IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/lauspo/v94y2020ics0264837719309585.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rethinking “development”: Land dispossession for the Rampal power plant in Bangladesh

Author

Listed:
  • Mahmud, Muhammad Shifuddin
  • Roth, Dik
  • Warner, Jeroen

Abstract

In this article, we critically review the developmental claims made for the construction of the Rampal power plant in southwestern Bangladesh, in the light of evidence about transformations of land control related to this construction project. Land has become a heavily contested resource in the salinity-intruded southwestern coastal area of Bangladesh. Changes in land control for the construction of the Rampal power plant and similar projects have intensified decades of struggles over rights and access to land. The Rampal project is labelled as “development” and claims to contribute to the elimination of poverty. However, we find that, in reality, this project leads to a reorganization of land control, rights and access in ways that perpetuate and intensify waves of eviction and exclusion of small landholders and landless laborers, thus threatening agriculture-based rural livelihoods. We analyze how four actor groups involved in land control are differently affected by the project interventions, embedded in the context of historical land tenure developments. We find that the benefits of this “development”, primarily favoring rich and powerful social groups and investors, necessitates a critical rethinking of Bangladesh's development and its claims of poverty elimination in the light of related land control practices.

Suggested Citation

  • Mahmud, Muhammad Shifuddin & Roth, Dik & Warner, Jeroen, 2020. "Rethinking “development”: Land dispossession for the Rampal power plant in Bangladesh," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:94:y:2020:i:c:s0264837719309585
    DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104492
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837719309585
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104492?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. South Asians for Human Rights SAHR, 2015. "Report of the Fact Finding Mission to Rampal, Bangladesh," Working Papers id:7558, eSocialSciences.
    2. Sharmin Afroz & Rob Cramb & Clemens Grünbühel, 2017. "Exclusion and Counter-exclusion: The Struggle over Shrimp Farming in a Coastal Village in Bangladesh," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 48(4), pages 692-720, July.
    3. Karim, M. R., 2006. "Brackish-water shrimp cultivation threatens permanent damage to coastal agriculture in Bangladesh," IWMI Books, Reports H039106, International Water Management Institute.
    4. Islam, M. R., 2006. "Managing diverse land uses in coastal Bangladesh: institutional approaches," IWMI Books, Reports H039119, International Water Management Institute.
    5. Derek Hall, 2013. "Primitive Accumulation, Accumulation by Dispossession and the Global Land Grab," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(9), pages 1582-1604, October.
    6. Manoj Misra, 2018. "Moving away from technocratic framing: agroecology and food sovereignty as possible alternatives to alleviate rural malnutrition in Bangladesh," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 35(2), pages 473-487, June.
    7. Bert Suykens, 2015. "The Land that Disappeared: Forceful Occupation, Disputes and the Negotiation of Landlord Power in a Bangladeshi Bastee," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 46(3), pages 486-507, May.
    8. David Lewis & David Mosse, 2006. "Encountering Order and Disjuncture: Contemporary Anthropological Perspectives on the Organization of Development," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(1), pages 1-13.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Saleh Shahriar, 2021. "Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir, Numbers and Narratives in Bangladesh’s Economic Development," South Asia Economic Journal, Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, vol. 22(2), pages 250-253, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Abu Nasar Abdullah & Bronwyn Myers & Natasha Stacey & Kerstin K. Zander & Stephen T. Garnett, 2017. "The impact of the expansion of shrimp aquaculture on livelihoods in coastal Bangladesh," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 19(5), pages 2093-2114, October.
    2. Bennett, Nathan James & Govan, Hugh & Satterfield, Terre, 2015. "Ocean grabbing," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 61-68.
      • Wehner, Nicholas & Bennett, Nathan & Govan, Hugh & Satterfield, Terre, 2015. "Ocean grabbing," MarXiv bm6pf, Center for Open Science.
    3. Nicola Banks, 2016. "Livelihoods Limitations: The Political Economy of Urban Poverty in Dhaka, Bangladesh," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 47(2), pages 266-292, March.
    4. Woods, Kevin M., 2020. "Smaller-scale land grabs and accumulation from below: Violence, coercion and consent in spatially uneven agrarian change in Shan State, Myanmar," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    5. David Lewis & Dennis Rodgers & Michael Woolcock, 2013. "The Projection of Development: Cinematic Representation as A(nother) Source of Authoritative Knowledge?," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(3), pages 383-397, March.
    6. David Lewis & Stephen Biggs & Scott E. Justice, 2022. "Rural mechanization for equitable development: Disarray, disjuncture, and disruption," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 40(5), September.
    7. Beck, Erin, 2016. "Repopulating Development: An Agent-Based Approach to Studying Development Interventions," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 19-32.
    8. Radhakrishnan, Smitha, 2015. "“Low Profile” or Entrepreneurial? Gender, Class, and Cultural Adaptation in the Global Microfinance Industry," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 264-274.
    9. World Bank, 2010. "Implications of Climate Change for Fresh Groundwater Resources in Coastal Aquifers in Bangladesh," World Bank Publications - Reports 27489, The World Bank Group.
    10. Bin Yang & Jun He, 2021. "Global Land Grabbing: A Critical Review of Case Studies across the World," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-19, March.
    11. Bangkim Biswas & Bishawjit Mallick, 2021. "Livelihood diversification as key to long-term non-migration: evidence from coastal Bangladesh," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(6), pages 8924-8948, June.
    12. Barbour, Emily J. & Sarfaraz Gani Adnan, Mohammed & Borgomeo, Edoardo & Paprocki, Kasia & Shah Alam Khan, M. & Salehin, Mashfiqus & W. Hall, Jim, 2022. "The unequal distribution of water risks and adaptation benefits in coastal Bangladesh," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 113320, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. Lewis, David, 2018. "Peopling policy processes? Methodological populism in the Bangladesh health and education sectors," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 87245, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Nanhthavong, Vong & Bieri, Sabin & Nguyen, Anh-Thu & Hett, Cornelia & Epprecht, Michael, 2022. "Proletarianization and gateways to precarization in the context of land-based investments for agricultural commercialization in Lao PDR," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    15. Oane Visser, 2017. "Running out of farmland? Investment discourses, unstable land values and the sluggishness of asset making," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(1), pages 185-198, March.
    16. Morshed, Md. Manjur & Islam, Md. Sariful & Lohano, Heman Das & Shyamsundar, Priya, 2020. "Production externalities of shrimp aquaculture on paddy farming in coastal Bangladesh," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 238(C).
    17. Elise Klein, 2021. "Unpaid care, welfare conditionality and expropriation," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(4), pages 1475-1489, July.
    18. Beacon Mbiba, 2017. "Idioms of Accumulation: Corporate Accumulation by Dispossession in Urban Zimbabwe," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(2), pages 213-234, March.
    19. Atapattu, Sithara S. & Kodituwakku, Dekshika C., 2009. "Agriculture in South Asia and its implications on downstream health and sustainability: A review," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 96(3), pages 361-373, March.
    20. David Lewis & M. Feisal Rahman & Revocatus Twinomuhangi & Shababa Haque & Nazmul Huq & Saleemul Huq & Lars Ribbe & Asif Ishtiaque, 2023. "University-Based Researchers as Knowledge Brokers for Climate Policies and Action," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 35(3), pages 656-683, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:94:y:2020:i:c:s0264837719309585. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joice Jiang (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/land-use-policy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.