Properties of Rent

Sushmita Pati teaches political science at National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Her areas of interests are urban politics, political economy and political theory.

• Acknowledgements; List of maps and figures; Abbreviations; Glossary; Units of measurement; Maps; Introduction; 1. Creating values of land: Law, records and Kabza; 2. From buying land, owning taxis to becoming landlords: The changing economic landscape of villages; 3. Villages of the city: Ordering spaces and aspirations in neoliberal times; 4. In the shadows of the state: Community as a mode of political and economic organisation; 5. Culture, gender and belongingness? City and the violence of rent; 6. The fringes of the cartel: How the marginalised become landlords; 7. The allure of politics: The candidates, the cadre and the euphoria of elections; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.

'Sushmita Pati reveals that the people at these embattled sites engage with the state's acquisition processes in unanticipated ways: they were neither always confrontational, nor merely resigned to their fates. Instead, the author uses life stories, court judgments, architectural forms, local political institutions and urban rental markets to provide a rich description, arguing that people often participated actively and purposefully in the process by which agricultural land became private urban property. This work should animate, for a long time to come, discussions about styles of urbanisation, economic growth and political forms of villages incorporated into the city.' Janaki Nair, author of Mysore Modern: Reconceptualising the Region under Princely Rule