The Rightful Share: Land and Effective Claim Making in Odisha, India

Scholars James Ferguson and Tania Murray Li have recently and persuasively argued that a new politics of distribution is needed to address the needs of the growing numbers of people who are permanently landless and jobless. The authors of this article explore how land might feature in James Ferguson's idea of a ‘rightful share’. It details a case study of the Anti‐POSCO People's Movement (POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti) of farmers, fisherfolk and landless labourers in Odisha, India, which prevented South Korean steel company POSCO from acquiring land for a steel plant. The authors offer two key arguments. The first is that a sharp distinction between landed and landless, and therefore a politics of production versus distribution, is difficult to draw. If people in need of distribution are, therefore, not necessarily landed or landless, it follows that the idea of a rightful share need not necessarily reject a role for land. The second argument is that in practical politics, land's animating and mobilizing force can potentially be harnessed toward cultivating a sense of entitlement to a rightful share.