Shaping Popular Politics in India's West Bengal (completed)

The project analyses the making of a rural social movement opposing a government-initiated land acquisition in Singur in the Indian state of West Bengal.

Photo: Kenneth B. Nielsen.

About the project

The project analyses the making of a rural social movement opposing a government-initiated land acquisition in Singur in the Indian state of West Bengal. Here, the government’s plans to acquire farmland for industrialisation have met with considerable resistance from local peasants as well as from urban activists and intellectuals.

The study focuses on the how this movement as a form of popular politics is shaped by local relations of class, caste and gender. It also examines the interplay between rural protestors, urban activists and political parties, and their mutual but not always compatible efforts to formulate common visions, agendas and political strategies for the movement. It also maps out how local and regional forms of popular politics seek to ‘go beyond locality’ by forging links with other national and global sites of struggle.

Duration: August 2006 - March 2013.

Financing

  • Centre for Development and the Environment
Tags: India
Published Aug. 30, 2011 10:21 AM - Last modified Oct. 30, 2020 3:23 PM