Infrastructural Development, Dispossession, and Land-Use: Localized ‘Socio-Institutional’ Analysis of Agrarian Transformation in Punjab, Pakistan

The article underscores the role of the localized socio-economic hierarchies and power asymmetries in mediating advantages and disadvantages associated with the provision of new road infrastructure development. The localized socio-institutional structures, such as the control over the land-use and informality of the postcolonial state, are central in mediating socioeconomic impacts of the road infrastructure. Therefore, the article argues that wider societal impact of infrastructure development can be best analyzed through the localized socio-institutional lens of original institutional economics. The article analyzes the localized socio-economic impact of a mega road infrastructure project on land-use in Sheikhupura district of Punjab, Pakistan. It illustrates that the provision of new roads has incentivized large landowners to extract super rents by transforming erstwhile farmland into commercial real estate housing projects. In this process, landless sharecroppers and small peasants have been evicted/dispossessed from the farmland. In other words, the existing socio-institutional structures have allowed large landholders to use the provision of infrastructure development in their own private interests at the expense of local agriculture and livelihoods of historically marginalized groups.