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SHIFTING LANDSCAPES: The Making and Remaking of Village Commons in India by Rita Brara. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2006.

IN this remarkable ethnography of village commons located in the Sikar district of Rajasthan over the period 1985-95, Rita Brara remedies what she identifies as ‘the neglect of the commons as an aspect of the environmental and social organization of the village’ (p. 11). Brara’s principal argument concerns the centrality of village commons as arenas that hold together a deeply divided society in addition to providing the means of subsistence for the marginalized. Her treatment of commons thus goes beyond a narrow focus on the bio-physical resource that the village commons are generally viewed as.

Brara advocates a strong policy focus on village commons as a means of dispensing social justice and strengthening livelihoods of the poorest. In addition, by arguing that the commons constitute the fulcrum of public life in the village, the author underlines their significance in facilitating effective local governance as also production and delivery of public goods by villagers on their own. Thus, village commons are brought right at the centre of efforts at promoting equitable development.

In order to prepare the ground for study of village commons, Brara traces the roots of gendered and caste-based discrimination in village life to the patrilineal transmission of agrarian rights, almost exclusively to the descendents of the upper caste pioneers. In the chapter on the Commons’ Policy as Practice, the author musters evidence from law suits brought before the courts and the Rajasthan Board of Revenue. Despite judicial interventions that supported communities’ customary rights over grazing lands, the bureaucracy’s command was often writ large on the village landscape because of its control over the execution of court orders. Brara shows how bureaucrats and community elites connived in privatizing village grazing lands for agriculture and other commercial enterprises such as dairy farms. This was accomplished by deploying socio-administrative techniques of selectivity in community-bureaucracy interactions combined with the cadastral techniques of re-classification and de-classification of village grazing lands into ‘unoccupied lands’ vested in the state.

The author’s novel contributions in the chapter on Village Commons and the Public Sphere, constitute the core of this book. Here the commons are viewed as a site where the public sphere is created by largely illiterate people against the western line of scholarship that links the development of public sphere to an educated public. Communal rights in village commons are often secured through ‘willed, coordinated, and intelligible social action’ of the villagers acting together, beyond caste and class barriers (p.12). Brara also shows how largely exclusive private rights in cultivable lands coexisted with the inclusive communal rights in the village commons that were of particular importance to the landless and the subordinated. The support of the landed upper caste villagers for subsistence rights of the weaker sections in the commons helps one appreciate the role of the commons as a uniting force within the village, as well as a base for survival of the disadvantaged within a largely inequitable society.

Brara deals carefully with the rich portfolio of traditional commons (grazing lands, water resources, leaf fodder from village lands) and the new commons (stud bull services, drinking water supply, school building, dispensary, and access to government projects on a matching grant basis). The diversity of management tools employed by the village collective is refreshing, considering the monotonous and narrow vision of efficient service delivery promoted by multilateral agencies. However, collective action in the villages of study is neither project-inspired nor located in the statutory provisions of local government bodies. Instead, the statutory provisions are subverted collectively by the informal village committee of elders, referred to as ‘behind the curtains’ village government. These informal committees in big villages appropriate government resources by working with and subverting the democratic workings of multi-village statutory village councils.

In this way the interests of the smaller villages within the statutory village council are compromised; so are those of the women and marginalized groups within the village. Decision-making is influenced overtly by the better-off, upper-caste, male leadership of the village. At the same time, without any statutory compulsion, marginalized communities were represented (even if nominally) on the informal committee. The demands of marginalized groups for increased representation on informal committees were intended for better accommodation of conflicting interests within these groups rather than for challenging the domination of the upper castes. Thus, Brara offers a nuanced analysis of villagers’ notions of representation, local governance and its form and function, as juxtaposed against the formal structures of local government imposed by the modern nation state. Notions of social justice as perceived by villagers were similarly at variance with the mechanistic approaches of reservations promoted by the statute.

The chapter on Perspectives on Commons Encroachments offers insights into administrative, historical, and resurgent democratic politics looked at from a viewpoint of conflict between the individual and common interests of the villagers. The issue of ‘encroachments’ has of late acquired increased salience vis-a-vis forest commons, that have increasingly been rendered out of bounds for communities in a bureaucratic discourse, dominated by ‘management’ concerns while ignoring the historical causes of forest degradation. In the chapter on Are Grazing Lands Wastelands?, the author goes well beyond the question posed in the title. Brara offers a critique of government’s expert-led interventions for improving the wastelands and agriculture in villages without fully appreciating villagers’ ingenuity in managing those resources for their ‘complex, diverse and risk-prone’1 livelihoods. She offers concrete policy suggestions, including villagers’ own ideas for improving the efficacy and utility of these interventions, particularly for the disadvantaged, who have got nothing other than the wages they earned through these projects. However, both of these chapters could have been connected better to the discourse on the public sphere presented earlier.

In a detailed chapter on The Changing Patterns of Livestock Ownership, the author relates the dimensions of transhumance and gendered division of livestock rearing to the efforts of farmer pastoralists to ensure continued viability of animal husbandry. The author touches only briefly on the policy implications of the continuously declining forage availability in the villages even as the government continues to fund programmes on animal stock improvement.

In this book Brara successfully argues that villagers not only constitute and reconstitute the public sphere but are ‘alive to the production of new and generative practices in matters pertaining to the commons’ (p. 251). While caste, class, and gender related hierarchies remained active, the author points to the signs of ‘re-centring of the social margins in the course of daily struggles that entailed the use of the resource of the commons’ (p. 250). This is a constructive response to Dumont (1972) offering new insights on how the commons potentially offer a critical axis of intervention for those interested in balancing socio-economic inequities that are only getting more pronounced in the current policy context in India. Her discourse goes beyond the corporate identity of the village signified with an economic argument in favour of ‘village republics’ (Wade 1994).

Though demanding for the non-academic reader, the book is a useful read for all those interested in subjects as wide ranging as conservation, collective action, democratization and state-society interactions. Readers could get significant clues and pointers from Brara’s work as they attempt to illuminate another moment or a fragment in human life.

Prakash Kashwan

 

Footnotes:

1. Phrase borrowed from R. Chambers, A. Pacey and L.A. Thrupp, eds. (n.d.) Farmer First: Farmer Innovation and Agricultural Research, accessed online at http://www.mekonginfo.org.

2. L. Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications. London, Paladin, 1972.

3. R. Wade, Village Republics: Economic Conditions for Collective Action in South India. San Francisco, California, ICS Press Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1994.

 

DEVELOPMENT WITH DIGNITY: A Case for Full Employment by Amit Bhaduri. National Book Trust, New Delhi, 2005.

THAT the process of economic growth and distribution of income in favour of the poor – the latter a part and parcel of the growth process itself – can be integral to a process of development that simultaneously and systematically breaks the social barriers of discrimination based on caste, gender, religion, ethnicity and so on, is no utopia. This is ‘development with dignity’, which can be pursued with the help of reasonable economic policies that are within the realm of feasible politics. This is the theme of the book under review, written with unusual clarity sans professional jargon by Amit Bhaduri, among the world’s most accomplished macroeconomists. What is proposed is a universal employment guarantee scheme providing socially productive work at a legally stipulated minimum wage within an overall Keynesian macroeconomic policy regime, the particular scheme itself devised and implemented by elected local bodies in the towns and the countryside to whom the requisite resources have devolved.

But what of the core requirements of the Keynesian macroeconomic policy regime that should be in place as a prerequisite? With the high degree of financial openness that the Indian power elite has chosen – they are presently considering full capital account convertibility – a considerable volume of highly mobile international financial capital is currently parked in rupee denominated assets. No surprise that governments of the day – whether the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance or the earlier Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance – ‘play it safe’, i.e., avoid any disturbance that may induce capital flight.

Thus the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act has been instituted to ensure near balanced budgets, with real interest rates kept much higher than those prevailing in the US or the European Union, and public expenditure subjected to austerity even in the face of high levels of excess capacity, unemployment and foreign exchange reserves. Keynesian demand management policies are being rejected and the international market is being privileged over the domestic market. One consequence of the latter is that the government wants to implement labour market flexibility, sharing with business a common view that wages are merely an element of cost, not a source of purchasing power or demand. Bhaduri recommends a complete rejection of such a neo-liberal policy package and advocates adoption of an integrated Keynesian macroeconomic policy package, with the restoration of the importance of the internal or the domestic market vis-à-vis the external market.

For financing the universal employment guarantee scheme, Bhaduri suggests borrowing from the Reserve Bank, thus avoiding the debt servicing obligations that arise through the issue of interest-bearing debt instruments. However, this borrowing should be on a special account, where the funds are for the exclusive use of the gram and nagar panchayats that will steer the employment guarantee projects. In the spirit of the 73rd constitutional amendment, the panchayats should not be ‘treated simply as implementing agents for the central or the state government without authority and fiscal autonomy.’ Instead, they should have the decision-making power, but be held accountable for their actions, with transparency ensured through the Right to Information Act.

The emphasis is on decentralisation, with transparency and accountability through fixing of responsibility at all levels – the central, state and the local. And, the Centre or the state should not be allowed to supervise and hold the panchayats accountable without being accountable themselves. Regulation and monitoring of the work of the panchayats should be with the local community, their records ‘kept open for public inspection by law’ and ‘as a precondition for receiving funds.’ The productive employment-oriented projects should be subject to ‘self-selection’ and ‘self-supervision’ – all adults offering their labour services to work at the minimum wage provided employment. They should have ‘a voting right in the choice of the project’, thus increasing the likelihood that the project chosen directly benefits those employed thereon. The completed project should be an asset of the panchayat against which it can further borrow. The panchayat should have the right to charge a user fee for the service/good that the project provides, except from those who were employed on the project at the minimum wage. And, the track record of the panchayats should count for receiving funds for subsequent projects.

What Bhaduri essentially suggests is a way of ensuring the full productive participation of the poor with accountability at all levels. At the heart of the proposal is a Keynesian macroeconomic policy package that ensures that higher labour productivity provides more goods and services for a better standard of living for all, realisable only if it is accompanied by the expansion of employment at satisfactory wages. This in essence is social democracy in the context of a large underdeveloped surplus labour economy and society like India.

The state’s guarantee of employment at the minimum wage to all who seek it is the main agency for management of aggregate demand. The programme proposed by Bhaduri would, however, have a higher chance of success the stronger the labour movement and the greater the extent to which the self-help groups of working people – the unions – are widespread and effective. Sadly, this is precisely one institution of economic democracy that has been severely undermined in the present free market globalizing economy, making it difficult to ensure the success of the productive full employment programme in the manner that Bhaduri advocates. Bhaduri, in fact, doesn’t consider it important whether the main institutional hand-maidens of the programme he advocates – presumably, the panchayats and the right to information – are sufficient! And yet, one should recall that, under the Roosevelt administration, it was only in the second phase (from 1935 onwards) that the New Deal became truly effective. This was when the political context and the institutional means to stimulate the economy and press for important socio-economic reforms were in place – social movements like ‘Share the Wealth’ in Louisiana or ‘End Poverty in California’, union recognition as a result of their rising labour militancy, a liberal Congress elected in 1934, federal financing of infrastructure projects of the Public Works Administration and the public services of the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Youth Administration, the Housing Act of 1937, and so on.

Despite the institutional handicaps, Bhaduri makes a strong case that a major social-economic reform like full employment is politically feasible in the here and now in India. It follows that this must therefore be demanded from the ever-reluctant and resistant capitalist power structure. An important question, however, remains: While growth and distribution can be integrated in the manner suggested by Bhaduri, how do we also simultaneously and systematically break the social barriers of discrimination based on caste, gender, religion and ethnicity in order to progress towards ‘development with dignity’?

Bernard D’Mello

 

INDIA’S WATER ECONOMY: Bracing for a Turbulent Future by John Brisco and R.P.S. Malik. The World Bank, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2006.

THE central message of this report, generally viewed as the policy pronouncement of the World Bank, is simple – the Indian water sector is in a crisis, is woefully ill-equipped to meet the growing challenge of the future and that a ‘business as usual’ approach is not going to work. There may not be much of a quarrel about this assessment. However, the World Bank’s recipe for a transition from ‘the ways of the past’ to ‘the ways of the future’ is likely to be contested, in part, because one, World Bank lending would be tied to this recipe, and two, the Country Assistance Strategy (Section Five of the report) clearly indicates that the Bank has decided to play a much larger role in the water sector in India – the outlay itself to rise from $ 700 million over the previous four years to $ 3200 million in the coming four years (p. 76). This more than a four-fold annual increase would definitely impact the direction of water sector reforms in India.

The report clearly favours creating larger water infrastructure, especially larger storage. It treats per capita (surface) water storage as an indicator of development. This emphasis on a large dam-centred strategy ignores the gains and experience of the extensive implementation of watershed development in the country. To assert that, ‘we have muddled though up to now and we will find a way to muddle through the future’ (p. 20) is unfair as it clearly ignores the creative responses of the toiling people of this country to continuous drought and water scarcity, in particular the strategy of watershed-based development. Though the outcomes may not have always matched expectations, watershed-based development has amply demonstrated its potential as the lynchpin of rural development in dryland areas – in integrating sectors and providing the foundation for subsequent development (Joy et al. 2006).

An important lesson of the water sector discourse and practice in India has been the need to go beyond the sterile debate on large vs. small and aim at integration of water from large exogenous sources and water harvested locally through watershed development programmes. The local water system plays multiple roles –for harvesting and utilising local water, as a buffer or holding system for the larger system, allowing greater control over the timing and quantum of water application for the individual user, and as a semi-autonomous management unit far more compatible with user participation. The exogenous water supplement can provide sufficiently dependable critical support to the local system needed for livelihood assurance. Integration is one of the core ideas in Paranjape and Joy’s (1995) alternative to the Sardar Sarovar Project on the Narmada. They show how the height of the dam, submergence and displacement can be significantly brought down through integration without compromising the irrigation benefits to Gujarat.

The authors forcefully argue for ‘empowering users by giving them clear, enforceable water entitlements’ (p. 46). They are also for separating water rights from land rights with the same legal certainty as land and other property rights (p. 47), which essentially ensures the tradeability of water rights. For instance, they view the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority Act (MWRRA) 2005 as a model legislation that needs to be emulated by other states (p. 50). True, enforceable water entitlements are a step forward, for without a definite entitlement there is no accountability. However, under the MWRRA, the criteria to work out entitlements are very clearly linked to landholding in the command areas. This implies that present access to water will be treated as entitlement, thereby converting present access to water, which is clearly inequitable, into a right in perpetuity.

Under the newly enacted Maharashtra Farmers Management of Irrigation Systems Act, closely linked to MWRRA, the water users’ associations can make water available to companies for contract farming. This can lead to a further concentration of water rights. For the World Bank, the rationale for de-linking water rights from land rights is to make it a commodity. For the social movements and grassroots initiatives committed to equity, the rationale behind de-linking of water and land rights is to create wider access to the resource poor sections, including the landless. Thus the very same demand of de-linking land and water rights is being pushed forward to serve two opposing interests.

With regard to financial sustainability and pricing, the report advances two major arguments: one, remove the disconnect between prices and costs as it induces very large economic costs, and two, the costs should increasingly be met from user charges as there is no free lunch (p. 56). The contention that users would be willing to pay a higher price for an efficient, reliable and accountable service is, by and large, in line with the experience on the ground. It is equally undeniable that presently the resource-rich sections pocket most of the ‘subsidy’ in irrigation. However, the authors have not outlined a pricing strategy which would take care of the interests of the resource-poor sections by making water available to them at an affordable cost and at the same time charge others the economic cost.

The issue at stake is whether water is a social or an economic good. We need to treat water as both a social and an economic good and argue not for a withdrawal of the state but for a change in its role (Gleick 2002). For example, access to clean water is fundamental to survival and critical for reducing the prevalence of many water-related diseases. Other dimensions of water supply also have a social good character that therefore requires governmental action, overseeing or regulation. At the same time, we need to advocate the use of sound economics in water management.

Water is also a means of production, whether in agriculture or in industry, in artisanal or large-scale production. Moreover, water for irrigation is critical to help stabilise a minimum production on small and medium farmers’ lands. It is also important to farmers who produce for profit rather than for subsistence needs. Water provision is a service that serves both functions, meeting basic livelihood needs as also for conspicuous consumption or surplus generation. These two functions place contradictory demands on how the service should be provided and at what charge. A service aimed at basic needs should be provided equitably at an affordable price. The poorest sections need to be subsidised, whether through cross-subsidy within the sector or across sectors. On the contrary, an economic service provided for surplus generation needs to be charged full economic cost, preferably at premium rates to provide for cross-subsidy for basic service. It is difficult to see how free markets can even begin to meet these complex and contradictory demands. A differential or graded tariff system advocated by the Irrigation Pricing Committee headed by A. Vaidyanathan (GOI 1992) can go a long way to resolve this tension between the social and economic character of water.

Some of the specific suggestions in the report – the call to ‘end the culture of secrecy and making transparency the rule especially in the context of the prevailing hydrological data secrecy in India’ (p. 53), or ‘incentive based participatory regulation of services and water resources’ (p. 54) are welcome. However, the problem is with its overall direction of reform. The strategy advocated by the report would only accentuate the already existing polarised positions, lead to concentration of water rights, price out resource poor sections and not address the problems of the vast dryland agricultural tracks of India.

Even though one may not agree with the overall direction of the suggested reforms, people concerned about the water sector cannot ignore the issues raised in the report. The need is to creatively engage with and respond to the challenges that have been outlined in the report and come up with alternative strategies to restructure the water sector on more sustainable, equitable and participatory lines.

K.J. Joy

 

References:

Peter Gleick, The New Economy of Water: The Risks and Benefits of Globalization and Privatization of Fresh Water, Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, Oakland, California, 2002.

Government of India, Report of the Committee on Pricing of Irrigation Water (under the Chairmanship of Dr. A. Vaidyanathan), unpublished, mimeo, 1992.

K.J. Joy, Amita Shah, Suhas Paranjape, Shrinivas Badiger and Sharachchandra Lele, ‘Reorienting the Watershed Development Programme in India’, Occasional Paper, Forum for Watershed Research and Policy Dialogue, SOPPECOM, Pune, 2006.

Suhas Paranjape and K.J. Joy, Sustainable Technology: Making the Sardar Sarovar Project Viable – A Comprehensive Proposal to Modify the Project for Greater Equity and Ecological Sustainability, Ahmedabad, Centre for Environment Education, 1995.

 

CAUSES OF FARMER SUICIDES IN MAHARASHTRA: An Enquiry by Ajay Dandekar, Shahaji Narawade, Ram Rathod, Rajesh Ingle, Vijay Kulkarni and Y.D. Sateppa. Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, 2005.

SUICIDE OF FARMERS IN MAHARASHTRA by Srijit Mishra. Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, 2005.

WE are of the considered opinion that as inquiries into the phenomenon of farmers’ suicide the two reports under discussion merely reiterate one kind of popular wisdom without adding anything new on the crisis facing the farmer. Not only is the information that they provide from the field partial, data which do not fit with their preconceived notions of the crisis faced by farmers are ignored. As efforts to reduce our ignorance about the causes of various suicide incidents involving farmers, they are fragmentary. The one by TISS was at the initiative of the Bombay High Court, which has already been used by the court to direct the government into action. The other, by Srijit Mishra from IGIDR was sponsored by the Ministry of Relief and Rehabilitation, Maharashtra.

These reports are a severe indictment of the government’s ignorance about the plight of the cotton farmers in Maharashtra and its callousness in remedying the situation. Their findings and suggestions complement each other. Together the reports point out that there is no safety net for farmers to protect them from usurious credit suppliers, exposure to unbearable price fluctuations, and spurious inputs for farming: seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. The farmer is ignorant of appropriate and more productive techniques of farming. Government efforts to educate the farmer in better techniques are inadequate. Male farmers with large female numerous families and fewer agricultural assets like a pair of bullocks, they claim, are most likely to commit suicide in the face of a price shock or crop failure.

The TISS study is based on a larger spread of cases and the case studies seem more detailed and reliable than those in Mishra’s study. Mishra’s study focuses more on the economic side of things. Simply put, the conclusion is that agriculture is losing importance in the Indian economy. The income in cotton farming is low. Typically, a farmer with 15 acres of land would earn a net annual income of Rs 32,500. A class IV employee of the government, we might add, is better-off since he earns more than double that amount plus untaxed perks. The uncertainties contributed by price fluctuation, failed rainfall, and unscrupulous suppliers of spurious seed, fertilizer and pesticide, make the picture even more grim. In the absence of non-agricultural sources of income and saddled with a large family, under stress for meeting social obligations, some of the farmers resorted to suicide.

The reports also make comprehensive suggestions. Give adequate compensation. Provide an ex gratia of Rs 2.5 lakh to each affected family. Create a life and agriculture insurance cover for farmers. Maintain an accurate list of farmers in a village as also of those who have committed suicide. Extend relief to farmers suffering from other kinds of disasters like theft of crop and fire. Revamp agricultural practices and train farmers in better techniques including organic farming. Provide irrigation facilities. Make changes in the agricultural policy to ensure that benefits reach the farmer and not to the fertiliser and pesticide corporations. Provide higher MSP. Create a safety net for farmers. Have a better credit policy. Regulate private moneylenders with the help of self-help groups. Regulate the quality of farm inputs. Provide non-farm employment as a source of additional income. Reduce access to pesticides. Train primary health centre staff to handle cases of poisoning. Decriminalise attempted suicide. Establish helplines. Encourage the creation of survivor support groups. Generate socio-religious activity that encourages social reform. As is the wont of research done by academics, both reports ask for even more research to be done.

These suggestions have long been part of public discourse. As general statements the findings are unexceptionable. There are many areas where record keeping by the government is lax, marked by corruption and bias. If people are in distress it is the task of the government to provide succour and it has not been able to do so to the satisfaction of all. In a changing economy where agriculture is losing its primacy, the efforts of the government to generate non-agricultural employment for people from the villages have been inadequate. No doubt the government should have been doing all this and more, irrespective of suicides. What we find lacking, however, is the link between their findings and recommendations and the evidence presented.

In 8% cases of suicide that Mishra considers there was no loan taken. Some 16% of the cases show debts ranging from Rs 2000 to 10,000. This information is hidden in the notes about the ‘case studies’ but is not included in the analysis presented. Does the size of the debt have a bearing on suicide? On personally checking more than a 10% sample of those interviewed in these two studies, we discovered that the reports did not reveal significant information given by the families themselves which indicated that neither agricultural distress nor debt was exclusively responsible for the suicides. The TISS report lists cases where a loan of Rs 10,000 had resulted in default 17 years back, or on a loan of Rs 13,000 the default had been 13 years ago. What then was the immediate urgency that created pressures for the farmer?

Even data about who is committing suicide and whether farmers as a social group are increasingly vulnerable to suicide is not clear. Maharashtra has a higher suicide rate per lakh than the average for the country, and that this high mortality may be independent of farming and cotton cultivation is ignored. Though one of the studies commissioned by Mishra (Dr. Bhatkule) mentions that farmers constitute a small portion of the suicides surveyed, this does not attract comment. The simple fact is that the overall suicide rate in this region is very high and there is little evidence to indicate that farmers are committing suicide at a rate higher than the rest of the population. A far more comprehensive intervention which goes beyond the concerns of the farmers and their debt is therefore needed.

Using National Crime Records Bureau Data, Mishra argues that male farmer suicides as a proportion of total male suicides increased from 24% to 38% between 1996 and 2004 in Maharashtra. District Ahmednagar which shows zero cases from farmer suicides till 2000, suddenly has farmers accounting for close to 90% of all suicides 2001 onwards. Jalgaon shows a staggering 441 male farmer suicides out of a total of 506 male suicides (87%) in the year 2000 alone. But neither Jalgaon nor Ahmednagar can be understood with exclusive reference to cotton as Mishra tries to do. We probably need to understand what is happening to the sugarcane and banana economies as well.

Mishra does attempt to identify various stressors and calculate the statistical frequency of occurrence of each. Marriage of a daughter or sister, loss of a bullock, illness in the family, debt, failure of crop and much more are included in the list of stressors. There is little effort, however, to analyse how they all gell together to push someone into suicide. The failure to look at the situation in a holistic manner remains a major lacuna.

Take Case 15 reported by Mishra: This is the family of a 55 year old female of the Agrahari caste which has 28 acres of land and an outstanding debt of Rs 44600 from the bank. She did not have good relations with her daughter in law. Our finding: This woman actually belonged to the Pardeshi Bania caste. Her husband had passed away on 12 June 2000, four years before her own death. Her son was mentally disturbed. She had strained relations with her daughter-in-law who remained childless even after eleven years of marriage. The villagers say that her son beat her up; a week later she died. The post mortem report showed that she had consumed poison.

Or, take Case 17 reported by Mishra: This is the family of a 45 year old male from the Banjara community which has three acres of land, and has leased in another three acres. He was tense about his daughter’s marriage and education. He had taken a loan but did not discuss his problems with his family members. Our finding: This farmer is survived by his 40 year old wife, aged mother and father, a 22 year old son who works in the Raymond factory for a monthly salary of Rs 5000-6000, and four daughters. In addition to his 19 acres of land he also cultivated three acres which belonged to a son in law. They sowed soyabean three times in 2005. There was an outstanding loan of Rs 33000 taken from the Bank of Maharashtra in 2003 for crops and also for a well. Another loan of Rs 8000 was taken from the Primary Agricultural Credit Society in 2004. This too has not been returned. A recovery notice was received in 2004 but details are not known. He spent Rs 60,000 on the marriage of the second daughter in 2004, the money raised through an interest free loan from a son-in-law who lives in Yavatmal. The son-in-law was repaid from the sale of the soyabean crop. The deceased was an alcoholic. He had an affair with his sister-in-law and once this was discovered, he committed suicide.

In both instances, factors other than debt were crucial in precipitating the suicide decision. Should these factors not be reported? We are not suggesting that debt-related factors are not important, but a complete picture is necessary to understand complex events such as suicide. Invariably, both reports resorted to the time-tested advocate’s strategy of suppressio veri suggestio falsi. Could it be that there are other important stressors in this region such as the absence of non-agrarian employment and lack of adequate medical facilities which need to be addressed in order to provide succour? But in order to see them one needs to go beyond agrarian distress.

Meeta and Rajivlochan

 

FROM HARIYALI TO NEERANCHAL: Report of the Technical Committee on Watershed Programmes in India. Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, 2006.

IN February 2005, the Government of India (GOI) set up a committee under the chairmanship of S. Parthasarathy with the specific mandate of reviewing the Guidelines for Watershed Development (in particular the Hariyali Guidelines) in the light of experiences gained and make recommendations with a view to improving the national effort in watershed development.

The Parthsarathy Commission Report (recently put in the public domain) argues powerfully for making people-driven watershed based development the centrepiece of development strategy in rural areas. Bringing together a wide range of information, data and experiences from across the country, the report distils key lessons, best practices and tested ‘non-negotiables’. Based on these, it identifies a number of areas where major improvements are called for in the flagship watershed programmes being implemented in the country.

More importantly, in calling for an expanded and ambitious programme for covering all of India’s untreated watersheds by the year 2020, the committee recommends the setting up of a national agency, the National Authority for Sustainable Development of Rainfed Areas (NASDORA), with a view to bringing the multiplicity of programmes being implemented by different ministries under one umbrella and treating them in a ‘mission mode’. This is seen as essential given the severe institutional and administrative limitations currently hobbling the national watershed programmes.

Given the stated commitment of the government to accelerate development of rural areas (the Common Minimum Programme), especially in the vast rainfed regions of our country where the majority of poor live, this report merits careful consideration by the political and administrative establishments at the highest levels and wholehearted adoption of its broad approach and key recommendations, in particular, the establishment of the National Authority for Sustainable Development of Rainfed Areas.

The report consists of five chapters. Chapter I makes out a reasoned case for an enlarged and reformed watershed development programme in India. However, it is Chapters II and III that contain key strategic and operational recommendations and constitute the ‘core’ of the report. This review will therefore, concern itself expressly with these two key chapters. Chapter IV outlines a set of guidelines that seek to anchor and institutionalize the approaches, processes and recommendations made in the earlier chapters. Chapter V provides an indicative list of regions, with a summary of their unique features, where the existing approach to watershed development needs to be modified.

Chapter II deals with lessons learnt thus far and makes recommendations with a view to improving the way watershed programmes are being run in India. It has two themes: one deals with the operational aspects of watershed development and the other with programmatic issues. Operational aspects addressed are issues of conceptualisation, participation, equity, transparency and water use for sustainable livelihoods generation.

The report highlights the critical role that ground water plays in watershed development. Pointing out that the ground water catchment, usually neglected in watershed planning and development, is as important as the surface water catchment (invariably accounted for), the report argues for an integrated ground water development plan that includes participatory ground water aquifer mapping and analysis, restrictions on tube wells, community-determined regulation and utilisation of ground water resources and promotion of shallow dug wells.

No complex endeavour, and watershed development is one such, can succeed unless all key stakeholders acquire a sense of ownership in it. Issues of participation, transparency and equity are central to this process and the report provides many examples of success and failure; draws lessons from experience gained; raises cautionary flags and makes pertinent recommendations. Especially noteworthy is the detailed analysis of issues like conflict resolution, beneficiary selection, benefit sharing and employment with a view to securing and furthering the interests of tribals, dalits and the landless. Acknowledging the unequal and discriminated status of woman in India, especially in the rural hinterlands, the committee suggests 50% representation of women on the village watershed committees and the establishment of a separate women’s watershed council (WWC) to mobilise women and represent their interests. To forestall possibility of women’s representation being reduced to mere tokenism (as has usually been the case), the report recommend steps (such as information dissemination and capacity building, enforcement of legal entitlements, payment of equal wages, etc) that would effectively empower women.

A key reason for the cynicism and low esteem publicly funded works are held in, is the near opacity in which they are enveloped. The report reiterates the need for transparency and recommends a number of measures (illustrated with successful examples) such as mandatory presentation of the action plan for approval at the gram sabha, public hearings and social audits, open access to all documents, public display of information, use of IT, etc.

The programmatic issues addressed are the role of the PRI (the gram panchayat and the gram sabha), SHGs and their federations, NGOs, the challenge of up-scaling with quality, capacity building, monitoring and research, public private partnerships and administrative problems.

While fully endorsing the spirit and rationale underlying the Hariyali guidelines, namely, the central role PRIs can play in undertaking developmental works in rural areas, the report points out that for a variety of reasons, not least being that the PRI functionaries are already overburdened with a number of tasks, PRIs have failed to live up to the high expectations engendered by the programme. The report thus recommends that a village watershed committee (VWC) elected by the gram sabha and endorsed as a sub-committee of the gram panchayat be entrusted with the task of undertaking watershed development.

The pioneering and path breaking role of many NGOs has been acknowledged and it recommends that genuine NGOs should be actively sought as partners in providing capacity building services, training, research and monitoring – a refreshing contrast to the generally negative view about NGOs in official programmes.

Chapter III deals with the setting up of NASDORA as well as the duration and phasing of the new programme. The report outlines the many problems bedevilling the current programme, not least of which is the fact that authorities responsible for its implementation at the various levels are already overburdened and cannot do justice to the requirements of a quality and process intensive effort. And watershed development is too important an issue to be given less than full attention.

Responding to the observation of the National Advisory Council on the need to bring all the different watershed programmes under a single ministry in order to catalyse a ‘mission imbued’ momentum, the report recommends the setting up of an all-India authority, the National Authority for Sustainable Development of Rainfed Areas (NASDORA) as a quasi-independent authority registered under the Society’s Act of 1860 (with the possibility of later converting it into a statutory body ) tasked with managing the entire centrally-funded watershed programme. It is to have a two-tier governance and management structure – an apex governing board headed by a competitively selected CEO, representatives of the related ministries, professional and eminent persons; and an apex rainfed areas stakeholders council chaired by the prime minister, ministers and secretaries of the related ministries, chief ministers of the concerned states, eminent personalities and representatives of the farming community. It simultaneously recommends similar arrangements at the state and district levels.

At the project level, each milli watershed will range in size from 4,000-10,000 ha, this being considered a viable unit, with the project to be implemented by the VWC overseen by the gram panchayat, and accountable and answerable to the gram sabha. A milli-watershed council (MWC) consisting of representatives from each VWC is to monitor and review the entire effort.

It is proposed that the project period be increased from five to eight years, divided into three phases; this being necessary to ensure sufficient time for stabilisation of strong local institutions as well as to realise the full livelihoods potential of the programme. The first phase called the preparatory phase consists of two years of social mobilisation, resource inventory and analysis, entry point activities and group and institution formation. Phase II, called the resource augmentation and institution building phase, extends over four years and is the central component of the programme. Phase III, called the sustainable livelihoods and productivity enhancement phase, lasts for two years wherein livelihood activities (also known as watershed plus) that build on the productive capacities developed in the watershed as well as lay the foundations for sustainability are undertaken.

While the structure is basically sound, the way the phases have been demarcated (two years, four years, two years) creates an impression of rigid boundaries between them, and may result in a situation where a designated authority at the lower levels, may not allow phases two or three to begin until the required number of years of the preceding phase have been completed, even if the expected outcomes of that particular phase have been achieved.

It is, therefore, crucial that the wording be changed from, for instance, ‘in this 2 year period’ to ‘in this period which is upto 2 years but may not be less than 1 year’; ‘this 4 year period’ to ‘this period which may extend upto 4 years.’ Moreover, it should be made clear that nothing prevents initiating in Phase II itself some of the activities envisaged for Phase III, provided they do not hinder the realization of the outcomes envisaged for Phase II. Experience has repeatedly confirmed the need of wording guidelines in a way that manifestly encourage flexibility in implementation and application of mind when faced with unanticipated or specific local and contextual realities.

On funding, the report recommends an increase in expenditure from Rs 6,000 per ha to maximally Rs 12,000 per ha fixed across eight years. It calls for spending Rs 150,000 crore over the next 15 years (Rs 10,000 crores per year) of which Rs 5,000 crores could be sourced from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and Rs 5000 crores from doubling the current outlays on watershed programmes.

But why should funds release proposals be routed to NASDORA through the state government,as stipulated in the report? This only adds another layer of bureaucracy and given the fact that state functionaries are already otherwise engaged and are unlikely to have any real stake in the proposed programme, one can only expect inordinate delays occurring thus nullifying the very raison d’etre of NASDORA. The committee might wish to revisit this issue.

The Parthasarathy Committee should be complimented not only for the clarity it provides on the varied and complex issues arising when implementing people-focused watershed programmes,but also for the consequent, purposeful and practical recommendations it has made. Now, however, the real work begins!

Crispino Lobo

 

INDIA: Unlocking Opportunities for Forest-Dependent People. World Bank, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2006.

AS an ecologist studying the harvest of fruits from a forest tree species, I was interested in how security of access to trees affected the ecological condition of the resource. I found that people with better security of tenure (long-term individual forest leases) tended to harvest fruits more benignly than those that were harvesting in open-access reserve forests. I presented my findings at a conference in New Delhi. Following the talk, a social scientist chided me for my rather uncomplicated analysis. He suggested that I needed a more nuanced argument than merely suggesting security of tenure. My findings, he suggested, would provide fodder to the neo-liberal mill pushing for a production and market-centric approach that seeks to grant individual property rights over forests. The book under review further fans these fears by using a production forestry and efficient market based argument for why control of forests should be devolved to local communities. Few of us would disagree with the notion of granting more control to local communities, but when a case is made to link communities with markets accompanied by a rollback of state control and the empowerment of private enterprise, one realizes that there is more here than mere devolution.

The World Bank study was conducted to identify opportunities to use forests as a pathway out of poverty. It suggests that the Joint forest management (JFM) framework is a useful one to build on and identifies four enabling factors: (i) secure forest resource tenure and management rights for communities; (ii) effective and flexible institutional models; (iii) robust support systems for forest management, monitoring and control; and (iv) greater access to more efficient markets. The ‘report is designed to assist senior Indian policy-makers in evaluating policy and program options that could help many communities gradually become more empowered to use forests as one means of moving out of poverty’ (p. xiv).

This report explores how markets could access the vast amounts of timber locked away in the forests of India. And what better way to do it than through the rhetoric of local community control, livelihood enhancement and conservation. A set of ‘bold steps’ are suggested through which, the authors hope ‘poor social groups living in forest communities will ultimately see an improvement in their livelihoods as they become better integrated into a more productive and competitive sector of the rural economy while also safeguarding national forest conservation goals’ (p. 88). The report has already attracted attention from the government. The Ministry of Environment and Forests has ‘debunked’ the report claiming that its assumptions disregard ground realities. They argue that under JFM, communities receive better access to non-timber subsistence forest products and a share of net commercial timber revenues in return for providing improved forest protection. The World Bank for its part has been ‘launching’ the report in various cities around the country.*

Bardhan (2003) refers to people who are both anti-market and anti-(centralized) state as ‘anarcho-communitarians’, a category that best suits the position I would like to take as I review this book. The central idea that pervades the report is that control of forests should be decentralized and production of timber and NTFPs removed from the purview of the state and linkages with private sector strengthened. While the idea that local communities need to be given greater control of forests will resonate with a wide spectrum of people, the notion that these communities enter into direct partnership with large timber firms to market produce from forests invokes visions of large-scale plantation forests, creation of a forest worker class devoid of identity, producing timber for the ever-hungry domestic and international markets.

Joint Forest Management as currently practiced is a state-engineered effort that is at best a contractual arrangement between the forest department and the local community. Apart from benefit sharing agreements and wage offerings there is little by way of actual participation of local communities in forest conservation. There exists an enormous amount of literature clamouring for reform of JFM to make it more participatory and equitable. That all is not well with JFM as currently structured is clear, but the route the report under review suggests might not be the only way forward.

It has been observed that privatization of resources often leads to disenfranchisement of the poor and benefits the elite. Unfortunately the report expends little energy on suggesting mechanisms under the reformed agenda to counter such inequities. Historical inequities might be further exacerbated and poorer sections further marginalized when control is handed to local institutions that are mediated by markets. Private enterprise and market regimes are known to accommodate economic and not necessarily conservation or equity bottomlines. While greater cash incomes might actually accrue to local communities, there are a series of entwined and contentious issues such as elite capture, loss of subsistence livelihoods, loss of food security and the erosion of risk insurance that multi-species forests now provide. The report is devoid of any social or ecological analysis although the text is sprinkled with such mantras as ‘participation’ and ‘conservation’. That a report can singularly focus on the economic flows from forests and relegate all other analyses to the sidelines (not to mention the relegation of a robust body of work on participation and JFM reform) speaks of the power that large donor institutions can muster to disseminate their economic agenda.

In a market-centric approach, local communities are merely pawns. The space that they have been allocated in decision-making continues – in the proposed agenda, as in the old – to be non-existent. The assumption that forest dependent people across the country most desire to harvest timber from their forests, and the only constraints to that is state control and preventive trade regimes, is a simplistic assumption, although not entirely wrong.

A stated objective in the report is to enhance conservation of forests through the granting of forest rights and linking with markets. Nowhere in the report is the link between conservation and production made explicit. Nor is it clear how forest conservation is ensured when local communities enter into partnership with processing firms to market their timber. There is evidence from around the world that when forests are converted to production areas, their composition changes from multi-species stands to few or single species stands of fast growing species. Such plantations rarely meet conservation goals.

There is a growing realization that values other than timber might be accrued from forests. Since the seventies several studies have suggested that conservation goals are better met when non-timber products, rather than timber, are harvested. This report pays little heed to those lessons. The assumption that managed forests might produce both timber and non-timber products is tenuous. Sharad Lélé and his group at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development have shown that in some JFM cases the conversion of forest to timber production affected a significant number of families who were previously dependent on a diverse forest for a variety of subsistence needs. This resulted in households migrating out of the village in search of other livelihood options. The focus on timber production misses an important point. That a large proportion of subsistence needs (food and fuel) of sections of local communities comes from forests. The report subscribes to a view of poverty and its alleviation that even the World Bank’s knowledge production machinery has recognized as deficient (World Bank 2001). A far more inclusive view is required of what constitutes poverty. As Agrawal and Redford (2005) suggest, we need to focus also on the political and not just the economic aspects of poverty. This will ensure more contextual and plural solutions to the poverty and conservation issue.

The term ‘conservation’ conjures up a variety of ecological indicators such as species diversity, habitat heterogeneity and such ecological services as pollination, water and biomass. The value of ecological services that forests offer local users often exceeds the economic returns from timber alone. Biodiversity values that might be most affected by timber production, are non-tangible attributes that are important both locally and regionally. Diversity in ecological systems has been shown to build resilience in systems that help buffer against local and global environmental change. The protection agenda of the state has accorded primacy to these attributes. It is important that local communities be intrinsically involved in the management of forests for biodiversity conservation and for livelihood enhancement. The state plays an important role as a catalyst in enabling local institutions to take control of forests and resource use.

I would like to see an enquiry into the devolution of forest control to local communities that addresses the roles and regulatory powers of the state, and other stakeholders, which might effectively complicate the market driven arguments provided in this report. We need to evolve an approach that provides space for local options and diverse livelihood mechanisms that are plural, local, economically viable and ecologically sustainable. An approach that is more diverse than the one size fits all, free market regime that is proposed in the World Bank. There have been several attempts at just such an approach, none of which have been referred to in this report (see Jeffery and Sundar 1999; Sarin et al. 2003; Sundar 2000; and papers within).

A report of this magnitude is weak in the literature it cites, basing many of the results on World Bank studies and on personal conversations with experts. This is surprising especially since JFM has attracted scholars who have explored a range of issues from the ecological and social to the economic. A critique of cooperative societies in India is sourced to a ‘personal communication’ although there is a large body of literature on the performance of cooperatives that might have been easily accessed. Several boxes have been sourced from ‘World Bank publications’, and ‘Background studies’ making it difficult for the reader to track the original publications. To add to the confusion, a few sources cited in the text have been left out from the reference list.

The report will rankle some and elate others. While it might make hardened critics of the Ministry of Environment and Forests hurry to the defence of the government, it might steer peoples’ rights activists towards the private sector for help in transforming lives. What is needed then is a serious dialogue among all actors to grapple with the complexities of evolving and implementing sound strategies. This will enable solutions to how local communities might benefit from forests and how forests and biodiversity might be conserved in a truly participatory manner. Only then might we be able to tell Jungle Sam where to get off.

Nitin D. Rai

 

* The full report is available on the web at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INDIAEXTN/Resources/Reports-Publications/366387-1143196617295/Forestry_Report_ volume_I.pdf.

 

References:

A. Agrawal and K. Redford, Poverty, Development, and Biodiversity Conservation: Shooting in the Dark? Working Paper No. 26. Wildlife Conservation Society, New York, 2006.

P. Bardhan, Poverty, Agrarian Structure, Political Economy in India. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2003.

M. Sarin, N.M. Singh, N. Sundar and R.K. Bhogal, Devolution as a Threat to Democratic Decision-Making in Forestry? Findings from Three States in India. Working Paper 197. Overseas Development Institute, London, 2003.

N. Sundar, Unpacking the ‘Joint’ in Joint Forest Management. Development and Change 31: 255-279, 2000.

R. Jeffrey and N. Sundar, A New Moral Economy for India’s Forests? Sage Publications, New Delhi, 1999.

The World Bank, The World Development Report, 2000-01: Attacking Poverty. Oxford University Press, New York; World Bank, Washington DC, 2001.

 

THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF WATER: Naturalising Scarcity in Western India by Lyla Mehta. Orient Longman, Hyderabad, 2005.

AT the outset itself, let it be declared that The Politics and Poetics of Water is a classic. There is eloquence in argument, pellucid narration, theoretical elegance and a provocatively stated case for adopting an altogether fresh conceptual paradigm to explore the messy relationships between water and politics. Thus far, a stock of recent monographs, articles and papers have vigorously explored water from the standpoint of its access, distribution or the consequences flowing from choices made regarding the adoption of a certain hydraulic technology.

The underlying assumptions that have escaped credible reflection is the central problem of how to relate water in its specific biophysical and ecological properties to particular social and economic process. That is, how does one meaningfully explore the political tensions that are located within and between perceptions that define water as being ‘scarce’ or ‘abundant’ or ‘limited’. Lyla Mehta’s study bravely attempts and convincingly scales this challenge.

The Politics and Poetics of Water sets out to examine the validity of the now widely believed and dominantly held assertion that water is a ‘scarce resource’: that water crises are brought on by ‘natural’ (rather than human induced) scarcities and that the latter is ‘universal’ (rather than something that can be cyclical or a sequence in a hydraulic rhythm). Put differently, the book puts to test the foundational myth of modern hydraulic engineering, which in turn draws its economics from the neo-classical supply-side strategy for water management.

To explore these weighty questions, however, the author does not pursue a mere abstract engagement; rather much of the book is devoted to a tactile ethnographic study around rural water and livelihood practices. And the laboratory site is the village of Merka, somewhere in the heart of the arid and seemingly foreboding landscape of the Kutch (Gujarat). The Kutch, in fact, is no arbitrary selection: in many ways it has come to symbolise the perfect metaphor for water scarcity and is currently the poster picture for the pro large dam lobby in India. What is subsequently revealed in the course of several tightly organised chapters is how the use and understanding of water is saturated by multiple, conflicting and contradictory meanings and perceptions. Water scarcity in Merka is perceived differently and often in non-overlapping ways by the landless, pastoralists, women, the ‘lower caste’ community, state officials, distant urban planners and the local powerful landed elements. Whilst this observation is in itself not particular striking, the author brilliantly argues that these differing perceptions don’t exist as a simple collage of views but are in fact in competition, from which a dominant view is then sought to be imposed.

Two propositions emerge from this analysis; first, that scarcity is real even if understood in a multiplicity of ways and second, that those who can decide what scarcity is get to shape the water strategy in their favour. Thus, Lyla Mehta points out that in enabling the dominance of a ‘manufactured’ notion of scarcity as being universal and naturalised, the state is enabled to pursue its quest to build a large dam (the Sardar Sarovar Dam) as a permanent solution. What gets elided, left out and suppressed, however, is the varied survival and livelihood practices that had been crafted by women, dry land cultivators, rural poor and pastroalists to cope with cyclical scarcity. Termed by Lyla Mehta as the ‘lived/experienced’ notion of scarcity, these innovative responses enabled the mostly weaker sections of Merka’s rural populace to tide over seasonal water shortages. With the insistence and triumph of the manufactured notion of scarcity, the Kutch landscape is increasingly being defined as an irrigated settled agricultural zone, one aimed mostly for the benefit of powerful agrarian landlords. On the other hand, it is also simultaneously leading to the detriment of the rangelands and the emaciation of the pastoralist community.

Clearly, the play of power impinges in the construction, shaping and assembling of discourses on scarcity with consequences that are political, social and economic rather than merely technical. In other words, the manufactured notion of scarcity in the case of Merka is aimed at further consolidating the landed and powerful elements. In contrast, the author argues, by strengthening discourses on water as being ‘limited’ or ‘finite’, several possibilities get opened up for empowering the weaker sections of the rural populace, besides enabling us to tap into a vast set of sustainable local practices and knowledge systems on water.

In other words, water can be more yielding when society learns to work with rather than against scarcity. This book is a must read for all those who experience the very real and lived anxieties about the sustainability of water usage on this planet. Lyla Mehta must be commended for an exceptional political effort.

Rohan D’Souza

 

THE KUHLS OF KANGRA: Community-managed Irrigation in the Western Himalaya by J. Mark Baker. Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2005.

IN 1968, Garrett Hardin wrote his influential ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ article, describing an alarming scenario where common property resources were fast degrading all across the world. Hardin proposed that the only stable solution was to transfer management of these resources to the state, or to private interests. The assumption that users of the commons were trapped in a free-for-all situation, completely missed the large number of successful, self-organized community groups that have successfully managed common property resources in the face of some very difficult challenges.

Responding to the attention that this over-simplified but influential article generated, scholars of common property have documented the existence of hundreds of self-organized irrigation systems, forests, grazing lands, fisheries and other CPRs, some of which have been in existence for hundreds of years. How does one explain the emergence and persistence of these successful self-organized common property systems, particularly when there are also at least as many examples of failure? Rational choice theory has been crucial to developing a framework for understanding the causes for persistence or disappearance of effective commons. This theoretical framework explains individual participation in common property management as a balance between calculations of costs of participation and the benefits that ensue as a result of resource conservation – particularly when these interactions are repeated, and persist over the long term. Though powerful, these explanations are focused at the level of single individuals and institutions, not taking into consideration crucial multi-scale factors external to the commons such as the expansion of market systems, state making, privatization, or population growth – all of which can and do act as stresses and shocks on these systems.

In a compelling study of community managed irrigation systems, or kuhls, in the Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, J. Mark Baker weaves a multi-faceted ‘tapestry’ of factors that interplay and interact at multiple levels to influence the long term persistence (and in some cases disappearance) of these complex systems. Historically, kuhls constituted the only available source of irrigation water for the entire Kangra region. The importance of these irrigation systems for the region can be deduced from the fact that there are over 700 major kuhls and over 2500 minor ones that form a dense network, and irrigate more than 30,000 hectares of agricultural land in the valley. The availability of irrigation water critically determines cropping patterns and influences the economic viability of agriculture in this region.

In contrast to the Indo-Gangetic plains, settlements are dispersed in the Kangra valley, with more equitable distribution of agricultural land holdings and relatively little landlessness. Smaller settlements tend to be single caste, while larger ones are multi-caste, with consequently greater conflict levels. Non-farm employment has increased in recent times, with a decrease in dependence on kuhls, leading to the disappearance of several of these systems. The state has taken over management of several of the larger irrigation systems. Further, with rapid cultural and social changes taking place throughout the valley, the hereditary authority of the kohli, who organizes the maintenance and repair of these systems, is rapidly deteriorating. All of these external factors act as a stress and shock on the system. Yet, despite the disappearance of some kuhls, a majority continue to function effectively, and have persisted through centuries of change.

Drawing on a rich set of historical and contemporary data on these systems, some of which can be traced back to their inception by pre-colonial Katoch rulers, Baker examines 39 kuhls in detail to understand the complex social, ecological, cultural, economic and institutional mosaic within which these systems are embedded. The ‘strands’ of this explanatory tapestry (a descriptive metaphor!) are fourfold. The first strand utilizes well developed frameworks of institutional analysis to explain variations in the persistence of different kuhls based on their social, biophysical and ecological heterogeneity, the mobilization of labour and organization of repair and maintenance activities, and on the salience of irrigation in different localities. The second strand draws on a richly detailed regional history to explain the origin of these irrigation systems, and locate them within political and economic changes that occurred during pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial, independent India. Drawing on hundreds of years of historical and narrative data, he examines 19 of the largest kuhls that were sponsored by Katoch rulers as far back as 1690 CE, and several smaller ones that were built by village communities. The successive rule of colonial and post-colonial governments has also impacted the stability of various kuhls.

Third, Baker examines recent patterns of change. The increasing penetration of the market economy and the tremendous ensuing increase in non-farm employment has made it difficult to mobilize labour to manage and maintain kuhls. Nevertheless, some kohlis have developed other solutions, including hiring migrant labour for this purpose, or lobbying to access state grants for maintenance. Through the final strand, he follows the development of latent networks between different kuhls that enable the exchange of water and labour in difficult times of earthquakes and droughts, thus engendering greater resilience in the overall kuhl system. This is not easy to explain in terms of conventional rational choice or game theoretical frameworks – as there is an embedded spatial inequality hierarchy in kuhl organization, with tail-enders always requiring support from head-enders, never the other way around. Networks of assistance across kuhls are formed based on larger cultural associations of sharing and ‘bhai-bundi’, rather than on short-term ‘rational’ calculations of costs and benefits.

The book develops a narrative that ties in information across multiple levels of governance, space, time and weaves a tapestry from multiple threads of culture, history, social and religious norms, caste heterogeneity, and flows of people and market forces. A simple explanatory framework based on kuhl salience and heterogeneity can accurately predict the persistence and disappearance of as many as 30 of the 39 kuhls Baker studies. Deviations from this are easily understood when one looks at the broader regional and cultural context within which these kuhls are located.

The interdisciplinary and exhaustive research, connecting multiple strands across multiple levels makes this a unique book. In expanding the dimensions of institutional analysis, Baker provides a fresh approach to examining complex, nested self-organized community managed systems. In an era of increasing decentralization and escalating contestation for natural resources, this study provides fresh evidence of the power of communities to successfully manage resources even in the face of extreme stress and rapid change.

Harini Nagendra

 

MANAGING RESETTLEMENT IN INDIA: Approaches, Issues, Experiences edited by Hari Mohan Mathur. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2006.

THIS is a collection of essays authored by some of the best-known names in the forced displacement and resettlement (FDR) arena on managing resettlement induced by large scale ‘development’ projects in India. The contributors bring to this volume their wide and multi-faceted experiences of planning and managing FDR as part of government, multilateral funding agencies like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, in academic policy research or non-government organizations.

The book is organized into four sections, covering resettlement management approaches, legal and policy framework, planning and management issues and implementation experiences. The recurring theme of this book is that resettlement of people displaced by mega-projects is largely a ‘management’ issue, and as such, almost all contributors try to steer clear of an entrenched pro- or anti-displacement position. Across chapters, the authors concede that till date, most FDR experiences have been marked by serious flaws in planning and implementation, both in India and abroad, causing serious trauma and lasting destitution to a majority of the people affected (Mathur quotes a study pegging this figure at nearly 75 per cent of all displaced people). However, they also forcefully argue that with proper planning, adequate fund-flow, efficient and transparent implementation and intensive involvement of the community affected, FDR can potentially be a tool for sustained improvement in livelihood of the same people.

The three essays in the first section of the book outlining some of the central issues relating to resettlement management range from the insightful to the indifferent. Cernea, in dealing with the nature and levels of risk management practiced by resettlement managers, underscores the widespread tendency among project managers towards denying of the impoverishment risks associated with displacement. This, he observes, undermines the most fundamental prerequisite of successful risk management, namely accurate a priori risk identification and assessment. He rightly points out that in all development projects that involve resettlement, ‘displacements are both intended and anticipated… When such forced displacement and resettlement (FDR) processes fail, managers and decision makers cannot claim the worn out excuse of being surprised by the "unexpected".’ He argues that it is only through candid and upfront risk assessment that strong counter-risk measures can be devised, and if project managers fail to do this, there is little scope to use resettlement as a tool for livelihood enhancement among displaced populations.

Cernea’s essay is among the few in this volume where the underlying politics of displacement caused by ‘development’ projects (typically designed to meet consumption demands created by the urban elite and middle classes, while affecting adversely some of the most marginalized segments of rural and tribal communities of India) is addressed upfront. He points out that in most such mega-projects, ‘some risks, to some stakeholders, are considered, while other risks to other stakeholders… are "beyond the horizon" in the mindsets, attitudes and management discourse.’ Drawing on his diverse experience of projects that have caused FDR, Cernea highlights the practical problems – including lack of managerial competence, low priority given to resettlement tasks, lack of commitment from top level project management and absence of a conducive policy framework – that beset resettlement management and are responsible for the poor outcomes observed. In the concluding part of the essay, he sets out the broad contours of an appropriate risk identification and mitigation methodology, based on his celebrated Impoverishment Risks and Resettlement (IRR) model.

Serageldin’s article in Section 1 provides an overview of involuntary resettlement in World Bank financed projects. A large part of the article dwells on the broad contours of Cernea’s IRR model, while the rest is devoted to a rather cursory and non-nuanced comparison of resettlement performance across India, China and Indonesia. Serageldin concludes that the key factor determining resettlement performance is ‘borrower country commitment’ to proper resettlement, and the need to enshrine this commitment in the form of a well-articulated resettlement policy. Mathur’s own essay in the overview section deals with the livelihood impacts of forced displacement and resettlement (FDR), with sub-sections devoted to different approaches to livelihood reconstruction and factors affecting livelihood recovery outcomes. It draws extensively on the author’s vast and varied experiences with FDR within India and elsewhere, and attempts to identify key variables like government commitment, resettlement policy, planning, budgetary allocations, role of NGOs, community participation and socio-cultural factors, which eventually determine whether and to what extent post-resettlement livelihood recovery will occur.

However, the nuances of land-based livelihood and the complex issues involved in reconstruction of such livelihood do not receive adequate attention, despite the fact that a majority of the people affected by mega-projects in India are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. The rural poor, especially in semi-arid, dry, upland adivasi-majority areas, typically practice livelihood diversification as a risk-mitigation strategy; it is, therefore difficult to divide such households neatly into categories like farmers, wage labourers or pastoralists. Livelihood among such communities is a dynamic combination of activities like subsistence farming, livestock, wage labour, hunting and collection of non-timber forest produce (NTFP), where access to common property resources and inter- and intra-community linkages often play a critical role in their survival. For such communities, forced displacement and resettlement, with one-off cash or land-based compensation (often administered poorly and marked by leakages and bad targeting) can and does result in an irreversible entry into poverty, food insecurity and heightened vulnerability. Current rehabilitation packages and policies are not designed to address complexities of existing rural livelihoods and the inherent economic, social and institutional challenges of livelihood reconstruction. It is precisely these nuances that are under-emphasized in the FDR discourse in India, despite the volumes that have been written about displacement. This book too is guilty of inadequate treatment of these complexities from the point of view of resettlement management.

The second section of the book, dealing with law and policy issues, contains three well-crafted critiques of the draft national Resettlement and Rehabilitation (R&R) Policy, the Karnataka R&R Act, and the Central Land Acquisition Act respectively. Each essay is well-researched and strongly argued, and constitutes a significant advance in knowledge and a forceful argument for improvement in the overall legal and policy environment governing FDR in India.

In Section III, the essay by Gill makes a laudable attempt to devise a middle path in the often acrimonious debate on planning and implementation issues in large dam induced displacement. Appleby, in his essay, provides a crisp analysis of the nature of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in mega-projects, and draws on his experience to identify best practices in M&E that need to be built into such projects. In the same section, Mallika Basu’s piece on gender aspects in displacement comes across as rhetorical, with few insights on management solutions, and inadequate attention to cutting-edge research on women in development. It also suffers from poor referencing to substantiate highly debatable claims, for instance, the following one about the position of women contract labourers in large projects: ‘They were formerly agricultural labourers. Not that being an agricultural labourer was more profitable, but when they were working on the fields, they were oriented towards it. Generally, the work atmosphere was relaxed and people were satisfied.’ The only essay in this volume by an NGO representative (Achyut Das) is a historical account of the experience of the NGO Agragamee in collaborating with the state in preparing the Resettlement Action Plan for the Upper Indravati Hydel Project. This essay too would have gained significantly from proper referencing and editing, and incorporation of experiences of other non-government and civil society players.

Section IV of this book contains three chapters on the practical experiences of implementation of resettlement and rehabilitation in India, including the Hyderabad Water and Sanitation Project, the Upper Krishna Project and the CSESMP of Coal India Limited. Each of these has been authored by individuals associated closely with the management of these projects at the highest level (the World Bank and the Indian Administrative Service). As such, the essays provide detailed and project-specific insights about, as well as strong internal critiques of, various aspects of managing population resettlement in World Bank financed mega-projects. However, the views of other stakeholders associated with these projects, for instance NGOs, civil society groups and the affected community, are not reflected.

Editorial inputs in this book needed to have been much more comprehensive. Errors in grammar and syntax could also have been minimized. The styles followed by the contributors vary enormously (see for instance Cernea and Das), and their observations often overlap significantly (for instance, Serageldin and Mathur in Section I), all of which makes for rather disjointed reading. Referencing is weak in a number of essays, and some contributors switch alarmingly between verifiable facts and personal opinions and sweeping, unsubstantiated generalizations. For instance, Mathur alleges that NGOs opt for international advocacy against resettlement since this is a softer option than helping project managers in the field with resettlement – an untenable simplification of diverse approaches of different organizations. Elsewhere, he argues, without any hard sociological or anecdotal evidence, that the caste system is a limiting factor which restricts oustees from the so-called ‘upper’ (sic) castes from taking up so-called ‘low-caste’ livelihoods. It is statements like these which undermine a book that otherwise makes an important contribution to the FDR debate in India.

Asmita Kabra

 

ENVIRONMENTALITY: Technologies of Government and the Makings of Subjects by Arun Agrawal. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2005.

HOW do people come to care for something they call the environment? To answer this question, Arun Agrawal has written a historically and contextually rich study in which he pays attention both to the ways in which the environment is made as object of government, as well as the ways in which subjects are made by expanding regimes of governance. Drawing from the literatures of colonial forestry, governmentality, common property resource management and political ecology, Agrawal directs our attention to the field of environmental practices in the Kumaon. Presenting the history and politics of the Kumaon through the concept of environmentality, he argues, is a useful way to show how different ‘building blocks of power/knowledges institutions and subjectivities’ (8) articulate with each other through ‘the emergence of the environment as a domain that requires regulation and protection’ (226).

In conversation with the work of environmental historians like Gadgil and Guha (1993) and Grove (1989), Agrawal begins his book by describing the configuration of the imperial forest service in the middle of the nineteenth century. Like them, his attention to the literature on colonial forestry shows how the scientific forestry models of Brandis articulated with the profiteering interests of the colonial regime. Together, these influences produced particular kinds of forest via numerical calculations, statistical representations and techniques of landscape classification. These representations had a series of effects. As they created new domains for the exercise of government, the colonial state enforced a series of new policies to administer forests. They also introduced a new language of protection which sought to change how people viewed and acted in these forests. As the forest service first claimed, and then sought to control, forests in the Kumaon through practices of reclassification and erasure, they were met with significant opposition by residents who continued to use forest resources for their livelihoods. With the vulnerability and inability of the department manifest in widespread arson and breaches of forest law in the 1920s, the Kumaon Forest Grievances Committee, set up by the colonial government, urged it to reclassify forests and to lay the decentralize their management community forest councils created for the purpose (83).

Community forestry, therefore, emerged in the 1920s as a political compromise between forest users and the government that sought to control the forest. As Sundar points out elsewhere, ‘community management’ is only defined as such when colonial forest managers find themselves out of sync with existing regimes of use (Sundar 2000:264). The effect of identifying community management, therefore, was to domesticate it under a system of state rules and management regimes. Therefore, rather than be seen as already existing, ‘communities that came into being in Kumaon in the early twentieth century were shaped very much by state efforts’ (66). For some forest officials in the 1920s, community forest councils promised not only to be more effective in regulating forest use, but also were a cheaper and more flexible system of regulation that propagated management regimes that could be tailored for specific localities, and yet remain subordinate to state oversight and control.

Having explained the historical conditions and political contingencies around the emergence of forest councils, the second section of Agrawal’s book focuses on the operations and effects of this system of governance. Recognizing the contemporary enthusiasm and celebration of decentralized community forest management systems the world over, the author draws its proponents to consider the history of these experiences in the Kumaon. He cautions that this paradigm propagates far-reaching and intimate forms of regulation that were not possible via more centralized regimes (127). Agrawal argues that the success of decentralized governance of the environment depends on the creation of (a) governmentalised localities (a redefinition of state-locality relations), (b) new regulatory communities (wherein a transformation occurs in the relationship between community leaders and ‘ordinary’ members), and (c) new environmental subjects (the ways in which people come to care for something called the environment) (12-15).

Agrawal points out that the governmentalisation of localities had different effects – it diverted attention away from the forest department, invited participation, and reduced the possibilities of rebellion (120). As the forest department stepped back to ‘permit’ communities to govern the forest, it simultaneously created a framework of rules to constrain and allow forest councils certain kinds of activities in the forest. Newly governmentalised localities, therefore, connected the state to individuals via the practices of community government (127). In so doing, these practices also reconfigured relationships within villages. Making clear that the state does not disappear under decentralization, Agrawal argues that the new regulatory communities accomplish state defined tasks more precisely and intimately via the logics of participation. In outlining this argument, Agrawal makes two important points. First, that participatory government is not, by definition alone, either equally representative or equally enforced. Marginalised groups continue to be fined and held to account more frequently. Second, the collaboration between the forest department and forest councils emerges not as a consequence of coincident interests in the forest, or via a reconciliation of competing claims, but from the ambiguous and ‘tempting promise that if villagers restrain their current consumption levels, their needs will be met indefinitely’ (160).

Therefore, the success of these governmental arrangements ultimately depends upon the effectiveness in hailing and forming environmental subjects. Putting the ambiguous and contradictory meaning of ‘subject’ to good use,1 Agrawal’s last chapter focuses on how Kumaon’s residents change the ways in which they think about and act in new forests of regulations. Tracing the increasing prevalence of the forest councils, and also a rise in environmental consciousness in the Kumaon, Agrawal finds a correlation between people’s environmental subjectivities, and the existence of decentralised regulatory regimes in the villages he surveys. He presents results of extensive field surveys to argue that people who believed that something called ‘environment’ needed to be protected are also more likely to form forest protection committees and that the formation of these committees has been increasing over the last century.

Agrawal’s attention to the dynamics of subject-making provides a much welcome and compelling contribution to the studies of environmental governmentality. In paying attention to practice, his argument accounts for the ways in which subjects navigate and negotiate between the unequal and dynamic relationships between historic experiences, structures of power, and ways they imagine themselves and the world. In arguing that practices manifest the tensions between projects of governmentality and everyday resistance, Agrawal’s work articulates with some of the contemporary literature on globalization in interesting ways. Where Gilian Hart (2002) follows Gramsci in urging attention to ‘the terrain of the conjunctural’, and Anna Tsing (2005) directs us towards the generative and dissynchronous ‘frictions’ of overlapping projects of differently collaborating actors (especially those interested in community forestry), Agrawal’s directs us to pay attention to the rise of particular, historically situated practices of forest conservation.

However, there is a tension in that the book’s ‘optic’ (226) is also its subject. What falls out of environmentality? In providing a very compelling account of how environmentality works, Agrawal loses some of the messiness and multiplicity of everyday life, and where it does not work. To be fair, Agrawal does point out that not everyone in the Kumaon views the environment as something to be conserved. Drawing from his sophisticated account of ‘agrarian environments’ elsewhere (Agrawal 2000), I wanted to learn more about how environmental subjects ‘worked’ to get a sense of these ambiguities. On a related note, village forest councils aren’t the only regulatory communities in the Kumaon. When other institutions of local government (eg panchayats, NGOs) are present and active, what do forest councils accomplish that these institutions do not?

All told, however, Environmentality is a careful, illuminating and ambitious book that achieves what it sets out to do. Via a keen attention to the details of the constitution of forest councils in the Kumaon, Agrawal first makes a clear case for why an attention to the historical conditions of their emergence is significant to acknowledge. As a political compromise forest councils give communities some control of their resources and also place them under the state. Next, he shows how forms of regulation and governmental locations articulate with subject formation by providing an account that shows these subjects both producing and being produced by environmental regimes. As such, his suggestion to not take subject identities as the most relevant starting point is a good one. Finally, he shows us why we should take subject imaginations and practices seriously and engage with the questions they raise both theoretically and politically. Taken together then, Environmentality is a compelling and rewarding book, and promises to engage with different disciplinary subjects in many places.

Nikhil Anand

 

Footnote:

1. Agrawal points out that subjects can be understood as actors, as well as persons subordinated by powerful interests (165).

 

References:

A. Agrawal and K. Sivaramakrishnan (eds.), Agrarian Environments: Resources, Representation and Rule in India. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.

M. Gadgil and R. Guha, This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

R.H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island-Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism 1600-1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

G. P. Hart, Disabling Globalization: Places of Power in Post Apartheid South Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

K. Sivaramakrishnan, Modern Forests: Statemaking and Environmental Change in Colonial Eastern India. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.

N. Sundar, Unpacking the ‘Joint’ in Joint Forest Management. Development and Change 31, 2000, 55-279.

A.L. Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.

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