Contemporary South Asia

ISSN: 0958-4935 (Print) 1469-364X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccsa20

The shifting sands of land governance in peri-

urban Mangaluru, India: fluctuating land as an
‘informality machine’ reinforcing rapid coastal
transformations

Alin Kadfak & Patrik Oskarsson

To cite this article: Alin Kadfak & Patrik Oskarsson (2017) The shifting sands of land governance
in peri-urban Mangaluru, India: fluctuating land as an ‘informality machine’ reinforcing rapid coastal
transformations, Contemporary South Asia, 25:4, 399-414, DOI: 10.1080/09584935.2017.1387097

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2017.1387097

Published online: 12 Oct 2017.

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Contemporary South Asia, 2017
Vol. 25, No. 4, 399–414, https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2017.1387097

The shifting sands of land governance in peri-urban Mangaluru, India:

fluctuating land as an ‘informality machine’ reinforcing rapid coastal
transformations
Alin Kadfak* and Patrik Oskarsson

School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

This article examines how unstable land on a sandy peninsula in peri-urban Mangaluru
becomes part of urban land contestation to primarily support continued informal tenure.
The peninsula is undergoing shifts changing both its shape and land use under the
influence of a range of biophysical and human forces. For the time being, fisherfolk
can remain in place despite lacking land documents, but much of the peninsula has
been proposed for commercial development projects. The sand-spit thus becomes a
frontier for variegated land claims part of urbanization processes where the variable
‘nature’ of land is enmeshed. Drawing on urban political ecology and Indian land
governance literature, the article highlights how the fluctuating land supports
continued informality since the shifting sands make boundaries challenging to delimit
and maintain, and, once stabilised, can be claimed by the state. The informalising
characteristics of land, understood as an ‘informality machine’, reinforces similar
ongoing urban transformations along the entire coastline, to mainly favour elite
interests, but can also be seized upon by the fisherfolk themselves for new claims, or
workarounds aimed at securing long-term tenure. Future research on the urban land
question would do well to include a perspective of land as co-constituted by socio-
natural processes.
Keywords: urban political ecology; unstable land; land governance; India; socio-nature

1. Introduction
Seen from the sea, on a clear day, Mangalore can take a newcomer’s breath away … Two
rivers meet around the elliptical curve of the fingertip to form a great palm-fringed lagoon
and the sea, lying tranquil under a quicksilver sky. Between the lagoon and the sea, holding
back the waves are two thin elbows of sand. They strain towards each other, but stop just
short of touching, and through the gap between them flows a narrow channel, joining the
lagoon to the open sea (Ghosh 1993, 197).
On a narrow patch of sand on the fringes of Mangaluru1 in southwestern Karnataka
state, fisherfolk have been making a living for the past century in an idyllic but also a pre-
carious location on shifting sands between unpredictable water and government bodies.
Fisherfolk clearly need access to water and this the sandy Bengre peninsula affords
while also risking to flood, or even wash away, its residents. And while Mangaluru city
with its growing economy can offer new jobs and other opportunities, its proximity also

*Corresponding author. Email: alin.kadfak@gu.se

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

400 A. Kadfak and P. Oskarsson

implies certain risks when activities like tourism, port construction and other large-scale
projects are not only increasingly proposed but held in preference over livelihoods which
depend directly on the natural resource base like fishing. Since initial settlement, Bengre
residents have slowly been recognized by the state but with much back and forth. The
complex historical pattern of land governance, the unstable geography of the peninsula,
and increasing land pressure on the fringes of Mangaluru city, together with the fisherfolk
need to remain close to the coast, but also interest in accessing new possibilities in the city,
all shape sand-spit land governance. For the fisherfolk land claims are mainly about the
house plots which allow them to remain close to beaches and within reach of the wider
city. For government and private developers economic development with new port facilities
and a golf course take precedence indicating different priorities on land use.
(Urban) political ecology analyses the tenuous and highly contingent ways in which
poor people attempt to gain a foothold and make claims to cities increasingly in focus
for modern economies (Benjamin 2004; Ranganathan 2014; Roy 2009; Swyngedouw
and Heynen 2003). Land takes on fundamental importance in these processes since liveli-
hoods are location-specific and risk being lost without secured tenure. Cities of the global
south continue to experience much more varied uses of urban spaces including fishing,
dairy production and many other activities perhaps not easily seen as urban. In such
cases, land uses are frequently overlapping and based on uncertain and informal tenure
arrangements (Arabindoo 2011; Kumar, Saravanan, and Jayaraman 2014; Roy 2009).
Such fluid land tenure conditions are kept in place purposefully to benefit influential
social groups since it allows governments to alter the purpose of land or acquire it (Roy
2009). As Roy points out the ‘state itself is a deeply informalized entity, one that actively
utilises informality as an instrument of both accumulation and authority’ (2009, 81).
Nature’s role in shaping urban land governance is, however, usually missing from a pol-
itical ecology intent on discussing how power relations affect a supposedly fixed nature
(Swyngedouw 2015). And yet it is clear that the ocean affects major coastal cities like
Mumbai and Chennai under the influence of seasonally shifting monsoon winds. In
response to the biophysical forces, human attempts to control the environment by construct-
ing ports and dredging rivers have met at best partial success even in core planned areas
with repercussions felt along the coastline as embankments in and around cities typically
shift erosion to poorer outlying areas. India’s peri-urban fisherfolk thus have to not only
‘dance’ with rivers and the ocean, to paraphrase Lahiri-Dutt and Samanta (2013), but
also to changes introduced by, or inadvertently occurring due to, attempts to utilize or
control ‘nature’ by city planners and urban developers.
This article examines how unstable land becomes a part of urban land contestation in the
expanding ‘middle city’ of Mangaluru to primarily support continued informality. The
‘shifting sands’ of land governance are here made up of the fluctuating land of the fisherfolk
peninsula and the variable governance in which promises for secured tenure are made fre-
quently and yet seemingly never realized. Based on urban political ecology and Indian land
governance literature, we explore land through ‘an ontology of socio-material composition
and potential transformation in deeply unequal conditions’ (McFarlane 2011a, 377). Land
becomes a key constituent of these always ongoing transformations as the paper traces the
disrupted boundaries of research objects to find the ways that both materials and society
might be transformed in the context of an urban land struggle in India.
The research builds on ethnographic research carried out over eight months of fieldwork
in Meenu-Bengre2 during 2013–2015 with 51 key informant interviews and 155 household
surveys. Additional empirical material comes from observational methods related to fishing
as well as village life, and from public city planning documents and maps. The initial theory
 Contemporary South Asia 401

section engages with urban land governance by drawing on recent literature in urban pol-
itical ecology and a context-sensitive reading of India’s recent land governance literature
(Section 2). Two empirical sections, on the shaping of the peninsula by the physical
environment (Section 3) and by governance processes (Section 4), respectively, are fol-
lowed by a final section of how the contestation over land has played out in the examined
case (Section 5). Finally, some conclusions are drawn (Section 6).

2. Socionatural forces and the governance of informal land in India

In India’s recent political economy land questions have come to take on crucial importance.
As the economy and wider society continue to go through rapid changes where private
sector-led real estate and industrial projects are seen as representing the future, land has
become key in multiple claims and counter-claims over control and access to resources,
and conflicting ideas of what represents justice (Banerjee-Guha 2009; Levien 2013; Roy
2016). It is in such unpredictable settings, where the urban land question ‘plays out’;
that is ‘who owns land and on what terms, who profits from land and on what terms,
and how the ownership, use, and financialization of land is governed and regulated by
the state (Roy 2017, A2).’ This article adds to enquiries into the urban land question by
interrogating the role of unstable land in these processes.
Urban land use in India falls under what Benjamin (2004, 179) calls a ‘flexible land
setting’ with loose regulations in practice allowing mixed land use, diversity of tenure
forms and a possibility to support a wide range of infrastructural settings. Under such con-
ditions no land will be completely legal while most land claims can find at least some
support in the law. This creates a wide spectrum of approaches and possibilities from
‘more authorized’ to ‘less authorized’ forms of land use (Ranganathan 2014; Roy 2003).
Urban land struggles, the ‘subversive politics on the ground’ (Benjamin 2008), simul-
taneously rely on, and are shaped by, this great fluidity across law, regulation and practice.
Existing approaches to governance are crucial in shaping this flexible land setting in
cities like Mangaluru where no overall plan is present. As in Hull’s study of city planning
in Pakistan, ‘[o]rder and disorder on every scale […] are produced through the cease-less
circulation of […] maps, forms, letters, and reports […]’ (2012, 4). This keeping of
urban spaces as informal by making them legally ambiguous or lacking a master plan
can be seen as a governance technique (Roy 2003). It also, however, indicates how
urban spaces are constituted in the everyday while drawing on rich, historical legacies.
Land tenure3 and wider resource use in India are governed in a political economy domi-
nated by urban elite interests. Recent decades of economic reforms have signalled a dra-
matic rise in the influence of capital now widely seen as the foremost agent of the
ambiguous term development. In land matters the state, however, retains a strong role to
play as a ‘partner’ of private capitalists (Kohli, 2007). Government ability, particularly at
the state-level, to provide land and related environmental and other approvals for private
sector-led development has become its raison d’être (Jenkins, Kennedy, and Mukhopad-
hyay 2014) while simultaneously being forced to handle strong claims from a multitude
of groups including increasingly assertive subaltern ones.
Land is constitutionally defined as a state government matter in India but is in practice
governed by overlapping entities. The Karnataka state Revenue Department is responsible
for land surveys and record management and takes on an especially important role. Devo-
lution of powers in urban planning via the 74th amendment of the Constitution in 1992 was
supposed to afford greater independence for municipalities but these, in practice, have
neither enough manpower nor financial support to manage land (Banerjee 2002). Key
402 A. Kadfak and P. Oskarsson

municipal influence exists via the Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) which via its elected
Corporators authorizes construction within city limits. Due to its coastal location, govern-
ance of the Bengre peninsula falls under not only state and municipal regulations but also
national environmental law, particularly Coastal Regulation Zone legislation, to indicate yet
another level of authority.
Benjamin (2008) shows how the everyday politics of land in Indian metros centre on
lower and mid-level bureaucracies where negotiations between residents and the state
take place. Such interactions may not directly discuss land but rather be about service pro-
vision, e.g. electricity supply, water connection or a voter card. Any form of official recog-
nition represents a ‘space of possibility’ (Ranganathan 2014) with the potential to be put to
use in the repertoire of claims a resident might make for improved tenure. This condition
citizens to pursue multiple strategies at any point in time, often on matters seemingly far
removed from particular pieces of land like demands for the provision of electricity.
Urban residents themselves, or via various intermediaries including elected politicians
or other mediators, do the ‘link work’ (Cook 2015) required to connect with the bureauc-
racy and gain recognition by the state. The state is here discursively constructed through
everyday practices by local bureaucrats (Gupta 1995). Fisherfolk are one of many groups
able to pull in resources via networks to protect their interests and assets, with well-estab-
lished informal institutions (Bavinck 2003). Measures to secure land might include both
formal government interactions and underhand measures, for example, by manipulating
the boundaries which determine where residents may settle along the coast.
Studies in urban political ecology inspired by socionature approaches has brought the
non-human, such as coastal land but also built nature, into view and opened up for
studies on interactions between different social groups and emerging material changes
(McFarlane 2011b; Swyngedouw 1999, 2006). This research has challenged the notion
that resources like land are merely passive materials shaped by humans, instead showing
them as intimately connected to, and even influencing technological solutions, social pre-
ferences and political choices (Swyngedouw 2015). In the co-constitution of nature and
society in coastal governance, land cannot be perceived as nature in an intrinsic sense,
but as the material production of socionature (Swyngedouw, 1996, 1999). According to
this perspective it is in the interconnections between economic, political and ecological pro-
cesses in urbanization where an unequal distribution of resources takes place (Swyngedouw
and Heynen 2003; Truelove 2011).
Dominant approaches to land governance assume strict dichotomies between land and
water with clear and unchanging boundaries not always apparent in coastal regions which
repeatedly experience storm surges, erosion, seasonal floods and many other events which
unsettle boundaries. The ambiguous boundaries between land and water in which a special
category of impermanent islands called chars exist for part of the year in the Bengal delta
detailed by Lahiri-Dutt and Samanta (2013) provide insights into the challenges experienced
by successive governments in India going back to British colonial times. Unclear boundaries
show an active material arrangement that can shape the way actors interact, govern and make
claims toward changes (Kadfak and Knutsson 2017). Strong biophysical forces related
especially to the monsoon are a core part of such rearrangements in coastal Karnataka.
Coastal areas around Mangaluru city share much with the Bengal delta detailed by
Lahiri-Dutt (2014). The unclear boundary between land and water actively co-constitutes
how local farmers and fisherfolk argue for tenure, while also forcing the government to
respond to multiple claims while attempting to earn benefits. According to the law, new
land formations part of the accretion of sand on the Bengre peninsula, or dredging in the
nearby rivers, belongs to the state government but can be settled according to who owns
 Contemporary South Asia 403

land close to any new land formation.4 Consequently, the expanding eastern waterfront with
its new fishing harbour and the new islets in Gurupur River due to dredging are owned by
the Port Authority while the similarly growing coastline on the western side belongs to the
state government.
A variable ability to make claims during the socio-material transformations part of
urbanization processes re-enforces inequality among urban citizens (McFarlane 2011a).
These power differences and inequalities cannot be explained separately from material pro-
cesses. A ‘socio-spatial fabric that privileges some and excludes many, that produces sig-
nificant socio-environmental injustices’ (Swyngedouw 2006, 37) is the result. In sum we
contend that there is a need to examine how social and natural forces continue to churn
the peri-urban residents of Mangaluru to reinforce existing informal governance arrange-
ments to generally favour dominant interests. We aim, however, to show that residents
are proactive attempting to simultaneously engage urban authorities and make use of gov-
ernmental and biophysical uncertainties in favour of their own land claims.
Meenu-Bengre, a small-scale fishing village increasingly within reach of one of India’s
understudied ‘middle cities’ Mangaluru, is in one of India’s best educated regions. Fisherfolk
might here be in a reasonably good position to make use of new economic opportunities
afforded by the city. In order to do so, or even to safeguard existing fisheries-based livelihoods,
the residents will, however, need to secure their present location. A temporary lease agreement
for house plots expired in 2014 leaving residents without legal protection at a time when the
interest in remaking India’s urban spaces is greater than at any earlier point in time.

3. The shape-shifting peninsula

Sand-spit formations like the Bengre peninsula frequently appear on the west coast of India.
They are formed in open shallow water when high-energy waves move along the coast to face
strong river flows during the monsoon (Kumar and Jayappa 2009). The southwestern
monsoon from May to August each year is the strongest biophysical force on the Indian
west coast moving millions of tons of sand with winds northwards. From October to Decem-
ber the wind patterns reverse, although to a weaker extent, with the onset of the northeastern
monsoon. The Bengre sand-spit is located where the ocean meets two strongly flowing rivers
drawing on an average of 3900 mm of rain per year and carrying large amounts of silt.
With such strong movement of sand and silt it can only be expected that coastal regions
will be predisposed to changing their contours. And yet the fluid sand formations of Man-
galuru (see Figure 1 below) continue to be governed based on the ideal of firm land with
stable boundaries associated with modernist attempts by Indian governments to control
water with strong historical roots in colonial rule (D’Souza 2006; Lahiri-Dutt and
Samanta 2013). This idealized ‘land-water binary’ (Lahiri-Dutt 2014) does not easily
match experiences of Indian ‘waterscapes’ with highly variable shape under the influence
of seasonal and daily flows of sea and rivers depositing or removing sand and silt, but also
strongly influenced by dredging and other human activities.
In older available records it appeared almost a surprise when the Mangaluru river mouth
did not change its location over consecutive years. In a historical reference, Palmer explains
how ‘the sand-spit has been breached so many times, and in so many places, by the joint
action of the sea and the floods in the [South West] monsoon, [that] it is quite impossible
to say with authority from year to year where the best anchorage is until the monsoon is
over’ (1898, 37). The result was that the entrance to Mangaluru city ‘changed its position
no less than fourteen times’ (1898) in the nineteenth century. Consequently, securing reliable
boat access to the city was seen as crucial for the city’s further economic development.
404 A. Kadfak and P. Oskarsson

Figure 1. Overview map of Bengre peninsula.

More recent accounts of coastal governance in Mangaluru focus on attempts to stabilize

urban land in spite of historical challenges and recent experiences of fluctuating land (Ben-
jamin 2017). The construction of piers has enabled improved ship access together with the
frequent use of dredging machines in the rivers. Breakwater and other erosion control con-
struction can protect particular pieces of land from becoming lost to the sea. The construc-
tion of breakwaters (jetties) at the river mouth has, however, caused a major increase in
accretion of sand extending the beach at the tip of the Bengre peninsula while simul-
taneously causing erosion on Ullal peninsula across the river mouth (Hegde and Raveendra
2000). Similar unintended accretion and erosion of beaches is common along India’s coast-
line and appear to be largely unplanned consequences when various structures are built. In
addition, river sand mining, solid waste, dredging activities, seawalls and river dams are all
human activities which continue to re-shape the Bengre peninsula in ways not yet fully
understood (Kumar, Narayana, and Jayappa 2010).
Morphology studies of the Bengre peninsula show significant changes of the land-
scape in the past century. The sand-spit reduced in length by 1730 m from the year
1910 to 2005 (Kumar, Narayana, and Jayappa 2010). Since 1997 the Bengre peninsula
has, however, gained 47 acres in area (Kumar and Jayappa 2009). The estimated
growth of the Bengre sand-spit overall is 90 acres of land from 1905 to 2005 with
periods of reduced size interspersed with growth (Kumar and Jayappa 2009). Human
efforts to secure Mangaluru city and port areas appear to have reduced erosion and accre-
tion within city limits in recent years. Results remain highly partial, however, and largely
 Contemporary South Asia 405

shift the costs away from wealthier metropolitan areas to peri-urban areas and further
along the coast to where poorer and less influential groups reside. Existing inequality
in urban land use and tenure cannot be analysed or perceived separately from these
ongoing material rearrangements.
A number of studies (e.g. Hegde and Raveendra 2000; Kumar, Narayana, and Jayappa
2010; Kumar and Jayappa 2009) evaluate the reasons behind the changing coastline around
Mangaluru using natural science approaches. It appears clear that a pier or jetty built into
the ocean will cause erosion and accretion of sand to rearrange vulnerable coastal environ-
ments. This research, while locally based, nevertheless appears to have limited influence on
the present day port and peri-urban construction along the waterfront reducing the possi-
bility to introduce planned land use changes in infrastructural projects. The Bengre penin-
sula is close enough to the city to benefit partially from the city’s port and flood control
measures, yet peripheral enough to not be a core part of such coastal protection resulting
in highly uncertain outcomes. Perhaps the best way to characterize present outcomes is for-
tunate for Bengre peninsula residents who gained significant areas, and unfortunate for
Ullal peninsula residents across the river mouth who according to Kumar and Jayappa
(2009) lost 62 acres to erosion.
While the coastal landscape changes examined here do not shift quite as dramatically as
the seasonally changing char island formations of the Bengal delta detailed by Lahiri-Dutt
and Samanta (2013), Meenu-Bengre residents are well aware of spatial changes with vast
decadal relevance for land availability (Kadfak and Knutsson 2017). Residents remembered
in interviews how the beach used to be very close to their houses allowing them to open the
window and smell the sea breeze. As the beach extended seaward space became available
for house construction. As a whole the area remains prone to flooding, however, raising
concerns for future calamities. Even if the 2004 tsunami left the area largely unharmed dra-
matic events are known to have occurred like the storm surge in 1974 which washed 30
houses, a sardine-oil factory and a government fish-processing factory into the sea (Inter-
view 14 March 2014).
It is acknowledged among researchers and villagers that the flow of sand deposits has
resulted in a growing Bengre peninsula while other areas erode. Gains in one location may,
however, be reversed in the near future in case socionatural conditions change. At the
moment the uncertainly growing land gives cautious support for new claims by both villa-
gers and urban developers whereas the government’s view on how to best manage shape-
shifting coastal land remains unclear. The next section discusses present attempts to govern
this urban-coastal land.

4. Governing land with overlapping authorities

Seeing the shifting sands of the Bengre peninsula as socionature opens up for questions
about how to interpret and negotiate the unsettled boundaries of coastal land increasingly
in focus for the urban expansion of Mangaluru. When the area became a part of urban gov-
ernance, the authority structure and the sets of relevant regulations further increased the
complexity. And yet fisherfolk continue to live in informality in spite of frequently
raising demands for secured tenure. This section details the overlapping formal and infor-
mal institutions which are part of governing land of the peninsula.
The construction of railway tracks at the Old Mangalore Port in 1907 forced 45 families
to relocate to a then-barren sand-spit across Gurupur River. The Mangalore Port Authority
owned the land and allowed the displaced to settle on them agreeing to vacate with 24 hours
notice as the peninsula was considered prone to floods and storms. Not part of the city at the
406 A. Kadfak and P. Oskarsson

time of settlement, Bengre was for long left without ‘any tangible civic amenity … . Its geo-
graphical discontinuity and the uncertainties about the future of this piece of land … forced
the sand-spit to remain a very poor and backward area’ (Thingalaya 1966, 48). This view of
the settlement not being on permanent land continues to shape tenure arrangements until the
present day (Budhya and Benjamin 2000). Meenu-Bengre is today home to about 6000
people according to the Census of India 2011 with a Hindu majority and Christian and
Muslim minorities.
The Port Authority is since 1996 owned by the Fisheries Department of the Karnataka
government. The handover of the Port Authority and its land, including most of the Bengre
peninsula, from the national government to the Karnataka government resulted in much
delay, however, and years of ‘hanging ownership’ (Budhya 2003, 6) since villagers
owed rent to the Port Authority only resolved in 2000 (Budhya 2003). The Port Authority
remains the main land owner with 239 of 393 acres of the Bengre peninsula while the Gov-
ernment of Karnataka owns the remaining 154 acres. This 154 acres of land is where penin-
sula residents received hakku patra,5 or temporary house plot certificates.
Since 1995 the peninsula is officially part of Mangaluru city with an elected Corporator
and in 2000 it was included under regular Revenue Department land administration. Paying
rent to the Port Authority used to be the main way to be recognized as a resident but the
transfer of the land to the Karnataka Government in 2000 rendered this approach invalid.
From 1994 and 20 years onwards the Government of Karnataka’s Ashraya (shelter) pro-
gramme gave hakku patra and acknowledged existing houses as legal structures. Among
the 982 houses of the village, about half held hakku patra, whereas the remaining were
either unable to receive the title at the time or arrived after 1994 (Interview village commit-
tee 4 January 2015). Common spaces for fishing boats, equipment storage and fish proces-
sing have never been recognized but are seen as possible to safeguard based on nearby
residential land.
Without land titles or other permits the residents, like so many other urban dwellers
across India, live on land officially labelled encroached and therefore not seen on most
maps (Interview MCC Officer 26 May 2015). The District Commissioner of the state gov-
ernment has the power to remove such unauthorized occupation but may also grant land to
‘encroaching’ dwellers6 if a house was built before 2012 and was earlier approved under the
Ashraya programme (Benjamin 2015). The specific procedures to follow for regularization
are not always apparent to residents, however, perhaps not surprising when any one city in
Karnataka can have more than 10 different programmes potentially providing recognition
(Benjamin 2004).
The village accountant used to keep land records in a paper-based process but the Kar-
nataka government, like many other states, have from 1988 digitized 20 million land
records (Manor 2007). Digital records have improved transparency but continue to have
challenges since no records management system can compensate for existing poor land
data put into it (Thomas 2009). The digital land records follow earlier documents where
the Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops (RTC)7 is most important (Government of Kar-
nataka, Revenue Department 2012).
Any change of land use in coastal areas needs approval under the national Environmental
Protection Act with special legislation for Coastal Regulation Zones (CRZ).8 According to
the Coastal Zone Management Plan Map of Karnataka, Meenu-Bengre is in the CRZ-I
zone on the beach side and CRZ-II on the housing area (Karnataka State Coastal Zone Man-
agement Authority 2013) meaning existing houses can remain while new construction,
especially on the beach side, is restricted. A Mangaluru Urban Development Authority
(MUDA) officer indicated that the ocean side of the Bengre peninsula is officially seen as
 Contemporary South Asia 407

unused land open for development while requiring a CRZ clearance (Interview 19 May
2014). It was this officially unused land which came to be proposed for the golf course.
When government departments have been unwilling or unable to recognize household
plots in the village, the village-fishing committee, the Meenu-Bengre Mahajana Sabha
(MBMS)9 or the Meenu-Bengre Great Peoples Forum, has come to take on an important
role. Historically, the MBMS, in lack of formal authorities, assigned plots to local and
early migrant families in return for a small sum of money towards the village fund. And
during the implementation of the Ashraya housing programme the MBMS demarcated
land using survey stones much like the Revenue Department does. These stones continue
to be important and could be seen during fieldwork in 2015. They are used in land disputes
between neighbours and to arrange informal sales or property divisions in lack of an official
land market. The elected Corporator, at the time of fieldwork elected from a female-
reserved seat, is seen as a person who can help assure the provision of public services,
e.g. street lights, solid waste collection and water, but has remained side-lined on land
issues where the MBMS has a history of interventions and significant political clout.
The MBMS was formed during initial settlement by the Hindu fishing caste majority and
has, despite inclusion into democratically governed Mangaluru city, remained a male-domi-
nated, caste-based forum common according to Bavinck (2003) in Indian fishing villages.
The president of the MBMS is elected by its members every two years. Twenty-one commit-
tee members, of which two are women, are also elected for two-year periods. A key position
in the organization is the secretary, usually held by a highly educated person, in charge not
only of the informal land records but also of total population numbers, house details including
door numbers and access to various government programmes (Interview 10 December 2014).
The secretary had been in place for 6 years in 2015. A few Christian and Muslims residents
were found to attend MBMS meetings regularly and could not become members, similarly to
none-fishing caste Hindus including migrant residents.
Mogaveera fishing caste members of Meenu-Bengre are further organized into two sep-
arate forums based on the earlier locations inhabited pre-1896. The less influential Kharvi
fisher caste has a similar association in Meenu-Bengre village. Wider kin networks connect
these associations along the west coast including to Mumbai to give significant political
clout. One such network is the Dakshina Kannada Mogaveera Mahajana Sabha (The
South Kannada Mogaveera Peoples Forum) network founded in 1923 and today consisting
of 146 organizations in southwestern Karnataka (Budhya and Benjamin 2000). Formal and
informal institutions thus overlap in the management of land in and around Meenu-Bengre
village where long-established village associations exist to safeguard fisherfolk interests.
While the MBMS has the significant clout to defend village land government recognition
is seen as offering greater security. How the politics of competing land claims play out
on the shape-shifting peninsula is detailed in the next section.

5. Making land claims in an unstable environment

The Bengre peninsula has in recent years attracted two major investments; a new fishing
harbour and an 18-hole golf course. The fishing harbour has space for more than a thousand
medium-sized vessels with related land-based facilities and occupies half of the village riv-
erfront previously used by small-scale fishing boats and fishing-related activities like fish
drying. The golf course is a public–private partnership which proposes to use 135 acres
of land on the ocean side northwest of the village. This land is officially uninhabited but
in reality claimed partially for housing and as an important space for social and cultural
activities. Fencing of the area started in 2015 but had to be stopped due to local protests.
408 A. Kadfak and P. Oskarsson

Despite close ethnic ties between the initial settlers, Meenu-Bengre is by now far from a
homogenous place in terms of caste composition or available resources. Its residents con-
sequently hold differentiated possibilities to make claims to land and public services. The
variable possibilities to claim earlier titles continue to influence the present day claims.
Only 479 houses, or about half of the total number of houses, previously held a hakku
patra. Despite having lapsed these documents continue to offer greater security of tenure
and improved access to services to its holders (Interview MBMS Member 4 January
2015). Furthermore, 75% of the houses lack a door number used to identify construction
as legal, again opening up for the varied possibilities to apply for other public services
(Interview MBMS Member 2 December 2014). The consequence of these differentiated
possibilities to make land claims is that within the village one solution to satisfy all resident
requirements is highly unlikely. Interviews indicated the varied claims as a crucial obstacle
since any solution politicians and administrators might be able to find only tended to benefit
a minority.
In the main part of the village, away from the eastern and western shores which are most
controversial as well as most unstable, residents are attempting to gain a new title deed to
replace the earlier, temporary one. Overall this group is relatively safe given the many
decades of continued habitation in the village, even if mainly on informal terms. The co-
constitution of land and governance make this part of the village appear stable enough
for possible tenure recognition. At the other end of this spectrum of land stability with
weak support in the law is the expanding western waterfront increasingly in focus for
new housing in the growing village. Increasingly firm peninsula boundaries due to infra-
structural works on the southern and eastern sides mean that the ocean side to the west,
with growing beaches due to sand accretion, has been preferred for new house construction.
This new land has not only weak support in the law but is also of prime interest for the pro-
posed golf course.
Re-zoning of the peninsula from CRZ-I to CRZ-II would allow house construction
closer to the western seafront with permission. In spite of the accumulation of sand the
Western part of the village is, however, only 100–250 m from the ocean and thus firmly
within CRZ-I where no construction is allowed. Older houses further east are more than
300 m from the coast and considered CRZ-II. For the time being those who can prefer to
buy land in the CRZ-II area where land is more stable and comes with some sort of
land/house document even if also here not officially recognized. People who can afford
it will pay a higher price for land identified as stable, in a combined reading of policy
and biophysical properties of the peninsula, while the poorest groups are forced to find
informal workarounds on unstable land.
Available government plans make it clear that even basic details on peninsula land are
either completely missing or highly variable in public planning. A case in point were
attempts to acquire maps from different government offices during fieldwork in 2015 exem-
plifying Hull’s (2012) experience of the partial nature of government plans. The Revenue
Department is supposed to keep land records and an overall map of the area but has not
recently surveyed the land and does not keep track of individual plots. On a 2001 land
use map from the MUDA master plan, half of Meenu-Bengre is labelled CRZ-I with
houses on the southern side of the village omitted. The MCC map, in turn, proved outdated
only identifying block numbers used for municipal services and for election purposes. The
Tourism Authority map was the most recent of all maps encountered presumably due to
the planning of the golf course. It, however, also failed to show house plots on the
beach. The partial pictures outlined on the different maps indicate incomplete pictures of
unmapping with inclusions and omissions based on departmental interests and capacities.
 Contemporary South Asia 409

Practically the bureaucrats face significant challenges regulating land which has not
been surveyed for a long time. When the Bengre peninsula was governed by the Port Auth-
ority, there was no need for a detailed survey since all land was owned and managed by the
port. The inclusion of the area into city administration appears to not have resulted in a fresh
survey, however. Surveys to establish actual land use changes are supposed to happen every
10 years but this, as an MCC officer admitted, ‘actually […] happens once in 30 years. The
last survey happened in 1933–1934. And also [in] 1963–64 so this land [on Bengre] has no
survey number’ (Interview 26 March 2015). Land details are thus known to be inadequate
among administrators with significant changes in settlement patterns and, additionally with
new land created on the unstable beaches since the early 1960s. This shows lacking capacity
to govern demographically and biophysically expanding coastal land.
Electricity was earlier not a concern for the residents who could get connected directly
from the city’s electricity supply company. In recent years, 245 houses, 170 of which are
close to the ocean, have not been able to get connected since their plots were not approved.
Accessing electricity, or other public services like water, depends on having a door number.
And the door number in turn depends on the land as well as on town planning approval.
This has been the case since long but it appears as if the actual implementation has
become stricter in this respect. Non-existing or expired hakku patra documents are the
reason given as to why door numbers cannot be provided. The increased difficulties are,
however, seen by villagers as connected to the golf course plans (Interview 13 May 2014).
Urban land controversies of proposed regularization, delay and alternative plans like
those outlined here are since long part of electoral promises in exchange for votes. One
Mangaluru ‘land consultant’ stated that

the moment the land issue is solved, there will not be a political mileage to get out of this … So
they [the politicians] just leave the land issue like as it is, and it will continue to be like that for a
while. (Interview 4 March 2015)

An ex-corporator of Mangaluru concurred by saying that ‘there is no political will to do

it, those politicians just promise and go’ (Interview former corporator 3 February 2015).
Long-term followers of the city politics of land thus highlighted its role in unfulfilled prom-
ises with the land kept informal. The interests of the state to promote commercial projects
ahead of local tenure rights here appears as an important, even if not explicitly mentioned,
factor in the light of recently proposed large-scale projects.
A lower-level land administrator referred to the delays as part of ‘political games to give
hope to locals’. Politicians prefer to keep matters delayed far away in the state capital Ben-
galuru (Interview 16 May 2014). In preparation for upcoming District and Block elections
the local MLA again visited the village in December 2015 and promised electricity pro-
vision and land tenure. Following this visit the MBMS gathered personal photos and IDs
of the house owners in renewed attempts to apply for title deeds and electricity (phone inter-
view with a local resident 10 December 2015). No immediate results have come from these
most recent promises as has been the case from previous attempts.
Even when administrators appear intent on supporting claims, this can prove impossible
when the legal framework does not match demands. In a top city administrators’ meeting it
was decided that villagers should get a ‘No Objection Certificate’ (NOC), a letter from the
MCC allowing access to certain public services like electricity, without settling difficult
land questions at Bengre (23 February 2015). An MCC officer could, however, see difficul-
ties in implementing such an order when saying that ‘even though the Deputy Commis-
sioner has ordered the unit to grant NOC to the residents, this cannot easily be done
410 A. Kadfak and P. Oskarsson

since there should be a provision in law for us [officers] to follow’ (Interview 26 March
2015). The NOC, according to the officer, needed to be approved by the state government
which had not been done. The department had even taken own initiative to move the issue
forward. Since ‘[t]he land itself was so huge, there are around 1000–1500 houses, we have
written to government and they can decide.’ Outcomes remain unknown to date.
Over the years residents have actively engaged authorities to gain recognized tenure.
Formal land title deeds have been the main goal but gaining access to land-dependent ser-
vices like electricity connections have also been important to open up the ‘space of possi-
bilities’ (Ranganathan 2014) for at least some positive outcome. The main actors within the
MBMS over the years have been its presidents and secretaries. Cultivating connections with
local politicians such as the Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA), particularly of the
Congress party, have been an important aspect of the work on land. The MBMS regularly
requests meetings with Mangaluru’s Deputy Commissioner and the organization will
bring up the lack of land rights whenever bureaucrats or politicians visit the village.
The long-running uncertainty over land, by now spanning decades, might make the fre-
quency of meetings seem surprising. Recent years have, however, as detailed above,
seen increased uncertainty over land to at least partially explain the frequent interactions.
The MBMS has argued in its government representations that the gravel road and street
lights on the Western side of the peninsula built by an MCC-funded project should be inter-
preted as a formalization of the area. And the newly built houses should be seen as adding to
this materiality by making the land further stable, and thereby possible to formalize by the
government. After representations the District Commissioner has been forced to revisit the
process again and again with at best a partial solution presenting itself and significant uncer-
tainty also among the administrators over where boundaries between, for example, the
different CRZ zones actually exist. Meanwhile other villager approaches to further stabiliz-
ing the informal land are proceeding in parallel such as using the address of a relative or
neighbour living further east to receive a ration card.
While land representations continue with the local administration the MBMS continues
to provide land to those who request it especially close to the ocean. ‘Owing to the fact we
are fishermen, we should have right to live close to the sea’ an ex-president of MBMS
expressed in an interview (interview 14 March 2014). The organization points out that resi-
dents will have to take own responsibility for the land and structures built on it. Interviews
among new plot ‘owners’, however, indicated a strong belief in MBMS protection. The
organization was frequently referred to as ‘kings’ of the village and its rightful decision-
makers. This informal land use appears to work for fishing people most of the time since
they are well organized. Nonetheless, larger projects like the fishing harbour and the golf
course change dynamics. And city planning laws are at times implemented like when six
houses close to the ocean were demolished due to CRZ violation in a neighbouring
village in 2011.

6. Conclusion
This article examined how unstable land on a sandy, coastal peninsula in peri-urban Man-
galuru became part of long-running land conflicts to predominantly support continued
informality of tenure. Understood since initial settlement as a precarious, coastal location
people on the peninsula faced uncertain outcomes for the past century where land meets
water. Like other peri-urban waterfronts around the world (see e.g. Bunce and Desfor
2007), it has also become a site for urban restructuring processes particularly for commer-
cial development. The overlapping institutional arrangements between government
 Contemporary South Asia 411

departments and fisherfolk bodies on the one hand, and the moving sands of the peninsula
on the other, together created a range of uncertainties where both entities were continually
up for reinterpretation. The emphasis here was to show how ‘[l]and and its embedded belief
systems fundamentally shape political and social space and its related economic forms’
(Benjamin 2017, 205) towards an understanding of the role of land in shaping how the
‘urban land question’ plays out in support of continued informality of tenure.
Like other urban areas inhabited by poorer groups in India, Meenu-Bengre village con-
tinues to consist largely of informal land holdings. Securing a foothold for continued fishing
as well as urban livelihood activities are priorities in a setting where the state needs to be
engaged with. A rich body of literature on urban political ecology has detailed the
complex ways in which such struggles unfold across urban India (see e.g. Benjamin
2004, 2008; Ranganathan 2014; Roy 2005, 2009). An important point seen through the
shifting sands of the Bengre peninsula is how the state is unable to keep up with the bio-
physical changes via inadequate survey and mapping procedures. Hence the land
remains unmapped with variable shades of legality to open up for commercial development
projects, but also spaces for residents to negotiate. The ultimate goal for the fisherfolk is to
obtain land rights, but they continue to engage multiple parts of the state for various ‘smal-
ler’ claims which may later be employed for secured tenure. Such claims were seen as part
of long-running attempts to further stabilize the land to open up for secure tenure.
The shape-shifting Bengre peninsula varied in size in unpredictable ways with the con-
struction of piers and other coastal protection infrastructure together with the influence of
monsoon winds and seasonally surging rivers. While similar studies in other socionatural
settings around India remain to be carried out, it is clear that the monsoon powers similarly
shifting sands, mediated by human construction and dredging activities, along the entire
coastline resulting in dramatic coastal transformations far beyond Mangaluru’s fisherfolk.
We argue that the effect of the erosion and accretion of coastal land appear as an informality
machine with crucial ability to influence land use trajectories and development patterns par-
ticularly in metropolitan areas where intense construction activities are taking place. In
some places the shifting sands will mean growing beaches, and in these locations the
law gives the state the upper hand to claim the new land for commercial development. In
other places, in urban locations negatively affected by construction or further away
where embankments are not prioritized by urban-focused decision-makers, land will inevi-
tably be lost to erosion and its residents forced to move on their own account, as if their
losses were purely a matter of natural forces taking away their land.10 As the informality
machine works on the coastline the state appears to have more to gain than to lose by
not attending to evidence of the shifting sands since it makes scarce land available in a
messy and highly politically contested coastal, urban landscape.
The discussion in this article indicates a need for the urban land question to be under-
stood in conjunction with the socionature of shifting land including how both the state and
residents can make use of unstable boundaries to their benefit. Land is thus a variable cat-
egory which can feed into, and be used by, different actors engaged in long-running land
disputes. The larger point is, however, that land is never a fixed category. It moves,
shifts and transforms in size as well as in other biophysical qualities whether intended
for dwellings, agriculture or countless other purposes. While land in most cases is unlikely
to shift as much as in the case discussed in this article, and may also be better understood
and governed by authorities than what has been the case for the Bengre peninsula, research
on urban land relations would do well to include a perspective of land as more than a fixed
category. This would help us understand how material changes contribute to re-constituted
relationships between land and society in settings of rapid urbanization.
412 A. Kadfak and P. Oskarsson

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This work was supported by Vetenskapsrådet [2013-34220-105588-74].

Notes
1. Mangalore officially changed its name to Mangaluru in 2014.
2. We have changed the name of the village to preserve the confidentiality of research participant
responses.
3. Durand-Lasserve and Selod (2009, 102) define land tenure as ‘the rights that individuals and
communities have with respect to land – the right to occupy, to use, to develop, to inherit,
and to transfer land.’
4. According to the Karnataka Land Revenue Act of 1964 amended to 2012.
5. Specific conditions for hakku patras issued to Meenu-Bengre residents were; (1) the land cannot
be sold for 20 years, and cannot be exchanged,( 2) a loan to construct a house on the property is
allowed, (3) it is not allowed to give the land for rent, (4) government taxes should be paid reg-
ularly, (5) incorrect information may cancel the ownership certificate (translated from Kannada
to English). Patra is the Kannada-language name for a land title deed known as patta in much of
the rest of India.
6. According to the Karnataka Land Revenue (Amendment) Act, 2012, Act No. 51 of 2013.
7. A record containing the details of land including area, ownership details, crops and tenancy.
8. CRZ-I are areas 0–200 m from the High-Tide-Line with great ecological sensitivity and there-
fore restricted use. CRZ-II areas are 200–500 meters from the High-Tide-Line and already built
up before 1991 when the regulation came into place. In CRZ-II areas new houses cannot be built
without permission but existing ones are allowed to remain. A state-level Coastal Regulation
Zone Management Authority can, and usually does, approve proposed land use changes
(Menon et al. 2015).
9. The name of the village organisation has been changed to preserve the anonymity of the village.
10. People made landless in this manner are likely to join the rapidly growing, informal settlements
of some of India’s cities.

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