Gendered-Caste Violations and the Cultural Politics of Voice in Rural Orissa,India

Despite the legal ban on untouchability over four decades ago, caste discrimination and atrocities perpetrated against ‘untouchable’ women (or Dalits) continue to be a part of the social landscape in India. Based on a decade-long partnership between a Canadian NGO, a partner Dalit/Adivasi local organization and 75 partner villages in South Orissa, this article provides a localized snapshot of the contemporary nature of caste atrocities committed against Dalit women in the Mohana administrative block. It briefly elaborates on Dalit explanations for such assaults and suggests that when it comes to addressing gendered-caste victimization, there are limits to open democratic advocacy which need to be acknowledged by activists and critical scholarship engaged with the cultural politics of ‘voice’.     

Factors Affecting Small Farmers' Access to Institutional Credit in Rural Orissa,India

This study uses original survey data from six villages to locate and analyse factors inhibiting small farmers' access to formal credit, including credit supply, bargaining strength, bureaucratic formalities, asset-based lending policies, informal tenancy contracts, extended processing procedures and caste barriers. The survey data confirm a correlation between higher overall transaction costs and smaller farm size, and also between arrearages and larger farm size. The analysis leads to the suggestion that policies should be directed both towards reducing the overall transaction costs of formal loans to small farmers, and towards improved collection processes.     

The Green Frog and Desalination: A Nyungar Metaphor for the (Mis‐)Management of Water Resources,Swan Coastal Plain,Western Australia

ABSTRACT In common with Aboriginal groups around Australia, the indigenous people, or Nyungars, of Perth adopt a holistic attitude towards groundwater resources. Of cultural significance are lakes, springs, soaks and watercourses that feature in Dreamtime creation narratives. Perth is experiencing major water shortages and many Nyungars feel that the degradation of the freshwater supply is a result of mismanagement and unsustainable development by non‐Aboriginal people. Proposals for dealing with the issue are seen as equally out of balance with the natural order of things. Water regulators have much to learn from indigenous Australians about water and environmental management. Although water continues to be central to Nyungar identity, the study on which this article is based found evidence of attenuated knowledge about the Dreaming, with discontinuities evident in the way significance is increasingly being read in everyplace rather than in specific ‘story places’.     

Environmental Policy in India

This article reviews the significant changes India has achieved in environmental policy in the pool 10 years, especially in terms of regulatory procedures and organizational structure. Despite these changes, however, environmental quality has continued to deteriorate, largely because a wide gap persists between the intent of policy and the actual achievement and because major problems have eluded serious attention. The paper analyzes major problems in the implementation of Indian environmental policy, with particular attention to policy design, policy analysis, and standard setting. Political problems are identified that underlie difficulties in policy formulation and implemetation, and strategies to improve implemetation are proposed.     

Equality‐led Development and the Demand‐ and Supply‐side Effects

This contribution to the Forum Debate on global development focuses on the dimension of functional income distribution between labour and capital and its demand‐side and supply‐side effects. The article summarizes recent literature that has sought to explain the reasons behind the global fall in the labour share. It then discusses the demand‐side effects of the declining wage share on growth, based on the post‐Keynesian/post‐Kaleckian literature. The author presents an alternative policy scenario for the G20 based on a mix of increasing wage share and public investment, before discussing the supply‐side effects of rising inequality. The article concludes with some policy implications for equality‐led development.     

Unequal Knowledges in Jharkhand,India: De‐Romanticizing Women’s Agroecological Expertise

Taking the Jharkhand region of India as a case study, this article uses empirical data to intervene in ‘women, environment and development’ and ecofeminist debates regarding women’s environmental knowledge. The article first outlines the adoption of gender/environmental issues into development planning and considers the dangers of overestimating women’s agroecological knowledges and assuming that they can easily participate in development projects. It then highlights the local complexities of environmental knowledge possession and control with reference to gender and other variations in agricultural participation, decision‐making and knowledge transfers between villagers’ natal and marital places. Particular emphasis is placed on the economic, socio‐cultural and ‘actor’ related factors that supplement gender as an influence on task allocation, decision‐making, knowledge distribution and knowledge articulation. The article concludes that given the socio‐cultural constraints women face in accumulating and vocalizing environmental knowledge, simplistic participatory approaches are unlikely to empower them. Instead, more flexible, site‐specific development initiatives (coupled with wider structural change) are required if opportunities are to be created for women to develop and use their agroecological knowledges.     

Causal Assessment in Small‐N Policy Studies

The identification of cause‐and‐effect relationships plays an indispensable role in policy research, both for applied problem solving and for building theories of policy processes. Historical process tracing has emerged as a promising method for revealing causal mechanisms at a level of precision unattainable through statistical techniques. Yet historical analyses often produce dauntingly complex causal explanations, with numerous factors emerging as necessary but insufficient causes of an outcome. This article describes an approach that renders complex causal narratives more analytically tractable by establishing measurement criteria for ranking the relative importance of component causes. By focusing on subjectively useful measurement attributes, the approach is well suited to the policy sciences' unique combination of explicitly normative aspirations and a commitment to the systematic assessment of causal claims.     

Celebrating the prophet: religious nationalism and the politics of Milad‐un‐Nabi festivals in India

The traditional honoring of the birth of the Prophet Mohammed (Milad‐un‐Nabi) has shifted in numerous Indian cities from private prayer and ritual meals in the home to grand public festivals that bear resemblances to Hindu religious processions. In 2010 in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, large‐scale Milad‐un‐Nabi festivals became implicated in Hindu–Muslim nationalist riots that erupted weeks later at the commencement of a Hindu festival for Hanuman Jayanthi. This paper explores the political production of Muslim ethno‐nationalism and the intra‐community debates over the legitimacy and piety of Milad‐un‐Nabi celebrations. It argues that Milad‐un‐Nabi as a public performance is a (re)invented tradition that is part of the struggle for material, political and symbolic goods of the nation‐state. It is shaped by local party politics and history of anti‐Muslim discrimination. However, as the festivals highlight community divisions and religious ambiguities, they ultimately reveal the fragility of ethnic groups.     

Ecological Conflicts and the Environmental Movement in India

Nature-based conflicts have increased in frequency and intensity in India. They revolve around competing claims over forests, land, water and fisheries, and have generated a new movement struggling for the rights of victims of ecological degradation. The environmental movement has added a new dimension to Indian democracy and civil society. It also posesan ideological challenge to the dominant notions of the meaning, content and patterns ofdevelopment.     

Using cultural trauma: Gandhi's assassination,partition and secular nationalism in post‐independence India

Nationalism theorists have noted the link between traumatic events and national identity, and cultural trauma theory presents a framework for understanding how these events become trauma narratives. I argue for greater consideration of how these narratives are strategically linked to ideological frames of national identity. A case study of post‐Independence India considering the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and the Partition of India and Pakistan demonstrates how two very different events were promoted as cultural traumas by various carrier groups in order to promote a secular vision of the Indian nation. Adapting Armstrong and Crage (2006), I suggest that the success of these trauma narratives depend on several criteria: the ease of narrating the event, how it is linked to underlying cultural meanings/frames and how the event interacts with historical contingencies.     

Economic and Environmental Policy Analysis of the Flumen‐Monegros Irrigation System in Huesca,Spain

This article describes a behavioral model of the Flumen‐Monegros irrigation area (Spain) and presents the results from the model simulation under various policy scenarios. The model combines agronomic, economic and policy information in a framework built using linear programming and crop growth simulation techniques. An important feature of the model is the classification of crop acreage in various types of soils which have different productive potential. The objective function maximizes net margins of crops and includes direct payments of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The crop activities covered in the model are the main crops cultivated in the area (fallow, wheat, barley, corn, sunflower, alfalfa, rice, other crops, and CAP set‐aside). To validate the model, the results on cropland utilization obtained from the model have been compared with actual cropland utilization, concluding that the model closely approximates the actual data. The model is used to characterize the behavior of the irrigation area under three scenarios which reflect likely changes in agricultural and environmental policies: removal of direct payments, increase in water prices, and reduction of fertilizer use. The results show the large impact of these three scenarios on farmers' production decisions: the elimination of direct payment reduces net margin almost by half; prices corresponding to full recovery of water costs reduce significantly the cultivated acreage; and the reduction in fertilizer use causes a fall of 23 percent in net margins.     

Unpacking Land Grabs: Subjects,Performances and the State in Ghana's ‘Small‐scale’ Gold Mining Sector

During the 2008 global financial crisis, gold‐backed reserves became a ‘safe haven’ for capital investment, causing gold prices to hit historic highs. Globally, small‐scale gold mining activities proliferated as prices climbed. Along the banks of Ghana's Offin River, abandoned, waterlogged mining pits now stretch for kilometres where agricultural and other land uses recently existed. While small‐scale mining is a right reserved for Ghanaian citizens, many mining sites are foreign‐operated and almost all go unremediated. There is thus a stark tension between Ghanaian minerals laws and environmental regulations and the ongoing transformation of rural landscapes. Based on 112 interviews and long‐term observation in Ghana since 2010, this article untangles the relationships and practices mediating ‘illegal’ foreign mining operations. Shifting subjectivities, performances and practices bring land grabbing into being as state actors weave together legal and extra‐legal domains to facilitate, and profit from, foreign mining. Other officials experience fear and frustration in the face of powerful mining interests, demonstrating the complex workings and conflicts between government actors and agencies. Detailing co‐productions between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ domains in official licensing procedures complicates understandings of the state and its role in foreign land grabbing, breaking down the ontological binaries — rational/irrational, official/unofficial — used to uphold an image of state legitimacy and cohesion. Finally, given the spatial extent of small‐scale mining deals and ensuing social and environmental transformations, the authors urge land‐grab scholars not to dismiss the importance of small‐scale deals alongside larger transactions.     

Environmental Assessment in the European Union: Perspectives,Past, Present and Strategic

Environmental assessment (EA) in the European Union (EU) is undergoing a period of significant transition. Following over 10 years of practice and development under Directive 85/337/EEC, the EU EA system is being subjected to legislative reform. In the light of this, this paper provides a critical examination of the past, present and future role of EA in the EU. After evaluating the legislative transposition and procedural effectiveness of the original provisions, the paper examines the extent to which recent amendments to the Directive and the proposed strategic environmental assessment (SEA) Directive will lead to improvement. The authors suggest that although the changes should overcome some of the procedural and practical problems experienced over the last 10 years, a more committed emphasis needs to be placed on fundamental areas of weakness.