Energy poverty, institutional reform and challenges of sustainable development: the case of India

This paper assesses recent efforts by the Indian Government to tackle energy poverty and sustainable development. It focuses on the new integrated energy policy, and initiatives to disseminate improved cookstoves and develop energy alternatives for transport. The success of government initiatives in cleaner biomass cookstoves and village electrification has historically been limited, and institutional reforms in the 2000s promoted market-led and ‘user-centred’ approaches, and encouraged biofuels as a ‘pro-poor’ route to rural development and energy security. The paper argues that such interventions have reopened tensions and conflicts around land-use, intra-community inequalities and the role of corporate agendas in sustainable energy

Sustainability Science

Meeting fundamental human needs while preserving earth's life support systems will require an accelerated transition toward sustainability. A new field of sustainability science is emerging that seeks to understand the fundamental character of interactions between nature and society and to encourage the interactions along more sustainable trajectories. Such an integrated, place-based science will require new research strategies and institutional innovations to enable them especially in developing countries still separated by deepening divides from mainstream science. Sustainability science needs to be widely discussed in the scientific community, reconnected to the political agenda for sustainable development, and become a major focus for research

Weather and Crop Instability in the Dry Region of Rajasthan

Low and unstable crop production has been a chronic problem of agriculture int eh dry region of Rajasthan, which is spread over 11 north-western districts and covers nearly three-fifth of the State. This paper after briefly reviewing the weather variability, the principal source of crop instability in the region, discusses the yield variability of the principal crops of the dry region. This is followed by a discussion of certain other features of crop instability, which tend to reduce the effectiveness of the measures adopted by the desert farmers to minimize the impact of instability and uncertainty in arid agriculture. The crop yield data fro 15 to 17 years pertaining to 11 arid districts of Rajasthan have been used

RPE CBNRM

"Submitted to PARDYP Management March 9, 1999, Kunming, China

The decline of common property resources in Rajasthan, India

Abridged paper Population and Development Rev. 1986 v. 11(2) p. 247-264Available from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:6391.5(ODI-PDN--22c) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

Testing Household-Specific Explanations for the Inverse Productivity Relationship

The inverse relationship between land productivity and farm size is an old and puzzling empirical regularity. Most explanations for this relationship rely on market imperfections that jointly determine the farm size and the household's shadow price of some productive inputs. We use plot-level data from the ICRISAT/VLS to assess whether these household-specific theories can explain the puzzle. The data exhibit plots of different sizes being simultaneously cropped by the same household. The inverse relationship is shown to hold true with the same magnitude across the plots of each household, thus cross-household heterogeneity does not suffice to explain the puzzle. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.

Urbanization, Common Property Resources and Gender Relations in a Peri-urban Context

The article reflects on the urbanization process and the social interactions that have played a role in diminishing access to common property resources (CPRs) for the vulnerable residents of the peri-urban Gurgaon. It emphasizes on the factors responsible for changing access and usage. Coupled with uncertain rainfall, these factors have reduced the dependence on and changed the usage of the CPRs in the two peri-urban villages—Budheda and Sadhrana. The article shares the field evidence of how social and political institutions shape access to resources affecting the livelihoods of the vulnerable groups, especially agriculture and animal husbandry. Lastly, it provides evidence of changing gender relations around the tasks of natural resource collection and use with increasing urbanization. These nuances raises the questions on the policy gaps based on the community perceptions and evidences in the field.</p