On the morning of 31 August 2016, hundreds of villagers in West Bengal's Singur area gathered in front of their televisions. After several hours of waiting in tense anticipation, the villagers burst out in jubilation. Soon, men, women and children emerged from their houses to congratulate each other as they danced, cheered and greeted their neighbours and friends with green gulal (coloured powder) and sweets.

The cause of the emotional celebration was a news flash that announced that the Supreme Court of India had just quashed a land acquisition that had taken place in Singur ten years earlier, when 997 acres of fertile farmland had been expropriated by the then- incumbent Left Front (LF) state government. Many of the local landowners – popularly called ‘unwilling farmers’ by the media because of their unwillingness to comply with the land acquisition – had mobilized to stop the land acquisition from going ahead, but to no avail. In December 2006 their farmland had been fenced, walled and handed over to the private company Tata Motors, which had built a car factory on it. The land losers, though, had not given up and had continued their movement, which eventually led to Tata Motors abandoning Singur in 2008. But their land had remained walled and inaccessible even after Tata's departure. On this day, however, the Supreme Court had declared the land acquisition to be illegal and had ordered the state government to take possession of the land and return it to its erstwhile owners within 12 weeks. A decade after having been deprived of their land, the jubilant villagers were now on the verge of getting it back. A few weeks later, work to dismantle the abandoned Tata Motors sheds and the issuing of new pachas (proof of land ownership) to the farmers was in full swing.

Land is back on the political agenda in India. As the price and use value of land have increased steadily over the past decade – particularly in urban and peri- urban areas, or areas that are rich in minerals – struggles over land and its uses have mushroomed almost across the country.