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.

'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

• 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.