Agroforestry systems are fundamental features of the rural landscape of the Indian state of Kerala. Yet these mixed species systems are increasingly being replaced by monocultures. This paper explores how public policies on land tenure, agriculture, forestry and tree growing on private lands have interacted with farmer preferences in shaping land use dynamics and agroforestry practices. It argues that not only is there no specific policy for agroforestry in Kerala, but also that the existing sectoral policies of land tenure, agriculture, and forestry contributed to promoting plantation crops, even among marginal farmers. Forest policies, which impose restrictions on timber extraction from farmers' fields under the garb of protecting natural forests, have often acted as a disincentive to maintaining tree-based mixed production systems on farmlands. The paper argues that public policies interact with farmers' preferences in determining land use practices.

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Active land markets in the periphery of Chennai have resulted in large tracts of agricultural land being bought by non-agricultural actors seeking returns primarily from speculation. We argue in this paper that the financialization of land and consequent spurt of agricultural land sales are central to what scholars have termed land grab. Recent literature on land grabs has focused primarily on processes of accumulation by dispossession and the coercive role of the state. Our contention is that land grabs more commonly occur due to the state underinvesting in agriculture, resulting in "dispossession by neglect" of especially marginal and small farmers. Dispossession by neglect better captures the fluid boundary between the coercive and voluntary in contemporary land grabs. KEYWORDS dispossession, financialization of land, land grab, land market 1 | INTRODUCTIONRaghavan (name changed) has been practicing as a civil lawyer for several years in metropolitan Chennai. Since the late 1990s, he has slowly moved out of his legal profession and floated a small real estate services firm in an upmarket neighbourhood in southern Chennai. He has around 150 clients, many of whom are non-resident Indians.The remaining are wealthy individuals mostly based in Chennai. He trades in land on their behalf and brokers purchase and sale of "high-yielding" land mostly south of Chennai. Not only does he ensure clear titles for the lands his clients buy but he also negotiates prices and safeguards their property by fencing them and providing security personnel to prevent illegal encroachments. He studies the market for land and advises his clients when to sell and where to invest in new land. The overlaps between the work of a mutual fund manager and his profession are hard to miss.The acquisition of land, rural land in particular, by wealthy households has been taking place in several parts of India since the early 2000s (Chakravorty, 2013;Rajshekar, 2013).

Indian trawl fishers in the Palk Bay regularly engage in cross‐border fishing to the detriment of Sri Lankan artisanal fishers whose nets are irreparably damaged. Increasing tension between Indian trawl fishers from the state of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lankan artisanal fishers from the Northern Province has resulted in the Sri Lankan government patrolling the international maritime boundary line (IMBL) more stringently and increased arrests of Indian trawl fishers. This paper argues that the present “fisheries crisis” in the Palk Bay must be understood from a political ecology perspective that takes cognizance of the circuitous nature of capital accumulation and how fisher conflict, ethnicity and the politics of the nation‐state have shaped the spatial practices of accumulation. In a changing global context where semi‐industrial vessels are increasingly crossing boundaries, it argues for more context specific studies of processes of capital accumulation.

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