Governing India’s Land

•Original article, based on extensive field-based qualitative research.•Disaggregates India’s post-liberalization story to the sub-national scale.•Focuses on land as the infrastructural base of structural economic change.•Covers varied land policy trajectories in Gujarat, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu.•Highlights institutions and politics in contemporary development trends.

SummaryUnder conditions of market-orientation and globalization, land is being transferred from agriculture and common property uses, to corporate farming, private industry, and the service sector. How are intra- and international land transactions governed? Using the case of India, this paper emphasizes the sub-national scale. Fieldwork in Gujarat, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu reveals States to be competing with each other to attract private investment. Yet, given institutional and political variation, their land provision ranges from attempted market-friendly policy change, to narrower state–business alliances. It is time for scholarship and resultant policy recommendations to look beyond the national and global scales.