Faculty Seminar | Make Live and Let the Land Question Die: Surplus Populations and the Welfare State

In this week’s faculty seminar, Dr. Sudheesh R.C., will present his paper titled ‘Make Live and Let the Land Question Die: Surplus Populations and the Welfare State’.

Abstract

In a worldwide scenario in which a large number of people are struggling to find gainful work under capitalist relations, welfare programmes have provided a much-needed lifeline. In contexts where these ‘surplus populations’ have been demanding land to address the crisis of reproduction, what implications does their biopolitical inclusion into welfare programmes have for their land question? This article seeks answers to this question through an ethnographic enquiry into state responses to Adivasi land struggles in the caste-ridden society of Kerala, India. A biopolitical regime that ‘makes live’ through welfare programmes may surely be desirable. At the same time, it may ‘let the land question die’ by erasing the demands for land. The implication is that those who were historically dispossessed from the land, such as Kerala’s Adivasis, are divorced from land discursively as well.