Constraints on the Development of a Land

Market in Meghalaya M K Sukumaran Nair In large parts of India the penetration of colonial markets and the emerging bourgeois property relations have led to extensive alienation of tribal lands reducing the tribal people to wage labour. In the north east however, more particularly in Meghalaya, the traditional kinship-based land relations have largely been preserved. Even though private ownership has emerged to some extent, especially in urban and semi-urban areas, only comparatively rarely does land appear to be acquired or disposed of through purchase or sale. The paper looks at the precise nature of this process of preservation of traditional land relations as they have unfolded in Meghalaya.