With six essays exploring different aspects of economic growth, poverty, inequality and social security, this book offers a critical perspective on India's development experience since independence. Incisive and empirically rich, the book opens up new vistas in development discourse and informs...

Preface: from Narmada to Rajpura -- Introduction -- Genesis of the land broker state -- Rajpura -- Dispossession -- Differentiation by speculation -- Peasants in a knowledge economy -- On the margins of a world city -- Reprise: dispossession without development -- Politics after dispossession --...