[Reader-list] Speculation and Acquisition

[Jeebesh Bagchi]

Dear All,

Here are some fragmentary notes that may gather some life in  
circulation!

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Over the last few years two processes have got sharply delineated and  
visible.

Speculation and Acquisition

I) Speculation (dreams of wealth and mobility with displacement)

Speculation is crucial to how we inhabit the world of property. The  
thought of "how long to hold on" ; "when to buy"; "when to sell"  
occupies a fair degree of brain power and conversational time in  
people with property or plans of property or resentment about  
property. The dreams of unimagined gains swing many a robust mind to  
confusion and grandeur.

Speculation acts on mobility of capital. But, its relationship to  
acquisition is less explored. How does it effect the "acreage" of  
acquisition?

II)Acquisition

The dramatic visibility of  capture of land for fast-track projects -  
infrastructural, production enterprises and ancillary structures  
(service and real estate) has brought the politics of acquisition  
into sharp focus . Here state intervenes with speed to produce space  
for deployment of technologies and architectures to mobilize and  
intensify production. The capture of large tracts of land is crucial  
for this.  (Relative measures of speed of different nation-states are  
sources of ruminations of edit pages of newspapers).

Obstacles to this process are:

a) If the process of buying and selling is kept "as usual" then there  
is a huge problem of aggregation, assembling of land.

b) Crucially, various property owners who, anticipating better future  
bargains through differential and escalating rent, prefer not to sell  
outright within the given acquisition rates.

c) The refusal by so-called obdurate and non-progressive  
sensibilities that do not want to sell land and thus come in the way  
of land being transformed into a commodity which can then be  
transactable through global financial networks.

d) The millions of "non-owner" users of land who do not have "titles"  
but have long duree embedded material life committed around land.  
These are the people who come into the way of enforced selling and  
buying of land in a very forceful way.

This is a nightmare situation for hungry large investments. Political  
society, however efficient, will take years to get land cleared for  
any project if they are to move with persuasion and intricate time  
consuming individual bargains.

This enormous quagmire is sought to be overcome by the legal seizure  
of the "public", in whose name land will be acquired. Thus the weight  
of "public purpose" is critical in any acquisition act. Without a  
discourse of "public purpose" we would be face to face with naked  
apparatus of violence of state and capital. State mediates this  
violence discursively by constantly creating a field of to-be- 
negotiated "growth/development path". It is around this negotiation  
that media and political parties debate the pros and cons of the  
violence and ensuing displacement.

In the present, Acquisition Narratives seem to follow a pattern.

(outside earshot)
A notice
Restlessness
Persuasion
Conflicts

(peripheral vision)
Confrontations
Violence unleashed by state apparatus

(lists and blogs)
Condemnation

(loud big fights)
Opining around pros and cons, a pathetic debate on what is best for  
National Interest, Pride and Glory.

A fear of falling sensed all around.

Capitalism's sustained production of despair (which occasionally gets  
submerged by euphoria) best manifests during these debates.

What gets left behind? Crucially, after the heat, what are the ways  
of thinking.?

Forced acquisitions will accelerate. It will confront deeper  
sediments of social and material life. There will be temporary halts  
and jerks but the juggernaut is on. It will attempt to suspend all  
forms of coalitions and mobilizations. Violence will accelerate and  
so will rallying cries. We seem to be trapped in a spiral that takes  
in its wake higher and higher human costs. But imagination of today  
is so locked into power and wealth as the motor of history, that it  
is impossible to move aside the "national" and see a larger canvas,  
drawing other spaces and times. (Police records in China record for  
80,000 protest, rioting and disturbances last year).

In peace time all national units are to compete with each other and  
learn to produce faster and cheaper.

In war time all national units will compete to annihilate each other  
with speed and efficiency.

warmly
jeebesh