Journal of Contemporary Asia

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Anticipating Future Capital: Regional Caste

Contestations, Speculation and Silent
Dispossession in Andhra Pradesh

Sanam Roohi

To cite this article: Sanam Roohi (2020): Anticipating Future Capital: Regional Caste
Contestations, Speculation and Silent Dispossession in Andhra Pradesh, Journal of Contemporary
Asia, DOI: 10.1080/00472336.2020.1725598

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2020.1725598

Published online: 19 Feb 2020.

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JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ASIA
https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2020.1725598

Anticipating Future Capital: Regional Caste Contestations,

Speculation and Silent Dispossession in Andhra Pradesh
Sanam Roohi
Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
In 2014, the state of Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated by the Indian Andhra Pradesh;
government, leaving the truncated state without a capital city. accumulation; Amaravati;
A period of political uncertainty before bifurcation and the anticipation; dispossession;
speculation
announcement of the new capital city created possibilities for
land speculation and for the acceleration of the commodification
of real estate in different parts of the state. Concentrating on
Guntur-Vijayawada in the Coastal Andhra region and Donakonda
town close to the Rayalaseema region, this article explores how
speculative investments based on political calculations by members
of regional elite castes translated into the emergence of competing
regional investment zones as possible future choices of the capital
city. Through an extended and largely ethnographic study, this
article shows how caste politics and regional processes of land
speculation led to land transfers without violent struggles between
different groups. Rather, the cultural politics of regional differentia-
tion and the economy of anticipation allowed a pragmatic conver-
gence of interests to emerge, where acquisition of agricultural land
was followed by silent dispossession.

Prashant Reddy retired from his managerial position in a government-owned mining

corporation in Kadapa (or Cudappah) district of Andhra Pradesh in June 2012.1 A few
months later, he received some three million rupees, as part of his provident fund (lump
sum provided to each permanent employee on retirement). With a matching amount in
cash and some savings about to mature in chit funds, he had started looking for a parcel
of prime land in which to invest his money since 2009. As an apartment owner in
Hyderabad, he was determined not to invest his savings in another flat in Hyderabad or
Bangalore as it entailed taking a mortgage from a bank over a 15 to 20 year period.
Instead, he had made plans to purchase agricultural land adjacent to a cemented road,
preferably close to one of the dozens of highways that criss-crossed Andhra Pradesh.
Such parcels of land have the potential to multiply in value in case of imminent
conversion from agricultural land to commercial plots. Illustrated by Prashant Reddy’s
experience, this form of speculative land buying was widespread among small-scale
investors like him who often belonged to powerful “dominant” land-owning castes
(Srinivas 1959); they were keen to multiply their investments quickly at a time when

CONTACT Sanam Roohi sanam.roohi@uni-erfurt.de; sanam.roohi@gmail.com Max Weber Center for Advanced
Cultural and Social Studies, University of Erfurt, Germany, Post Box 900221, 99105 Erfurt, Germany
© 2020 Journal of Contemporary Asia
2 S. ROOHI

land prices were appreciating considerably across the state. From 2004 to 2009 in Andhra
Pradesh, under the Congress Party Chief Minister Y.S. Rajashekhar Reddy (or YSR) the
commercialisation of land had received an immense boost and parcels close to main
roads were especially prized as they had a high chance of being converted from agricul-
tural to commercial plots.2
Prashant Reddy’s first choice was to buy agricultural land in the vicinity of Hyderabad.
However, in 2009, a sudden turn of political events forced him to reconsider this plan.
YSR, who was elected for a second term as chief minister in May 2009 was killed in
a helicopter crash in September 2009, plunging the state into deep political turmoil.
Belonging to the Rayalaseema region, YSR had managed to suppress long-running public
sentiment for a separate Telangana state to be carved from Andhra Pradesh.3 However,
within months of YSR’s death, the demand for secession gained new momentum. While
there was a lot of uncertainty over whether Telangana would become a separate state, the
bigger issue was that Hyderabad, the capital of undivided Andhra Pradesh, could be lost
to Telangana, leaving the truncated state capital-less. This article examines the ways in
which political uncertainties created speculative investment opportunities for members
of regional elite castes and how this translated into the emergence of competing regional
investment zones as possible choices of the future capital city.
The resulting political uncertainty caused Prashant Reddy to drop his plan to buy land
near Hyderabad as the agitation and ensuing violence had depressed land values there.
Thereafter, he spent 2011 and 2012 identifying agricultural land that would fall within the
truncated state and possibly near the future capital, which held the prospect of steep
appreciation in value. Based on the information circulating locally among the three main
political parties of Andhra Pradesh (Congress, YSR Congress Party or YSRCP, and
Telugu Desam Party or TDP), Reddy had identified likely locations for a new capital.
His options included areas in and around Tirupathi, Kurnool or Donakonda towns
within or near the Rayalaseema region; and the Guntur-Vijayawada conurbation and
Vishakapatnam in the Coastal Andhra region. It was understood that if the TDP (a party
with Kamma leadership drawn from Coastal Andhra) came to power, the capital would
go to Coastal Andhra and if YSRCP won, the capital would probably be in or close to
Rayalaseema, due to the party’s roots among Reddy caste leaders from this region.
Through a chain of brokers, Prashant Reddy found an acre of land along the
Amravathi Road that connected Guntur town to the ancient Buddhist town of
Amaravathi for four million rupees in 2011. He also found another parcel of land near
Markapur, close to Donakonda, where he could get four acres for a similar price. This
semi-arid land belonged to a Golla (shepherd) family, who were eager to sell it at a “good
price” amidst speculation that Donakonda might be made the capital city. While both
plots were agricultural land, they were close to National Highways 5 and 565 respectively
and had access to groundwater, with a higher chance of being converted to commercial
plots, more so if the capital city was to be established nearby. Through an alternative
chain of brokers, Reddy also found an additional small parcel of land near Gannavaram
airport close to Vijayawada, but it involved risk as it was “assigned land” allotted by the
government to the landless poor, and being non-transferable, it could not be legally sold
(see Oskarsson 2013, 206; Cross 2014, 7, 56). Because of the illegal nature of this land
deal, its market value was artificially supressed and plots were being sold cheaply at
400,000 rupees per 0.025 acres. Prashant Reddy decided to buy this land as well as the
 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ASIA 3

four acres near Donakonda, hedging his bets on two places likely to become a capital city,
in the event that either TDP or YSRCP would win the elections. However, as a Reddy
from Rayalaseema, he had an “emotional attachment” to his region and was convinced
that YSRCP, riding on YSR’s legacy, would sweep the next state elections. He therefore
decided to allocate most of his money to Markapur land near Donakonda, giving the
lucrative land deal in Amaravathi a miss.
Between 2012 and 2014, Prashant Reddy’s Markapur land values doubled. But they
soon crashed, reducing by 20%–30% when it was announced in February 2014 that
Andhra Pradesh would be bifurcated and a separate Telangana state would be formed.
Prices slid further in June 2014, when TDP came to power, defeating the YSRCP.
However, the value of the land he purchased near Gannavaram had almost tripled, as
there was conjecture that with TDP’s victory, the capital would be within the Vijayawada-
Guntur-Tenali-Mangalagiri (VGTM) region in Coastal Andhra. Therefore, the specula-
tive investments made by Prashant Reddy and many of his relatives and friends (who
invested most of their money based on their “attachment” to their region and support for
YSRCP) appeared only partly miscalculated. Yet, even for those who “lost” money by
speculating in the “wrong” places, the loss was more in terms of projected value genera-
tion and less in terms of actual devaluation of their land, as there is some stability in land
prices. Conversely, those who had invested in coastal areas, particularly the VGTM
region, made windfall profits, as their land value increased four to five times after the
TDP came to power and further appreciated when the new government announced the
capital in that region.
After the bifurcation announcement, the central government appointed an Expert
Committee in March 2014 to do a feasibility study and make suggestions based on their
findings for suitable place(s) for a new capital city. When the committee submitted its
report on August 31, 2014, it expressed strong reservations against a greenfield capital,
particularly in the VGTM region where a new capital would consume fertile farming
land. The committee proposed a more “distributed development” model with capital
functions dispersed across different regions of Andhra Pradesh for the state’s overall
development (Sivaramakrishnan Committee Report 2014, 11). The committee’s recom-
mendations, highlighting areas where disaggregated forms of capital city functions could
be established included those Prashant Reddy had considered as early as 2012. However,
the Chandrababu Naidu led TDP government disregarded the recommendations and in
March–April 2015 declared a greenfield capital named Amaravati on the bank of the
Krishna River in Guntur district – with Guntur and Vijayawada cities as its conurbation.
Obfuscating references to caste politics with “hydraulic development politics,” Naidu
used the water supply in the region to justify his capital choice (Gidwani 2008, 95).
This article examines some of the interconnected issues of regional specificity, caste
politics and land speculation unfolding today in parts of India. Concentrating on two
urban conurbations which saw intense speculation – Guntur-Vijayawada in Coastal
Andhra region and Donakonda town close to Rayalaseema region (see Figure 1) – the
article posits that such investments need to be understood around the centrality of land
as a vehicle for development, political influence and caste pride among dominant
agrarian castes in different regions of India (Jeffrey 2001; Kennedy 2020; Nielsen 2020).
However, as shown later in this article, the fruits of a land-based speculative economy
also hold “promise” for other groups. During the run-up to the capital declaration, what
4 S. ROOHI

Figure 1. Map of bifurcated states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana

Source: Adapted from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Telengana.PNG.

Sivaramakrishnan and Agrawal (2003) call the cultural politics of development paved the
way for different caste groups within each region to unite in anticipation of future
development prospects not only for their respective regions, but also for their own
futures (Cross 2015). The graded structure of caste hierarchy interacted with the cultural
politics of regional differentiation, whereby those who were marginal landholders, often
belonging to “lower” castes, were dispossessed of their land, selling it to those above
them, in the hope of immediate and future gains.
Based on fieldwork carried out over the last seven years, in what follows the logic
behind land speculation in the period leading to the state’s bifurcation and announce-
ment of the new capital is explored (for the politics of land pooling after Amaravati was
declared, see Ramachandraiah 2016; Vakulabharanam and Prasad 2017).4 By examining
the political economy of the region, the next section foregrounds the emergence of
regional rural elites and the increasing consolidation of land in their hands. Looking at
the latest phase of land commodification in post-reform India, it is argued that dispos-
session from land need not always be accompanied by violence or forceful acquisition by
the state, but can also occur in unremarkable ways, mediated through market mechan-
isms. The article then proceeds to show that in the run-up to capital formation,
 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ASIA 5

speculative land markets led to the emergence of competing speculation zones, including
in and around Donakonda and Mangalagiri. In addition, attention is given to how caste
affiliation and politics of regional belonging mediated speculation in the two regions,
fuelled and facilitated through political parties like YSRCP and TDP. Finally, it is shown
that speculative activities created a sense of anticipation of better prospects among buyers
and sellers of land, and in the run-up to capital selection led to the accumulation of land,
often in the hands of already powerful groups, while silently dispossessing marginal
landholders.

Regional Agrarian Transformation and Land Commodification

On the Mangalagiri Road or National Highway 5 in 2011–2012, the steady expansion of
agricultural land converted to empty commercial plots was striking. Buyers, sellers and
brokers identified this new phase of land commodification in the region as being a result
of the resurfacing demand for a separate state of Telangana and the consequent flow of
money from the USA-based regional diaspora (Roohi 2017, 2018). Until then, such
investment had flowed to Hyderabad (Biao 2007). By 2015, any remaining agricultural
land was subsumed into neatly carved plots with developers’ signs marking ownership
and tradability. Scholars link the unfolding process of land commodification to land
grabbing, where agricultural land is taken from relatively poorer farmers and converted
into transactional commodities (see Borras et al. 2011; Borras and Franco 2013; Levien
2018).
Land grabbing is a global process linked with changes in the global political economy
even when the modalities of change differ in their specificities (Akram-Lodhi and Kay
2008; Banerjee-Guha 2013; Zoomers 2010). However, this article, while acknowledging
this global process, argues for a fuller and a more situated understanding of the realities
of different regions in India undergoing agrarian transformation following neo-liberal
economic reforms (Levien 2012). Studies have shown that post-reform, as states compete
to attract national or global investments, most of the negotiations around land transfers
have taken place at the regional rather than the national level (see, for example, Levien
2011; Bedi and Tillin 2015; Nielsen and Bedi 2017). Indian states acquire agricultural land
and transfer it to industry, often through coercive means, cloaking it in the language of
development, or through a combination of tactics that attempt to build consent on
a material basis among those dispossessed of their land (Levien 2013a, 400–402; see
also Das 2020). Often laws are used as a lever to broker between activism against land
acquisition by the state and acquiescence to a neo-liberal development strategy promoted
by the same state (Nielsen and Nilsen 2015, 205).
According to Nielsen (2016, 3), India underwent two major socio-political transfor-
mations since the early 1990s that had since then governed land transfers taking place
within the country. The first is the liberalisation of the economy and the second is the
ensuing change in India’s federal structure that enabled states to more freely invite
foreign or domestic capital, often by providing cheap land (Agarwal and Levien 2020;
Kennedy 2020). Both developments altered the regional political economy of Andhra
Pradesh in decisive ways. In fact, the state was one of the first to undertake reforms
outside the diktats of the central government and negotiate a loan directly with the World
Bank to restructure its economy (Reddy 2002). Much of this loan and project benefitted
6 S. ROOHI

rural elites transitioning to professional classes (Mooij 2007, 47). Some touted liberal-
isation as ushering in a new period of progress and democracy (Corbridge et al. 2005).
Yet, studies show that post-liberalisation, state resources continue to be utilised for the
benefit of a few powerful groups, even if democratic forms are in place (Jeffrey and Lerche
2000, Harriss-White 2003).
Literature on land transfers also suggests that dispossession from land is state aided,
often requiring agricultural land to be commoditised for purposes as diverse as: the
creation of Special Economic Zones or SEZs (Levien 2013b; Cross 2014); for mining
(Aphun and Sharma 2017; Oskarsson and Sareen 2020); or even for changing of land use
patterns in urban peripheries (Roy 2017). Yet, as shown below, for the period preceding
the announcement of Andhra’s new capital, land transfers from marginal landholders to
rural elites do not always follow from direct violence or state repression and are not
always accompanied by protests, as we see in the case of state supported land acquisitions
(see Levien 2011, Cross 2014; Nielsen 2016). As a result of economic restructuring, new
and different opportunities for land commodification and land transfer are arising in
unremarkable ways, mediated by market mechanisms. In such cases, the state is not
always an expropriator of land for private industrial or non-industrial purposes; its role is
passive – allowing private players to create a speculative land market in anticipation of
future “development.” As Prashant Reddy’s case shows, speculative land markets in
Andhra Pradesh have allowed even small-time land speculators like him to shape the
land market in quotidian ways, the contours of which are regulated socially rather than
by state institutions (Harriss-White 2003, 2004).
Building on these two broad strands of argument, it is postulated that a regional lens
allows a clearer view of the processes of agrarian transformation that have precipitated
land transfers at different moments in the history of the region. A regional historical
political economy lens helps us to better understand how and why, in post-reform India,
caste-mediated social relations continue to be a crucial axis of accumulation and silent
dispossession, albeit in new ways (see Nielsen 2020). Moreover, this view allows us to
apprehend the ways in which regional specificity, caste politics, and land speculation are
entangled, shaping land commodification in particular ways outside of the state’s direct
purview.

A Regional Political Economy Lens

There are multiple registers through which scholars have made sense of India’s regions,
and regions coincide with state boundaries (see Harriss-White 2017). Both colonial and
post-colonial history has moulded India’s regions and the regional elites have played
a vital role in sculpting and controlling regional identities (Cohn 1987; Misra and
Niranjana 2005, 4675). In much of India, these elites are inevitably drawn from the
ranks of the dominant castes who also control most of the land in the form of agricultural
holdings. In Andhra Pradesh, agricultural land is concentrated in the hands of agrarian
castes like Kammas and Reddys. Andhra’s variegated regional political economy paved
the way for different regional elites to territorially consolidate their control over land,
particularly since the late colonial period (Washbrook 1976; Ludden 1985, 85). This
consolidation of landholding has occurred at different moments for these groups, amidst
changing agrarian relations over the last several decades (Prasad 2015).
 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ASIA 7

While earlier work on the agrarian question highlighted this role of upper-caste
landlords and their control of rural social relations (Patnaik 1986, 786; Bernstein 1996,
42–43), it neglected a fine-grained analysis of the caste–class overlap to account for
agricultural growth and capitalist development driven by petty commodity producers,
farmer capitalists and landlords (see Lerche 2013, 393–394). For instance, it fails to
foreground how all these classes of agricultural producers have similar caste locations.
A sociological approach could better explain how despite class differences, their interests
may collide or diverge, as it did in the phase of accelerating land commodification. Land
speculation is a newer and more fragmented process tied to its commodification and
consolidation, yet it has generated limited scholarly debate in the Indian context
(Goldman 2011; Levien 2012; Sarkar 2015 are exceptions). As this article shows, the
antecedents to the latest phase of land transfers and resultant dispossession lie in regional
agrarian histories.
Coastal Andhra was part of the Madras Presidency under British colonial rule and
followed the ryotwari system of land revenue collection.5 Due to the construction of dams
on the Krishna and Godavari rivers in the mid-nineteenth century and the development
of canal irrigation systems, the region saw a sharp increase in agricultural productivity in
the latter part of that century. This led to the commercialisation of farming during the
early twentieth century (Baker and Washbrook 1975; Satyanarayana 1990). Rice became
the main agricultural product and mono-cropping became the norm, leading to the
emergence of commodity markets for agricultural produce. Up to the 1930s, the area
under cultivation expanded, leading to tremendous pressure on land, as even grazing
land was converted into agricultural land to grow paddy. The ryotwari system also
instituted a system of private ownership of land by cultivators, creating land markets
in the process. These developments led to the emergence of a large and prosperous class
of peasant castes participating in the cash economy (Kumar 1975). The rise of
a prosperous class of large landowning cultivators consolidated the power of the domi-
nant agrarian castes, especially the Kammas, Reddys and Rajus and Kapus. Harrison
(1956, 381) has estimated that during the time of his research in the Krishna delta region,
Kamma farmers owned 80% of the fertile delta land.
After India’s independence, the Green Revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s
further stimulated commercial agriculture and led to the emergence of capitalist relations
in agricultural production (Upadhya 1988). Agricultural development programmes pro-
moted by the state government facilitated access to market, credit and irrigation facilities
(Parthasarathy 1975). Later, what Upadhya (1988, 1376) calls a “capitalist farmer” class
began to diversify into business activities and non-agricultural occupations, such as trade
and moneylending and started to migrate to regional towns to establish businesses and
pursue education for their children. The construction of the Nagarajuna Sagar dam,
completed in 1961, brought the hitherto dry areas of Guntur district under irrigation,
further expanding commercialised agricultural production (Reddy 1985). A process of
financialisation of land and the movement of capital between the countryside and urban
centres shaped the development of a vibrant regional economy, particularly after inde-
pendence (Ananth 2007, 120–122). However, agrarian expansion and its development
went hand in hand with the deteriorating condition of agricultural labourers from the
marginalised castes (Rao 1985). The rise in the economic stature of landholders saw
a concomitant decline in the social status of agricultural labourers, mainly the
8 S. ROOHI

“untouchable” Dalits or Scheduled Castes. This strong hierarchical positioning of the

dominant castes vis-à-vis the service castes has not changed. It is important to note that
the commercialisation of farming also led to the opening of the land market (Kumar
1975).
In contrast, Rayalaseema is widely considered the drier and “underdeveloped” region
of Andhra Pradesh. It was a region largely dependent on tank irrigation but the area
covered by this irrigation method declined throughout the twentieth century and depen-
dency on well irrigation increased during the same time (Kumar 2017, 20–30). The
ryotwari system had already given smaller farmers huge tax burdens during the late
nineteenth century, and those with small holdings did not have accumulated capital to
reinvest in farming. After the surveys and settlements of the 1860s and 1870s, the colonial
administration set up the Kurnool-Cudappah canal to boost agricultural productivity
(Rajasekhar and Rao 1994, A80). The colonial administration initiated the production of
agricultural commodities for the international market and prices steadily increased until
the 1920s. The period also saw the emergence of a few powerful Reddy landlords in
Cudappah and Kurnool districts who benefitted from this phase of internationalisation of
markets (Washbrook 1973, 507). It is estimated that most villages in Rayalaseema had
two or three Reddy families who controlled substantial agricultural land there
(Damodaran 2008, 113).
During this period, some 10% of landowners held more than 20 acres of land, which
hindered the growth of dynamic farming methods (Damodaran 2008, 113). Famines and
influenza epidemics led to a declining population, particularly among “lower castes”
(Rajasekhar and Rao 1994, A82). Dwindling outputs from the agrarian economy – much
of which was dependent on groundnut production – further aggravated the issue in the late
1920s (Subramanian and Purkayastha 1986). These events plunged the region into severe
agrarian distress for almost a quarter of a century. Because of the nature of land holdings
and reduced water availability, Green Revolution technologies took off late, during the
1980s, when groundnut production peaked but decelerated once again by the end of the
1990s (Subrahmanyam and Sekhar 2003). Apart from slow agricultural growth,
Rayalaseema’s development appeared stinted when in 1956, after the state’s borders were
reorganised and Telangana included within the state, the capital was shifted from Kurnool
to Hyderabad. Because of this agro-economic history, Rayalaseema did not see as much
land fragmentation or distribution among smaller landholders as in Coastal Andhra, but
rather land became concentrated in the hands of a few landlords (Balagopal 1986).

“Entrepreneurial” Kammas and “Feudal” Reddys

Land ownership has translated into political power for Kammas and Reddys in both
regions. Most of the large Rayalaseema farmers were Reddys who held powerful positions
under successive Congress governments in Andhra Pradesh from the 1950s. While
YSRCP is a recent entrant to politics in Andhra Pradesh, many view it as Congress’
replacement in Andhra, because, like Congress, its leadership is largely drawn from
among the Reddys and many Congress leaders made a switch to this party after it was
formed in 2011.6 Reddy landlords in Rayalaseema are ascribed feudal characteristics
when compared to more enterprising and capitalist Kammas (Balagopal 1986). Such
reasoning has also been used to explain the dominance of Reddys in Andhra’s political
 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ASIA 9

landscape and their vote-bank cultivation among other social groups, particularly the
lower castes (Elliott 1970).
The long association of Reddys with political power in Andhra has resulted in strong
political rivalry with Kammas (Pingle 2011). Due to this inter-caste rivalry, the Kammas
of the coastal districts aligned with the Communist Party of India in early decades after
independence, but never managed to capture power in the state (Harrison 1956).
Consequently, powerful Kammas would often depend on the Reddys as political arbiters.
As a key interlocutor explained in early 2012: “We had money, but still had to go begging
to these Reddy politicians for our business purpose” (Interview, retired school teacher,
Guntur, February 2012). In response to the resentment of Kammas regarding their lack
of political power, the TDP was founded by the Kamma cinema star, N. T. Rama Rao in
1982. The party quickly became a serious challenger to Congress in Andhra Pradesh, as
Kammas began to consolidate their political power in the state and emerged as a strong
political force in opposition to the Reddys. The enmeshing of caste and politics in the
state has made it difficult to separate the interests of caste groups from those of the
political parties they lead (Reddy 2002, 875).
The control of political parties by dominant castes as a mean to control resources,
particularly land, for further capital accumulation is well established (Omvedt 1982; Witsoe
2013). This reinvention of caste and its entanglement with politics in Andhra has led to
intense inter-caste strife between Kammas and Reddys over access to state resources, with
other communities only occupying a peripheral space in this struggle. In the run-up to
capital selection, both political parties used the trope of regional belonging as a uniting
factor across castes, promising “development for all” in the truncated state if they come to
power in 2014. Yet, beyond the rhetoric, the nested structure of caste hierarchy allowed for
a pragmatic convergence of interests cutting across caste lines, based on political and
economic calculations. The possibility of immediate short- to long-term material benefits
became became one of the driving forces in uniting people to vie for the capital in their
respective regions, a prospect tied to the victory of regional caste-based political parties.

Political Mobilisation and the Convergence of Interest

In both Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra, land-based development aspirations in the
run-up to the selection of the new capital were heavily mediated by the YSRCP and TDP.
As mentioned, these parties with a dominant caste-based leadership at the helm, also had
stakes of “caste pride” or kula gauravam at their core. Prior to bifurcation, statements like
“Reddys' might well be broken if YSRCP loses,” or “it’s crucial for Kammas to win or they
will lose everything” were a common refrain in the state. The fact that Reddys are spread
across the three regions of undivided Andhra worked in their favour when they mobi-
lised support for Congress throughout the decades since the state’s existence. Bifurcation
spatially divided their power and reduced them to being dominant only in Rayalaseema.
The nascent victory of YSRCP was considered vital for Reddys to hold on to state power.
The party had many tasks at hand prior to the 2014 election: to wean Reddy leadership
from Congress, to build alliances with other caste and religious groups and to secure the
interests of Reddys if the bifurcation were to happen, one of which was by bringing the
capital city into or close to Rayalaseema. As an existing party, while it did not have to
build its support base, the TDP too worked hard to cater to the interests of its caste-based
10 S. ROOHI

supporters while building alliances with other groups, but with additional focus on
Coastal Andhra. Both parties worked through their party functionaries to build momen-
tum for the new capital, facilitating a collusion of political interests across class, caste and
religious lines.
In August 2015, Satish Yadav, a local real estate dealer and developer in Guntur, who
had voted for the TDP in 2014 and canvassed for the party, stated in an interview that
before elections he was apprehensive about a YSRCP victory, “we [Coastal Andhra
residents] would lose out on the fruits of development and [the] real estate and infra-
structure boom would not take place in Coastal Andhra but rather in Rayalaseema.” This
view was widely held. In another interview, in August 2014, Raghav, an educated
professional from Kakinada and living in Bangalore, expressed support for the TDP for
the sake of his region. His reasons for supporting the TDP included the view that Jagan
Mohan Reddy was a “goonda” (criminal) and he would rather be ruled by a technocrat
like Naidu than someone like Reddy.
Both interviewees belong to non-Kamma castes – one is a Golla and the other a Kapu,
another dominant agrarian caste in the Godavari basin who have had periods of enmity
with Kammas in the early 1990s (see Parthasarathy 1997). But in the run-up to the 2014
elections the Kapus and Kammas – from Godavari and the Krishna basin of Coastal
Andhra respectively – had seen a coalescing of interests cutting across caste lines.
Raghav’s family, many of whom held huge tracts of agricultural land in East Godavari
district were willing to make peace with the Kammas, because as Raghav put it, “someone
from Rayalaseema ruling them seemed like bad news for Coastal Andhra.” There were
too many uncertainties politically and it was better to rely on a “party from the same
region.” This kind of inter-caste based political machinating culminated in the TDP
winning 108 out of 175 seats in the truncated state, and 48 out of 67 seats in the four
coastal districts in the 2014 election.7
As a new party, YSRCP did not have a committed support base but was riding on YSR’s
legacy and Congress networks and alliances. In Kadapa district, for example, politically
active respondents suggested that alliances were forged between Reddys and lower castes,
while the TDP was successful in co-opting land-owning and Other Backward Class (OBC)
castes, as well as some disgruntled Reddys.8 Yet, the emergent land market in Rayalaseema
united many who were eager to have the capital city in their region, so that their land value
would escalate and they could benefit from the development of the region. A Kamma
family from a small town called Railway Kodur in Kadapa district interviewed in May 2015
hoped that the capital would come near their place, as it would pull the area out of
“backwardness.” The development of their region would not only mean appreciation of
their land prices, but that their family members who had migrated to work as house helps
in the Middle East would return. “If you become crorepati [multi-millionaire], why work in
Kuwait?” quipped one. YSRCP ultimately lost the elections even though it did quite well,
losing only by a margin of just 2.6% (Deccan Chronicle, May 18, 2014).
The land question can at once be divisive while forging a pragmatic convergence of
interests based on different calculations. Therefore, paying attention to the “political”
dimension of mobilisation around the question of land is also useful to understand why
land transfers, while creating regionally competing zones of investment, did not necessarily
create widespread resistance during the run-up to capital selection, as will be shown below.
Prospects of development inflected the prognosis of better prospects for buyers and sellers
 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ASIA 11

of land, creating an economy of anticipation in Andhra that shaped vertical political

mobilisation. This economy is temporally contingent, mediated by shifting political calcu-
lations. The bifurcation of the state of Andhra Pradesh provided such an opportunity –
infusing aspiration among people for improving their material conditions and making
calculated choices including building pragmatic intra-regional and inter-caste alliances.
These alliances were inflected by the promise of future development possibilities – for the
region and for the people personally – and compelled many to either successfully or
unsuccessfully hedge their bets on the future capital of Andhra, with varying outcomes.

Speculation, Anticipation and Silent Dispossession

Land speculation not only entails investments in land by some, it also requires the sale of
land by others for it to become a speculative commodity. This period presented a unique
opportunity for often marginal farmers to sell land at improbably high rates, in anticipa-
tion of improving their material prospects. As Weszkalnys (2015, 617) explains, spec-
ulation is an anticipatory prospect; it comprises a “heterogeneous set of practices, an
observation of potentiality, both in the sense of remarking on potentiality’s existence and
of producing new facts about it.” Speculating on land in anticipation of something that is
yet to be – a potential capital gain – can be seen as planning for an imagined better and
superior future life (Appadurai 2013, 287; Cross 2014, 91). Here anticipation is
a preparatory phase to face an uncertain future, almost bringing the future to the present
(Weszkalnys 2014, 221).
Land speculation engenders anticipation tied to its appreciation in value and aspirations
attached to that value. Yet, these aspirations led to different outcomes – while the finances
of the sellers (often marginal landholders who sold their land at a price that appreciated
three to four times within as many years) were augmented, they were also silently
dispossessed of their land (the value of which is only expected to increase over time).
Conversely, land became further concentrated in the hands of powerful caste groups. Land
transfers usually create conflict, but they were accompanied by expediency on the part of
marginal landholders, who were “choosing” to become dispossessed in anticipation of the
better future prospects that a speculative economy offered in boom time (see Cross 2014).
When asked in March 2013 why the state capital should come to Rayalaseema,
Ambedkar, a young college student from Produttur in Kadapa district, remarked “we
need development here.” For him, “development” had two meanings. One was linked to
infrastructure development – better roads, water and electricity supplies provided by the
state – and the second was as personal development, tied to aspirational material well-
being. While different groups agreed with the first meaning of development as better
infrastructure provided by the state, what was meant as personal development or well-
being differed. For those with meagre land holdings who often belonging to Scheduled
Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs, while land had value, it was also a burden – not
allowing them to move from farming to other jobs. To become “developed” often
entailed selling their small parcels of (usually assigned) land when there was a boom in
the land market and investing in better housing, improving material conditions and
providing private schooling for their children.
For those with sufficient capital, “development” was tied to landownership, the pride
associated with it and the increase in land’s notional value with accelerated
12 S. ROOHI

commodification, that further enhanced their pride. They would either buy more land,
or, at times, buy land and sell it within a short period of time (a few months to a year)
making a profit of 10–20% in the process, and further repeat the cycle. These investments
would reap further dividends when agricultural land was converted into real estate
projects, controlled by private players, while the state invested in the basic infrastructure
like laying roads, providing piped water and building electricity grids (Levien 2012).
Some landowners doubled as dealers and swiftly got their agricultural land converted into
smaller plots and sold it to others to make even higher profits. Bigger players (often with two
or more dealers getting together) either built standalone apartments or housing estates,
depending on their ability to mobilise capital. The financial viability of each project was
entwined with the state’s responsibility to provide the basic infrastructure. Additionally, in the
case of Andhra’s future capital city, the state would also bring foreign direct investments for
projects including real estate development and the setting up of SEZs.9
Speculative land purchases were rife within Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra prior to
the re-emergence of the Telangana agitation, yet they were uneven, and the sale and
conversion of agricultural land occurred at a much faster rate in Coastal Andhra than in
Rayalaseema. Plans for developing the VGTM region were made as early as 1978, when
the VGTM Urban Development Authority was set up. Chandrababu Naidu’s “Vision
2020” added some impetus to speculation on future development in this urban conglom-
eration (Andhra Pradesh nd). But when the Telangana agitation resurfaced, the spec-
ulative market took off properly. In Coastal Andhra, villages in and around Mangalagiri
were highly sought after. National Highway 5 connected the towns of Guntur and
Vijayawada, and along this road, an acre of land that would sell for 200,000–400,000
rupees in 2004–2005, had shot up to between 1 and 2 million rupees (depending on
proximity to the highway) after the calls for Telangana gained momentum. Once the
news was confirmed that Telangana would be created, land prices further appreciated to
10–12 million rupees (Interview, Muslim land broker in Pamuru, Guntur, January 2015).
In Rayalaseema there had been little economic development historically once Kurnool
was removed as a capital city of Andhra in 1956. However, when YSR came to power in
2004 this changed. A young Reddy caste technology professional from Kadapa explained:

I have seen my region change. When I was growing up in 1980s and early 1990s, land did not
have much value, except maybe in big towns. But once I went to college, I started seeing
changes after [YSR] Rajshekhar Reddy came to power. Then everyone started to invest in
land and prices increased tremendously. It doubled in every few years. In towns, govern-
ment employees would pool money together and buy a few acres of agricultural land and
then convert it to real estate plots in towns. We saw lot of development. After 2010, land that
would cost 50,000 in late 1990s suddenly became worth 15–20 hundred thousand [rupees].
After [the Telangana] . . . agitation, land prices went up so much that this was also not
possible, so people started buying land in villages! (Interview, May 2015).

While the effect of political mobilisation was felt on land markets in both the regions, its
visible manifestation was in the emergence of chains of brokers, across the caste and
religious divides at key speculative sites. As Muslim broker Basha explained in a follow-
up interview, “earlier, Chowdaries and Reddys would deal in real estate, but in last few
years, you see many people like me becoming real estate agents” (Guntur, August 2015).
The lower-level agents would approach as many people as they could in the hope of
convincing them to buy or sell some land so as to make a small commission. Sometimes
 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ASIA 13

a few brokers were involved in the same land deal but irrespective of the number of
brokers, 1–2% of the total land price was paid as a brokerage fee, to be shared among all
brokers involved. Yet, Reddys and Kammas remained at the top of the chain as final deal-
makers for these transactions. For Prashant Reddy, two of the three land plots were
identified for possible investments by OBCs but the deal was sealed by Reddys. This
vertical penetration of brokerage had a catalytic effect on the buying and selling of land: it
created a sense of immediacy among both buyers and sellers who felt they had to make
quick albeit risky choices regarding land transaction.
Development prospects related to the new capital city were also in part mediated by land
investments by political leaders in both regions. Despite uncertainties, there was gossip
after YSR’s death, especially from 2010 onwards, that Telangana would become the capital
and many respondents cited it as one of the main factors, coupled with the inflow of money
from politicians, businessmen and non-resident Indians (NRIs), creating a speculative land
market in Coastal Andhra).10 In fact, the names of a few powerful Kamma politicians and
big businessmen from Guntur and Krishna districts would crop up repeatedly during
conversations between 2011 and 2014, with interlocutors explaining how these players’
investment choices had further added to land speculation in the region.11 Locals would cite
that “big people” (pedda wallo) had purchased many acres of land in and around Guntur-
Vijayawada conurbation, pointing out that the TDP’s electoral victory would make these
places part of the future capital, since Kammas, the TDP’s main support base, controlled
most of the land here. Therefore, several Kamma interviewees awaited fresh elections in
2014, banking on the TDP to come to power after a gap of ten years, failing which their
dreams of “development” would not come to fruition.
Before Amaravati was announced as the capital, investors knew that Donakonda was in
an arid region that lacked groundwater, but this did not deter them from speculating in
land around the town. As news spread that Jagan Mohan Reddy’s relatives and many
Reddy leaders had purchased land around Donakonda (among other places in
Rayalaseema), speculation increased. Donakonda’s location in Prakasham district, almost
bordering Rayalaseema, made it a zone connecting two distinct regions of the state. The
town itself had some 50,000 acres of government land within a radius of ten kilometres
where a new capital could be built without requiring land acquisition (Rao 2018, 72). Such
factors meant that between 2012 and early 2015, areas around Donakonda saw
a continuous inflow of speculative capital. It was not just small-time investors like
Prashant Reddy, but his neighbour, who ran two colleges in parts of Prakasham district,
who had invested around the town, banking heavily on the YSRCP coming to power.
People from Coastal Andhra too started buying land in Prakasham. A Kamma doctor
living in New York explained how some of her friends and relatives (all NRIs) were buying
land in Prakasham district as it might become the capital (Interview, July 2012). She
explained that YSRCP supporters among NRIs (particularly Reddys) had been enthusiastic
in promoting the party and it seemed wise to not put all of one’s savings in buying land in
Guntur and Krishna districts. In fact in 2012–2013, such were the political uncertainties
that speculators (even the most loyal supporters of either party) hedged their bets and
invested in both the regions, while still putting most money in their own precinct.
Land and real estate are viewed as providing security against hard times, but land
ownership is also related to “prestige” and the collective might of the agrarian elite, whose
“honour” as a dominant caste is linked to landholding. All brokers interviewed over the
14 S. ROOHI

years of research agreed that during the run-up to the selection of the capital, more sellers
were from the lower castes and buyers were from dominant castes. In cases where upper-
caste landowners sold their land, the land was often bought as a speculative instrument in
the first place. In villages around the VGTM region before the capital announcement
there were instances of landowning caste members selling part of their land, but they
augmented their landholdings by buying elsewhere.
Therefore, while the dominant groups continued to increase their landholdings, many
marginal landholders were often selling their land to the best bidders. The illegality of
selling assigned land did not deter sales at a time when speculative purchases were at their
peak between 2012 and 2015. For instance, between 2012 and 2013, half of the 100 acres
of assigned land near Gannavaram in Coastal Andhra had already been sold to small-
time speculators like Pashant Reddy. One seller interviewed in December 2012 explained
that his tiny plot was non-transferable, but as a poor man, he did not mind illegally selling
it to make some money. His son was jobless and he was too old to earn himself. By
2015–2016, all the 100 acres of the assigned land had been sold, and by 2018, upper-caste
buyers started lobbying with the Revenue Department to consider these 100 acres for
regularisation. In another instance, in a village close to Markapur town, near Donakonda,
a vaddera or mason interviewed in March 2013 explained that he had sold his four acres
to Reddys from Kadapa. His story was of land-as-drudgery. Semi-arid land meant back-
breaking work with little earnt in return and almost no savings. He had a family of seven,
including his divorced brother and his child, and the money from agriculture was never
enough. Unwilling to carry this burden anymore, cashing-in on unusually high land
prices seemed a reasonable way to be rid of it. He had expected 2.5 million rupees for his
land but managed to sell it for 2 million rupees. He considered this a “fortune.”
Once the capital was announced, land speculation cooled off for several years. In 2019,
however, YSRCP swept to power, defeating the TDP, and within a few months reversed
the decision on Amaravati. In December 2019, a three capital cities formula was
announced, ostensibly for overall development of the state, signalling the temporally
contingent dimension of land-mediated political decisions. The lower house of the
assembly ratified this move on January 20, 2020 (India Today, January 20, 2020; The
News Minute, January 30, 2020). With Vishakhapatnam as the main administrative
capital, the new government plans to reduce Amaravati to legislative capital and intro-
duce Kurnool as another capital where the high court will be located. The decision was
met with widespread protests in Amaravati where people opposed the move. Conversely,
investors like Prashant Reddy who chose to “park” their money in different regions are
optimistic that the declines in land value in 2014 will be made up, setting off another wave
of an economy of anticipation and land commodification.
The struggle around Andhra’s future capital and the speculative land markets it
spawned exemplifies the ways in which a cultural and regional imaginary of develop-
ment, led by the dominant castes, percolated down to create an economy of anticipation.
The formation of speculative land markets and ensuing land transfers in the run-up to
the capital formation affected land values owing to the risky nature of speculation that
could only be borne by individuals like Prashant Reddy – belonging to the powerful
Reddy caste – who had sufficient capital to take such risks. Simultaneously, it precipitated
forms of “silent dispossession,” where land was purchased from those undergoing rural
 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ASIA 15

distress or those eager to make money during a speculative land boom, where it undid
their burden of tilling land with receding productivity.

Conclusion
What the race over the capital city between two regions in Andhra Pradesh suggests
is that land speculation and ensuing land commodification are an outcome of the
uneven weaving together of politics and strategies that are shaped to a large extent
by the regional political economy, itself structured around caste. Following the
acceptance of demands for a separate Telangana state, intense speculation over
land emerged in parts of Andhra when the prospect of building a new capital
arose. Dominant caste members (both big and small players) – largely Kammas
and Reddys in Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema respectively – capitalised by buying
agricultural land from marginal landholders, often converting it into commercial
plots for real estate development. While not all speculation paid off as handsomely
as investors hoped nor did it produce grave losses either. Indeed, the activities of
small-time players accelerated the process of speculation, once the economy of
anticipation was set in motion.
The prospects of enmeshing of caste politics and land speculation around the future
capital was not only material (speculative capital) but also immaterial (involving symbolic
capital) for the two competing and powerful castes. Borrowing from Streeck (2010, 138),
who argues that capitalism is structured and regulated through social institutions, we can
view caste as one such social institution structuring capitalist relations. Because of non-
uniformity in the way caste politics plays out in India, one has to be attentive to the
specificities that may create collaborations between those who are dispossessed and those
who dispossess them, and that may create rivalries between powerful groups who wish to
control the mechanisms of wealth accumulation through dispossession. In Andhra
Pradesh, caste becomes this axis of accumulation and dispossession, revolving around
regionalism.
The role of the state in such market-mediated land commoditisation need not
always be active. A simple understanding of state-aided “land grabs” does not do
justice to on-the-ground complexities. The economy of anticipation allows for
a pragmatic convergence of interests, giving form to regionally specific speculative
land markets. In the period before the announcement of the state capital, powerful
yet contesting caste groups from different regions came forward to stake their
claims. Coastal Andhra elbowed Rayalaseema, ostensibly because of hydraulic devel-
opment politics, but in fact because speculations led by the region’s elite – the
Kammas – paid off when TDP, a party with Kamma leadership and a base in
Coastal Andhra, came to power. Their fortunes are set to reverse with the loss of
TDP and coming to power of YSRCP in 2019, along with the declaration of
distributed capital functions over three cities. However, in either of the events of
TDP or YSRCP’s victory, speculation in anticipation of (a) new capital(s) provided
an opportunity for further concentration of land in the hands of powerful groups,
dispossessing marginal landholders in the process.
16 S. ROOHI

Notes
1. All names of interviewees are anonymised to maintain confidentiality.
2. See Elliott (2011) for more discussion on YSR’s politics of welfare and development
combined. For details on how Andhra Pradesh has used market-oriented policies of devel-
opment, where land related projects have become a vehicle for development, see Cross
(2014).
3. Andhra Pradesh was formed in 1956 on a linguistic basis, with Hyderabad as its capital. The
state consisted of three distinguishable agro-economic and socio-political regions based on
their distinct histories, namely Coastal Andhra, Rayalaseema and Telangana (Parthasarathy
2013). In part based on claims of distinctness and that its resources had been exploited by
non-Telangana communities, the demand for a separate state of Telangana arose, first in the
late 1960s and again in the 2000s.
4. Data gathered for this article stretches over seven years. In 2011, the author made her first
visit to Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema respectively for short field trips. Thereafter,
between 2011 and 2012, 15 months of intensive multi-sited ethnographic research was
conducted, primarily anchored in the Krishna basin, but with four months of fieldwork
split equally between Hyderabad, India and New York, New Jersey and California in the
USA to grasp the different dimensions of diaspora resource flows. The primary research
methods were qualitative, including participant and non-participant observations and
interviews. However, these were paired with a short 100 household survey in Guntur in
2012. In 2013, another short fieldtrip was made to Rayalaseema, followed by six months of
fieldwork between 2015 and 2016. This fieldwork relied largely on interviews combined with
non-participant observation. While the Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra fieldwork was
conducted for two different projects, land-based speculation was a common thread, espe-
cially around the question of imminent bifurcation of the state and the possibility of a new
capital. The author followed the trails of money spent on buying and selling land, inter-
viewing a host of people who were involved in land speculation, including real or potential
buyers and sellers, brokers and a handful of bureaucrats and consultants working for the
various governments. The last field visit was made in August 2018.
5. “Ryotwari” refers to a land revenue collection system instituted by the British, in which
agricultural taxes were directly collected from individual cultivators, in contrast to the
zamindari system where local landlords were responsible for revenue collection.
6. YSR’s son Jagan Mohan Reddy was keen to be chief minister after his father’s death, even as
the Congress Party’s high command rejected his demand. He went on to launch his own
party in 2011, but was jailed immediately afterwards in a case of political graft.
7. East and West Godavari districts (that together with Guntur and Krishna form the green
belt in Coastal Andhra) are a Kapu stronghold.
8. OBC refers to “middle” castes, below Reddys and Kammas in the regional caste hierarchy,
but above Dalits. The Constitution of India designates certain categories of people eligible
for quota (or reservation) in government jobs and places in educational institutions. This
positive discrimination is intended to remedy past caste discrimination. The official cate-
gories include Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes (tribals or adivasis, considered indigen-
ous people) and, since 1991, OBCs.
9. After the TDP government announced Amaravati as the capital city, it actively proceeded to
implement a land-pooling scheme, where an agricultural tract of some 33,000 acres of land
on the banks of the Krishna river were taken over by the government and designated as the
space where the new capital would be built, almost from scratch. It aimed to build the city
along the lines of Singapore and promised to attract foreign investments. For details about
the contestations that followed the decision on land pooling (see Ramachandraiah 2016).
10. NRI is an official term denoting citizens who live outside the country for more than 180 days
a year, mainly for taxation purposes. The acronym is widely used to refer to any Indian
residing outside the country, regardless of citizenship status. NRIs in Coastal Andhra,
mostly Kammas, were one of the significant groups who invested in land, initially in
 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ASIA 17

Hyderabad and then in and around Mangalagiri after the agitation for Telangana as the
capital (see Biao 2007; Roohi 2016, 2019).
11. One name that frequently cropped up was Lingamaneni Ramesh. His father had made
investments around Nagarjuna University along Mangalgiri Road in the early 1980s,
anticipating infrastructure development after the TDP came to power and promised that
the High Court would be shifted to Guntur. Following the resurfacing of demands for
a separate Telangana state, Ramesh commoditised part of these farmlands into real estate
and even invested some of the profits in the fledging airline company Air Costa. His
proximity to Chandrababu Naidu made speculators buy land around his estate before the
capital was announced. When Naidu shifted his secretariat to Amaravati, he made
Lingamneni’s guesthouse into his temporary office.

Acknowledgments
This article partly draws on my PhD research conducted under the Provincial Globalisation
Programme, funded by the Science for Global Development programme of the Netherlands
Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). It was supplemented by self-funded research trips
to Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra between 2013 and 2018. I thank Patrik Oskarsson and
Kenneth Bo Nielsen for their extremely useful comments on the initial drafts of this article.
Thanks are also due Siddharth Sareen and Kevin Hewison for carefully reviewing a revised draft
of the article. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers whose comments proved very insightful
while revising the article for publication. Any oversight or shortcoming, however, is entirely mine.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID
Sanam Roohi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2483-841X

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