Employment, Poverty and Rights in India

Abstract

In comparison to other social groups, India's rural poor-and particularly Adivasis and Dalits-have seen little benefit from the country's economic growth over the last three decades. Though economists and statisticians are able to model the form and extent of this inequality, their work is rarely concerned with identifying possible causes. Employment, Poverty and Rights in India analyses unemployment in India and explains why the issues of employment and unemployment should be the appropriate prism to understand the status of well-being in India. The author provides a historical analysis of policy interventions on behalf of the colonial and postcolonial state with regard to the alleviation of unemployment and poverty in India and in West Bengal in particular. Arguing that, as long as poverty-either as a concept or as an empirical condition-remains as a technical issue to be managed by governmental technologies, the 'poor' will be held responsible for their own fate and the extent of poverty will continue to increase. The book contends that rural unemployment in India is not just an economic issue but a political process that has consistently been shaped by various socioeconomic , political and cultural factors since the colonial period. The analysis which depends mainly on ethnography extends to the implementation of the 'New Rights Agenda', such as the MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), at the rural margin. Challenging the dominant approach to poverty, this book will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of South Asian studies, Indian Political Economy, contemporary political theories, poverty studies, neoliberalism, sociology and social anthropology, as well as development studies.

‘On the Horns of a Dilemma’! Climate Change, Forest Conservation and the Marginal People in Indian Sundarbans

“…The question that arises, therefore, is whether the FRA, like all other previous legislations, has been curtailing the natural rights of several deserving people in the name of conferring rights. The new rights-based agenda, as I argue elsewhere (Roy 2018), are not only redefining various entitlements but are also reinterpreting afresh its beneficiaries. The FRA, while being upheld as a historic act that could undo the historic injustices 19 , also poses a limit to the natural rights of the forest-dependent people, be it in the SBR or anywhere else in India by means of its scripted rules and guidelines.…”

“…Two factors might have been responsible for the increase in the reclamation of lands in the SDB. First, the Bengal economy was at a low point (Roy 2018). The poverty-stricken landless and marginal people from various parts of Bengal particularly from Midnapore district seemed to buy easily the colonial government's proposal for resettlement in the SDB through the reclamation of lands.…”

“…The villagers, despite suffering from increased costs of production due to the high price of groundwater, are now compelled to extract ground water for irrigating high-yield crops. The extraction not only dispossesses residents but also shrinks the groundwater level, exacerbating surface evaporation (Roy 2018). As a result, once flourishing mangrove forests have been drying up rapidly in the SDB.…”