Make Live and Let the Land Question Die: Surplus Population and the Welfare State

Document Type

Research Article

Abstract

Welfare programmes offer an essential lifeline to surplus populations struggling to survive under capitalist relations worldwide. However, such biopolitical inclusion can undermine demands for land. Through an ethnographic study of Adivasi land struggles in Kerala, India, this article explores how welfare regimes that ‘make live' through social transfers can simultaneously ‘let die’ the land question. By prioritising welfare over land, the state effectively erases demands for land as the primary resolution for the crisis of reproduction. Consequently, groups that were dispossessed from land historically are now divorced from the land question discursively.

DOI

10.1080/03066150.2026.2653058

Publication Date

4-16-2026

Journal

The Journal of Peasant Studies

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