Real estate politicians in India

This article uses as its entry point the empirical phenomenon of what we call ‘real estate politicians’ in India; that is, politicians whose main source of wealth is real estate. We argue that the rise of real estate politicians is situated within deeper processes of ‘labour voter contradictions’ in low-wage democratic societies of the global south. On the one hand, countries like India largely compete in the global economy based on their cheaper labour costs, but on the other hand, the condition of electoral democracy makes it imperative for politicians to meet the consumption, including housing, needs of their low-wage but electorally mobilised labour voters. As real estate politicians mediate the negotiated access of unorganised and surplus workers to informal land and unauthorised housing, the delinking of housing struggles from labour struggles leaves processes of capitalist agglomeration unchecked. This, we argue, blunts the potential of land struggles to emerge as sites of radical labour politics. 本文以我们称之为印度“房地产政治家”的经验现象为切入点；“房地产政治家”就是主要财富来源是房地产的政治家。我们认为，房地产政治家的崛起的背景是，全球南方低工资民主社会中“劳工选民矛盾”的更深层过程。一方面，像印度这样的国家在全球经济中的竞争很大程度上是基于其低廉的劳动力成本，但另一方面，选举民主的环境使得政治家们必须满足工资低、但在选举中被动员起来的劳工选民的消费需求，包括住房需求。随着房地产政治家通过谈判调解无组织和过剩工人获得非正规土地和未授权住房的问题，住房斗争与劳工斗争的脱钩使得资本主义集聚过程不受制约。我们认为，这削弱了土地斗争成为激进劳工政治领域的可能性。