle class’ (Mooij 2007: 46-7), composed largely of educated professionals from Coastal Andhra. ‘Costa’ people particularly benefited from the opportunities that were opened up by the government’s business-friendly policies and infrastructure investments in Hyderabad, making the city a key site of accumulation for both provincial and international capital. Another important development of this period was the development of a pattern of international migration from Coastal Andhra, as educated professionals (especially doctors, and later scientists and engineers) began to move abroad from the 1960s, giving rise to an affluent Telugu diaspora located mainly in the USA. Most Andhra ‘NRIs’ (Non-Resident Indians)6 retain close social ties with their home region, creating dense transnational networks (Roohi 2016, 2017; Xiang 2007)7 through which resources flow back into the region – mainly investments in land and real estate (Upadhya 2018). Against this background, it is not surprising that much of the real estate activity in the new capital region was due to NRI investments, according to local brokers. Although the Andhra business class was well established in Hyderabad, their future was thrown into doubt by the Telangana agitation, whose leaders threatened to divest them of their properties and industries. With the impending division of the state, wealthy Costa businessmen began to look elsewhere for investment opportunities and large amounts of money began flowing into coastal towns, pushing up land prices – signalling the recirculation of provincial capital back into the Andhra region. In this context, Andhra businessmen, real estate developers, and politicians, now located mainly in Hyderabad, began buying up parcels of land in strategic locations – especially in places that were rumoured to be the possible sites of the new capital (see section 4). Investments by the regional diaspora also intensified following state bifurcation and the

6 ‘Non-Resident Indian’ is an official category designating Indian citizens who live abroad for more than half the year, for purposes of taxation. In Andhra as elsewhere in India, the term ‘NRI’ popularly refers to anyone living abroad regardless of their citizenship status. 7 This development was also underwritten by the establishment of many private engineering colleges by in Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema, especially by Kamma and Reddy entrepreneurs and politicians (Kamat, Mir & Mathew 2004; Upadhya 2016). Many engineering graduates from Andhra moved to Hyderabad for computer training in the 1990s, and some later went abroad to work as software engineers (Xiang 2007). IT professionals constitute a large segment of the Telugu diaspora in the USA and elsewhere.

9 announcement of the Amaravati plan, and significant NRI money flowed into the new capital region and surrounding areas. However, for this deterritorialised regional elite, Coastal Andhra was not just another site of accumulation; it was reclaimed as their cultural homeland and the new centre of political power. Consequently, provincial capital and the regional diaspora had a deep interest in ‘developing’ residual AP into a vibrant, fast-growing state – an ambition that is encapsulated in the Amaravati project. This desire was reinforced by the proposed bifurcation and imminent ‘loss’ of Hyderabad, which engendered angry protests across ‘Seemandhra’. Proponents of the ‘Samaikya Andhra’ (United Andhra) movement claimed that it was Coastal Andhra people who had ‘developed’ Hyderabad and that therefore the city belonged as much to them as to Telangana. Ironically, the long-standing claim that Andhra was the more ‘advanced’ region was inverted by the United Andhra movement, leading to the strong demand that residual AP should be given ‘special category status’ (and therefore more resources from the centre) based on its relative ‘backwardness’. This background partly explains the victory of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), led by N. Chandrababu Naidu, in the May 2014 elections, just before bifurcation. The Telugu Desam Party, which is widely thought of as a ‘Kamma party’, received major financial and political support from Kammas across the world as well as Andhra ‘provincial capital’ for its election campaign.8 It was the same coalition of Andhra business, landed and political interests that lobbied for the capital to be located near Vijayawada, the commercial hub of the ‘Kamma heartland’. The close identification between ‘Costa’, the Kammas, and the Telugu Desam Party also explains the keen participation of many capital region farmers in the land pooling scheme, discussed in section 3.

Caste and agrarian class structure of Coastal Andhra While a full description of caste and class structures in the region cannot be included here (see Srinivasulu 2002), this section provides a brief overview of the caste composition and class structure of Coastal Andhra. While clear data on the distribution of the population or land by caste is not available, it is estimated that Kammas formed around 18 percent of the population of Guntur district in 1921 (the last census to count caste). As noted above, Kammas are the most important landholding

8 The close alignment of the TDP with provincial capital is indicated by the fact that several wealthy Andhra businessmen stood for election for the first time in 2014 and, having won, were appointed as ministers or key advisors to the government. A prime example is the education entrepreneur P. Narayana, who became Minister for Urban Development and the key minister responsible for the development of Amaravati. With regard to NRI support, see the social media campaign called ‘Bring Back Babu’: https://www.facebook.com/BringBabuBack/ last accessed on December 13, 2016.

10 caste in Guntur and Krishna districts, and to a less extent in East and West Godavari. Data on distribution of land by caste is also not available, but the control of Kammas over land in Guntur and Krishna districts (and to a less extent in East and West Godavari districts) is attested by all sources. In the 1950s it was estimated that Kammas formed 40 per cent of the agricultural population of the Krishna delta but owned 80 per cent of its fertile land (Harrison 1956: 383, cited in Benbabaali 2018: 1950). Other important middle-ranked cultivating castes, such as Rajus, Kapus and Reddys (‘Forward Castes’), also hold substantial lands in certain areas. In addition, several OBC (Other Backward Class) communities such as Gowdas and Balijas also hold substantial land in some villages. The other major castes of the region are the Scheduled Castes (SCs), which formed while 19.59% of the population of Guntur district in the 2011 Census. The major Scheduled Castes of Coastal Andhra are the Malas and the Madigas. In contrast to Kammas and the other cultivating castes of Coastal Andhra, these communities have historically been excluded from land ownership and were largely dependent on agricultural wage labour for their livelihoods. While most Dalits continue in this occupation, some have become tenant farmers or have acquired small or marginal holdings – mainly ‘assigned’ lands which are granted by the government to the poor for cultivation. The difference in the type of land rights held by Dalits and dominant caste cultivators underwrote the conflicts discussed in section 5. Most Dalits in this region have converted to Christianity – a process that began during the colonial period – and their social identities are strongly connected with the church (mainly different Protestant denominations). While conversion enabled some Dalits to acquire education and engendered a degree of social mobility, this has not ameliorated the extreme caste discrimination and oppression they face, especially in rural areas (Still 2013). The region became notorious in the 1980s and 1990s for several cases of extreme caste violence (especially the Karamchedu and Chunduru massacres) – leading to the formation of a strong Dalit rights movement in Andhra (Berg 2014). While it is beyond the scope of this report to discuss the history of Dalit politics in the region (see Gundimeda 2016), this background is important to understand how Dalit resistance was organised in the context of land pooling (section 5).

The next section outlines the key features of the Amaravati project and provides an overview of its social and economic consequences for the affected communities.

3. SPECTACULAR URBANISM: IMAGINARIES AND REALITIES OF DEVELOPMENT

For several decades after the formation of united Andhra Pradesh, Andhra provincial capital had invested mainly in Hyderabad and other Indian cities, while Coastal Andhra remained largely an agrarian and ‘provincial’ place. Although they retained strong affective, social and economic ties with their home towns or villages, the region was not attractive to the mobile business class as a site of investment or to NRIs as a destination for return migration.9 But with the division of the state and the plan to build a modern capital city, we saw the beginnings of a reverse flow of people, resources and provincial capital into the region, driven by new development imaginaries. The desire to build a ‘world-class’ city modelled on Singapore or Dubai suggests that a particular notion of urban modernity has taken hold, at least among affluent and middle-class actors. Thus, the Amaravati project could be seen as a process of ‘reterritorialisation’ by the regional business class and the educated middle classes, both comprised mainly of Kammas who had become spatially dispersed across India and abroad and yet remain rooted in the Andhra region (Upadhya 2017). The conceptualisation of Amaravati by Chandrababu Naidu and his supporters was central to this project of reinventing and reimagining the Andhra region as a new political entity. In the wake of bifurcation, local business leaders and citizens, TDP politicians, and NRIs began to talk about making Andhra Pradesh the most ‘vibrant’ and ‘forward’ state in the country. These narratives highlighted the ‘entrepreneurial drive’ and ‘courage’ of Coastal Andhra people who, having transformed Hyderabad into a prosperous ‘global city’, would now perform the same feat in residual Andhra Pradesh. Such claims echoed Naidu’s frequent assertion that he ‘built up Hyderabad as the software capital of the country, and placed it on the world map. I am going to repeat the feat with the new capital of AP’.10 Middle-class citizens as well as large farmers expressed confidence in Naidu’s leadership and his plans for the new capital, pointing to the way Naidu ‘transformed’ Hyderabad to justify their faith in his abilities. Thus, the Amaravati project, as a globally visible symbol of a reborn Andhra state, channelled mounting expectations about the possibilities for development in the region. This section explores this development imaginary and traces its unfolding through the Amravati project.

9 While many migrant Andhra software engineers and other professionals have returned to India, most have settled down in large metro cities such as Hyderabad and Bangalore, which offer the kinds of job opportunities and lifestyle they seek (Upadhya 2013). 10 http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/two-millennia-later-amaravathi-becomes-andhra- capital-once-again/article7070798.ece last accessed on June 16, 2015.

Siting the new capital Even before the bifurcation of AP had taken place, an intense debate about the location of the new capital erupted, especially in the core delta districts of Coastal Andhra. The central government appointed an Expert Committee, headed by the respected urban development expert K.C. Sivaramakrishnan, to examine the question. Important regional towns such as Guntur, Vijayawada, Ongole and Visakhapatnam vied for the honour of becoming the state capital, mainly because they believed it would bring ‘development’. In September 2014, the state government finally announced its decision to build a ‘greenfield’ city on 200 square kilometres of land in Guntur district, just across the Krishna River from Vijayawada. Although it is the second largest city in the residual state with a population of over 1 million, Vijayawada remains essentially a provincial town – a centre of trade, services, and education serving the rural hinterland, rather than an important industrial or financial centre. But the ruling party used its central location within the residual state as justification for the choice of this site, located between Vijayawada and another major regional town, Guntur.11 This decision satisfied the demands of the local business class as well as the powerful Kamma community (section 2). Significantly, the area was also a stronghold of the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP), with only a few ‘opposition’ villages included in the new capital zone. However, this choice ignored the recommendations of the Sivaramakrishnan Committee, which had found the Guntur-Vijayawada regional to be unsuitable for constructing a greenfield city, for several economic and environmental reasons (Sivaramakrishnan Committee 2014). Naidu was widely criticised for this decision – he was accused of catering to the real estate lobby or favouring supporters who had bought up land in the area (accusations that resurfaced after his defeat in 2019). Critics also questioned why the government required such a large amount of land to build the capital (Ramachandraiah 2015, 2016), yet the plan also gained widespread support, especially within the business community and the middle classes. Although the decision reflected the interests of the ruling party, the landowning classes, and other groups aligned with the TDP, it also reflected a cultural politics of regional assertion and development aspirations centred on the Coastal Andhra region. The widespread desire for ‘development’ (as envisioned by Naidu and his government) also explains the relative lack of resistance to land pooling, discussed below.

11 The residual state does not have a large metropolitan city comparable to Hyderabad. Visakhapatnam (‘Vizag’), located in northern coastal Andhra, is the largest city. As the site of several major industries and central government establishments, Vizag is the most cosmopolitan and ‘developed’ city in the state, but it was not chosen as the capital due to political and locational reasons.

Amaravati as the future of the ‘New Andhra’ A month after the announcement of the site for the new capital, the state government revealed the exact boundaries of the planned city, which would cover over 200 sq. km. and engulf 29 villages. The ‘Extended CRDA region’ (a planning region to be governed by the newly established AP Capital Region Development Authority, the APCRDA) covered a much larger area and encompassed several towns (Figure 1). The massive scale of the planned acquisition highlights that Amaravati was envisaged as much more than an administrative capital – it was the cornerstone of Naidu’s plan for the economic development of the entire state.12 In his many public speeches, Naidu repeatedly proclaimed that he would make Andhra Pradesh the ‘number one’ state in India by 2029, with Amaravati as the primary ‘engine of growth’.13 To achieve this goal, the city must have ‘world-class infrastructure’ and incorporate the latest in urban planning and governance systems – hence his request to the Singapore government to design the Master Plan and the involvement of foreign consultants in most aspects of the project.

Figure 1. CRDA region and location of new capital city

Naidu travelled widely – to Japan, Singapore, Australia, China, Korea, Malaysia, the UK and USA, Kazakhstan, and to the World Economic Forum at Davos – to market Andhra Pradesh

12 These plans were laid out in a series of ‘vision’ documents. See: http://apvision.ap.gov.in/about.html last accessed on April 30, 2016. 13 For example, see: http://www.livemint.com/Politics/PtYFmizTq3oIVCjmUoB0pK/Digital-currency- literacy-future-to-end-corruption-N-Chan.html last accessed on December 20, 2016.

14 and Amaravati as prime investment destinations. The state government also appealed repeatedly to the central government for funds and applied to multilateral agencies such as the World Bank for loans. Several foreign governments signed memoranda of understanding with the state government to ‘help’ build the new capital, primarily through public-private projects – although concrete deals did not materialise in most cases. As recent literature on ‘spectacular urbanisation’ (Mohammad and Sidaway 2012) suggests, the construction of grand capital cities reflects not only current policy thinking about development – it is also about fashioning or strengthening national identities (Adams 2010; Koch 2013). In this case, the idea of building a hyper-modern city on a ‘greenfield’ site could be viewed as a strategy to consolidate a regional identity (Sud 2014). This became evident in the strategies employed by the state government to publicise the project, such as the elaborate foundation stone ritual that was held at Uddandarayunipalem (UDpalem) village in October 2015, on an expanse of agricultural land converted into a temporary fairground. On a large stage with a backdrop depicting a Singapore-like skyline, troupes of artistes performed traditional Telugu dances and songs, while politicians from the ruling Telugu Desam Party gave emotive speeches about the promising future of the state. The foundation stone was installed by India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, together with the AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, as a contingent of Hindu pundits chanted slokas and performed Vedic rituals. An exhibition created for the occasion featured a scale model of the planned city, along with displays of artefacts illustrating the history and culture of the Andhra region. Through this lavish political performance, the state government sought to engender popular support for the ambitious Amaravati plan, by interweaving images of the urban future with potent symbols of regional identity. The site where the foundation stone was installed has been converted into a sort of shrine where visitors can participate in the imagined future represented by Amaravati (Figure 2). Like the construction of ‘urban utopias’ in several republics of the former Soviet Union, the Amaravati project promoted ‘state-dominated, elite financial interests’ – a model of development typical of ‘rentier state political economies’ (Koch and Valiyev 2015: 593). As an embodiment of the ‘new Andhra’ and its desired future, Amaravati is emblematic of this shift in India’s post-liberalisation development trajectory in which state-led infrastructure development and urbanisation projects depend on private capital investment, leading to extensive spatial restructuring and far-reaching social and economic disruptions.

Figure 2. Site of the Amaravati foundation stone, UDpalem village (photo by author)

Vision for the new capital: Development and modernity The plan for the new capital also reflected a broader trend in urban planning and policy that has been termed ‘neoliberal urbanism’ (Peck, Theodore and Brenner 2009), referring to a set of policy prescriptions and planning models that circulate internationally and have reshaped cities across the global South (Bunnell 2015; Roy and Ong 2011; Shatkin 2014). One facet of neoliberal urbanisation is ‘state rescaling’ (Brenner 2004), as sub-national political units forge direct connections with international capital and multilateral agencies (bypassing the national or central government) – a trend seen in post-liberalisation India as well (Kennedy 2014; Parthasarathy 2013). The Amaravati project absorbed several of such hegemonic urban policy models, promoted by multilateral agencies, private consultancy firms and new centres of urban expertise such as Singapore. The state government first hired McKinsey India to create a ‘roadmap’ for the development of the capital region. One of their recommendations materialised in the establishment of a planning authority to plan and execute the project – the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA), a semi-autonomous parastatal agency. Subsequently, Naidu negotiated with the Government of Singapore to develop the Amaravati Master Plan ‘free of cost’,

16 which in turn commissioned Surbana International Consultants and Jurong International (Singapore’s major semi-government urban design firms, now merged to create Surbana Jurong International Holdings) to execute the project. The Center for Liveable Cities, Singapore was appointed to design the Amaravati Perspective Plan and coordinate work on the detailed master plan.14 Although the government’s decision to invite foreign firms to participate in the project was widely criticised, Naidu argued that international expertise is required to build a ‘model capital’ with ‘all futuristic infrastructure’.15 Justifying his decision to build a ‘greenfield’ city rather than designating an existing town as the capital, and to employ international consultants and architects to plan the project, Chandrababu Naidu stated: ‘After all, I am building a capital city for grandsons and daughters of AP who would like to work in a global environment’.16 In his frequent speeches about the capital plan, he declared that Amaravati would become the ‘best city’ in India and even one of the ‘five best cities’ in the world.17 Naidu constantly referred to Singapore, Dubai or Astana in articulating his vision for Amaravati, reflecting the practice of urban ‘inter-referencing’ (Bunnell 2015) that is central to current urban policy thinking. Naidu avidly pursued his ‘dream city’ project, investing substantial state resources in the Amaravati plan. The Amaravati Perspective Plan (Figure 3) incorporated the latest in modern urban design: visualisations of the future city feature high-rise towers, expansive green spaces, and modern transportation systems hugging the banks of the Krishna River. Although Amaravati was promoted as a ‘people’s capital’, the images in the plan envision an enclave space where the affluent business class and upwardly mobile professionals can comfortably live and work, away from the

14 Surbana Jurong is in the business of exporting urban expertise to developing countries (Huat 2011). The parties to the Memorandum of Understanding, signed in December 2014, were the Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC) and Singapore Cooperation Enterprise (SCE), Singapore, and the CRDA. The regional Perspective Plan was completed in March 2015, and the Capital City Master Plan and the ‘SEED Capital Plan’ (for the core capital city) were submitted to the AP government in July 2015. These plans were revised several times at the instance of the state government and the CRDA. See: ‘The New Capital Region of Andhra Pradesh; Seed Development Masterplan Report (Draft)’. Surbana International Consultants Pte Ltd, Singapore. https://surbanajurong.com/sector/amaravati-capital-city-of-andhra-pradesh/ last accessed on September 4, 2016. 15 ‘Nara Chandrababu Naidu's Bouquet of Promises on AP Capital’, The Hans India (12 February 2015). http://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/2015-02-12/Chandrababus-bouquet-of-promises-on-AP- Capital-131078 last accessed on May 16, 2015. 16 http://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/2015-02-12/Chandrababus-bouquet-of-promises-on-AP- Capital-131078, last accessed May 6, 2015. 17 ‘Amaravati should be among world‘s five best cities: CM’, The Hindu (Vijayawada), October 2, 2016. http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Vijayawada/amaravati-should-be-among-worlds-five-best-cities- cm/article9175931.ece last accessed October 2, 2016.

‘chaos’ that characterises most Indian cities. The artist’s impressions in the planning documents (Figures 4 and 5) stand in stark contrast to the rural villages and agricultural fields that would be engulfed by the new city.

Figure 3. Amaravati Master Plan Source: Detailed Master Plan of Capital City Amaravati, Capital Region Development Authority, Government of Andhra Pradesh. https://crda.ap.gov.in/APCRDA/Userinterface/HTML/masterplansNew.htm accessed March 21, 2016.

Figure 4. Visualisation of planned city from Amaravati Master Plan (source as above)

Figure 5. Visualisation of planned city from Amaravati Master Plan, on display in CRDA office, Vijayawada (photo by author)

This vision of a futuristic, well-planned city captured the imagination of many middle-class and elite residents of the region as well as members of the Andhra regional diaspora. One day I met a young software engineer, ‘Srikant’, a native of Vijayawada then living in the US, who had come down to purchase a piece of land in the new capital region.18 When I asked why he would want to buy land here only to hand it over the government (under the LP scheme), he replied:

If you have seen the cities in India, most of them are unplanned. There are congested roads, no common area, no parks and so on. Our leader is trying to build a well-planned city here, with wide roads and parks and all. I want to live in such a city.

He was pooling in money with several of his cousins (also NRIs) to buy one acre in the capital zone. He had already purchased one acre for himself a month earlier, at a cost of 85 lakh rupees, but the price had now gone up to 1.5 crore (15 million) rupees, he said. When I asked him whether he thought it was a risky investment (since the future value of the compensation plots was unpredictable), he replied: ‘No, I trust in my Chief Minister. The reason I am buying is because I trust in Chandrababu Naidu’.

18 Pseudonyms are used for the names of respondents unless their words or actions have been publicly reported.

Thus, Naidu’s development agenda largely reflected the interests of the provincial middle classes and the regional business elite and diaspora, whose imagination of the ‘good life’ and progress has been shaped by transnationalisation and their ‘global’ aspirations. The regional elite and NRIs tend to equate development with modern technology, modern infrastructure, efficient governance, and well-ordered spaces like those in Singapore or Dubai. As a potent symbol of the new state and its future, Amaravati condensed this imaginary of development and projected it onto the space of the region. The Amaravati project also exemplified a larger shift in India’s development agenda toward ‘smart cities’ and infrastructure corridor projects as strategies to push economic growth (Basu 2019; Datta 2015; Kennedy and Sood 2016; Nielsen 2017; Sampat 2016, 2017). Private capital investments are encouraged through an array of new financial instruments, particularly modes of ‘land-based financing’ (Balakrishnan, 2017; Kennedy, 2014; Sud, 2017), of which land pooling (discussed below) is one model. However, the Amaravati project cannot be understood as just another example of spatial restructuring driven by global capital in pursuit of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey 2003), as other mega-projects in India have been understood (Banerjee- Guha 2010; Levien 2013, 2015). While the project clearly aimed to open the CRDA territory to global capital investment, it was the (trans)regional political elite and provincial capital who were the main agents and beneficiaries of this urban transformation. Thus, the Amaravati project should be understood through a multi-scalar perspective, highlighting how wider processes of urban restructuring have linked Indian cities into global circuits of accumulation even as they remain embedded in regional and agrarian economies.

Land pooling The first phase of the Amaravati development plan covered an area of 217 sq. km., encompassing 29 villages in Thullur, Mangalagiri, and Tadepalli mandals of Guntur district, with a total population of around 100,000. Of the 54,000 acres required for the project, 38,000 acres (15,400 hectares) consisted of privately held agricultural land while the remainder was ‘government land’. To assemble land for the project, the government decided to avoid compulsory land acquisition, which is a cumbersome and expensive process that would likely have engendered strong protests, and instead used a land pooling approach. Under the land pooling (LP) scheme, owners would ‘voluntarily’ surrender their land in return for smaller ‘reconstituted’ plots of land in the new city. Most of the land in the capital zone was unirrigated or ‘dry’ (rainfed), producing only one crop of cotton or maize a year, hence many farmers were happy to give up their land in exchange for plots that they believed would be worth much more in the future. The dryland areas also saw

20 the most dramatic increase in land prices after the announcement of the capital site, and many owners quickly sold off some of their land before giving the remainder for pooling. However, the scheme was less attractive to owners of jareebu (irrigated) land, located mainly in the riverfront villages. Many of these farmers initially opposed the land pooling, which would deprive them of valuable and productive land without offering sufficient compensation. The initial LP ‘package’ offered by the government was 1000 sq. yd. residential plot plus 300 sq. yd. commercial plot per acre for irrigated patta land, and 1000 residential + 100 commercial sq. yd. plots for dry (‘metta’) patta land.19 Unhappy with this deal, farmers in the more prosperous villages adjoining the Krishna River demanded that the compensation be enhanced. After a series of negotiations between the government and the well-organised Kamma landowners, the package was increased twice to arrive at an acceptable formula of ‘1000+450’ for multi-cropped, irrigated land and ‘1000+250’ for dry land (see section 4). In addition to the compensation plots, those who pooled their land receive an annual ‘lease’ amount of Rs. 30,000 (for dry land) to 50,000 (for wet land) per acre for 10 years. In contrast, landless households are given a ‘pension’ of Rs. 2500 per month per household for 10 years, which is meant to tide them over while they search for alternative employment. Land pooling was initiated in early January 2015, and by the deadline of February 28, 2015, the government had received ‘consent forms’ for 28,000 acres. This figure gradually rose over the following months as the state made concerted efforts to persuade farmers to cooperate, and by the end of 2017 around 34,000 acres (or 89 per cent of the targeted land) belonging to 28,000 households had been committed. The owners of around 4000 acres still refused to part with their land. What accounts for the relative ease with which land pooling was implemented in this case, in contrast to the strong resistance to land acquisition seen across most of India? According to some observers, it was a combination of ideological power, rational calculation and coercion that created this level of ‘consent’ for land pooling (Ramachandraiah 2016; cf. Kolsto 2019). However, the fact that a large proportion of the targeted land was signed over to the government within two months, and with relatively little protest, suggests that many farmers were caught up in the imagination of development that is encapsulated in the Amaravati plan, or at least were persuaded

19 Land pooling is a market-based mechanism in which land owners receive smaller ‘returnable’ plots as compensation for the agricultural land they surrender. The balance land (usually ranging from 40 to 70 percent of the total area, and in this case, 60 percent) remains with the government. The formula is generally given in terms of plot size in square yards for each acre of land pooled. In this case, both residential and commercial plots form part of the ‘package’, hence ‘1000+200’, etc, in popular speech.

21 by the promise of future wealth it offered. Indeed, extensive discussions with farmers across capital region villages suggest that many came to view the project as a prime opportunity for accumulation rather than as a threat to their livelihoods (see section 4).

Recasting development The faith in the Amaravati project which was expressed by many Kamma farmers also derived from what several interlocutors referred to as the ‘caste factor’. Kammas are the major landowning community in most of the capital area villages (barring three villages where Reddys are the major landowning community, and two where OBCs hold more land), where the Telugu Desam Party enjoyed wide support. Given their faith in Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, many Kamma farmers, NRIs and absentee landowners echoed the narratives disseminated by the state’s publicity machinery about the bright future that is promised by ‘Rajdhani’ (the capital, as it is popularly called). Kamma landowners, as future property owners in the new city, had significant financial stakes in ensuring that the project goes ahead as planned. In addition, although the Andhra ‘provincial propertied classes’ (Balagopal 1987) have become urbanised, well-educated, and spatially dispersed due to out-migration, they have largely held on to their agricultural lands in Andhra (Prasad 2015). These ‘absentee’ landowners were among the first to participate in land pooling (Ramachandraiah 2016: 71), creating a wave of enthusiasm for the scheme that helped to persuade local farmers to also pool their lands. As I elaborate below, many landowners also saw the project as an opportunity to realise the value of their lands in the context of declining agricultural income. Both Kamma and non-Kamma respondents spoke openly about the role of the ‘caste factor’ in obtaining widespread ‘consent’ for the project, pointing out that this area was chosen because of the preponderance of ‘Kamma villages’. As a key informant, ‘Nageswara Rao’ said: ‘Except for five villages, all the villages are Kamma villages. That is why the capital has come here. Had this not been the case the capital would have never been constructed in this place’. Caste identity provided social and political networks that Kamma farmers could use to maximise their gains from the project (section 4). Such connections extend from provincial capital and ordinary farmers deep into the political class and the bureaucracy, facilitating negotiations with the government by Kammas, while marginalising Dalits and others in the land pooling process (see section 5). While caste played an important ideological and political role in the success of land pooling, it also reinforced divisions and inequalities. The land pooling scheme created a new constituency of ‘capital area farmers’, or ‘LP [land pooling] farmers’, who viewed themselves as important stakeholders in the Amaravati project.

They formed associations to collectively represent their interests to the state and kept close watch over the development work, the allocation of plots, and other aspects of the project, to ensure that their interests were protected. But not everyone in the capital region shared this imagination of the future.

Contesting development When a team of planners from Singapore visited the area for the first time in December 2014, local farmers planned to hold a silent ‘black flag’ protest along the planned route of their tour through the capital zone. In response, the ground visit was cancelled and an aerial survey by helicopter was arranged instead. Standing next to me while we watched the helicopter flying overhead, a young resident of Undavalli remarked, ‘They can’t just make a plan in the sky and then put it in the ground!’ The majority of residents of the capital region villages do not own land and have nothing to gain from land pooling or the booming real estate market. Most agricultural wage labours, tenant farmers and informal sector workers lost their jobs and livelihoods, but had little voice in the matter and faced a very uncertain future. Agricultural workers, especially Dalits, expressed dismay and anger at being marginalised by ‘Rajdhani’ as they could foresee little benefit from it. A few educated youths from lower caste or landless households believed that the construction of the capital might open up more employment opportunities for them, but most were pessimistic about their futures. We frequently heard a version of the following statement from members of marginalised communities we interviewed, when asked about the benefits of Rajdhani: ‘Only those who own land are benefitting from the capital’. A local auto-rickshaw driver put it succinctly: ‘With the coming of Amaravati, the poor are staying poor while rich are becoming crorepatis’. Many non- Kammas highlighted the caste base of the project, pointing out that it is the powerful and rich ‘Chowdaries’ (Kammas) own most of the land and control the state government and so will profit from the project, while other groups must be content with the small ‘pensions’ given by the state government to compensate for their loss of livelihood. The sharp contrast between the enthusiastic participation of many Kamma farmers in the capital dream and the disaffection, alienation (and sometimes resistance) of non-dominant groups, and the uncertainty of educated youth who were promised a bright future yet find themselves unemployed, underscore the reproduction of caste and class inequalities in the Amaravati project. But given the close links between the ruling TDP, Kammas and provincial capital, it is not

23 surprising that the state government pushed ahead with the capital plan even at the cost of displacing so many families, exacerbating existing inequalities, and creating discontent. Many farmers in three ‘non-Kamma’ villages refused to participate in land pooling. This refusal was widely attributed again to the ‘caste factor’ (resentment against Kamma domination) and their opposition to the ruling party (and support for the YSR Congress Party). While these factors certainly played a role, there were other reasons for the resistance. In several river-facing villages where water is plentiful, most farmers are smallholders who were earning substantial incomes growing vegetables, fruits and flowers for supply to Vijayawada markets. They were not willing to give up this lucrative livelihood for the package that was offered. Moreover, two of these villages (Undavalli and Penumaka) are located close to Vijayawada and are practically peri-urban in character, with urban-style buildings providing rental housing. Many residents of these villages were not dependent on agriculture but commuted to Vijayawada for work. Because of the demand for real estate in and around Vijayawada, the price of land in these villages was already very high, and the announcement of ‘Rajdhani’, which actually led to a decrease in land values even as prices soared in other villages. This discrepancy was a major reason that many landowners in Undavalli and Penumaka refused to pool their land, apart from the fact that these are ‘Reddy villages’. Reddy farmers in a third ‘resisting’ village, Nidamarru, were also opposed to land pooling, not only for political reasons but because many owned lucrative floriculture farms supported by a lift irrigation scheme, investments and incomes that would be lost with land pooling (Figure 6). 20 Despite the general support for Naidu amongst the landowning class and the Kamma community, a few substantial Kamma farmers also refused to pool their land. Their reasons varied – some did not want to give up their ancestral land or farming as a livelihood, while others opposed land pooling on principle – viewing it as illegal (contrary to the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act) and not really ‘voluntary’. For others, the opposition to land pooling seemed to stem more from intra-village rivalry between different groups of landowning Kammas – in every village at least one big Kamma farmer joined the opposition. Several of the most vocal opponents pointed out the ecological disaster that might ensue from the construction of a new city on a floodplain, as the area was regularly inundated water flowing in streams toward the Krishna River. Moreover, the villages close to the river had soft black cotton soil, and a water table of less than 20 feet in some place, which would require

20 On the mobilisation against land pooling in these villages, also see Ramachandraiah (2015, 2016) and Kolsto (2017).

24 expensive deep piling to put up the expensive high-rise buildings.21 Critics also pointed to the destruction of the productive multi-cropped agriculture that was carried out in several villages. A group of local farmers and activists even proposed an alternative plan for a ‘Green Capital’ – a more modest and ecologically appropriate city that is also grounded in local architectural and cultural traditions – but this plan was generally dismissed as unrealistic or ‘backward’.

Figure 6. Floriculture farm at Nidamarru, where many farmers opposed land pooling (photo by author)

The politics that emerged around land pooling produced two rival groups of capital region farmers – ‘LP farmers’ and ‘LA [land acquisition] farmers’ – the latter are those who refused to pool their land and so were sent land acquisition (LA) notifications by the government to put pressure on them. The opposition of several ‘big farmers’ led to a major rift between them and the ‘LP farmers’, who viewed the former as obstructing progress and jeopardising their futures. ‘Sivaji’, a strong TDP supporter, was very angry with the protesters: ‘We have all given our land and depend on the capital being built to see some return. So why should these people raise objections

21 These issues were pointed out by engineers and other experts as well, but Naidu was determined to build a riverfront city ‘like London or Chicago’. The CRDA (Capital Region Development Authority) had begun work on a costly flood control system when the project stalled.

25 and spoil our chances?’ When I asked him why a particular landlord in his village had not pooled his land, he said that he was ‘expecting a better package’. For many of the affluent Kamma ‘resistors’, their opposition was not about preserving the agrarian environment or their ancestral property for sentimental reasons, but was more a strategy to maximise their returns from land pooling. ‘Krishna Rao’ – an elderly and respected organic banana farmer and one of the first among the leading Kamma farmers to pool his land – held back one acre to use as a bargaining chip in his ‘negotiations’ with the government about a disputed plot of land. Sivaji was visibly upset when speaking about this issue, complaining:

All those big Kammas who did not give their land – it is all about greed …. I am losing patience with these people – they are always disturbing things. If they go on like this, we will be left with nothing – no new roads or anything.

Thus, the land pooling scheme, as well as the speculative land market, were viewed by many as an opportunity for accumulation as well as for the development of the state and their villages, which were threatened by the mobilisation against land pooling. But the potential gains and risks of land pooling was of concern to only a minority of the population in the CRDA villages, where three-fourths of the households were landless. The next section summarises briefly the impacts of land pooling and the cessation of agriculture on different classes and caste groups.

Social and economic impacts of ‘Rajdhani’ The land pooling programme clearly affected different sections of the populace very differently. While households with land could see the potential benefit of land pooling and were receiving the annual ‘lease’ to compensate for the loss of agricultural income, three-fourths of households in the affected villages were landless and had nothing to gain from the project. Indeed, many people lost their main sources of livelihood – tenant farming, agricultural wage labour, or other agriculture- related occupations – especially after cultivation was forcibly stopped by the government. The ‘pension’ of Rs. 2500 per month for landless households was grossly insufficient to sustain a family. The contrast between the ‘lease’ paid to LP farmers and the ‘pension’ for the landless laid bare the inequalities that were inherent in the project and created deep discontent amongst landless residents. These highly unequal compensation packages also reflected the state’s differential valuation of the contribution of landed farmers and landless workers to the agrarian economy, and also lay bare the uneven social standing and political influence of these groups. As I argue in more detail below, the differential treatment of cultivators and labourers flows not simply from their ‘class’ positions (defined by landholding), but also from their locations within an entrenched caste 26 system which has long structured social power in this region. In this section I briefly summarise our findings on the situation of different categories of households after cultivation was forcibly stopped by the government in 2015.

Landless SC/ ST tenant farmers Tenant farmers belonging to marginalised communities, who depended on land leased from Kamma landlords, expressed their struggles with the demise of cultivation and therefore the possibility of leasing in land. They explained that earlier the landlord would give them loans, and they were also able to take loans from others as the lender knew they would pay back the money after the harvest. Now the landowners from whom they used to take land on lease no longer feel a sense of obligation toward them, they complained. With the banning of cultivation, they said, the landowners do not require tenants and so they behave like they have no relation or obligation to other people in the village. They would not be able to lease land in other villages because this depends on having long-standing social relations with landowning families, nor would they be able to get loans to carry out cultivation. ‘Now we have to look for work’, yet agricultural work is difficult to find, especially for the men. ‘All our life we worked in agriculture, we can’t do work of heavy lifting involved in construction labour’, one respondent explained.

Landless labourers belonging to SC, ST and other communities Families that are dependent on wage labour were found to be struggling the most. Most of the agricultural workers who lost their jobs could not find alternative employment in construction work or other occupations linked to the Amaravati project, as had been promised by the government. Some men found work on small local construction sites or other manual labour jobs, while women were either staying at home or they were going to neighbouring villages, outside the capital zone, for daily wage labour. Many respondents told us that before ‘Rajdhani’ they used to have work for the entire year, but now they have to search for work on a daily basis. Before, everyone in the family used to get work, but now women have to go to other villages to find scarce work and men have fewer opportunities, so household income has fallen. Dalit respondents also explained that middle-aged workers who are accustomed to agricultural labour cannot suddenly shift to construction or other such manual work, as they are not accustomed to that kind of labour. According to them, only people with cheti pani [hand skills] – who know trades such as masonry, carpentry, ceiling work or painting – have enough work now. They also complained that earlier they could save some money from their wages, ‘but now we just get by’, sometimes eating only twice a day.

A common refrain that we heard from this group was that only those who owned land were benefitting from the capital project: ‘Even if one had just half an acre, they could benefit.’ Several informants feared that if the situation were to continue like this, they may have to sell whatever they have in the village and move to another place where there is work. (Most labour and SC households own at least house sites and houses in the villages.) All respondents said that the Rs. 2500 monthly payment from government is insufficient – ‘hardly enough for five to 10 days’. It was mainly women agricultural workers who were commuting on a daily basis outside the capital zone for agricultural labour. They reported that both their working hours and traveling time had increased, as had accidents from travelling in overcrowded auto-rickshaws. Although they were receiving the same wages as before, they felt that it was risky to go outside – for instance, it was easier for unfamiliar employers to cheat them. They also spoke about ‘other kind of risks’ for women when they have to commute to other villages, and the difficulties of leaving their children at home the whole day. Below are some quotes from labourers we spoke with:

‘Capital is only for people with at least ½ an acre.’

‘What is there for people like us? vunna vadiki bagane vunnadu [people with resources are doing good, memu coolie pani ki vella vallam [people like us who labour], we lost all work’.

‘Earlier people from outside used to come here for work, but now people from here are going out.’

‘If possible one should take from the rich and give to the poor, but here they are taking away from the poor and giving it to the rich.’

Small Kamma farmers Most Kamma farmers who owned less than 5 acres of land had been cultivating their own land, while some also leased in additional land from larger landowners. Many cultivators complained that now time hung heavy on their hands, because after cultivation was stopped they had little to keep them occupied. A common statement was: ‘You would not have found us here sitting like this earlier, we used to always be in the fields from early morning to late evening.’ According to some in this group, agriculture used to provide sufficient income: ‘In agriculture there was no surplus money, but there was rotation of money, we used to get by.’ However, this differed according to the village and type of land – those with dryland could grow just one crop per year of cotton or maize, whereas farmers with irrigation facilities were doing

28 much better by growing fruits, vegetables, flowers and other commercial crops and harvesting several crops per year. Small farmers who had leased in land reported that they were heavily in debt, and that if not for Rajdhani they would not have been able to pay off their debts even if they had sold all their land. Indicating the extent of indebtedness, several respondents said, ‘If not for rajdhani, people would have consumed pesticides’. The land boom that followed the capital announcement allowed many small landowning households to get out of debt by selling of all or part of their land. After paying off debt, most used the proceeds to buy land elsewhere and saved the rest for their children’s education or marriage and other needs.

Big Kamma farmers Families that owned 10 acres or more, although they were clearly better off than everyone else, universally reported that agriculture was no longer remunerative. Apart from the difficulties of turning a profit, they complained most about ‘labour problems’. They believe that the younger generation of the labour classes do not work in agriculture anymore because they are getting educated or moving into other occupations. One Kamma farmer remarked, ‘Earlier people used to work for their entire life for us, now we hardly know their younger generation’. To illustrate the ‘labour problem’, they would note that workers now they demand transportation from their houses to the fields in auto-rickshaws. But big farmers do not see a future in agriculture also because most of their children have gotten educated and transitioned into the urban economy. One farmer said, ‘I have inherited agriculture from my parents and have practised it since I was young, but now my children don’t even know where our fields are.’ Many spoke about the importance of keeping ancestral land in the family, which clearly had value beyond the utilitarian or economic. ‘This land was given to my father by his father, who then passed it on to me. I have lived on this land and will pass onto my son. But their generation sees land as money, they see having 10 acres as having 15 crore rupees.’ But overall, the generational change incentivised many of the large Kamma farmers to sell or pool their land. They viewed Rajdhani as an opportunity to complete the transition out of agriculture and into the urban economy, as well as a way to overcome the ‘labour problem’. It is this group who were well positioned to become the primary beneficiaries of the Amaravati project. As one respondent put it: ‘A person owning 10 acres of land, even if he sells one acre he will get 1.5 crore rupees. He will construct a three-storey house for 70 to 80 lakh, spend around 2 to 3 lakh on a house-warming party, he will buy a car. But even then, he can’t spend the entire money.’ However, there were some big farmers who did not sell or pool their

29 land, as noted above. As one ‘LA farmer’ explained, ‘What should we do after selling the land, we should invest the money somewhere, buy land elsewhere. But where should we invest that money? We can’t keep it in the bank.’ These farmers felt that it made sense to sell only if there was an urgent need for money, as getting so much liquid wealth at once would lead to other problems.

Dalit and landless youth – aspirations and skilling While some Dalit youth had also gotten educated and moved into white-collar urban occupations, those who had not gone beyond primary or high school had learned skills (‘cheti pani’) and so were able to find jobs in construction or other sectors. For this group, the coming of ‘Rajdhani’ had increased their employment opportunities – not in the capital development works directly but because of the construction boom in the area that had been set off by the Amaravati project. They noted that migrant labourers from outside were ready to work for lower wages and longer hours, so their daily wages had also decreased. Moreover, they complained that their parents and wives were not getting enough work so the burden of providing for the family had now fallen on them. It was educated young men from landless SC and ST families who were in the most difficult position. They harboured aspirations to enter the formal urban economy but were unable to find ‘good’ jobs and so felt left behind. We met many such young men in the CRDA villages who had completed BA, B.Sc., B.Tech. or MBA degrees, but were working as security guards, as helpers in small local businesses, or even as construction labour. According to these respondents, only those who studied in good private colleges and had acquired other skills like good spoken English would get good jobs with decent salaries. Many young men in this category were preparing for entrance exams for various government jobs while earning money through menial jobs in the village. One B.Tech graduate we interviewed was applying for the post of police constable while another was applying for a Railways job. This situation reflects the larger issue of educated unemployment in the country, where the education and skills that young people have acquired are insufficient to meet their aspiartions for well-paid white-collar employment. But the context of Rajdhani made the gap more glaring to these young Dalit men. They could see youth of landed families roaring around the village on their new motorcycles, purchased with windfall profits from the sale of land, or going off to Australia for higher studies, while they were stagnating at home with degrees that did not yield decent jobs. A Dalit parent stated that it is better to teach children skills rather than send them to school and college. He felt that people like him who educated their children are now struggling as they are unable to get work, while parents who ‘taught their children to work’ (in skilled manual jobs)

30 are comparatively better off. But once they had been educated up to college level or above, few were willing to work in manual jobs. When we asked about the skill training programmes that were being organised by the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) to help the youth find work, several young men said that they had attended such workshops but the government had not been able to provide jobs as promised. They had even organised dharnas and met ministers on this issue of unemployment. One day, while Udaybhanu was sitting with a couple young men in the village, an announcement came over the public address system asking people to apply for skill training programmes. One interlocutor said, ‘You go and see even if 10 people turn up there. People will go once or twice, but after that who will believe in it?’ Government officials in charge of skill training in the CRDA villages felt that young people want jobs but are not willing to invest time in training. They argued that while these young men may have college degrees, they do not have the necessary skills to get the kinds of jobs they desire. The CRDA had developed training programmes to help educated youth acquire those extra skills, but when they provide them with work opportunities in cities following the course, most were unwilling to join. According to skill training personnel, these young people were not thinking realistically about the future. ‘They are thinking that now we are comfortable, there is daily work and we are earning 300 per day – this is the extent of their thinking. So the task is to change their mind set.’ In his speech to young women who were attending a beautician training programme, an officer tried to make them imagine future possibilities, telling them that is they learn the necessary skills they can be successful entrepreneurs. Skill training officers we interviewed often complained that young people in these villages are ‘not willing to move out’ or take risks – they expect to get a high-paid job next to their own house. Indeed, the many promises that the government made for the development that would come with Rajdhani fed into a popular belief that good jobs would come to their villages. While the officers explained the lack of interest in skill workshops as the subjective failure of youth to foresee the future by investing in new skills, the youth viewed it as a material issue – they could not afford the time off work to attend training, nor did they have the necessary backup to sustain themselves in cities on such low salaries. The jobs they were offered were always in some distant city such as Bangalore or Hyderabad, and they believed that only those with financial backing from their parents (such as youth from landed Kamma families) can sustain themselves in cities at salaries offered – Rs. 12,000 to 15,000. Although they could survive in cities on such salaries, they said, but would not be able to save enough money to send back home, defeating the purpose of moving outside for employment. So they believed it made more economic sense to stay at home,

31 living with the family and working in some dead-end job for Rs. 7,000-8,000 per month while waiting for better opportunities to come along.

In the next section I explore the linkages between the state-driven, top-down model of urban planning discussed in this section, land-based financing, and new modes of accumulation.

4. SPECULATIVE URBANISM: FINANCIALISATION, ACCUMULATION, DISLOCATION

In the months leading up to the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in June 2014, circulating rumours about where the new state capital might be located precipitated several dramatic episodes of land speculation.22 Prices of agricultural land rocketed to unprecedented levels, yielding windfall profits for those who sold their land in one place after another, bankrupting some players while making small fortunes for others. The news media played a major role in creating and sustaining these land bubbles, as stories about gyrating prices and huge investments appeared almost daily in local papers and the ‘land rush’ became the subject of popular discussion across the region. This speculative market was driven by the anticipation of the ‘development’ that, it was widely believed, ‘Rajdhani’ would bring to the region, which in turn would make land even more valuable. After the government revealed the site of the new capital in September 2014, the announcement predictably set off the land market in that area as well, with prices reportedly escalating from just 10-20 lakh rupees per acre (for unirrigated land) to 8-10 crore within a few weeks. Prospective buyers could be seen roaming rural roads in expensive SUVs bearing license tags of cities such as Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai, in search of land (Figure 7). Rumours circulated widely about the purchase of land by prominent industrialists, politicians, and film stars through ‘benami’ transactions. But the speculative land market was not driven by wealthy ‘outsiders’ alone – local businessmen and ordinary middle-class citizens were quick to pick up small parcels of land, as this was seen as a rare opportunity to acquire wealth. A new class of ‘real estate’ brokers appeared in capital region villages to cater to this market, operating out of small, brightly painted shacks hastily erected along rural roads (Figure 8), or circulating on motorcycles in search of prospective customers. Almost overnight, this sleepy agrarian landscape was transformed into a prime real estate market, throwing up new opportunities for accumulation for a range of actors. Consequently, even before the state began pooling land for the project, at least one-third of privately held agricultural land in the capital zone had reportedly already changed hands.

22 This section draws on Upadhya (2020).

Figure 7. Prospective buyers looking at land for sale (photo by author)

Figure 8. A land broker’s office near Undavalli (photo by author)

This story is hardly unique – across India land speculation is a well-known outcome of planned mega-projects, especially since the 1990s when policies governing land and real estate were liberalised (Cross 2015; Searle 2016; Sud 2017). Spectacular profits may be generated for ‘speculators’ who deliberately drive prices up and then sell off their holdings before the market crashes. Politically well-connected individuals with inside information about a new project are known to ‘grab’ land around the project site prior to the official announcement, later profiting from the steep rise in land values (Levien 2018: 102). The intimate relation between land and real estate markets, on the one hand, and political power and party funding on the other, is also well known. With the increased circulation of money, rising incomes and easier availability of credit following economic liberalisation in the 1990s, land and real estate became prime sites of investment and accumulation across India, at multiple scales (Chakravorty 2013: 162-166). What explains the seemingly unlimited capacity of land to generate financial value in contemporary India? On one level, the answer appears to be straightforward – demand for land for a new infrastructure or urban mega-project creates expectations of rising land values, activating the land market and luring investors; the consequent inflow of money further pushes up prices, creating an upward spiral. But what is not explained by conventional economic reasoning is how such expectations are actually produced, disseminated and absorbed, and more importantly, what creates faith on the part of investors that a planned project (on which future land prices depend) will actually materialise. As Tsing (2000) argues, speculative capital operates through an ‘economy of appearances’: ‘profit must be imagined before it can be extracted; the possibility of economic performance must be conjured like a spirit to draw an audience of potential investors’ (Tsing 2005: 57). While Amaravati is very different from the illusory gold mine in Borneo described by Tsing, confidence that the new capital will be built, and that the real estate market will take off as a result, must be generated and sustained for land to be financialised and yield profit. This section explores the creation of a speculative land market in Amaravati and the modes of financial accumulation that were facilitated by the project. I map the changing valuations of land as an agrarian economy is decimated by forced urbanisation, without collapsing this shift into a straightforward story of commoditisation or ‘accumulation by dispossession’. The financialisation and assetisation of agrarian land, and the prospects of spectacular profit, also account for the relative ease with which the state was able to assemble such a large swathe of land.

Speculative accumulation through land The story of Amaravati could be told as one of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (ABD; Harvey 2003), in line with much of the literature on compulsory land acquisition in India (Banerjee-Guha

2010). However, as Levien (2018) argues, we need to recognise the important role of the ‘land broker state’ in post-reform India rather than keeping global capital at the centre of the analysis of dispossession. Levien’s (2013: 383) concept of ‘regimes of dispossession’ usefully captures the ‘socially and historically specific constellations of state structures, economic logics tied to particular class interests, and ideological justifications that generate a consistent pattern of dispossession’). The new regime of ‘land for the market’ (2013: 384) is best illustrated by Special Economic Zones (SEZs), which ‘became an outlet for speculative real estate capital’ (Levien 2013: 395) as well as the main focus of India’s ‘land wars’ (Sampat 2016). While the focus on compulsory land acquisition and the role of the state has been important in understanding dispossession and accumulation through land, we must also note that agricultural land is increasingly being alienated through the market (Balakrishnan 2018; Vijayabaskar and Menon 2018). 23 If we are to map what happens when land is constituted as property, alienated as a commodity, mortgaged as a financial asset, or transformed into urban real estate, we need to attend to the constellation of social power and ‘technologies of property’ (Bhattacharyya 2018) that create these possibilities. Rather than engaging directly with the ABD debate here, I employ the idea of speculation as a conceptual lens through which to think about the generation, circulation, and sequestration of value in post-liberalisation India (Bear 2020; Bear et al. 2015; Birla 2015; Goldman 2011, 2020; Humphrey 2020). The land bubbles that regularly erupt in India, especially around the edges of Special Economic Zones (SEZS), infrastructure projects, and expanding cities (Sathe 2011), more closely resemble the practices of settlers along an unfinished highway in the Brazilian Amazon described by Campbell (2015). Campbell (2014: 240) uses the term ‘speculative accumulation’ (modified from Tsing’s ‘spectacular accumulation’) to capture the ‘imaginative and material processes through which colonists and settlers create property relations’ in the Brazilian Amazon, which are key ‘components of emerging processes of accumulation and dispossession on resource frontiers’ (Campbell 2014: 240). While Amaravati was not a resource frontier (Tsing 2003), it is an urban frontier – an ‘agrarian-urban edge’ where ‘relentless negotiations, speculations, contestations, displacements, and dispossessions produce new urban subjects and social formations’ (Gururani and Dasgupta 2018: 42). It is also a state-driven scheme of ‘improvement’ (Li 2007), promoted as the route to a more prosperous future. Local citizens are urged to help create that future, and in so doing they become ‘self-conscious participants in the dreams and

23 For another critique of the ABD literature, see Gardner & Gerherz (2016).

36 dramas of the frontier’ (Campbell 2014: 241). This perspective helps to explain the reorientations and strategies of local farmers who gave their land for the construction of the new capital. In Amaravati, speculative accumulation operated on several registers, from the mechanisms for infrastructure financing that convert agricultural land into a financial asset and form of equity, to the land pooling system that turned landowners into active investors or ‘stakeholders’ in the project, and the real estate market which allowed owners to transform their land into other forms of property and value. Land stands at the centre of the regional economy as a financial as well as a productive asset (section 2), and it is the specificities of land and its diverse meanings and affordances that need to be explored to understand farmers’ responses to the appropriation of their land and to the gyrations of land markets.

Meanings and affordances of land Tania Li, in her provocatively titled essay ‘What is land?’ (Li, 2014b), emphasises land’s ‘materiality, its multiple affordances and the quality it shares with other resources: its intrinsically social character’ (2014b: 600). She reminds us that ‘land’ (like property) is not a natural category, but one that needs to be constructed or assembled to become a marketable commodity. Land, and the social relations that are built around land, have long been at the centre of theories of agrarian transition and capitalist development (Bernstein 2004; Byres 1991), while the ABD thesis foregrounds the expropriation of land as a major source of accumulation under neoliberal capitalism. However, such political economy perspectives view land as a straightforward economic asset, based on its productive capacity or market value. In contrast, anthropologists highlight the difficult cultural reorientations and social reshuffling required for land to become a commodity or a source of financial value (Li 2014a). As Li argues, the ‘new modes of inscription’ that produced marketable land in the Indonesian highlands did not ‘change something concrete into an abstraction’; instead, they ‘reformatted the social relations with which the new resource was entangled, and extended the network of actors and devices connected to it’ (Li 2014b: 560). However, the reconfiguration of land as an object of the market and a site of accumulation does not follow a uniform pathway of ‘commoditisation’ driven by capitalist expansion into new territories. Instead, scholars have explored the ‘relationship between local vernacular practices and emerging forms of capitalism and governance’ (Campbell 2014: 240). While the rich literature on land governance, local social power, and the creation of private property rights in colonial India provides some clues to how land was made ‘investible’ in this region (Ludden 1985; Washbrook 1981), little attention has been paid to the connections between rural land, credit markets and urban real estate. Yet the ways in which land and property were

37 created as objects of governance and embedded in structures of power and accumulation were central to the formation of agrarian as well as urban landscapes under colonialism (Bhattacharyya 2018: 15, note 32). These histories are in turn crucial for understanding postcolonial configurations of land, finance capital, and state power – formations that are regionally specific and rooted in local histories. In Madras Presidency, the imposition of the ‘ryotwari’ system of land revenue administration in the 19th century dismantled the claims of superior rights holders and devolved rights to the peasant cultivators, in effect creating individual property rights in land. It also produced a fairly clear records of rights which continue to form the basis of land governance and claims to property in the region. With the production of a legal infrastructure for property ownership, land became a saleable commodity and a lively market for land emerged, in sharp contrast to other regions of India where the sale of land was circumscribed by social or legal restrictions.24 By the early 20th century, land markets became closely linked to expanding circuits of finance, as cultivators pledged their land as collateral to moneylenders and also invested surplus from trade in land (Rao 1985: A- 65-67). As noted in section 2, regional vernacular capitalism took shape during this period, as increased productivity and commercialisation of agriculture allowed surplus to accumulate in the hands of peasant cultivators (Baker 1976; Washbrook 1976). Ananth (2007) argues that Andhra’s ‘culture of business’ was dominated by ‘speculative finance capital’, marked by a search for super- profits through high-risk investments. This history helps to explain the central place that land holds in Andhra’s regional economy as well as in the accumulation strategies of peasant and elite families alike.25 This ‘culture of speculation’ – a penchant for risk-taking – has filtered into other social classes as well (Ananth 2006: 511). Against this background, the episodes of land speculation that followed state bifurcation are perhaps not surprising. Provincial capital tends to follow the gyrations of land markets, fluctuations in interest rates or the price of gold, as well as state development plans. Because land

24 As Chakravorty (2013: Chap. 9) notes, regional variations in agricultural productivity and histories of land administration have led to highly uneven levels of activity in land markets across India. Variations in the values that adhere to land (especially as a tradeable rather than a productive asset) may also account for differing responses to land acquisition across different regions of India, such as in the Rajasthan and West Bengal cases described by Levien (2018) and Nielsen (2018), respectively. 25 While landed property is highly valued across India (as elsewhere), land is a particularly important form of wealth for agrarian communities, one that is infused with social meanings and affordances that go much beyond its monetary value (Nielsen 2018: Chap. 2). This characteristic is often cited to explain why land markets in India tend to be ‘sticky’, as cultivators prefer to hold on to their land unless they face a major crisis requiring a large sum of money (Chakravorty 2013: 143). But this also helps to explain the intense desire to accumulate land and other forms of property in this region (Upadhya 2018).

38 is easily monetised, it may enter the market when prices are sufficiently attractive, thereby becoming a target for speculators. When a new project such as Amaravati is planned, landowners (even small farmers) are often willing to sell at the right price – realising a surplus which may then be invested in cheaper land in another location or in urban real estate, small businesses, financial instruments or gold. It is not only mega-projects that set off land speculation – the spatial expansion of regional towns and cities into surrounding rural areas has pushed up land prices across India, tempting to farmers to sell their land to developers who create housing ‘layouts’ or build commercial or residential properties on the outskirts (Upadhya 2018; cf. Raman 2016; Vijayabaskar and Menon 2018). Thus, land has long been a prime site of speculative accumulation in Andhra, even as it remains the major source of livelihood for much of the state’s populace. Although land markets earlier operated within the agrarian economy and land changed hands mainly between cultivating households, the agrarian economy was also integrated with the urban economy through the circulation of finance capital. The close integration of ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ in this region also provided a template for farmers in the capital region villages to imagine an urban future. However, the Amaravati case may represent an important shift, in that rural land has become deeply entangled in transnational circuits of accumulation.

Negotiating uncertainty Participatory and market-based approaches such as land pooling are increasingly being used by state and municipal governments in India to acquire land for large infrastructure and township projects. Under a land pooling scheme, owners of agricultural land receive smaller ‘developed’ plots of land in return for the land they surrender, in place of (or in addition to) monetary compensation. The balance land (usually ranging from 40 to 70 per cent of the total area) remains with the government which it can then utilise for the planned project or sell to raise finance. Land pooling is promoted as a ‘win-win’ proposition because the state gets the land it needs at lower cost (compared to direct acquisition), while the landowners potentially receive higher compensation than what they would normally get under current land acquisition laws. This method is also thought to forestall resistance by allowing landowners to reap the benefits of the market – an unwarranted assumption, as several cases show (Levien 2012; Sampat 2016). But land pooling is a highly speculative enterprise, which Levien (2011) terms a ‘compensation-through-speculation model’. The financial logic of land pooling hinges on the expectation that the ‘reconstituted plots’ received by landowners will (eventually) be worth much more than the agricultural land they gave up. However, the future value of this land depends

39 entirely on the success of the project and the performance of the real estate market, which is unpredictable. This means that landowners are essentially gambling with their property, because they cannot be sure that the market will yield the expected values in future. In the case of Amaravati, if the new city had developed as planned, owners who pooled their land would probably have seen substantial gains; but in the current scenario, their compensation plots will be virtually worthless as there is no demand for real estate.26 Thus, landowners had to carefully weigh the potential returns from land pooling against (incalculable) risks of giving up their land. In December 2014, just after the government revealed the names of the villages whose land would be acquired for the new capital, local farmers began to discuss the implications of the establishment of ‘Rajdhani’ in their area and the land pooling scheme. Extrapolating from prevailing real estate prices in Vijayawada, they calculated that a reconstituted plot given against one acre of land might yield 1.5 crore rupees. Compared to current land values in their villages, which had skyrocketed to 1.8 to 2 crore per acre following the announcement of the plan, they concluded that pooling their land would represent a ‘loss’ for them and resolved to oppose the scheme.27 Krishna Rao articulated their uncertainty:

People don’t know when they will see the benefit – even our next generation [children] may not see the development [of the new city]. But if the [land pooling] certificate can be sold, they can take the money and do something else… But mentally it is not okay – there will be lots of adjustment. Many people who have always lived here and worked here, they are worried about this new situation.

Nonetheless, he expressed faith in Chandrababu Naidu’s ‘vision’, and like many other substantial Kamma farmers he was pleased that ‘Rajdhani’ would be built in their area. Initially, substantial Kamma farmers like Krishna Rao were initially unwilling to participate in the scheme until they got a ‘satisfactory package’. But rather than oppose land pooling outright, they organised themselves to negotiate with the government for a better deal. Unhappy with the initial formula of 1000 sq. yd. of residential land plus 300 sq. yd., commercial plot per acre of land pooled, farmers in the ‘wet’ villages adjoining the Krishna River demanded a ‘better package’. After hectic negotiations with government officials and TDP politicians and a last-minute meeting with

26 This is why farmers who pooled their land have been agitating for the capital to remain at Amaravati after the project was stalled by the new government – a turn of events discussed in the final section. 27 The English word ‘loss’ frequently used in conversations in Telugu to refer to failed investments in business or agriculture.

Chandrababu Naidu himself, the government announced an enhanced package of ‘1000+400’ for multi-cropped, irrigated (jareebu) land. Following further negotiations, the package was again enhanced to ‘1000+450’. When I met Krishna Rao again in 2016, two years after the completion of land pooling, he had stopped cultivating his land and moved to a flat in a neighbouring town. He expressed sorrow at having to give up his ‘chosen profession’, as he put it, but was satisfied with the compensation package. In addition to receiving the certificates for his compensation plots, he was getting the annual ‘lease’ payment of Rs. 50,000 per acre from CRDA. He was confident that the project would be completed and that he would eventually see substantial returns from pooling his land. When I asked him why so many farmers were convinced that they would benefit from land pooling, he replied that they view it as an ‘investment’ – they do not expect an ‘immediate return’, but believe that if they ‘wait’ they will realise profits in the future: ‘It’s a 10-year plan’, he quipped. When I pointed out that the future value of their compensation plots is unknowable, he reiterated the same logic that had convinced many farmers to pool their land at the outset – that property values on the outskirts of Vijayawada were already very high, and based on those prices a 1000 sq. yd. residential plot (given against one acre of land) would now be worth around 2 crore rupees: ‘If we were not sure about this calculation, we would not have given up our land’, he declared. Thus, farmers were persuaded to participate by the booming land market, which signalled to them that land values would continue to shoot up. Discussions with Kamma farmers such as Krishna Rao revealed that most did not view land pooling so much as ‘speculation’ as a calculated risk. When I pressed him to explain why they believe that the market will yield the desired results, given the many uncertainties about the project, he replied: ‘In farming also there are so many risks – this is also a risk!’ To illustrate this point, he spoke about Kondaveeti Vaagu, a stream that flows through the area towards the Krishna River during the monsoon and floods about once in three years, inundating farmlands. Farmers are accustomed to dealing with such uncertainty, he pointed out, and uncertainty about the future of their investments in the new city is no different. The trope of ‘planning’ runs through the narratives of LP farmers interviewed three years after the inception of the project, suggesting that they had begun to think about the future in new ways. Like other Kamma landowners, Krishna Rao praised Naidu’s ‘vision’ in creating a beautiful and ‘well-planned’ city for the new capital:

You see, other cities in India are not up to the mark because they have not been properly planned – the roads are very narrow, traffic cannot pass. In such cities we cannot plan for the future. Here the capital is being planned properly, taking into account future needs, 41

so we won’t have those problems ... This is why so many farmers have given their land, they believe it will come up like this.

Thus, the confidence of LP farmers in the project was built on belief in the authorised vision of development that is represented by Amaravati. Large farmers frequently expressed their confidence in Chandrababu Naidu’s abilities, based on his reputation as the person who ‘made Hyderabad what it is’. When I asked Nageswara Rao about the stalled World Bank loan, he declared: ‘The amount promised by the World Bank is nothing in comparison to Mr. Naidu’s commitment. If it doesn’t come it will have financial impact, but still Naidu can pull it off’. These expressions of belief in Chandrababu Naidu’s abilities and ‘vision’ should be understood not as blind faith in a leader; for capital region farmers, Naidu represented the promise of a future which they have seen and experienced (in Hyderabad and other large cities in India and abroad) and to which they aspire. As Cross argues in the context of a Special Economic Zone in northern Andhra Pradesh, the capital zone has been constructed as a ‘future-oriented space’ to which ‘visions of development, economic security and upward social mobility’ are attached. If these promises are persuasive, it is because ‘they invoke local registers of aspiration and tap into vernacular dreams for social and material transformation that are assembled from globally circulating media forms and out of local social histories’ (Cross 2014: 67-68). Moreover, the LP farmers developed various strategies to offset these risks. For instance, most landowning households (even those with very small holdings) sold a portion of their land to outside investors, at the peak of the land boom, before pooling the remainder. With prices running above one crore per acre, many farmers were suddenly wealthy.28 Most used part of the proceeds to purchase agricultural land in other areas of the state where land prices were lower.29 Others built

28 Data on the volume of land transactions in the capital zone are not available, since most were informal sales or were registered much later. However, knowledgeable sources estimated that one-third to one-half of privately-owned agricultural land had changed hands after (or just before) the announcement of the Amaravati plan. A fact-finding report by the National Alliance of Peoples’ Movements brought out in December 2014 claimed that 3500 acres of privately owned agricultural lands had been transferred within a month before the official announcement of the capital-city project, involving a very large sum of money paid almost entirely in cash (NAPM 2014, cited in Kolsto 2017: 57). According to an anti-LP activist, 80 percent of this land was sold to ‘real estate people’ or big politicians at prices ranging from 50 lakh to 2 crore. He claimed that some 17,000 acres of capital area land is held in ‘benami’ (fake names). 29 Such a strategy has been reported in other areas as well, where cultivators have made windfall profits from selling land during a land boom and the proceeds circulate into other sites, stimulating commodification of land, rise of rentiership and speculation (Levien 2011: 475). Levien (2015) argues that large farmers are better positioned to capitalise on speculative land markets compared to small and marginal farmers. However, in Andhra most farmers are quite well-educated, politically savvy and well-connected with urban society (in contrast to the Rajasthan case studied by him), hence even small landholders were

42 additional floors on their homes or constructed new buildings to cash in on the growing demand for rental housing in the capital zone. For many, this windfall was an opportunity to pay off debts, provide expensive higher education for their children, ‘marry off’ their daughters, or start small businesses. Vakulabharanam and Prasad (2017) argue that the government’s decision to allow owners to sell their land even after the LP agreement papers had been filed pushed forward the pooling process: ‘As most of these buyers were closely linked to the political class, the government was able to facilitate and quickly wrap up the process of registration’ (Vakulabharanam and Prasad 2017: 71). Thus, the ‘LP farmers’ seem to have absorbed the speculative logic of the scheme and devised various strategies to manage the uncertainty that it entailed, also plotting new futures for themselves outside of agriculture. Land pooling is viewed as a long-term, risky but potentially lucrative investment, but these farmers are not dependent on their compensation plots for their economic security or income. As they engage the development of the new city, farmers also re- plan their lives, especially by marshalling and investing new wealth derived from land. We collected several narratives from LP farmers about how they appraised and apportioned risks and assets, who explained their reasoning in selling a certain amount of land at a particular point in time, or their decision to invest in another type of asset or a productive venture, while also betting on long-term gains from their reconstituted plots. For example, ‘Sivaji’ said that he sold 0.8 acre of his family’s 12 acres for 80 lakhs in November 2014, before land pooling was announced. This price was less than he might have gotten if he waited – now the same land is worth 2 crores. When asked if he regretted the decision, he replied:

Yes, you can say that I would have gotten more if I had waited. But you should also remember that a few months before I sold, land prices were hardly 20-25 lakhs an acre. In that sense I gained a lot, right? It is difficult to live if we cannot counterbalance a loss somewhere with profit somewhere else.

This rather philosophical statement reflects the cultural logic of accumulation discussed above, in which land is just one (but important) element – landowners may sell or buy land depending on fluctuating prices, invest in land or house sites in different places, or find new sources of income by becoming rentiers, as they adjust to this post-agrarian situation while remaining rooted (for now) in their villages.

able to profit from the land boom. Of course, in the Amaravati villages there are also cases of farmers who lost their new wealth by making unwise investments.

Farmers also weighed their decisions to participate in land pooling or the land market against the returns from the ‘use value’ of land – cultivation. Many said that agriculture is no longer ‘remunerative’, hence it makes sense to sell when land prices are high. Sivaji explained:

There is no sentimental attachment to the land or agriculture now. Agriculture only gives loss, it is not remunerative, the climate is erratic. In my grandfather’s day we could live on one acre of land, but now you need money for everything and even 10 acres is not sufficient!

In addition, the children of most landowning families have been educated and work outside the villages, and are unlikely to return to farming. In making decisions about land, large and small farmers alike envision a future that is not tied to agriculture. They hedge their bets – taking advantage of the rising land prices to realise immediate gains from part of their land, while giving the rest for pooling in a long-term calculated gamble that the capital project will eventually yield substantial returns – for their children if not for themselves. But these investment strategies were premised on their strong belief, or hope, that the new city will materialise as planned. But the land pooling farmers did not just hope, or depend on the state – they organised themselves to ensure that the project would be a success so that they could extract maximum value from it for themselves and ensure their futures.

Negotiating the future As we followed how the Amaravati project unfolded on the ground over several years, it became evident that the fantasy of a well-planned and orderly city was being disrupted by local realities and actors before anything had been built. From the beginning, local politicians and state functionaries worked hard to convince landowners that they would reap spectacular returns from the deal, through regular village-level meetings and constant negotiations about the compensation package and other details of the scheme. At every step, farmers opposed or negotiated with the state to reshape the plan to suit their own interests. From the inception of land pooling in late 2015 to the allocation of the reconstituted plots from the middle of 2016, and through the process of planning and creating layouts, the CRDA (Capital Region Development Authority) organised numerous public meetings to explain the land pooling scheme, the infrastructure development plans and plot allocation system to the land pooling farmers. As the project moved forward, every aspect of the plan – from the minutia of the compensation package and the plot allotment system to the design of the residential layouts – became subject to intense bargaining between ‘LP farmers’ and CRDA officials. For example, when the micro-level plans for each village were opened up for public comment (Figure 9), many 44 objections were filed, forcing the planners to make changes to the dimensions or location of plots – especially to make them ‘vaastu compliant’.30 LP farmers also demanded that their compensation plots should be located only in their own villages. To concede these demands meant undertaking a very complex and costly revision of the micro-level plans, yet their demands were ultimately conceded by the CRDA as the farmers refused to back down.31 In addition, although the allocation of plots was done through a computerised lottery system, supposedly to ensure transparency, even this process was apparently distorted by various pressures and manipulations.32 Throughout the land pooling process, the balance of power seemed to be with the landowners, as their cooperation was essential for the project to go forward. This was tacitly acknowledged by CRDA officials, who organised numerous meetings in the villages to present the development plans and explain the various bureaucratic procedures. The government also quickly cobbled together an elaborate administrative system reaching into each village to handle the extensive paperwork involved in land pooling and plot allotment. The constant presence of the state during this period was experienced by some residents as threatening, while others began to view themselves as valued partners in the development process.

30 For instance, the ‘Seed Capital’ plan, which provides a detailed structure plan including the alignment of roads and the location of important buildings, was revised several times in response to protests and petitions by residents. See ‘Revised master plan released’, The Hans India (Andhra Pradesh), February 23, 2016. http://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/Andhra-Pradesh/2016-02-23/Revised-master-plan- released/209112 last accessed on October 2, 2016. 31 A major design challenge was to create layouts across the entire capital zone with returnable plots of different sizes catering to the selections submitted by hundreds of farmers. The individual plots were then allocated through a lottery system. Restricting plot allocation to the owner’s village made it even more complicated, as layouts had to be created with the requisite plot sizes. Once the allotment was done, some farmers raised objections to the orientation or location of their plots because they were not in accordance with ‘vaastu’. The Singapore consultants complained bitterly about this episode, as it meant redesigning detailed plans that had already been finalised, significantly delaying the work. They attributed these objections to the traditionalism and irrational cultural beliefs of local people, but these demands could also be read as farmers pushing back against the state – ensuring that their voices are heard and that they are recognized as real partners in the making of the new city. 32 ‘Final Master Plan for Andhra Capital City Brings Smiles to All’, The New Indian Express February 23, 2016. http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/andhra_pradesh/Final-Master-Plan-for-Andhra-Capital- City-Brings-Smiles-to-All/2016/02/23/article3292290.ece, last accessed on October 3, 2016.

Figure 9. Map with layout of reconstituted plots, on display at a village CRDA office (photo by author)

As Cross (2014: 9) noted in his study of a Special Economic Zone near Visakhapatnam, the new capital region became a zone where ‘people attempt to know and master the unknowable future with modes of planning, calculation and predication; borrowing against the expectation of future profits or returns, mapping development visions, modelling growth trajectories or bracketing potential risks’. When asked about their expectations from the new city, farmers do not speculate about an abstract future marked by urban modernity, but instead pull out their files containing maps, land documents, legal papers, and even architectural designs for the homes they plan to construct on their reconstituted plots (Figure 10). Having been forced to give up their main occupation (cultivation), and (for many) having reaped windfall profits by selling some of their land, these erstwhile farmers now pass their time charting new trajectories for themselves and their families – attending meetings to discuss the development of the residential layouts and infrastructure projects in their villages, multiplying their newfound wealth through moneylending or property investments, or negotiating with officials, road contractors or builders to ensure that they extract the best deal from the land pooling scheme – signalling their desire to shape and materialise new futures in the face of uncertainty and an uncontrollable transition in their environment. Through this process, some LP farmers configured themselves as active participants in the making of Amaravati. Indeed, most envision their futures in the city, living with their families in a new house built on one of their reconstituted plots, supported by incomes from renting out their 46 old homes or newly constructed buildings. To ensure their place in the new city, some farmers even took it upon themselves to monitor the implementation of civil works in their villages. For example, when the CRDA began to develop the first residential layout in his village, ‘Ashok’ – a wealthy landlord and former village head – carefully supervised the measurement and ‘peg- marking’ of plots (Figure 11) and the construction of internal roads and other infrastructure. When he suspected that the road contractor was ‘cheating’ on the concrete mixture, he sent a sample to a laboratory in Guntur for testing; when it was found to be sub-standard, he demanded that the contractor be replaced. As Ashok explained, the land pooling farmers need to get involved and ensure that the infrastructure is of high quality, otherwise their reconstituted plots will not attract a good price.

Figure 10. Map of new layout, shown by a farmer in a capital area village (photo by author)

Figure 11. Preparation of land for housing layout, with peg-marked plots (photo by author)

During repeated visits to the Amaravati villages between 2016 and 2019, my interlocutors spoke to me enthusiastically about the pace of development, mentioning the construction works that had started since my last visit and urging me to visit the sites to admire the advanced technology being used. They revealed a detailed knowledge of various aspects of the project – which companies had been awarded what contracts, the design of the flood control infrastructure, the number of returnable plots registered and sold. Monitoring the development of the city enabled them to sustain confidence in the project and therefore in their own futures. ‘Nageswara Rao’, a leading farmer, explained:

Everyone is waiting for the development to happen. The government has no money so they don’t know how it will happen. But now there is more confidence among the people as they can see things coming up.

In addition to following the development of infrastructure and buildings, farmers tracked the real estate market as a sign of development. In response to my remark that progress seemed to be slow, Nageswara Rao retorted: ‘If there is no progress, then why is land worth 30 lakhs being sold at 3 crores? If there is no development why would the prices go up like this?’ Thus, the logic of land speculation permeated LP farmers’ faith in Amaravati project. Their willingness to part with their land in the expectation of potentially high future returns, and their capacity to engage with both state and market to leverage land ownership into new wealth, point to a logic of accumulation and valuation of land different from what is described in most studies of land acquisition in India (but see Balakrishnan 2013; Nair 2019). Unlike cultivators in other

48 regions who have strongly opposed both compulsory land acquisition and land pooling, or have acquiesced under pressure or out of ignorance (Levien 2018; Nielsen 2018; Srinivasulu 2014), in Amaravati many farmers were persuaded fairly easily to give up their land. Indeed, many participated enthusiastically in the scheme. They did so not only out of political commitment, caste affiliation, or their belief in the state’s vision of urban modernity, but also because of the new opportunities for accumulation that were signalled by soaring land values. While the state invokes LP farmers as ‘stakeholders’ in the project, they in turn appropriate this subject-position to renegotiate their futures. But in doing so they have not simply become ‘neoliberal subjects’ of the post-liberalisation state, but draw on their deep knowledge of land markets and long-standing strategies of accumulation. Yet, the Amaravati project can be viewed as an instance of ‘speculative state planning’ (Bear 2011), for it devolves risk mainly onto individual farmers, who are made to gamble with their land in the hope of future returns.

Speculative state planning In a land pooling scheme, much more land than is actually needed to build the planned project must be acquired in order for the government to have sufficient land to create the compensation plots and also for its own purposes. In the case of Amaravati, the first phase covered a very large area of 217 sq. km. – much more land than the city would need in the foreseeable future. But taking excess land was essential to attract investors, because the project – like most mega-projects in India today – was based on a model of ‘land-based financing’ (Balakrishnan 2017) in which much of the finance comes from trading on the land acquired. The plan also depended on public- private partnerships to develop the new city, in which the state would use the excess land acquired as its equity share while the private partner puts up the liquid capital. In such arrangements, the potential future value of the land (or what could be built on it) is crucial – hence the implementing agency must create expectations of (or provide guarantees for) high future valuations to attract private capital investments. In the case of Amaravati, the state government had to generate confidence among both potential investors and landowners that the project is both viable and desirable. As discussed in the previous section, the state deployed various ‘technologies of the imagination’ (Sneath et al 2009) to promote the project and create confidence amongst the landowners and attract investors that it was viable. The wide circulation of fantastical images from the Amaravati Master Plan helped to disseminate the dream of a futuristic ‘world-city’ rising out of this agrarian landscape. However, perceptions and expectations also drive the land market – it is the anticipation of rising property

49 values that creates ‘buy-in’ on the part of both farmers and potential investors.33 This means that the state must perform a balancing act, allowing land markets to operate as usual, driven by speculative capital, while also providing land at reasonable prices to potential investors – thereby undercutting its own source of revenue. Thus, the Amaravati project exemplifies what Bear diagnoses as a turn to ‘speculative state planning’ in neoliberal India, pointing out that as ‘schemes are driven by the new financial speculations of public deficit, they seek to stimulate entrepreneurial speculation, and they have highly uncertain outcomes’ (Bear 2011: 49; cf. Goldman 2011; Bear 2020). Both urban planning and speculation are future-oriented projects, but the former produces an imagination of a desired ‘good life’ while the latter trades on uncertainty and unpredictability (Abram and Weszkalnys 2013). In the Amaravati case, planning was speculative in another sense as well, for it depended on financial mechanisms that ‘unlock’ value from unruly land markets, yet those markets operate largely through ‘informal’ or extra-legal transactions and practices. Despite the state’s efforts at perception management, the Amaravati plan was not without controversy.34 Critics alleged that the Amaravati project was basically a big real estate deal benefitting TDP politicians and Naidu’s ‘cronies’.35 Politicians and business people close to the Chief Minister were rumoured to have received advance information about the capital location and bought up large amounts of land at low prices, later profiting from the escalation in prices. But the Amaravati story was more than a straightforward ‘land grab’, for it is a highly risky venture with uncertain returns for investors as well as the state, which borrowed extensively (including from the public, in the form of bonds) to finance the project. In this context, the land that was acquired from farmers was the main asset held by the state, which it could leverage to push forward the project. One of the main responsibilities of the CRDA was to allocate the acquired land to organisations and companies that expressed interest in investing in the new city. Parcels of land were offered at relatively low rates (50 lakhs an acre, in most cases) to lure well-known private education and health conglomerates as well as corporates to establish a presence in the new city.

33 Although the state government periodically tried to control land prices in the capital region, such as by stopping the registration of land sales, the project also depended on sustaining high land values to create investor confidence. Whenever the project appears to be stalled or negative rumors start to circulate, prices would fall. 34 The Amaravati plan was criticised on a number of other counts as well, including environmental and equity issues. Activists filed numerous cases in court to stall the project. The opposition has been extensively written about, so I do not provide details here. See Ramachandraiah (2015, 2016). 35 The CRDA was dubbed by wits as the ‘Chandrababu Naidu Real Estate Development Agency’.

The government fast-tracked these deals, as well as the construction of several government buildings and major arterial roads, to create visible evidence that the new capital was developing as planned (Figures 12 and 13). The first private organisations to come to Amaravati were educational institutions – SRM University and Vellore Institute of Technology set up campuses there (Figure 14) – and the Secretariat and High Court also began functioning. While a number of private organisations and institutions were granted land, few other projects were even under construction by 2019. A separate entity – Amaravati Development Corporation Limited (ADCL) – was formed to channel private investments into the development of infrastructure such as roads and bridges, using land as equity. The most striking public-private deal in Amaravati was the agreement between ADCL and a consortium of Singapore-based companies Ascendas-Singbridge and Sembcorp to develop the ‘start-up area’ of the new city on 6.84 sq. km. of prime riverfront land.36 A new entity was established for this joint venture – Amaravati Development Partners (ADP), a partnership between ADCL and the Singapore consortium – which was granted the development rights.37 In return for their investment, ADP was given the rights to sell the commercial space and developed plots of land. This project, although it was to be implemented by a conglomerate of experienced infrastructure companies and urban planning experts, can also be viewed as speculative, in that its success depended entirely on future land values. A senior Singaporean manager in ADP explained the business model in this way:

36 The Government of Singapore’s offer to create the Amaravati master plan for ‘free’ was clearly a strategy to develop a relationship with the AP state government and pave the way for Singapore companies to get contracts to build the new city. This strategy bore fruit as indicated by this deal, which was signed in May 2017 between a consortium of Singapore companies – Ascendas-Singbridge Pvt Ltd and Sembcorp Development Ltd – and the Amaravati Development Corporation Limited (ADCL). The details of the arrangement have not been made public, but clearly the state government’s 42 per cent share of the total capital of 528 crore is the imputed cost of the land (1,691 acres or 684 hectares). See: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/ascendas-sembcor-to-co-develop-start-up-area- in-amaravati/articleshow/58684871.cms last accessed on May 16, 2017. 37 The Government of Singapore’s offer to create the Amaravati master plan for ‘free’ was clearly a strategy to develop a relationship with the AP state government and pave the way for Singapore companies to get contracts. That this strategy bore fruit is indicated by this deal, which was signed in May 2017 between a consortium of Singapore companies – Ascendas-Singbridge Pvt Ltd and Sembcorp Development Ltd – and the Amaravati Development Corporation Limited (ADCL). The details of the arrangement have not been made public, but clearly the state government’s 42 per cent share of the total capital of 528 crore is the imputed cost of the land (1,691 acres or 684 hectares). While this deal could be seen as an example of the ‘global land grab’ (Adnan 2013; White et al. 2013; Zoomers 2010), the story was much more complicated and it ultimately fell through.

We have to spend up front to fund the project and create the distributive infrastructure [roads]. We get our money back only by selling the developed plots of land. But this is very difficult to do in a greenfield city. Whether someone buys the land we offer depends on a lot of factors. So, the risk is significant. If we can manage the costs and sell the developed plots, we can pay back the banks and then get some return. Only if the land prices go up can we can make money. But land prices go up only if there is economic generation. I cannot artificially inflate the land prices … So that’s where the catch is – how to attract investments when there is no infrastructure? It is a chicken and egg problem. So, for this kind of project, you need a long-term view – you recover your investment only after twenty years.

Thus, the success of the Amaravati project depended on the ability of the state and its corporate partners to not only create the required infrastructure and attract productive investments, but also – crucially – on the performance of real estate markets. Although the investment was highly risky and indeed speculative, major foreign companies such as Sembcorp are willing to bear the risks as part of their long-term investment plans. But an unanswered question here is how the risks and potential profits would be distributed between the various partners – the farmers who contributed their lands, the state government and the foreign investors. Since the contract was never made public and Singapore withdrew from the project after the new government decided not to procced with the plan, the terms of the agreement will never be known.

Figure 12. The six blocks of the ‘Temporary Secretariat’, built in record time (photo by author)

Figure 13. The new ‘Seed Access Road’ stretching through kilometres of empty land (photo by author)

Figure 14. SRM University campus in Amaravati (photo by author)

Planning, urban informality and speculation Over the five years since the inception of the Amaravati project, the capital zone has seen drastic changes. Cultivation was forcibly stopped by the government, turning a lush agrarian environment into a vast expanse of fallow fields now populated only by grazing goats and buffaloes, for which

53 the Amaravati project has been a boon (Figures 15 and 16). What was until very recently a sleepy rural landscape is rapidly being transformed into a vast, if scattered, construction site. Despite the careful plans that were laid out for the orderly development of the new city, multi-storied houses and apartment blocks have come up haphazardly in most of the villages, in contravention of CRDA building codes, as residents invested the proceeds of land sales in the creation of rental units and in the hope of profiting from the rising demand for residential and commercial properties (Figures 17, 18 and 19). These developments suggest, as Ayona Datta (2015) notes in the case of the Dholera project in Gujarat—that it is impossible to predict how state-driven ‘urban utopias’ will materialise on the ground. Master plans and state development visions are subject to re-visioning and revision, as the subjects of planned mega-projects calculate their risks and potential returns, negotiate with state agencies, forge new strategies of accumulation, or re-imagine their futures beyond the remit of official planning regimes (Roy 2009). Moreover, while major real estate development on the pooled land within the capital zone is controlled by the CRDA, all around its perimeter new apartment complexes and upscale gated communities are coming up— leading to the conversion of even more agricultural land into urban real estate (Figure 20).

Figure 15. Herd of goats, on road leading to new government complex, Velagapudi village (photo by author)

Figure 16. View of Temporary Secretariat, Velagapudi village (photo by author)

Figure 17. Construction activity in a capital region village (photo by author)

Figure 18. New apartment block in another CRDA village (photo by author)

Figure 19. Sign for real estate business, Thullur (photo by author)

Figure 20. New real estate project on main highway, on perimeter of capital zone (photo by author)

5. AGRARIAN URBANISM: RECASTING LAND

Urban scholars have argued that greater attention should be given to how postcolonial cities and towns have been shaped by their regional histories and agrarian locations (Nair 2013). Gururani uses the term ‘agrarian urbanism’ to refer to an ‘urbanism in which agrarian regimes of land and property endure and coproduce the urban’. She also points to how ‘changing relations of caste and land produce an uneven geography of spatial value’ (Gururani 2019: 14). Recent studies of peri-urban spaces in south Asia have revealed the sharpening or reconfiguration of existing structures of class and caste as agricultural land is converted into urban real estate, and as agrarian elites capture the benefits of new land markets and economic opportunities (Cowan 2018; Gururani and Dasgupta 2018; Sarkar 2015). Similarly, the literature on compulsory land acquisition for infrastructure development, Special Economic Zones, and ‘new city’ projects highlights the reproduction of caste and class inequalities as India’s current urban-centric development agenda unfolds, documenting how contemporary conflicts around land emerge from historically embedded structures of property and control.38 Recent work on India’s ‘land wars’ illustrates how ‘caste consistently mediates land transfers in present day India by pre-empting, undermining or fuelling processes of social contestation’ (Nielsen et al. 2020: 1- 2) and how the ‘cultivation of new, non-agrarian spaces of accumulation’ has reinforced the exclusion and dispossession of Dalits in particular (2020: 7). Building on this body of work, this section explores how regional ‘agrarian regimes of territory, land and property are implicated and inscribed in ongoing urban land use changes’ (Balakrishnan 2019: 2). The findings of this study point to how caste works to produce value differentially from land as rural communities urbanise, facilitating accumulation by some groups from land while marginalising others. As discussed above, many Kamma farmers participated willingly (or sometimes reluctantly) in the land pooling scheme, which they viewed as a long-term investment that would potentially yield substantial financial benefits in the future. However, Dalits and members of other marginalised communities were largely excluded from the process – not only landless households but also landholders. This differentiation can be traced to the embedding of caste in the land governance system – in particular, the inferior land rights carried by ‘assigned lands’. To understand the contestations that arose around Dalit lands, below I provide a brief history of the category of ‘assigned land’ in Andhra.

38 See, for example, Agarwal (2021), Agarwal and Levien (2020), Das (2019), Kennedy (2020), Levien (2015, 2018), and Steur (2015).

Governing land through caste Across India, caste-based structures of control over land have not only shaped regional formations of social and political power (Lerche 2015) but also the governance of land itself. Viswanath’s (2014) history of caste in Madras Presidency illustrates how ‘customary’ agrarian relations (defined by caste) were inscribed into law and land revenue administration by the colonial state. In Tamilnad, the British authorities accepted mirasidari claims to ownership of entire villages and its lands, while the ‘untouchable’ agricultural labour castes were not considered members of the village community. When the colonial government, in response to numerous petitions by ‘Pariahs’ (former ‘Untouchables’), finally granted them rights to the ‘wastelands’ that they were already cultivating, they were not given ‘pattas’, or proprietary rights, but only conditional occupancy rights. Grant land was circumscribed by various restrictions such that it did not carry full property rights (Viswanath 2014: 159-160). In contrast to the Tamil districts, in most of Coastal Andhra the ‘ryotwari’ (raiyatwari) system of land revenue settlement was imposed, apart from a few pockets of zamindari settlement (Frykenberg 1969). The ‘pattas’ that ryots received under the settlement still form the main source of property rights. As in the Tamil districts, the colonial state granted limited land rights to Panchamas in Kistna (Krishna) and Guntur districts, a measure that was directed at alleviating the conditions of the ‘poor’ (Viswanath 2014: 171 ff.). This colonial genealogy of the differentiation between Dalit ‘assigned lands’ and regular ‘patta’ (freehold) lands has been reproduced in the post- independence period. The distinction between ‘proper’ cultivators (most belonging to the upper and dominant castes), and lower caste subjects who cultivate other kinds of lands (if at all), has been replicated in contemporary land acquisition programmes (Nielsen et al. 2020). The circumscribed rights accorded to grant lands have also been reproduced in land distribution programmes for the poor and Dalits marginalised groups, particularly in the category of ‘assigned lands’. Assigned land is heritable but not transferable or alienable, in contrast to the full property rights of patta land (generally enjoyed by non-Dalit cultivators).39 Although land titling programmes today are aimed at the ‘poor’, ‘...they are still heavily determined by caste and are imbued with value-laden social stereotypes about personhood and capabilities corresponding to different

39 The distribution of conditional land titles (termed ‘D-Form patta’) is referred to as ‘land assignment’. Assigned lands include ceiling surplus or other government lands granted to households in designated categories (such as SC, ST, the landless poor) for cultivation. This process is distinct from ‘land regularisation’ in which titles are given to ‘unauthorised’ occupants of land on the payment of a fee. These two modalities of land management through titling – land assignment and land regularisation – delineate two categories of citizens, marginalised groups and ‘general population’ (Jonalagadda et al. nd: 9-10).

59 groups’ (Jonalagadda et al. nd: 10). The absorption of caste into the category of ‘the poor’ is demonstrated by the fact that most land held by Dalits is assigned land. The Andhra Pradesh government initiated formal land distribution programmes for landless and poor households in 1954, but it was only in the 1970s that these schemes were expanded and steps taken to ensure that assigned lands remain in the hands of the assignees (Ramachandraiah and Venkateswarlu 2014).40 Land assignment has often simply recognised long- standing occupation of ‘wastelands’ or ‘government lands’ by the ‘beneficiaries’, yet it is represented as a ‘gift’ or beneficence from the state rather than an entitlement or confirmation of existing usage. In Andhra Pradesh, the large majority of assignees belong to Scheduled Caste and other marginalised communities (Rama Rao and Murthy 1980: 64). It is important to note that assigned lands are regarded as ‘government land’ and so can easily be resumed by the state, without compensation, when required for some ‘public purpose’. Consequently, assigned lands are often the first to be acquired for government projects (Balagopal 2007; Oskarsson 2013; Ramachandraiah and Venkateswarlu 2014). Thus, land distribution programmes allow the state to patronise certain groups while also expanding the scope for dispossession. In these and other ways, assigned lands stand in opposition to property rights in ‘patta’ land, which are mainly enjoyed by the ‘dominant’ (by definition, non-Dalit) castes. Thus, land distribution programmes have created a ‘subaltern category of property’ (Jonalagadda et al. nd: 2). The inscription of caste in land governance categories and procedures in turn shapes access to, and struggles around, land. In undivided Andhra Pradesh, in the wake of several rounds of conditional land titling, ‘… questions of property and citizenship have become thoroughly entangled in land policies and in the politics of marginalized groups’ (nd: 4). In the case of Amaravati as well, this politics plays out mainly on the terrain of the law.

Struggling for equality in the ‘world-class city’ As noted in section 3, caste identity provided the social networks and political leverage for Kamma farmers to negotiate with the government to maximise their gains from the Amaravati project. In contrast, Dalits – both landless and landholders – were systematically marginalised as the project unfolded. The few Dalits who owned land lacked the social connections and political influence to

40 The Andhra Pradesh Assigned Land (Prohibition of Transfer) Act, 1977 was passed after much of the land that had been assigned was found to have passed out of the hands of the assignees. The law prohibits the sale or transfer of such land except within the same designated categories, after a certain period of time and with the permission of the authorities (Ramachandraiah and Venkateswarlu 2014: 48-56). The assignees receive ‘DK pattas’ which recognise the holder as the cultivator but does not confer ownership.

60 stake a claim as equal partners, unlike most Kamma farmers. However, small and marginal Dalit landowners did not simply accept the situation, but mobilised to pressure the government to protect their rights and to claim equality in the new city. The first controversy concerned the question of compensation for assigned lands. Because assigned lands are considered ‘government land’, the state government initially left assigned lands out of the land pooling (LP) scheme entirely and planned to simply reclaim them, even though most of these lands had been under cultivation by the assignees for decades. However, politically aware Dalits in the capital area villages quickly mounted a protest against this injustice, and after contesting this decision for two years succeeded in getting assigned lands included in land pooling. Explaining their objections, ‘Babu’, a Dalit leader, said:

We have not asked anyone not to give their land, we are not saying they should not construct the capital here. We are just asking for a good package. Who will not be happy if land which is now selling at 1-2 lakhs an acre shoots up to 50-60 lakhs? Why can’t we be treated equally?

Although assigned lands were finally included in land pooling, the compensation provided was less than that for regular patta lands. The government’s stance, as explained by a CRDA official, was that assigned lands are granted only for cultivation and are non-alienable, hence they are classified differently from lands with ‘pakka pattas’ (title deeds) and transferable rights. The LP scheme designated six categories of assigned lands, each with a different ‘package’, depending on when the land was granted, whether it had been sold or not, and who had current possession. Only land assigned prior to 1954 was given the same compensation as patta lands, while land granted after that date (most of the assigned lands) were given smaller compensation plots.41 In contrast, other categories of assigned land, such as that given to former servicemen and ‘freedom fighters’ in recognition of their service to the nation, received the regular ‘patta’ package – pointing to clear discrimination against the ‘poor’ (mainly SC) beneficiaries.

41 For lands assigned prior to 1954, the package was the same as for ordinary patta lands - 1000+200/ 1000+450 sq. yds. Lands assigned after that date were given 800+100 for dry land and 800+200 for wet or semi-urban land. The other categories include ‘eligible encroachers’ on ‘non-objectionable government land’ (500+50 and 500+100 for wet / dry land), while encroachers in ‘objectionable’ government lands receive 250+nil sq. yd. plots for both types of land. For both categories of ‘encroachers’, annuity is not payable. Source: APCRDA, Amaravati The People’s Capital: Innovative & Inclusive Land Pooling Scheme, 2017.https://crda.ap.gov.in/apcrdacommuni/Media/APCRDADOCS/LPS/2018/APR/APCRDA%20 LPS%20Book%208th%20April.pdf. In addition, AP GO No. 41 of February 2016 states that land that had been alienated (sold) was ‘deemed to have been resumed to Government’ and the cultivators would receive only 500+50 or 500+100 sq. yds.

Another injustice mentioned by several Dalit interlocutors was that even after pooling their land, they were not receiving the annuity of Rs. 30,000 / 50,000, whereas patta holders were receiving the payment regularly. The CRDA offered various excuses for this delay – the land records were unclear so they could not determine the rightful recipient, or the land had been sold without permission so was eligible only for the ‘encroached land’ package (which does not include annuity). While on the surface it was the administrative status of assigned lands which created these problems, the caste basis of differential treatment of assigned lands is clear from other issues faced by Dalits. For example, some assigned land holders had applied for the pension that is given to landless households after they were told that their land would be resumed by the government. A human rights lawyer (and local landowner) who was a vocal opponent of land pooling said, ‘Once you take the pension and sign the document which declares you are landless, that will become a weapon for the government to say that they own no land’. Conversely, those who applied for land pooling were not eligible to receive the monthly landless pension because they had declared that they own land – thereby trapping them in a ‘legal limbo’ (Kolsto 2017: 55). It is also important to note here that assigned lands were brought into the LP scheme only after most of these lands had been sold. This brings us to the second major controversy that erupted in the context of land pooling – the widespread sale of Dalit lands to local Kamma farmers and absentee landlords.

Alienation of Dalit lands A large (but unknown) proportion of the assigned lands in the capital area had been purchased by non-Dalits, both before and after the announcement of land pooling. This meant that most Dalit farmers could not participate in land pooling, nor could they capitalise on the soaring land market since most sold at low prices – in contrast to many Kamma farmers who benefitted from both land pooling and the land market. Babu articulated this difference: ‘Upper caste people [Kammas] in our village sold a quarter of an acre for 50-60 lakhs, but even if we sell one acre it would not fetch 50 lakhs, as our lands are assigned lands’. Although there are no reliable figures on how much assigned land was sold, close observers of the scene believe that many Dalits sold their land early in the land pooling process at low prices. Allegations that many of these sales were to TDP politicians (Ramachandraiah 2016: 73) have been supported by recent government investigations.42 ‘Narayana’, a local CPI-M (Communist Party of

42 https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/andhra-pradesh/2019/dec/30/44466-acres-of-assigned- land-acquired-by-tdp-men-benamis-in-amaravati-csc-2082679.html

India-Marxist) activist,43 estimated that 80 percent of the approximately 2000 acres of assigned lands in the capital region had gone out of the hands of the assignees. We gathered many stories of distress sales of land from Dalits, as well as about the disputes that arose because of these sales as land values rose. It was difficult at first to understand why Dalits would dispose of their lands at low prices in a boom situation, but the reasons gradually became clear from multiple conversations with local Dalits and other interlocutors. These are summarised below. First, local politicians and government officials had informed assigned landholders that their land would not be included in the LP scheme, leading to panic selling before land pooling began as the assignees hoped to realise at least some value from their lands before they were resumed by the government. Second, Dalits continued to sell their land even after assigned lands were included in the LP scheme, because the package was inadequate and they believed they could do better by selling. Third, it was easier to sell rather than try to negotiate the bureaucratic maze of the land pooling system, especially because their land documents were often missing or unclear, which made it difficult to prove their claims (in contrast to patta lands, for which title is usually clear). Finally, Dalits could not easily sell their land in the open market because of the restrictions on the transfer of assigned land. Consequently, their lands were purchased mainly by local Kammas through informal deals, at prices well below market value. In contrast to Dalits, Kamma landlords had the political and bureaucratic connections (and money) to get the paperwork sorted out with the Revenue Department. Rumours about manipulation of land records by government officials – presumably enabled by strategic under-the-table payments – were confirmed after the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) government came to power in 2019 and launched an investigation into the Amaravati ‘land scam’ (discussed below). According to Narayana, the wealthier buyers were willing risk purchasing assigned lands because the deals were done through ‘agreement’, in which only a small portion of the total price is paid up front and the balance after the land is registered in the buyer’s name.44 Further, they did

43 The local unit of the CPI-M has long been active in organising agricultural labourers and has strong networks amongst Dalits in the capital area villages. 44 Sale of land by ‘agreement’ is a common practice across India. In such transactions, the parties enter into a legal contract on stamp paper to sell the land at a particular price. Upon signing the agreement, a portion of the price paid (usually 10 to 50 percent) and the original documents are handed over to the buyer. Such sales meant that Dalits also lost out because they did not receive the full price at once, and so could not make the kind of productive investments that Kamma farmers did after they sold their land. Consequently, according to our interlocutors, many Dalits ‘wasted’ the money they got from selling their land on buying consumer goods or spending on marriages, and so on. More often, they used the proceeds to clear debts.

63 not mind ‘gambling’ on assigned lands because land deals are always involve ‘black money’ (unaccounted funds or cash). If for some reason the registration is blocked, the buyer will lose only the advance payment.45 Pointing out the contradiction in such sales, Babu said:

When I purchased assigned land, I was served a notice saying that the transaction was illegal and the land will be taken over by the government. I told them, first you should take back the land from the upper caste people who illegally purchased assigned lands from SC farmers. Around 1000 acres of assigned lanka lands have passed from SC farmers to upper caste farmers.

Caste segmented the land market not only in the case of assigned lands, but also for patta lands owned by Dalits. Narayana related his own experience:

I owned regular patta land which I sold for 1.19 crore an acre, whereas land belonging to a Kamma just adjacent to my field fetched 1.5 crore. The excuse given by the broker was that there are so many legal issues [property disputes] in SC families, so you can’t expect the same price. Dalit lands always go for less.

Through this systematic ‘land grab’, Kammas were able to acquire more land in the capital area villages, while many Dalits with small and marginal holdings lost their lands. Several studies have shown that small and marginal landowners are usually the first to sell when land markets heat up, and so receive lower returns compared to larger landowners who have the capacity to hold out for higher prices (Levien 2015; Vijayabaskar and Menon 2018). But in this case, it was not just the difference in landholding status that made it more difficult for Dalits to participate in the land market or the land pooling scheme. Rather, the ‘caste factor’ also clearly worked to produce this differentiation. For example, the Revenue Department passed an ordinance stating that under the LP scheme, compensation could be given to the current owner of assigned land – even though the transfer of assigned land is prohibited by law. This ordinance, which was widely seen as a mechanism to grab Dalit lands, was reversed by the YSRCP

45 In such cases, the Dalit seller gains as he keeps the advance money as well as the land. Through such deals, many Dalits in the Amaravati villages were temporarily flush with cash, which in many cases also disappeared just as suddenly.

64 government in December 2019, which ordered that the compensation plots would be given only to the actual assignees.46

Administrative ambiguities and confusions: The case of lanka lands The agitation around the assigned lands issue was initiated mainly by Dalits from the riverbank village of UDpalem, who cultivate what are called ‘lanka [island] lands’. Lanka lands are situated on the floodplains of the Krishna River as well as on islands in the river, and they became a subject of acrimonious dispute because of their location. The government was determined to gain control over the scenic riverfront area (Figure 21), which was central to the plan for the new city, which envisioned the development of recreational and tourism facilities as well as the ‘Startup Area’ next to the river.

Figure 21. Lush agricultural land of CRDA villages along the Krishna River; lanka lands in the river are also visible

Lanka lands are found in several villages of the capital region and have been cultivated by Dalits since the colonial period. Lanka land farmers spoke about how their grandfathers or great- grandfathers had brought the land under cultivation, giving them a sense of entitlement as they

46 https://www.hindustantimes.com/real-estate/andhra-govt-cancels-allotment-of-compensatory-plots- under-land-pooling-in-amaravati/story-rIMbgmKU7nVQIF43jsKWxJ.html

65 had made the land productive. However, these lands are not found on village revenue maps, and their physical area expands and shrinks over time with the ebb and flow of the river – giving rise to numerous disputes over the years about boundaries and cultivation rights. Lanka lands are technically assigned lands (they carry DK pattas, which were assigned many years after they were brought under cultivation), but their geographical peculiarities and complex administrative status created particularly thorny issues in the context of land pooling. Here I present a few examples of these issues from UDpalem and a neighbouring village, Rayapudi, to illustrate how land governance categories and rules operate to dispossess Dalits. In 1975, rights to the lanka lands of UDpalem were granted to the Harijan Cooperative Society which was formed for this purpose. The Society (which later split into two separate societies) was initially composed of 125 families and held a total of 450 acres. Later the land was divided amongst the individual households, which received DK pattas for their plots. Because the lanka lands of UDpalem are highly fertile, the cultivators prospered from growing commercial crops such as guava, sugar cane, banana, turmeric and vegetables -- especially after 1984 when the Society received funding from the SC Corporation to install borewells. They also secured agricultural bank loans by pledging their pattadar passbooks, which the farmers gave as evidence of their land rights. The story of the Rayapudi lanka is similar – the land had been granted to a Society but was later divided amongst the member families, who were given individual DK pattas in 1986. An important difference is that the riverbank lands of UD Palem are accessible by road from the village (Figure 22), while Rayapudi lanka lands are located in the middle of the Krishna River and can only be reached from the opposite bank by boat or sometimes by land. Due to this inaccessibility, many of the Rayapudi lanka rights holders had leased out or informally sold their lands to other people, much before the capital city project began. Some of these sales had been deemed illegal by the government, creating ambiguities about ‘ownership’ of the land. In addition, the plots had been broken up into smaller ones as they were passed down, complicating the problem of identifying the rightful assignees of each land parcel. These complications led the government to delay the pooling process for lanka lands on the grounds that they could not identify the actual holders of each plot (to determine eligibility for land pooling). The Joint Collector decided to conduct a ‘social enumeration survey’ to ascertain the boundaries and rightful tenure holders of each individual plot of lanka land, but several rounds of the survey each yielding different lists and information.47 Finally, the Revenue Department

47 The President of the UDpalem Harijan Society explained that of the original 450 acres assigned to the Society, 20 acres had been earmarked for a government nursery and 10 acres for houses and roads. These

66 identified around 2000 acres of lanka land for land pooling and issued LP notifications to the holders, but by that time many lanka farmers had sold their lands. Vakulabharanam and Prasad (2017: 72) suggest that the survey was a deliberate delaying tactic to create confusion and force lanka land holders to sell. According to a Dalit leader, TDP leaders had told the lanka farmers of Rayapudi that their land would be resumed by the government without compensation, to intimidate them into selling their lands to ‘big people’. As a result, many Rayapudi Dalits had sold their lands for as little as 10-15 lakhs per acre.

Figure 22. Road to UDpalem lanka lands (photo by author)

The widespread alienation of lanka lands created disputes amongst Dalits as well as between Dalits and the government. For example, during the surveys, land that had been sold was recorded in the names of both buyer and seller and later some of the original assignees claimed that they had not sold their lands. In such cases, rather than getting into a long dispute, the original assignee and the buyer would often agree to share the compensation. Some assignees also entered into informal agreements with the buyers to sell the land to third parties and share the proceeds equally. The story of the Rayapudi lanka lands is one of numerous such complicated land deals, disputes and squandered money – all induced by the land pooling process.

lands had been left out of previous government surveys and so did not appear in the records, but the farmers were demanding that the missing 30 acres should be included for the purpose of land pooling. Kolsto (2017: 52-55) also discusses the confusion around lanka lands.

Although many of the conflicts took place amongst Dalits themselves, the theme of caste discrimination emerged consistently in their narratives. A cultivator at Pedda Lanka in Rayapudi, when asked if he would give his land for pooling said, ‘Yes, I already went to the office, but they are saying wait as there is no clarity on lanka lands. When it comes to SCs, there is no clarity!’ Another resident of Pedda Lanka declared:

They are delaying solving the lanka land issue so that Dalits sell their lands to others. They don’t want Dalits to grow in the capital city. TDP is Chowdarys, Chowdarys are TDP and Capital is Chowdarys!48

In contrast to the Rayapudi story, UD Palem lanka cultivators were more politically astute and so preferred to fight for the LP package rather than sell their lands. According to several interlocutors, they had prospered from commercial farming and so had high ‘expectations’. It was the UD Palem lanka cultivators who first raised the demand for an equal package for assigned lands. Their desire and ability to organise around this issue was reinforced by a long history of caste tension between Kammas and Madigas in UD Palem. According to him, one reason that assigned lands were not given the same package as patta lands was opposition from Kamma farmers:

The Kammas here are very casteist. Kamma farmers thought, how can they [SC farmers] get the same package as us? They even asked this question in front of us at a CRDA meeting in Thulluru. In fact, they don’t even let us talk at these meetings. To give an example, when the distribution of the reconstituted plots was taking place here, we went to the meeting to share our problems.49 The police asked us who we are, when we said we are UD Palem SC farmers they said, ‘All you SC farmers come and stand here by the wall.’ I nearly died then itself with shame. They did not allow us to go near the stage. All these are humiliations. Because of these humiliations there is no scope for SC farmers to give their lands happily.

Thus, Kamma oppression and Dalit resentment played a major role in the mobilisation of assigned land holders, who confronted the state on its own terrain - that of law, governance and citizens’ rights.

48 Chowdary is another caste name for Kammas. 49 As discussed above, the distribution of compensation plots by computerised lottery was done through an elaborate ceremony organised by the CRDA in each village. The participants were mainly Kamma ‘LP farmers’.

Land struggle as caste struggle: Strategies of mobilisation The first demand of the protesting Dalits was that their lands should get the same package as ‘jareebu patta’ lands. As a Dalit leader explained, pointing to the floor tiles at our feet, ‘My land is separated from the registered land by just a bund, yet the government is giving us a different package. Actually, our lands are more fertile than the registration lands’. While the Revenue Department justified the differential treatment of these lands on the basis of administrative categories and rules, Dalits framed it as an issue of discrimination against them by Kamma landlords and the Kamma-dominated government. This is how Babu recounted the story of their struggle since 2015:

We filed a court case pleading that if our land is to be taken, we should be compensated on the terms given in the Land Acquisition Act, 2013, rather than via pooling. Alternatively, if the government insists on pooling, they should give us the same package as jareebu lands. Also, we prayed that if people are not willing to give their lands they should be left in peace. When the judge asked the government lawyer about the difference in the packages [for patta and assigned land], the lawyer told the court that the government is in no position to give the same package, but the lanka land owners are free to keep their lands. First Naidu promised us the jareebu package, then it came down to 1250 square yards, and finally it was brought down further down to 1000 square yards. Why did he go back on his word? Initially he promised us heaven. But as he realised he cannot do it, he kept on decreasing the package.

In mounting their resistance, UDpalem lanka farmers took the help of retired Dalit government officer, social activists, and opposition parties.50 The theme of caste discrimination was articulated repeatedly in their narratives at public meetings and representations to the courts and government authorities. Below I present two brief examples of the political and discursive strategies that were deployed to create visibility for the struggle and to project their voices to authorities beyond the local and regional state. The first example is from a hearing of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (hereafter, SC Commission) which was held in Vijayawada in February 2017 in response to a petition that was filed on behalf of assigned land holders in the Amaravati villages, alleging caste discrimination in the land pooling scheme. The meeting was well-attended by capital area Dalits

50 Notably, many Dalits of UDpalem had supported the Telugu Desam Party, but after their treatment by the Chandrababu Naidu government they switched loyalties to the YSRCP.

69 and Dalit leaders, human rights activists, representatives of the Dalit Bahujan Front (DBF) and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), and several big Kamma farmers who were opposing land pooling. The Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner of CRDA, who had been summoned by the Commission, were also present. The first speaker, Bhagya Rao of the DBF51 – one of the petitioners – argued that by giving different packages for Dalit lands, the government is practicing discrimination. Father Francis, a social activist who was the other petitioner, reiterated that Dalit assigned land holders had been discriminated against, and further that they had been threatened into pooling their lands for a lower package:

While we were fighting for an equal package for both assigned and registration land, they came out with GO [Government Order] No 43, which increased the package for registration lands and so widened the difference. Because of the 9.2 clause in the agreement between landowners and the CRDA, we can’t take back our lands or fight in the courts.

Father Francis highlighted that the lanka lands had not been notified for land pooling or acquisition even though they were clearly included in the master plan. Speaking about the multiple surveys on lanka lands in UD Palem, he pointed out that one survey had documented 540 acres while the next one reduced the area to 234 acres. Nirmalata, a Vijayawada-based lawyer who had filed court cases on behalf of Kamma farmers who were opposing land pooling, said that the government is practising a ‘divide and rule policy’ for patta and assigned land owners. A member of the panel, Kamalamma, then turned to the CRDA officials and admonished them for violating the law and the rights of Dalits:

You are discriminating against Dalits by giving a different package for assigned lands. GO 4152 itself is against Article 14 of the Constitution, and against the 2013 Land Acquisition Act. On what authority is the government issuing GO 41 giving different packages for patta and assigned land? When the government itself is showing discrimination, where can SCs

51 The membership of DBF mainly consists of Malas, whereas the lanka farmers are mostly Madigas. There have long been political and social tensions between these two communities in Andhra, most recently around the splitting of reservations for the Scheduled Castes between the two castes (Gundimeda 2009). It is not clear how the DBF became involved in this case, since it appears that they did not coordinate with the leaders of the lanka land farmers. 52 GO 41 is the government order that sanctioned the package for assigned lands, detailed above.

go? You cannot protect the purchasers of assigned land or force the assignees to share the compensation with the purchasers.

On hearing Kamalamma interrogating the CRDA Commissioner so harshly, applause exploded in the room. She then declared that the Commission would recommend suspension of GO 41 and that assigned land should be given the same package as patta land. She concluded by asking the Commissioner, ‘Do you want SC people to leave the capital? Is that your thinking?’ The headline for a story on the hearing in a Telugu newspaper the following day read, ‘Do you Want Dalits to Leave the Capital?’ After the meeting, we spoke to a human rights lawyer who had helped file the petition. He said that the hearing would not yield any concrete gains for the Dalit landowners, but that its purpose was to build visibility and put pressure on the government, which might help their case:

This is all like cinema, for tomorrow’s newspapers. The Commission’s recommendations are not binding on the government. But it will be a basis to critique the government and argue in courts, as we can say that even the SC Commission has faulted the government.

The second example is from the hearings conducted by a World Bank Inspection Panel in several capital region villages in September 2017.53 The President of the Assigned Lands Society in UD Palem told the panel:

We have been cultivating these lands at least since 1954. The government is giving 1000 + 450 sq. yd for direct cultivators and 600 sq. yd to SCs who have purchased assigned lands from other SCs. We are asking that we should be given the same 1450 sq. yd package which the patta land holders are getting. We too cultivate multiple crops.

He pointed out that according to the 2013 Land Acquisition Act, assigned land holders are supposed to be compensated on par with patta landowners. Next, a farmer from UD Palem informed the panel that no proper survey of lanka lands had been carried out. Further, ‘The CRDA Commissioner had declared before the National Green

53 After the state government applied for a World Bank loan to finance the construction of major roads in the new city, opponents of land pooling requested the Bank to conduct social impact assessments in the affected villages. The World Bank ultimately did not approve the loan.

Tribunal that there are no houses on the lankas and the land is not arable!’ – a clear misrepresentation. Another lanka cultivator related his story, illustrating the discrimination and difficulties they have faced due to the Amaravati project:

We have been cultivating these lands for the past 140 years. How can the government now say that we don’t have any title and so we are eligible only for 600 sq. yd. package? The land adjacent to ours is patta land. Both plots are the same type of land, but we get different packages. We were given DK Patta in 1979. The Land Acquisition Act, 2013 clearly says that all types of land should be treated equally, but here there are four types of packages. One caste, one package - and another package for politicians. We have gone all the way to the SC Commission with our complaint, but the government here is so adamant. In the entire capital region, the government has never conducted any meeting with SCs.

These narratives illustrate how Dalits and their supporters employed the language of law and justice to press their case, particularly invoking laws that protect Dalit rights and affirm their equal citizenship. These tactics can be viewed as a way of ‘hailing the state’ (Mitchell 2018), deploying their identity as oppressed Dalits to insist that their grievances be heard and rectified. But in this case, the regional and local states – framed as a ‘Kamma government’ – could not be expected to deliver justice, so the protesters shifted scale and went over the heads of the CRDA administration and state government to make their case to national and international bodies.

Urbanisation, marginalisation and caste The contestations that erupted around the treatment of Dalit assigned lands in the land pooling scheme shows how caste inflects the politics of land as agricultural land is transformed into urban real estate. Caste, as a basic structure of social power and agrarian production rooted in control over land, is neither simply reproduced nor erased by urbanisation. Instead, the examples presented here show how caste continues to structure – in subtle and varying ways – access to land, resources and political power as well as the functioning of state institutions, even as its political and social meanings are transformed. In the Amaravati project, the major axis of differentiation was between landless and landowning households, given that benefits flowed mainly to landed households. But even within the landowning class, stark differences along the lines of caste (as well as class) emerged. This section has provided illustrations of some of the ways in which caste inequality played out in this context – not only did the unleashing of a speculative land market lead to the rapid dispossession of Dalits, but the land pooling process itself reinforced their marginalisation. Due to the historical

72 institutionalisation of caste within the land bureaucracy and its categories and practices, as well as the entrenchment of caste power and ideology within and beyond the state in this region, the land transition in Amaravati was deeply striated by caste. The complexity and ambiguity of land documents and property transactions, and the potential for land records to be manipulated at the behest of powerful actors, also facilitated this caste-based land grab. Yet, the historical entanglement of land and caste evoked a strong response by Dalits to their exclusion from land pooling and the land market. A political consciousness forged through a long history of caste- based oppression and its living memory, and the long-standing conflict between Kammas and Dalits in the region (sporadically erupting in caste violence), crystallised in the assigned lands issue. On its face, the bureaucratic classification of land has nothing to do with caste, but the inscription of caste in the category of ‘assigned land’ was immediately apparent to those Dalits who were marginalised by such government procedures and categories. While utilising wider political networks and organisations to forward their claims to the (supra-local) state, and invoking the principles of equal treatment under the law and abolition of caste discrimination, the movement was initiated and led by local Dalits drawing on their collective memory of caste oppression and struggle. This mobilisation – to press for an equal ‘package’ for their lands, to recoup land that had been ‘sold’ through trickery or coercion, and more broadly to be recognised as equal citizens of the new city – points to the potential of subaltern politics to disrupt the best- laid plans of state and capital.

6. CONCLUSION

This study has explored the imagination, design, implementation and unravelling of the Amaravati project, and its consequences for the residents of the CRDA villages and others. While this ambitious greenfield city project stemmed from the hegemony of neoliberal urban development policies and the aspirations of state leaders, the ways in which it unfolded on the ground shows that the development of the new capital was profoundly shaped by local citizens and political actors and by the interests of regional capital, who inserted themselves into the processes of planning and development. Their interventions reflected an older regional cultural economy of speculative accumulation, which allowed new values to be infused in land as they reconfigured their lives and futures. The rapid development of a speculative land market, the state’s role in creating new avenues of accumulation, and landowners’ engagements with the land pooling scheme, are understood against this background. However, the increasing employment of ‘land value capture’ and public-private partnerships to finance infrastructure development, and the direct involvement of private consultants and capital in state-led mega-projects, are also reflected in this project. The Amaravati project thus illustrates the deepening intersections of neoliberal urban development policy and programmes with vernacular capitalism and the formations of social and political power through which it operates. The imagined future that is Amaravati is refracted in diverse ways through the desires and strategies of local citizens, investors, and state and political actors. Although it is very unlikely that Amaravati will ever be built as envisioned in the Master Plan, the process of bringing this urban future into being has generated new imaginaries and aspirations as well as dissonances, disruptions and dislocations. The study has documented some of the profound consequences of the project for local communities, as some families with even small holdings were propelled onto a pathway of upward mobility by selling land, while those who already subsisted at the margins of the rural economy were further marginalised by this urban dreamland. This work has explored the roles of land, speculation and risk in the development of a new city – the enmeshing of speculative capital in modalities of land assembly; the imbrication of land markets in state planning and governance; and the practices of calculation, negotiation and investment through which various ‘stakeholders’ are reimagining and securing their futures. The Amaravati project is shown to be ‘speculative’ in multiple ways – in the land boom brought on by the announcement of the plan; the land pooling system in which farmers must wager their land on the future value of the compensation plots; and in the financial architecture of the project itself.

Land is the major source of value here, but value was generated and extracted in multiple ways – overtly by the state to push forward its plans, covertly by political actors and speculators, and strategically by residents who navigate the complexities of the land pooling system by drawing on their privileged access to the state and their ‘social capital’ (Levien 2015). Speculative state planning interdigitates with an unruly land market and a powerful class-caste formation that was also in control of the state government – a conjuncture that created a fertile field for powerful actors to capture land. The planning process produced new spaces where ‘speculators’ could make quick money, buying cheap and holding land in anticipation of rising prices, and later perhaps selling out if the project shows signs of stalling. The unbuilt city produced value by pulling capital into local land markets, but it is not easy to trace where all that surplus value is accumulating. It is these entanglements of planning and speculation, state and market, and global and provincial circuits of capital, as well as the aspirations, apprehensions and strategies of accumulation and accommodation that need to be explored further. A consideration of speculative accumulation in ‘provincial’ places such as Amaravati opens up wider questions about the ways in which value is generated in contemporary capitalism, and indeed about the heterogeneity of capitalism itself. Scholars have shown how vernacular capitalisms (Birla 2009) in India were shaped by the specificities of regional ecologies and social structures of caste and community (Chari 2004; Gidwani 2008). These regional differences have persisted in postcolonial India (Lerche 2015) despite the creation of a strong centralised state system and the increasing integration and globalisation of the national economy. These differences may help to explain regional differences in development politics (Koskimaki and Upadhya 2017) as well as the diverse responses to land acquisition across the country (Nielsen and Bedi 2017). In this report I have tried to uncover the intersections between ‘neoliberal’ practices and ideologies of development and pre-existing social structures and modes of accumulation. Foremost among the structures that operate to extract value and apportion gains from mega- projects is caste. Across India, caste has organized regional political economies, and caste does not disappear as rural spaces urbanise, as several studies have shown. This case too demonstrates how caste as a key ‘social structure of accumulation’ (Harriss-White 2003) in the agrarian economy is repurposed to capture value from the financialisation of land, while also becoming a major axis of struggle against such accumulation. The study interrogates the popular notion that land pooling is a more equitable and democratic strategy for assembling land for large projects (compared to compulsory land acquisition). The asymmetrical status of different categories of ‘stakeholders’ in the Amaravati land pooling process raises questions about the politics and ethics of ‘participatory’ strategies of land

75 assembly in agrarian contexts where caste continues to determine access to land, resources and political power. Further, land pooling as a mode of aggregating land for state-driven projects is based on the (rather optimistic) premise that the variable, ambiguous and (sometimes) collective property rights inscribed in the land revenue system can be smoothened, homogenised and transformed into individualised and transparent property rights – in this case, rights to ‘reconstituted’ plots of land – and that this transition would in turn create a new class of modern, urban citizens. Instead, the long-standing stamp of caste on bureaucratic categories and procedures produced caste-differentiated categories in the context of land pooling for the Amaravati project which, in tandem with the burgeoning land market, brought into sharp relief and deepened the cleavages of caste that have long defined power and wealth in the capital zone villages. The ambiguity and manipulation of land records and other documents by government officials in concert with powerful local actors also casts doubt on land pooling as an urban development strategy, in a context where access to the local state and proper documentation is not equally distributed across classes and castes. Laying bare the inequalities in the land pooling scheme, a wave of caste-based political activism around the question of compensation was converted directly and sharply into an issue of caste oppression and inequality. In response to Dalit protests on several fronts, Kamma landowners too organised to defend their privileged position, forming new political networks to apply pressure on the state and the ruling party to resist Dalit demands, or to (surreptitiously) manipulate land records to strengthen their own advantages. Yet, the demise of the project after the YSR Congress Party, led by Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy, came to power in May 2019, and the prosecution of cases of land-grabbing by the new government, point to the limits of Kamma power. Although the assigned lands issue was probably not a major reason for the defeat of the Telugu Desam Party in 2019, the ascent of the YSR Congress owed much to the activism of capital region Dalits, who articulated so clearly the contours of caste power in Coastal Andhra, rooted in control over land – which they understood would only become more deeply entrenched with the building of a ‘world-class city’. It is noteworthy that one of our key informants – a local leader from UDpalem who was an important face of the Dalit struggle – was elected Member of Parliament from the YSRC Party in this election. The implications of this form of speculative state planning became most obvious after the YSR Congress came to power in May 2019 and with the decision to stall the Amaravati project and shift the administrative capital to Visakhapatnam. While LP farmers organised to protest strongly against this decision, pointing out that they had given up their lands for the project, their future – which hinge on the future value of their reconstituted plots – is now highly uncertain. The

Amaravati project thus raises serious questions about state planning practices that could lead to such extensive dislocation and disruption to livelihoods and lives while not achieving any of its objectives. More broadly, the story of Amaravati raises strong doubts about economic development policies that promote mega-projects which consume vast amounts of land, destroy agriculture on over 30,000 acres of arable land, and dislocate people and their livelihoods. While numerous studies of compulsory land acquisition have come to the same conclusion (e.g., Goldman 2020), this case calls into question the wisdom and rationality of centralised, top-down urban planning which takes little account of local social or environmental conditions or the agrarian substrate on which ‘greenfield cities’ are built. Although land pooling was largely successful and new roads and buildings were coming up at a rapid pace, the future of the Amaravati project was uncertain even before the TDP lost power. The state government had failed to secure the much-needed private investments and multilateral agency loans to finance the project. Having spent enormous sums of money and already burdened with a large budget deficit, the state was in deep debt by the time of the 2019 elections. If the future of the Amaravati project was already uncertain after five years of planning and intense activity, its implosion was guaranteed by the change in government. More research is needed to explore the aftermath of the 2019 elections, the political agitation by land pooling farmers to continue the development of new city, and the afterlives of the project in the lives and imaginations of the residents of the Amaravati villages. We also need to consider and debate what kinds of changes in decision-making and the political process would be needed to ensure that such ill-conceived experiments are not repeated in future, and how urban planning could be made more democratic and equitable.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First, I must acknowledge the contributions of my Research Associates, S. Udaybhanu and Rohith Gutta, without whose dedicated assistance I could not have carried out the fieldwork for this project. I am extremely grateful to Azim Premji Foundation for providing the financial support for the project, and to the Director and staff of my institute, NIAS, for all their support. Above all, I am thankful to the many people in the CRDA villages, Vijayawada and other places in Andhra – most of whom must remain anonymous – who selflessly shared their time, knowledge and thoughts with me.

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APPENDIX 1: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Project period: July 2016 - December 2019 (3.5 years)

In this section, the research strategy and methods as outlined in the proposal are presented, followed by a note on challenges faced under each strategy and the changes that were made to the research plan as the project unfolded.

Research methods 1. Primary and secondary data analysis: Micro-level data obtained from the 2011 and 2001 Censuses for the 29 villages within the core capital area, and for villages within 10 km of the zone, will be used to construct a baseline socio-economic profile of the population of the capital region. Additional data will be gleaned from the Socio-Economic and Caste Census, and (if permitted) from the Socio-economic Survey conducted by the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA). This baseline information will facilitate selection of sample households and enable us to assess changes over time. Challenges and changes: We were not given access to the data from the survey conducted by the CRDA, despite repeated requests. They did provide us with summary tables. Census and other available data were not very useful for selecting sample households, although they have been used to sketch socio-economic profiles of the CRDA villages. 2. Household interviews: The major component of research will consist of semi-structured interviews with all adult members of the 75 sample households, carried out in four rounds, using interview guides to collect information on household composition, family and life histories, education and employment of all household members, economic activities and sources of income, housing and assets, land tenure status and land rights claims, children‘s education and well-being, access to skill development or other livelihood enhancement programmes, access to state benefits and welfare schemes, participation in land and other asset markets, views of the capital project, and social aspirations and mobility strategies. Challenges and changes: This part of the research strategy did not work out in the field. Although we did conduct many household-level and individual interviews, we could not construct a purposive sample of different types of households from selected villages as planned, nor could we carry out repeated semi-structured interviews with the same respondents in a systematic way. A particularly difficult issue was assembling sufficient respondents from Dalit and/or agricultural labour households, since displaced workers had to migrate outside the capital zone daily for work and were hardly found at home. Instead, we relied on other sources of information and a few in-depth interviews with individuals from these categories, as well as group discussions. However, we were able to conduct in-depth interviews with many landed households (small to large farmers) belonging to different castes and communities, as well as with leaders of Dalit and other non-dominant communities. 3. Key informant interviews: Unstructured, in-depth interviews with key actors such as local leaders and panchayat members, government officials, politicians, labour recruitment agents, and business owners will be used to develop an overall understanding of the capital plan and land pooling process from different perspectives. These interviews, combined with 88

documentary research, will also be used to construct the social, economic and environmental history of this micro-region, in order to contextualise ongoing changes. Interviews with real estate developers, land brokers, land revenue officials, and other significant actors in the land market will be carried out to understand the functioning of land markets. Challenges and changes: There were no significant problems or changes to this objective. We conducted many KI interviews over the course of the study and had very good access to government officials, local leaders and other important actors. 4. Ethnographic research: The household and key informant interviews will be undertaken during periods of fieldwork carried out at regular intervals, during which the researchers will spend at least one week in each village. This strategy will enable them to build rapport and to engage in participant-observation (to the extent possible during short stays in the field), informal interactions, and group discussions in order to glean deeper insights into everyday life and how local people are responding to the challenges and opportunities of urbanisation. Extensive photographic and video documentation of spatial and environmental changes in the area will supplement the ethnographic observations. Challenges and changes: My first research assistant, Udaybhanu, lived for several months in Thullur, the taluk headquarters. We selected four villages for intensive fieldwork, which he could carry out while using Thullur as his base. This strategy allowed him to assemble a solid archive of interviews and observations. My second RA, Rohith, was based in Vijayawada but visited the CRDA area regularly and also accompanied me on my field visits to the villages. I went to the field every few months, for a period of 7-10 days each, and carried out interviews in the villages while residing at Vijayawada. 5. Content analysis: Content analysis of planning documents, government circulars and reports, and other documentary material collected from the government and other sources will be used to understand the governance and legal framework of the project and the planning and administrative procedures employed. Analysis of media reports, in English and Telugu, will also contribute to understanding how diverse publics have engaged with the project. Challenges and changes: No significant issues – we have collected a large archive of such material, as planned. 6. Observations of skill training programmes organised by government agencies to help the affected families transition from agrarian to urban livelihoods. If permitted, training programmes will be observed and interviews conducted with trainers and trainees. A cohort of people who receive skill training will be followed up over two years in order to track the outcomes of these interventions. Challenges and changes: We were able to observe several training programmes and interacted several times with managers of skill training initiatives. However, the plan to follow up with individuals who had undergone training was not feasible – especially because training programmes were not running very successfully and we could not develop a cohort of trainees to trace.

APPENDIX 2: RESEARCH ARCHIVE

This section provides an overview of the research material collected.

Field notes: Key informant interviews: Government/ CRDA officials/ consultants - 59 Builders, real estate agents - 17 Activists (including several interviews with same respondent) - 8 Politicians - 5 Journalists, lawyers, others - 12 Observations of meetings, training programmes, other events - 19 Group discussions with workers, trainees- 8 Interviews with village residents/ household interviews Land pooling farmers (including several interviews with same respondent) - 39 Protesting farmers (including several interviews with same respondent) - 35 Landless workers/ tenant farmers - 7 Interviews with local youth/ skill training participants - 12 Other - 5 Total interview and observation notes and transcripts – 226

Other material collected: Over 400 files – government reports, circulars and planning documents, media clippings, investigative reports, photographs, maps, primary databases, land records, etc

APPENDIX 3: PROJECT OUTPUTS

Below is a list of publications and presentations based on the project till date.

Publications 1) Upadhya, Carol 2021 Recasting land: Agrarian urbanism in Amaravati. Submitted to Special Issue of Urbanisation on Agrarian Urbanisation, under review. The paper explores how the planning and development of the ‘greenfield city’ of Amaravati in Coastal Andhra Pradesh were shaped by the region’s agrarian social and political formations. The discussion highlights the role of caste in the process of urbanisation, not only in structuring access to land, resources and power but also in the governance of land. The land tenure categories and bureaucratic procedures used in the land pooling scheme differentiated unequally between dominant caste (Kamma) cultivators and Dalits, and this became a major site of contestation and protest. In response, Dalits deployed political and discursive strategies that invoked the language of law, rights and justice, framing the issues of unequal compensation for assigned lands and the illegal alienation of Dalit lands as manifestations of caste oppression. The eruption of caste struggles around land in what was supposed to become India’s first ‘fully planned’ city illustrates a key dimension of ‘agrarian urbanisation’ in contemporary India.

2) Upadhya, Carol 2021 Rural real estate: Empty urbanisation and the agrarian land transition. In S. Patel (ed), Contemporary India: Neoliberalism, Urbanisation and the Aspirational Society. New Delhi: Oxford University Press (forthcoming). This chapter examines the market-based routes through which agrarian land in India is transformed into real estate – especially on the peripheries of expanding metropolitan cities and regional towns. As agrarian land becomes a key site of speculative accumulation for regional, national and transnational finance capital, as well as for urban middle class and affluent households, the increasing flow of money into rural land markets produces a pattern of ‘empty urbanisation’, in which alienated and converted land often remains unused and unoccupied. This phenomenon reflects the increasing financialisation of land in the post- liberalisation period.

3) Upadhya, Carol 2020 Assembling Amaravati: speculative accumulation in a new Indian city. Economy and Society 49(1): 141-169. The paper explores processes of speculative accumulation through land in the making of a new city in Andhra Pradesh, southern India. Rather than analysing the Amaravati plan as an example of neoliberal urbanisation or ‘accumulation by dispossession’, it examines how the project is unfolding on the ground by situating it within the region‘s ‘vernacular capitalism‘ centred on land and finance capital. The paper maps the processes of speculative accumulation through which value is extracted from land by diverse actors, and describes the practices of calculation, investment and negotiation employed by local landowners to manage their uncertain futures and to insert themselves as stakeholders in the development of the new city. The Amaravati case reflects the deepening entanglement of transnational and provincial circuits of capital in post-liberalisation India.

4) Upadhya, Carol 2018 Capitalizing on the future: Negotiating planned urbanization in South India. In Tim Bunnell & Daniel P. S. Goh (eds), Urban Asias: Essays on Futurity Past and Present, pp 169-182. Berlin: JOVIS Publishers.

Conference and seminar presentations ‘Capital Dreaming: Speculative Capitalism and Spectacular Urbanism in Amaravati’. Presentation at webinar, Interrogating Governance and Financial Implications of ‘Smart Cities’ organised by Environment Support Group and Centre for Financial Accountability, November 19, 2020. ‘Speculative Development: State Planning, Vernacular Capitalism and Land in Amaravati‘. Work- in-Progress talk, South Asia Center, University of Pennsylvania, May 22, 2019. ‘Rural Real Estate: Agrarian Land as a Financial Asset’. Sixth Network of Rural and Agrarian Studies International Conference, Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, September 20-22, 2018. ‘Capital Dreaming: Speculative Capitalism and Spectacular Urbanism in Amaravati (India)‘. Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University, Budapest, November 28, 2016.