In essence, the notion of benefit sharing is recognition of the natural rights of affected communities over mineral resources in their traditional and historical homelands. Communities have a right to benefit first—culturally, economically and politically. These rights can be seen from the prism of both immediate as well as long-term …
Kameshwar Baitha, MP, will now fight to end Naxalism from jail There was a price on his head just a few years ago; Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh had together declared a reward of Rs 5 lakh for anyone helping in his arrest. Today, the head is held high
How have women been coping in the aftermath of farmer suicides in Punjab? This article is based on detailed interviews with 32 women in three districts of the state. Accosting the reality of women caught in the vortex of the agrarian crisis, one painfully comes to terms with the newer …
The 61st round (2004-05) of the National Sample Survey showed that there was a turnaround in employment growth in rural India after a phase of jobless growth during the 1990s. Paradoxically, this employment growth occurred during a period of widespread distress in the agricultural sector with low productivity, price instability …
Natural resources perform multiple functions as a driver, maintainer, potential exit route, and also an effective escape mechanism in the context of poverty dynamics, especially in a predominantly agrarian economy such as India. The discourse on poverty reduction however, has often overlooked some of the major concerns of natural resource …
Kalliammal is busy gathering harvested gingerly seed crops and piling them up in a heap and does not notice us as we enter the village. A quick glance around, will tell you that many of her neighbours are in a hurry as well. It
Drawing upon a micro-study of two villages in two non-Left gram panchayats in West Bengal, this paper puts one issue in the foreground, namely, the idea and practice of local politics. Using two counter examples to prove a general point about contemporary West Bengal
The study investigates whether the employment shift from the farm to the non-farm sector in Uttar Pradesh arises out of prosperity-induced or distress-induced factors. The examination of employment patterns at various levels leads to conclusive evidence that distress-induced push factors have been predominant in driving workers to non-farm employment. The …
This paper examines the evolution of poverty in India through the prism of agricultural wages and employment. It links the movement in wages (and hence poverty) to the fundamental process of sectoral labour flow that underlies economic development. It finds that despite the rapid growth of the non-farm sector, its …
Most of the rural population in Nepal is engaged in subsistence farming. There is a high rate of migration of poor landless people from the mountains to the plains and the rural to the urban in search of better land for farming and better job for livelihood. This has resulted …
The Orissa Resettlement and Rehabilitation Policy, 2006 draws its strength from experiences from the implementation of past policies, best practices in other states and the Orissa government's Industrial Policy Resolution, 2001.
In the recent past, two major policy interventions have been made to resettle and rehabilitate persons displaced as a result of acquisition of land for development projects. While the government of Orissa brought out its policy in 2006, the Central Government notified a new policy in 2007. Both policies suffer …
This is a study of social mobility over 25 years in six villages in the former Tiruchirapalli district in Tamil Nadu. The two most important external drivers are local industrialisation and social policy in a broad sense. It is shown that the overall effect seems to be a centripetal tendency …
The widely accepted view that emphasises the negative impact of the decline in common property resources on the village poor generally presumes that village common lands would have been used by all villagers inclusive of the poor without serious differences in the right to access them. Mainly based on historical …
In a developing country like India, the development of rural economy through effective and proper management of common property resources (CPRs) such as forests has increasingly become an integral part of sustainable development policy in the past couple of decades. The recognition of community-based forest has led to the devolution …
The persistence of colonial patterns of ownership of plantations in Kerala remains one of the enduring weaknesses of the land reforms programme of the 1970s in the state. The case of Chengara
India's rural socio-cultural scenario was at the crossroads in the 1960s with the introduction of the new agricultural revolution, popularly known as the Green Revolution. The present paper is a modest attempt in revaluating empirically the bearing of this technological revolution on the socio-cultural scenario, and particularly on the agro-based …
India is truly an amazing place: it is both a graveyard of concepts that flourish happily elsewhere, and a breeding ground for those that survive only in our conditions. Terms such as class, status, nation state, and community have already undergone significant modifications in the Indian setting. These changes have …
The rural world of nineteenth-century Tamil Nadu was highly diversified in terms of land control and ownership. Academic efforts have largely focused on the various claims to
Whereas for the construction of Sawra Kuddu Hydro Electric Project besides the Government land, some private land is also to be acquired by the H.P. Power Corporation Limited. Due to acquisition of private land for the project, some families will be affected but only one family shall become land less. …
