Kathy le Mons Walker (2008) has estimated that as a result of land acquisition, over 3 crore Indians have been dispossessed in the name of “development” since independence; she argued that land is the most prominent site of struggle in the subcontinent. Moreover, a significant body of literature has highlighted how India's economic liberalization has intensified dispossession by generating an intense scramble for land for, among other things, large-scale real estate projects and special economic zones (Levien 2011, 2012, 2018), industry (Levien 2013; Strumpell 2014), mining projects, and hydroelectric dams (Padel and Das 2010; Sundar 2016; Baviskar 1999).

Although this chapter briefly engages with large-scale land acquisition in Punjab, its primary focus is on the less conspicuous but pervasive and mundane processes of land grabbing that also result in widespread, albeit largely unrecorded, cases of dispossession. Building upon Kanchan Chandra's (2015) insights, this chapter elucidates the central role of state actors in these processes. Chandra has detailed how the intensified competition for land in India's post-liberalization era has presented bureaucrats and politicians with increasingly lucrative rent-seeking opportunities. As such, she argues that liberalization, far from resulting in the state's withdrawal from economic life, reinforced its role as the key facilitator in land acquisition processes. Extending these insights, this chapter examines how individuals used their state connections to engage in micro-level processes of land acquisition and dispossession.