Dr. Ajay Kumar Gautam, Kautilya School of Public Policy, India
Economic & Political History Review, Volume I, Number II, October 2025
Dr. Ajay Kumar Gautam is an interdisciplinary scholar of public policy, governance, and development. Dr. Gautam’s research focuses on how urban and rural governance systems, and their differing planning approaches, lead to uneven and exclusionary development outcomes. Dr. Gautam can be contacted at Ajay@kautilya.org.in
Editorial Summary
India’s post-liberalisation urbanisation is built upon the unfinished agenda of land reform and the persistence of caste-based land ownership. The shift from rural to urban economies has not dismantled inequality but reconfigured it—transforming agrarian privilege into urban wealth and exclusion. Dominant castes continue to profit from land commodification, while Dalits and Adivasis remain landless and marginalised. Case studies from Gurgaon, Bangalore, and Delhi-NCR reveal how caste capital underpins city-making. The article argues that India’s urban modernity rests on inherited rural hierarchies, making contemporary urban inequality a direct continuation of historical caste and land relations.
Introduction: The Agrarian Roots of Urbanisation
Since economic liberalisation in 1991, India has witnessed rapid and largely unplanned urban growth and development that has profoundly reshaped its socio-economic and spatial landscape. Ironically, this transformation has not occurred on neutral and equal ground. Instead, post-liberal urban development remains deeply rooted in pre-existing rural caste-based land relations, which continue to structure patterns of urban inequality. Recent research demonstrates that urban expansion rarely unfolds on a “blank slate”; it typically occurs on farmland historically dominated by entrenched agrarian elites (Gururani, 2020; Upadhya & Rathod, 2021). As these scholars argue, the “urban question” in India is inseparable from the agrarian one: understanding city-making requires examining how historical caste-based land control has been reconstituted—rather than dismantled—under neoliberal urbanisation (Roy, 2016; Gururani, 2020). The commodification of land has in fact widened caste inequalities. Dominant-caste farmers have profited immensely from rising land prices, while Dalits, Adivasis, and landless labourers have lost access to common lands and livelihoods (Gautam, 2021). Census 2011 data show that 71% of Dalits work as landless labourers, and 58.4% of rural Dalit households own no land at all. In states like Haryana, Punjab, and Bihar, 85% of Dalits remain dependent on landlords for subsistence (NSSO, 2014). The NITI Aayog Multidimensional Poverty Index (2023) highlights the persistence of inequality: 32.6% of Scheduled Tribes, 27.4% of Scheduled Castes, and 18.3% of OBCs are multidimensionally poor, compared with only 8.5% among the general category (Mondal, 2025). The following section summarises key historical and contemporary dynamics before examining the cases of Gurgaon, Bangalore, and Delhi-NCR.
Historical Foundations: The Incomplete Promise of Land Reform
Institutional Failures and Elite Capture:
The land reform programme launched after the independence meant to democratise the rural land ownership, however in practise they fell far short of their promises. Due to weak institutions, poor govern and the capture of this land reform processes by upper caste landlord section, thereforms never reached to those sections they were meant for. The studies have shown that the land ceilings laws were seldom enforcedand by the time they came into effect many land holdings had already been fragmented to fall below the legal limits. Moreover, the very definitions of surplus land were also vaguely defined and were inconsistently applied across the states (Bandyopadhyay, 2003). Even Some surplus land was identified It was often redistributed Two relatively well of tenants an intermediary peasant or often got stuck in the layers of bureaucracy and political tussles. For instance, despite the formal abolition of a Zamindari system in 1950, the land control in many areas in different states remained concentrated in the hands of dominant caste groups, whose social and political influence Allowed them to Hind The progress These performs were supposed to make. From scholars such as Béteille (1965), Bardhan (1984), and to Appu(1996), all have noted that, overall land reforms resulting in reinforcingrather than weaken caste-based hierarchies of land ownership. There were however few exceptions. In Kerala and West Bengal, moreeffective implementations led to the relatively higher rates of redistributions. However, in the recent time scholars has pointed out that reforms were as failed as in other states, and much of the studies which highlighted the progress in these states were highly politically motivated, far from the actual reality is on the ground. Across India, tenancy laws were widely evaded through benami or proxy transfers and weak enforcement, further deepening rural inequality (Chaturvedi, 2016).
Caste-Based Political Economy of Reform Failure:
It is often argued that land reforms in India failed primarily due to the bureaucratic inefficiency, corruption and weak governance. However,the deeper causes of this failure lie in the political and the social dynamics that has shaped the post-colonial rural structure and power dynamics. Across India, the dominant caste group mobilised their agrarian capital and electoral strength to influence how these reformswere drafted, interpreted and implemented on the ground. Over the period of time, their political organisations such Khap Panchayats, transform older social hierarchies into the new forms of institutional control allowing them to capture and redirect land reform processes even at the local level. In regions such as Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, the dominant caste landlord networks particularly among the AZGAR (Ahir, Jat, Gujjar, Rajput) coalition landlords extended their influence from village council to the state legislature. The same patterns were visible in other state as well. For example, in Karnataka Vokkalinga andLingayats dominated the rural political economy, while in the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Reddy and Kamma elites effectively captured the apparatus of land reform. Possessing both social and political powerthese groups often working in the close alignment with the state officials; and ensured that land ceilings limits were set generously and that surplus land when available rarely reached the truly landless. As a consequence, Dalits and many among the other backward classes have remained largely excluded from a meaningful access to land, a pattern that continues to this day. The recent data reveal the persistence of this inequality (NSSO, 2014; 77th Round, 2019). Dalit’s household remain the most landless section in the rural India owning only a small fraction of a total agricultural land, the remaining agricultural land continues to be concentrated in the hands of the upper caste groups Survey (PLFS, 2022–23). The NSS 70th round (2014) data showed that Schedule Castegroups owned barely 9% of the country’s agricultural land, despiteconstituting over 18% of the rural population, underscoring the enduring caste-based inequalities in the land distribution.
Persistent Rural Inequality:
Even after independence, the caste based structural inequality in India remained unresolved due to the failed implementations of these land reforms, which later became the defining feature of India’s rural and urban Transformation. The caste-based patterns of landlessness which were further strengthened during the colonial and the early post-colonial persisted for decades and creating what institutional economists often call Path dependency or lock in effects. Therefore, when urban expansion accelerated after the 1990s economic reforms, it did not disrupt these inequalities, rather it built directly upon them and creating an even more unequal growth pattern for different sections of the society and most specifically landlords and the landless. It must be noted that for Dalits and Adivasis, landlessness was, and continues to be, not a temporary economic condition but a durable form of exclusions. Roughly 45% of Dalit hhouseholds possess no land at all, reflecting deep institutional barriers rather than natural market outcomes (NSSO, 2014). Even today, large sections of landless people continue to work as sharecroppers or wage labourers under dominant caste landlords, reproducing old hierarchies in new economic forms. In the post-liberalisation period, when cities began to expand outward into rural areas, they did not do so on equal terrain. Urban expansion took place on land already controlledd by agrarian elites. The urbanisation phenomena in India was therefore never neutral; the urban land frontierswas always controlled and territorialised by caste power and historicalprivilege. The contemporary patterns of urban exclusions aree a direct outcome of the incomplete redistribution of land in rural areas. In thissense, the rapid urbanisation of the 1990s–2010s was built quite literallyon land that had never been freed from the grip of caste hegemony. Having established these historical foundations, the next section turns to examine how these caste and land dynamics have been reconstituted in the processes of contemporary urban expansion.
Case Studies: From Agrarian Power to Urban Capital
The unevenn processes of urbanisation across India’s metropolises illustrate how caste-land power is reconfigured in the urban frontiers:
Gurgaon: Institutional Mediation of Caste Advantage:
Gurgaon’s transformation from agriculture hinterland to India’s “Millennium City” provides perhaps the clearest illustration of how pre-existing caste hierarchies were not dissolved but rather institutionally mediated and amplified through the urban development processes. Around 1990s, the villages of Gurgaon possessed land of hight potential due to their proximity to Delhi, Attracting sustained interest from private investors who anticipated the area’s urban trajectory. Responding to these market pressures the Haryana government introduced land pooling and acquisition mechanism that facilitated private real estate development Through private investors or private builders by themselves and offering a generous compensation package to the Land owners. However, the land pooling mechanism systematically privileged those with the existing advantage primarily the dominant landlord groups who possessed not only substantial land holdings but also the social capital and the social-political connections that enabled them to negotiate a favourable compensation package. The ethnographic research by Naik (2018) demonstrates that affluent and well-connected farmers able to secure the lucrative land deals and reinvest their compensations into urban real estate. Many constructed multi storey rental apartments engaged with local town planners and bureaucrats, and emerged as the landlords within the newly urbanised villages. Naikfurther distinguish these emerging landlords into two categories of landlords: dominant landowners from the upper caste background who integrated into formal real estate market and accumulated significant capital and second is the smaller subsistent landlord who manage informal rental housing within the village (Naik, 2018).
On the other hand, smallholder farmers and Dalit communities were routinely left out of these capital accumulation processes. They often had to deal with what could be called “accumulation by dispossession,” where their limited assets were taken without giving them much or any pay. Due to their lack of land titles, many marginal tenants or landless villagers were excluded to receive pooling benefits. Many times, they were left without any formal compensation or received only small amounts, resulting in their dispossession. The government, including development officials, courts, and planners, mostly disregarded informal claims. Because of this, Gurgaon’s development reinforced old social classes, landowners became millionaires, while Dalits and migrant workers lived in small renter dwellings in “urban villages” or illegal colonies that didn’t have access to basic services (Cowan, 2018). In reality, landownership (economies) emerged as urban authority: dominant-caste landowners have the capacity to shape Gurgaon’s development according to their preferences, so cementing the “fusion of law and authority” as articulated by Lund (2011).
Bangalore: Fragmented Development and caste Territoriality:
In juxtaposition to Gurgaon’s relatively centralised development model, Bangalore’s peri-urban transformation has unfolded through what may be described as ‘fragmented urbanism’, a patchwork of small-scale developments that has, however, persistently perpetuated caste-based spatial hierarchies. Rather than relying on singular megaprojects, the expansion of Bangalore’s peripheries has emerged through a complex interplay of small layouts, village consolidations, and satellite townships. This intricate expansion has been shaped by land markets that are intricately tied to caste dynamics. According to a study by Upadhya and Rathod (2021) and others, historically prominent castes in Karnataka, particularly the Vokkaligas, Lingayats, and Reddys, used their agricultural holdings to profit from speculative development. The landowners frequently conspired with local politicians and brokers to subdivide farmland for residential development, at times appropriating village commons or panchayat lands. In the interim, both Dalits and migrants have experienced dispossession. In the villages surrounding Bangalore, individuals from the Dalit community frequently possessed small parcels of land and utilised common areas for grazing purposes. With the swift escalation of urban demand, these territories gained significant value and were appropriated by more affluent social classes. Upadhya’s field studies provide a detailed account of instances in which Dalit “SC grant lands,” which are legally protected, were informally sold to Reddy developers. These developers possessed the political influence necessary to secure the registration of titles (Upadhya & Rathod, 2021). Traditionally utilised by Dalits, common lands such as gomala and tanks have been appropriated by external parties. Consequently, numerous Dalit families found themselves compelled to sell their properties under duress or faced outright eviction.
The “messy urbanism” of Bangalore consequently perpetuated existing rural hierarchies. Promoters from the dominant caste successfully secured the regularisation of their colonies through strategic pressure on planners, whereas Dalit colonies continued to exist in an unauthorised state. Solomon Benjamin and others articulate a framework of occupancy urbanism, wherein the assertions of marginalised groups are founded on collective habitation rather than legal ownership (Benjamin, 2008). In this context, the influence of caste remains significant: individuals from mixed backgrounds frequently encounter eviction when their locality is devoid of influential patrons, while areas predominantly occupied by dominant castes are more likely to attain legal acknowledgement. Caste networks, in essence, delineated the framework of informality. As one analysis observes, Peri-urban land markets facilitate landowners from dominant castes in transforming agrarian-urban land dynamics into what can be termed as ‘caste capital’ (Gururani, 2020). The experience of Bangalore illustrates how urban expansion has scattered historical caste conflicts into the peripheries of villages, manifesting in Reddy-Dalit disputes over communal land, the establishment of Vokkaliga enclaves, and the frequent evictions of migrants. The conclusion is that established disparities continued to exist, even as new commercial prospects emerged.
Delhi NCR: Multi Scalar Development and the politics of Urban Aesthetics:
NCR exemplifies the highly intricate institutional scenarios, characterised by the numerous overlapping development authorities, planning jurisdictions, and financial mechanism, often resulting into what we can described as a multi scalar urbanism”. Nevertheless, amidstthis complexity, caste-based pattern of inclusion and exclusion persist with notable consistency. In the past two decades, the projects like, highways, industrial town and metro development and other new infrastructure development has mostly travelled through the previously agricultural farmlands, where caste played a significant role in this whole development process (Gautam,2022). In the recent times, theresearch underscores the uneven dynamics of urban and barrier man transformations of NCR. During the pandemic, petty landlords, primarily first-generation Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes households, faced considerable income reduction and vulnerability, illustrating that small-scale landlordism offers only fragile empowerment due to caste-based exclusion, gendered limitations, and governmental neglect (Gautam, 2024). In contrast, local developersfrom dominant castes leveraged peri-urban transitions, forming coalitions with state actors and financiers to create unauthorisedd colonies and consolidate socio-political power, marginalising Dalits in thee process (Gautam,2025). In Noida Extension, dominant caste villagers engaged in speculativee territorialisation, constructingg multi-storey rentals and marking space symbolically to secure economic gains, while Dalits and non-dominant castes were largely excluded, reflecting how caste, capital, and state intersect to produce stratifiedurbanisation.
Simultaneously, state policies and planning discourse have frequently displaced those who are disadvantaged. According to Ghertner (2015), Delhi’s focus on becoming a “world-class” city has resulted in an aesthetically motivated elimination of informal settlements. The slums are deemed illegal based on their appearance rather than their legal status; this “rule by aesthetics” appears impartial in theory but predominantly affects Dalit and Muslim communities in practice (Ghertner, 2015). A notable example of this is the Commonwealth Games that took place in 2010. Dupont (2008) records that officials razed thousands of slum shanties under the pretext of beauty and security during the Games. Most evicted families belonged to marginalised groups and received insufficient appropriate rehousing. In reality, Delhi’s city-building plans transform space by discarding the underprivileged and using slogans and high-profile events.
In recent years, dominant-caste farmers in the NCR, particularly Jats in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, as well as Gujjars in Western Uttar Pradesh, have organised as a political force. Organisations such as the BKU (Bharatiya Kisan Union) orchestrated extensive protests about land acquisition, advocating for increased compensation and benefits rather than outright refusal. Levien (2013) elucidates that during the Greater Noida expansion, land was bought for as little as ₹820/m² and subsequently resold at ₹35,000/m². Indignant farmers, supported by the BKU, compelled the government to amend its policies. The state provided substantial packages: farmers now obtain annuities, a portion of developed land, and index-linked payments for future value, as outlined in Mayawati’s 2013 land policy (Levien, 2013). The Jat-dominated cabinet of Haryana enacted one of India’s most advantageous compensation legislations for farmers (Levien, 2013). These examples illustrate how caste-affiliated farmers can leverage dispossession protests to their benefit; instead of overtly opposing urban initiatives, they have secured a larger share for themselves.
Theoretical Synthesis: The Reproduction of Caste Capital ThroughUrban Development
A theoretically significant pattern emerges that challenges conventional narratives of the urbanisation as a modernising, equalising force, as evidenced by these empirically diverse cases from Gurgaon’s corporate-driven development to Bangalore’s fragmented growth and Delhi NCR’s government-driven development. Landed caste elites have seamlessly transformed agrarian privilege into urban political influence. Their bargaining power with the state has been strengthened by their economic gains from land commodification and real estate. For example, in Delhi NCR, dominant agrarian caste coalitions (such as the AJGAR and variants) combined their mobilisation for compensation with demands for broader recognition (often referring to themselves as agricultural communities whose livelihoods are at risk) (Levien, 2013). The outcome is what some scholars refer to as the agricultural paradox of urban politics: groups that profit from land-value inflation simultaneously assert that they are “victims” of development (Balkrishna, 2021). In these struggles, Dalits and landless migrants are marginalised. The agrarian elites seldom align themselves with Dalit or labour movements; rather, they reinforce their own caste identity andprivileges.
In contrast, Dalit communities have limited influence in the land negotiations. They primarily participate in the urban economy as informal settlers or labourers as they possess no formal titles or claims over land. In most cases, their political response takes the form of social justice campaign (for housing rights, sanitations, and labour rights) which they do in alliance with the non-governmental organisations. However, numerous endeavours continue to struggle against the deeply ingrained status quo. As Janaki Nair (2005) observed in Bangalore, thatthe land question has never been resolved. It continues to be the source of ongoing spatial, exclusion and tenure insecurity. In the present day,housing and land policies are inclined to prioritise those with the preexisting titles. For example, the initiative such as the formal titling or the slum redevelopment generally benefits residents of more well organised Urban villages (often led by former landlords) rather than the most marginalised.
These disparities are frequently concealed by high-modernist aesthetics in the panning discourse. As Ghertner notes, the displacement of slum residents is portrayed as a “cleansing” of the city’s image (Ghertner, 2015). However, the maps of the “clean” city and the “messy” slum precisely overlay the respective caste geographies. For instance, Fernando (2006) demonstrates that the slum clearance for the city’s “world-class” initiatives disproportionately targeted Dalit and Muslim neighbourhoods in Mumbai. The NCR exhibits comparable patterns. In Bangalore, officials frequently refer to Dalit or minority colonies on the periphery as “encroachments” when discussing the removal of “encroachments,” while upper-class plots are permitted (Ghururani, 2020; Upadhya & Rathod, 2021).
The visible top of the iceberg is housing inequality. Individuals who lack land titles are automatically marginalised due to the fact that land is the primary medium of inclusion in the urban economy. Rental or squatter housing with insecure tenure is a common outcome for Dalitsand other excluded groups. Dalit tenants are particularly vulnerable during crises, according to a study of Delhi’s rental economy (Gautam, 2024). In the meantime, the majority of rental markets in city villages are dominated by dominant caste families, which further distorts the benefits. The city that appears to be new and global in the end is constructed on the same ancient foundations.
Conclusion: Historical Continuities and Structural Legacies
After liberalisation, India’s urban transformation has happened on deeply unequal terrain and in a very uneven manner. The Neoliberal city making developments has not really made a clean break with the past. In many ways, it has continued the long-standing relationship between social status, land, and power. The Modern cities like Gurgaon, Bangalore, and Delhi NCR are built on institutional foundations that go back to the colonial era, when land was first codified as private property and local hierarchies were strengthened through legal and regulatory structures. For instance, the colonial land revenue arrangements such as zamidari, ryotwari, and mahalwari created differentiated relations of control and dependence that actually closely overlapped with the castehierarchies. These systems did not disappear after independence rather they shaped the post-colonial imagination of land reform and set the boundaries of what was politically and socially doable and possible. Therefore, despite the ambitious legislations, he reforms rarely disrupted the agrarian hierarchies.The dominant caste intermediaries Who had prospered under the colonial rule Adapted quickly to a new institutional condition, translating their political influence into economic advantages. As a result, the post-independence land reform regime largely preservedthe essence of agrarian inequality while merely altering its outward forms.
When economic liberalisation in 1990s opened up the new markets for the urban growth and development these entrenched inequalities were not dismantled. In fact, they were reactivated and reconfigured. The urban frontiers became the new site where the caste based agrarian privileges were converted into the urban capital. The dominant caste groups families and networks that once dominated rural land holdings emerged as the influential actors in the real estate, local governance and the land speculations. For Dalits and other landless groups, the story has unfolded dramatically differently. Historically excluded from the property ownership, remained on the margins of the urban economy, now as tenants, informal settlers or the low wage workers building and servicing the expanding city.
If you look at it from a long-term point of view the urban inequality today is not an exception but a continuation of a deeper structural process. The fact that the caste system stayed in a place during colonial,developmental and the new liberal time shows how property relation in India have stayed the same way overtime. The agricultural problem wasn’t solved by urbanisation; it just changed the magnitude and the structure of a problems in a new way. India’s urban expansion does not represent modernisation or upward mobility; instead, it shows how strong social hierarchies are that are built into the land norms. The fact that the femur’s were turned into the real estate, different compensation was given to different people and that the people had a different access to the urban areas, all shows that the caste has always played a role in power dynamics in city making process. Noticing this continuity helps us see the city after liberalisation not as rupture or a break, but as a part of a much longer history of land caste and state. A history in which the promise of a change and inclusive development Is consistently met with the persistence of inherited social hierarchies.
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