Indebted by Dispossession: Special Economic Zones and the Reproduction of Inequality in Rural Telangana.

A growing scholarship examines the ways in which dispossession in neoliberal India is reinforcing and reconfiguring agrarian social hierarchies. These studies have focused on the differential success of villagers in Special Economic Zone (SEZ)-generated real estate markets, adverse incorporation of villagers into labour markets, caste-stratified compensation packages, and the caste-based politics of dispossession. Few studies, however, have systematically explored the long-term implications of dispossession on indebtedness across agrarian social hierarchies. Based on long term fieldwork in a village dispossessed for an SEZ in the South Indian state of Telangana, this paper shows how dispossession has led to rising indebtedness, especially among Dalits. Dispossession deprived villagers of land and livestock; low compensation was inadequate for villagers to obtain replacement assets; and labour inside the SEZ was insufficient to ensure the reproduction of most households. The result was a cascading process of indebtedness that was general but far greater among Dalits (lower castes) than OBCs (middle castes). Since dispossession also made access to institutional credit more difficult, Dalits' reliance on upper caste moneylenders was deepened. Paradoxically, then, neoliberalism has reinforced this traditional caste-based form of exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]