Changing before their very eyes: Urban Expansion and Dispossession in Kammattipadam

Yadu and Sujeesh analyse how the visual world crafted by the 2016 movie Kammattipadam provides minute insight into the class and caste dimensions of urbanization.

C.R.Yadu and G. Sujeesh

The movie Kammattipadam, directed by Rajeev Ravi and released in 2016, was a critical and commercial success. We see this movie as a mirror to the exclusions of contemporary urban processes in Indian cities. If we approach the movie from the vantage point of critical geography, it is about gentrification, a process through which urban space is favourably distributed to the elites through market mechanisms. Set in the context of Kerala’s booming metropolis Kochi, the film brilliantly weaves a story of how subaltern spaces are encroached over by the ‘gentry’ of the city and what it means to the ‘underdogs’ who inhabited those spaces. 

The story progresses through the perspective of Krishnan (Dulquer Salman) as he returns to Kammattipadam in search of his long-lost friend Ganga (Vinayakan). But the sequence of events in the lives of the protagonists also unfolds with it a story of the transformation of an urban fringe in Kochi mainly inhabited by the Dalit working class. With the real estate boom facing the city in the mid-2000s, speculative private capital is rapaciously searching for possible pieces of land which it could financialize. And Kammattipadam is not insular to these processes. Subaltern spaces like these have no other way but to submit to the instincts of predatory capital, ultimately facilitating gentrification.

According to Ghertner,¹ there are three major processes through which gentrification may unfold in the global South—enclosure, dispossession and privatization—all of which have been vividly shown in the movie. Another important aspect of the movie is that it is firmly contextualized in time and space. The time element is shown through the different points in the life history of Krishnan, Ganga and his friends— as children; when they were in their early twenties; and finally, in their early forties. The film uses these three periods to portray the changing socio-spatiality of an urban fringe (see Table 1).

Kammattipadam during Krishnan and Ganga’s childhood is shown amongst lush green paddy fields and a lot of commons; a space dense and extensive enough to play hide and seek (the word ‘padam’ in Kammattipadam literally means paddy field). In their teenage years, Ganga and Krishnan are introduced to gangsterism by Balan (Ganga’s brother). Balan works at the behest of Surendran who runs a small-scale illegal liquor trading network.

When the protagonist comes back to Kammattipadam after a period of imprisonment in his early twenties, the change in landscape is evident. The lush greenery is no longer seen and the paddy fields have been converted to plots ready for sale. The space usable by its inhabitants has considerably shrunk.  While riding with Ganga on a motorbike, Krishnan is baffled to find that many plots have been enclosed by barbed wire fences, making the way to their settlement narrower. 

Krishnan: What is this? This place has changed a lot. I don’t understand this route at all.
Ganga: This is our way home. It has become too narrow, you see!… Everything happened in the blink of an eye. They [real estate agents] came and enclosed everything. 

The present is shown when Krishnan and Ganga are in their forties. Kammattipadam has changed beyond recognition. A high-rise apartment complex becomes the highlight of the place. The lanes have become even narrower and congested, and one side of the lane to Ganga’s home now borders a high concrete wall. There is barely any courtyard left in Ganga’s house and the well has vanished. The small patch of settlement that remains looks sandwiched between the apartment buildings and enclosure on either side. 

Table 1: Intertemporal changes in the socio-spatial constitution of Kammattipadam

	Krishnan and Ganga as children	Krishnan and Ganga in their early twenties	Krishnan and Ganga in their early forties
General landscape	Lush green, filled with paddy fields and coconut trees. Presence of commons.	Land enclosure by private capital, paddy lands reclaimed and converted to real estate	High-rise apartment complex and concrete buildings
Nature of settlement	Impoverished settlement	Impoverished settlement (with considerable enclosure of land by private capital)	Except for a small patch of the old settlement, modern apartments engulf the place
Nature of inhabitants	Dalits and the working class	Some original inhabitants have      been dispossessed	The rich and the upper-middle class (and probably upper      castes too)
Ganga’s house	Kutcha house with extended open courtyard, well constructed towards the end of the courtyard	Pucca house with tiled roof, small courtyard, new well very near to the house	Pucca house, almost no courtyard (the front door lies very close to the high compound which has replaced the well)
Surendran’s occupational building	Kutcha building	Modern office space	Luxury apartment (likely with a posh office room)
Surendran’s business	Petty shop along with small scale illegal liquor trading	Expands the liquor business into large scale, invests in the real estate sector	Real estate business (mostly taken over by the next generation)
Ganga’s job	NA	Gangster	Gangster
Krishnan’s job	NA	Gangster	Security personnel

The film also showcases the use of violence for swift urban expansion. The following conversation between Balan and a young man resisting eviction from his colony shows the tactics of private capital and what dispossession may entail for the people evicted from a place.

Balan: What is this, man…They have offered you a good amount. Then why are you creating problems?
Man: Brother, we work as daily wage labourers in Ernakulam city. If we sell our house [kidappadam] by accepting the amount you give, where else in the city could we find a place to settle down? We will be doomed.
Balan: That is not our concern. We are ready to give you a little more money. Why don’t you convince fellow colony people? If that is not the case, you will see our true colours. Understand?
Man: We won’t go no matter what you do. I don’t have time to waste on you.

In the course of gentrification, the land value in the inner city and its surroundings skyrockets. Some people may find it lucrative to sell their land and buy up another house somewhere where the land value is lower. This may be on the outskirts of the city. In an otherwise stigmatized and peripheral location such as Kammattipadam where Dalits and the working class live, land may be valued at less than the neighbouring ‘prime’ lands.  This could also happen due to the historically low bargaining power of such subaltern groups. All of this would make sure that the value of land in these places won’t rise beyond a point even amidst the real estate boom. These subaltern spaces, therefore, are an easy catch for predatory capital. If the inhabitants don’t voluntarily move out, they would be dispossessed through violence. 

Along with the restructuring of the urban space, a redistribution of inhabitants also takes place in Kammattipadam. The (upper-caste) gentry replaces the (Dalit) working class there. The movie also tells the story of compounding inequality in our society. While Surendran and his physical environment witness a substantial change, Ganga’s circumstances and his house remain the same. While Surendran is now a rich businessman who lives in a gated community, Ganga is still the same gangster as he was some 20 years ago. His wife works in a petrol pump. While Surendran witnesses remarkable economic, social, and spatial mobility, the underdogs are dispossessed of their land and driven to casual labour. 

The film speaks volumes about the social relations of property and power in Kammattipadam and similar places in the Indian context. The song ‘akkaanum maamalayonnum nammudathallen makane…’ which Ganga sings in the movie broadly means, ‘we polayadis are pariahs who own nothing here, not even our imaginations’. The film poignantly shows who would be the winners and losers when accumulation happens in a social system of graded inequality. The scenes from the movie speak for themselves. Needless to say, Kammattipadam is a commendable political project which skillfully integrates the different layers of gentrification and urban exclusion into the aesthetic framework of cinema without losing originality.

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About the Authors: C.R.Yadu (chandran.yadu@gmail.com) and G.Sujeesh (c2k009@gmail.com) are PhD candidates at the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Trivandrum and Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady respectively.