The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India Author(s): Bina Agarwal Source: Feminist Studies, Vol.

18, No. 1 (Spring, 1992), pp. 119-158 Published by: Feminist Studies, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3178217 . Accessed: 06/06/2011 05:32
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THE GENDERAND ENVIRONMENTDEBATE: LESSONSFROM INDIA

BINA AGARWAL

What is women'srelationship with the environment? it distinct Is from that of men's?The growingliterature ecofeminismin the on West, and especiallyin the United States,conceptualizesthe link between gender and the environment primarily in ideological terms. An intensifying struggle for survival in the developing world, however, highlightsthe materialbasis for this link and sets the backgroundfor an alternativeformulationto ecofeminism, which I term "feminist environmentalism." In this paper I will arguethat women, especiallythose in poor ruralhouseholdsin India,on the one hand, arevictims of environmental degradationin quite gender-specificways. On the other hand, they have been active agentsin movementsof environmental protectionand regeneration, often bringingto them a genderand one which needs to inform our view of specific perspective alternatives.To contextualizethe discussion, and to examine the opposingdimensionsof women as victimsand women as actorsin concreteterms, this essay will focus on India,althoughthe issues are clearlyrelevantto otherpartsof the ThirdWorldas well. The discussion is divided into five sections. The first section outlines the ecofeministdebatein the United Statesand one prominentIndian variant of it, and suggests an alternativeconceptualization. The next three sectionsrespectivelytracethe natureand causes of in environmental degradation ruralIndia,its class and genderimplications, and the responses to it by the state and grass-roots groups. The concluding section argues for an alternativetransformativeapproachto development.
Feminist Studies 18, no. 1 (Spring 1992). ? 1992 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 119

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ISSUES SOMECONCEPTUAL Ecofeminism embodies within it several different Ecofeminism. strandsof discourse,most of which have yet to be spelledout fully, and which reflect,amongotherthings,differentpositionswithin the Westernfeministmovement (radical, liberal,socialist).As a of thought ecofeminismis as yet underdevelopedand still body evolving,but carriesa growingadvocacy.My purposeis not to critique ecofeministdiscoursein detail, but ratherto focus on some of its majorelements, especiallyin orderto examinewhether and how it might feed into the formulation a ThirdWorldperspecof tive on gender and the environment.Disentanglingthe various threadsin the debate, and focusing on those more clearly articulated, provides us with the following picture of the ecofeminist (1) argument(s):1 There are importantconnections between the dominationand oppressionof women and the dominationand exploitationof nature. (2) In patriarchal thought,women are identified as being closer to natureand men as being closer to culture. Natureis seen as inferiorto culture;hence, women are seen as inferiorto men. (3)Becausethe dominationof women and the dominationof naturehave occurredtogether,women have a particular stake in endingthe dominationof nature,"inhealingthe alienated human and non-humannature."2 The feminist movement and (4) nonhierthe environmental movement both stand for egalitarian, archicalsystems.They thus have a gooddeal in commonand need to work together to evolve a common perspective,theory, and practice. In the ecofeministargument,therefore,the connectionbetween the dominationof women and that of natureis basicallyseen as as ideological, rooted in a system of ideas and representations, values and beliefs, that places women and the nonhumanworld below men. And it calls upon women and men to hierarchically to themselves,and theirrelationships one another reconceptualize and to the nonhumanworld, in nonhierarchical ways. We might then ask: In what is this connectionbetween nature and women seen to be rooted?The idea that women are seen as closer to naturethan men was initiallyintroducedinto contemporaryfeministdiscourseby SherryOrtnerwho arguedthat"woman is being identifiedwith-or, if you will, seems to be a symbol ofsomethingthat every culturedevalues,defines as being of a lower in orderof existencethan itself.... [Thatsomething]is 'nature' the

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bolicallyassociatedwith nature,as opposedto men, who are identhe In tified with culture."3 her initialformulation, connectionbetween women and naturewas clearlyrootedin the biologicalprocesses of reproduction although,even then, Ortnerdid recognize that women, like men, also mediate between natureand culture. Ortnerhas since modifiedher positionwhich was also criticized on social anthropologists) several counts, by others (particularly divideis not universalacross especiallybecausethe nature-culture all cultures, nor is there uniformityin the meaning attributedto and "male," "female."4 some ecofeminists Still, "nature," "culture," the emphasison biology uncriticallyand in differentways accept reiterateit. An extremeform of this positionis that taken by Ariel Kay Sallehwho groundseven women's consciousnessin biology and in nature. She argues:'Women'smonthly fertilitycycle, the tiring symbiosis of pregnancy,the wrench of childbirthand the pleasureof sucklingan infant, these things alreadygroundwomen's consciousness in the knowledge of being coterminouswith nature. However tacit or unconscious this identity may be for YnestraKingand CarolynMerchantarguethat the nature-culture dichotomyis a false one, a patriarchal ideologicalconstructwhich is then used to maintaingenderhierarchy.At the same time they constructedas closer acceptthe view thatwomen are ideologically to naturebecause of their biology.6 Merchant, however, in an illuminating historical analysis, shows that in premodernEuropethe conceptualconnection between women and naturerestedon two divergentimages,coexisting simultaneously,one which constrainedthe destructionof nature and the otherwhich sanctionedit. Bothidentifiednaturewith the female sex. The first image, which was the dominant one, identifiednature,especiallythe earth,with the nurturing mother, and culturallyrestricted"thetypes of socially and morally sanctioned human actions allowable with respect to the earth. One does not readily slay a mother, dig into her entrailsfor gold, or
many women ... it is nevertheless 'a fact of life.'"5Others such as

most generalized sense....

[Women are everywhere] being sym-

mutilate her body ...."7 The opposing image was of nature as wild

and uncontrollable which could renderviolence, storms,droughts, and generalchaos. This image culturallysanctionedmasteryand human dominanceover nature. Betweenthe sixteenthand seventeenthcenturies,Merchantsug-

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Revolution the growthof a market-oriented and gests,the Scientific the culturein Europeundermined imageof an organiccosmoswith a livingfemaleearthat its center.Thisimagegave way to a mechanisticworldviewin which naturewas reconceivedas somethingto be masteredand controlledby humans.The twin ideas of mechaboththe denudation nism and of dominanceover naturesupported of natureand male dominanceover women. Merchantobserves:
The ancient identity of nature as a nurturingmother links women's history with the historyof the environmentand ecologicalchange.... In investigating the roots of our current environmental dilemma and its connections to science, technology, and the economy, we must reexaminethe formationof a world view and a science that, by reconceptualizingreality as a machine ratherthan a living organism,sanctionedthe dominationof both nature and
women.

the goalsof the Today,Merchantproposes,juxtaposing egalitarian women's movement and the environmentalmovement can suggest "newvalues and social structures,based not on the domination of women and natureas resourcesbut on the full expression of both male and femaletalentand on the maintenanceof environmental integrity."8 Ecofeministdiscourse,therefore,highlights(a) some of the important conceptual links between the symbolicconstructionof women and nature and the ways of actingupon them (although Merchantalone goes beyond the level of assertionto trace these links in concrete terms, historically);(b) the underlying commonality between the premises and goals of the women's moveviment and the environmental movement;and (c) an alternative and sion of a more egalitarian harmoniousfuture society. At the same time the ecofeminist argumentas constructedis as on problematic severalcounts. First,it posits"woman" a unitary and fails to differentiateamong women by class, race, category ethnicity, and so on. It thus ignores forms of dominationother than gender which also impinge criticallyon women'sposition.9 Second,it locates the dominationof women and of naturealmost materialsourcesof solely in ideology,neglectingthe (interrelated) this dominance (based on economic advantage and political power). Third,even in the realm of ideologicalconstructs,it says little (with the exceptionof Merchant's analysis)about the social, within which these constructs economic, and politicalstructures are produced and transformed.Nor does it address the central

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issue of the means by which certaindominantgroups(predicated on gender, class, etc.) are able to bring about ideologicalshifts in their own favor and how such shifts get entrenched.Fourth,the ecofeminist argumentdoes not take into account women's lived materialrelationshipwith nature, as opposed to what others or they themselves might conceive that relationshipto be. Fifth, those strandsof ecofeminism that trace the connectionbetween women and natureto biologymay be seen as adheringto a formof essentialism (some notion of a female "essence" which is unSuch a formulation flies in the face changeableand irreducible).10 of wide-ranging evidence that conceptsof nature,culture,gender, and so on, are historically sociallyconstructed vary across and and and within culturesand time periods.1l In other words, the debate highlightsthe significanteffect of ideologicalconstructsin shaping relationsof gender dominance and forms of acting on the nonhuman world, but if these constructsare to be challengedit is necessaryto go further.We need a theoreticalunderstanding what could be termed "thepolitical of of ideologicalconstruction," is, of the interplaybethat economy tween conflictingdiscourses,the groupspromotingparticular disand the means used to entrenchviews embodiedin those courses, discourses.Equally,it is criticalto examinethe underlyingbasis of women's relationshipwith the nonhuman world at levels other than ideology (suchas throughthe work women and men do and the genderdivisionof propertyand power)and to addresshow the material realities in which women of different classes (/castes/ races) are rooted might affect their responses to environmental Women in the West, for instance,have respondedin degradation. specific ways to the threatof environmentaldestruction,such as the by organizing GreenhamCommonsresistanceto nuclearmissiles in England and by participatingin the Green movement acrossEuropeand the United States.A varietyof actionshave similarlybeen takenby women in the ThirdWorld,as discussedlater. The question then is: Are there gendered aspects to these responses?If so, in what are these responsesrooted? VandanaShiva's work on Indiatakes us a step forward.Likethe she sees violence againstnatureand againstwomen ecofeminists, as built into the very mode of perceivingboth. LikeMerchant,she argues that violence against nature is intrinsic to the dominant as model, which she characterizes a coindustrial/developmental

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lonial imposition.Associatedwith the adoption of this developmental model, Shiva argues,was a radicalconceptualshift away from the traditional Indiancosmologicalview of (animateand inand and exas animate)natureas Prakriti, "activity diversity" as "an pression of Shakti, the feminine and creative principle of the cosmos" which "in conjunction with the masculine principle ... In (Purusha) createsthe world." this shift, the living,nurturing between man and nature as earth mother was rerelationship over placedby the notionof man as separatefromand dominating inert and passive nature."Viewed from the perspectiveof nature, or women embedded in nature,"the shift was repressive and violent. "For women ... the death of Prakriti simultaneouslya is of theirmarginalisation, and devaluation, beginning displacement, ultimate dispensability.The ecological crisis is, at its root, the At the same time, Shivanotes that violence againstwomen and but againstnatureare linked not just ideologically also materially. For instance, Third World women are dependent on nature "for drawingsustenancefor themselves,their families,their societies." The destruction of nature thus becomes the destruction of women'ssourcesfor "staying alive." Drawingupon her experience of working with women activists in the Chipko movement-the environmentalmovement for forest protectionand regeneration in the Garhwalhills of northwestIndia- Shivaarguesthat "Third Worldwomen"have both a special dependence on nature and a specialknowledgeof nature.This knowledgehas been systematiunder the impact of modem science: "Modern cally marginalized reductionist science, like development,turnsout to be a patriarchal project,which has excludedwomen as experts,and has simultaneously excluded ecology and holistic ways of knowing which understand respectnature's and processesand interconnectedness as science."13 Shivatakes us furtherthan the Westernecofeministsin exploring the links between ways of thinking about development,the processesof developmental change,and the impactof these on the environmentand on the people dependentupon it for their livelihood. These links are of critical significance.Nevertheless her argumenthas three principalanalyticalproblems. First, her exfromnorthwestIndia,but amples relateto ruralwomen primarily her generalizations conflateall ThirdWorldwomen into one catedeath of the feminine principle. .. ."12

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gory. Although she distinguishesThird World women from the rest, like the ecofeminists she does not differentiatebetween women of differentclasses, castes, races, ecologicalzones, and so on. Hence, implicitly,a formof essentialismcouldbe readinto her work, in that all Third World women, whom she sees as "embedded in nature," womenhave a specialrelationship with the qua naturalenvironment.This still begs the question:Whatis the basis of this relationship how do women acquirethis specialunderand standing? Second, she does not indicate by what concrete processes and institutions ideologicalconstructionsof gender and nature have changedin India,nor does she recognizethe coexistenceof several ethnic and religiousdiversity.For ideologicalstrands,given India's her emphasis on the feminine principleas the guiding instance, idea in Indian philosophicdiscoursein fact relates to the Hindu discoursealone and cannotbe seen as applicablefor Indiansof all religious persuasions.'4 Indeed, Hinduism itself is pluralistic, fluid, and contains several coexisting discourses with varying But it genderimplications.l5 perhapsmost importantly, is not clear how and in which historicalperiod(s)the concept of the feminine affectedgenderrelationsor relationsbetween principlein practice and nature. people Third, Shiva attributesexisting forms of destructionof nature and the oppressionof women (in both symbolic and real terms) principallyto the ThirdWorld'shistory of colonialismand to the impositionof Western science and a Western model of development. Undeniably, the colonial experience and the forms that modern development has taken in Third World countries have been destructiveand distortingeconomically,institutionally, and culturally.However, it cannot be ignored that this process impinged on preexistingbases of economic and social (including gender)inequalities. Here it is important distinguishbetween the particular to model of modernization clearlyhas been imported/adopted that fromthe West by many ThirdWorldcountries(withor withouta historyof colonization)and the socioeconomic base on which this model was imposed. Pre-BritishIndia, especially during the Mughal period,was considerablyclass/castestratified,althoughvaryingly acrossregions.16 would have affectedthe patternsof access to This and use of naturalresourcesby differentclassesand socialgroups.

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rule.

Althoughmuch more researchis needed on the politicaleconomy of naturalresourceuse in the precolonialperiod,the evidence of differentiated peasant communitiesat that time cautions against about the effects of colonial sweeping historicalgeneralizations

almost entirely in the ThirdWorld's By locatingthe "problem" of the West, Shiva misses out on the very real local experience forces of power, privilege,and propertyrelationsthat predatecolonialism.What exists today is a complex legacy of colonial and precolonialinteractionsthat defines the constraintsand parameterswithin which and fromwhich presentthinkingand actionon development,resourceuse, and social changehave to proceed.In a particular, strategyfor changerequiresan explicitanalysisof the structuralcauses of environmentaldegradation,its effects, and responsesto it. The outline for an alternativeframework,which I term feminist environmentalism, suggestedbelow. is I FeministEnvironmentalism.would like to suggest here that women's and men's relationshipwith nature needs to be understood as rootedin their materialreality,in their specific forms of interactionwith the environment. Hence, insofar as there is a divisionof laborand distribugenderand class (/caste/race)-based tion of propertyand power,genderand class (/caste/race) structure the interactions with natureand so structure effects of enpeople's vironmental change on people and their responses to it. And where knowledgeaboutnatureis experiential its basis,the diviin sions of labor,property,and power which shape experiencealso shape the knowledgebased on that experience. For instance, poor peasant and tribal women have typically been responsiblefor fetchingfuel and fodderand in hill and tribal communitieshave also often been the main cultivators.They are thus likely to be affectedadverselyin quite specificways by enviAt ronmentaldegradation. the same time, in the course of their everyday interactionswith nature,they acquirea special knowledge of species varieties and the processes of naturalregeneration. (This would include knowledge passed on to them by, for example,their mothers.)They could thus be seen as both victims of the destruction of nature and as repositories of knowledge about nature, in ways distinct from the men of their class. The formeraspect would providethe genderedimpulsefor their resistance and response to environmental destruction. The latter

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would conditiontheir perceptionsand choices of what should be and done. Indeed,on the basis of their experiential understanding could provide a special perspectiveon the proknowledge, they cesses of environmentalregeneration,one that needs to inform to our view of alternative approaches development.(Byextension, women who are no longeractively using this knowledgefor their daily sustenance,and are no longerin contactwith the naturalenvironmentin the same way, are likely to lose this knowledgeover time and with it the possibilityof its transmissionto others.) In this conceptualization, therefore,the link between women and the environmentcan be seen as structured a given gender by and class (/caste/race) organizationof production,reproduction, and distribution.Ideologicalconstructionssuch as of gender, of nature, and of the relationshipbetween the two, may be seen as a (interactively) part of this structuringbut not the whole of it. This perspectiveI term "feminist environmentalism." In terms of action such a perspectivewould call for struggles with over bothresourcesand meanings.It would imply grappling the dominantgroupswho have the property,power, and privilege to controlresources,and these or other groupswho controlways of thinkingaboutthem, via educational, media,religious,and legal institutions. On the feminist front there would be a need to aboutgenderand the actual challenge and transformboth notions divisionof work and resourcesbetween the genders.On the environmentalfrontthere would be a need to challengeand transform not only notionsaboutthe relationship between people and nature but also the actualmethodsof appropriation nature's of resources a few. Feministenvironmentalism underlinesthe necessity of by addressingthese dimensionsfrom both fronts. To concretizethe discussion,considerIndia'sexperiencein the sectionsbelow. The focus throughout on the ruralenvironment. is DEGRADATIONAND ENVIRONMENTAL FORMS OF APPROPRIATION In India (asin much of Asia and Africa)a wide varietyof essential items are gatheredby ruralhouseholdsfrom the villagecommons and forestsfor everydaypersonaluse and sale, such as food, fuel, fodder, fiber, small timber, manure, bamboo, medicinal herbs, oils, materials for housebuilding and handicrafts, resin, gum,

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Althoughall ruralhouseholdsuse the village honey, and spices.17 commons in some degree, for the poor they are of criticalsignifiin cance given the skewedness of privatizedland distribution the Datafor the early 1980sfromtwelve semiariddissubcontinent.18 trictsin seven Indianstatesindicatethatfor poorruralhouseholds (the landlessand those with less than two hectaresdrylandequivalent)village commons accountfor at least 9 percent of total income, and in most cases 20 percentor more, but contributeonly 1 to 4 percent of the incomes of the nonpoor (table 1). The dependence of the poor is especially high for fuel and fodder:village commonssupplymore than 91 percentof firewoodand morethan 69 percentof their grazingneeds, comparedwith the relativeselfTable 1 Average Annual Income from Village Commons in Selected Districts of India (1982-85) State'and Districts Per householdannualaverageincome from VillageCommons Poor Households2 Percentof total householdincome 17 16 21 20 18 26 9 13 20 21 23 22 OtherHouseholds3 Percentof total householdincome 1 1 1 3 1 4 1 1 2 2 3 2

Value (Rs.) AndhraPradesh Mahbubnagar Gujarat Mehsana Sabarkantha Karataka Mysore Pradesh Madhya Mandsaur Raisen Maharashtra Akola Aurangabad Sholapur Rajasthan Jalore Nagaur TamilNadu Dharmapuri 534 730 818 649 685 780 447 584 641 709 831 738

Value (Rs.) 171 162 208 170 303 468 134 163 235 387 438 164

Source: N.S. Jodha, "Common Property Resources and Rural Poor," Economic and Political Weekly, 5 July 1986, 1176. 1 "State"here refers to administrative divisions within India and is not used in the political economy sense of the word as used in the text. 2 Landless households and those owning < 2 hectares (ha) dryland equivalent. 3 Those owning > 2 ha dryland equivalent. 1 ha = 2.47 acres.

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sufficiencyof the largerlandedhouseholds.Access to villagecommons reducesincome inequalitiesin the villagebetween poor and nonpoorhouseholds.Also there is a close link between the viability of small farmers' privatepropertyresourcesand their access to the commons for grazingdraftas well as milch animals.19 Similarly,forestshave always been significantsources of livelihood, especially for tribal populations, and have provided the basis of swidden cultivation,hunting, and the gatheringof nontimber forest produce. In India, an estimated30 million or more on people in the countrydepend wholly or substantially such forest producefor a livelihood.20 These sourcesare especiallycritical seasonsand duringdroughtand famine.21 duringlean agricultural The health of forests, in turn, has an impact on the health of soils (especiallyin the hills)and the availability groundand surof face water for irrigationand drinking.For a large percentageof rural households, the water for irrigation,drinking,and various domestic uses comes directlyfrom riversand streamsin the hills and plains. Againthere are class differencesin the natureof their dependencyand access. The richerhouseholdsare betterable to for tap the (relatively cleaner)groundwater drinkingand irrigation more and deeperwells and tubewells, but the poor are by sinking mainly dependenton surface sources. However, the availabilityof the country'snaturalresourcesto the pooris being severelyerodedby two parallel,and interrelated, trends-first, their growing degradationboth in quantity and quality;second, their increasingstatization(appropriation the by state) and privatization (appropriation by a minority of individuals),with an associateddecline in what was earliercommunal. These two trends, both independentlyand interactively, underlie many of the differentialclass-gendereffects of environmental degradationoutlined later. Independently, the former trendis reducingoverallavailability, the latteris increasing and inin the distribution what is available.Interactively, of an equalities in altereddistribution favorof the state and some individualsand away from community control can contributeto environmental insofaras communityresourcemanagementsystems degradation be more effective in environmental may protectionand regeneration than are the state or individuals.These two trends I call the primary factors, underlyingthe class-gendereffects of environmental change. Several intermediaryfactors impinge on these

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primaryones the most importantof which, in my view, are the following:the erosion of community resource managementsystems resulting from the shift in "controlrights"over natural resourcesaway from communityhands,22 populationgrowth,and choices in agriculture their associatedeffect on and technological local knowledgesystems. These also need to be seen in interactive terms. Considereach in turn. Formsof Environmental Althoughthere is as yet an Degradation. inadequatedatabase to indicatethe exactextentof environmental variations,available degradationin India and its cross-regional sufficient pointers to warrant conmacro-information provides siderableconcern and possibly alarm. Degradationin India'snaturalresourcebase is manifestin disappearing forests,deterioratsoil conditions,and depletingwater resources. Satellitedata ing from India reveal that in 1985-87, 19.5 percent of the country's geoareawas forestedand decliningat an estimatedrateof 1.3 million hectares a year.23 Again, by official estimates,in 1980, 56.6 of India'sland was sufferingfrom environmentalprobpercent lems, especiallywater and wind erosion. Unofficialestimatesare even higher. In some canal projects,one-halfthe area that could have been irrigatedand cultivated has been lost due to watercreatingwhat the local people aptly call "wetdeserts." logging,24 The area under periodicfloods doubled between 1971 and 1981, and soil fertilityis decliningdue to the excessive use of chemical fertilizers.Similarly,the availabiltyof both ground and surface water is falling. Groundwaterlevels have fallen permanentlyin several regions, including in northernIndia with its high water tables, due to the indiscriminate sinkingfo tubewells-the leading As input in the Green Revolutiontechnology.25 a result, many drinkingwater wells have dried up or otherwise been rendered unusable.In addition,fertilizerand pesticiderunoffsinto natural water sources have destroyed fish life and polluted water for human use in several areas.26 In TheProcess Statization. India,both under colonialrule and of in the postcolonial period,statecontrolover forestsand continuing with selectiveaccess being grantedto villagecommonshas grown, a favored few. To begin with, several aspects of Britishcolonial effects.27 First,the Britishestablished policy have had long-lasting state monopoly over forests, reservinglarge tracts for timber extraction.Second,associatedwith this was a severe curtailmentin

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the customaryrightsof local populationsto these resources,rights of access being grantedonly under highly restrictedconditions, with a total prohibitionon the barteror sale of forestproduceby such rightholders.At the same time, the forest settlementofficer could give considerable concessions to those he chose to so privilege.Third,the colonial state promotedthe notion of "scientific" forest managementwhich essentiallycloakedthe practiceof encouragingcommerciallyprofitablespecies, often at the cost of species used by the local population.Fourth,there was virtually forestexploitationby Europeanand Indianprivate indiscriminate contractors,especially for building railways, ships, and bridges. Tree clearingwas also encouragedfor establishingtea and coffee to plantationsand expandingthe area under agriculture increase the government'sland revenue base. In effect these policies (a) (b) severelyerodedlocal systemsof forestmanagement; legallycut off an importantsource of sustenancefor people, even though illegal entries continued;(c) createda continuingsource of tension between the forestryofficialsand the localpeople;and (d)oriented forest managementto commercialneeds. Postindependencepolicies show little shift from the colonial view of forestsas primarilya source of commercialuse and gain. Statemonopoly over forests has persisted,with all the attendant tensions,as has the practiceof scientificforestryin the interestsof commercialprofit. Restrictionson local people's access to nontimberforestproducehave actuallyincreased,and the harassment and exploitationof forest dwellers by the government'sforest guardsis widespread.28 resourcesin individual(essentiallymale) hands has paralleledthe process of statization.Customarily, largepartsof village common lands, especiallyin northwest India, were what could be termed that "community-private," is, they were private insofar as use to them were usuallylimitedto membersof the community rights and thereforeexclusionary; the same time they were communal at in that such rightswere often administered a groupratherthan by Table 2 reveals a decline in village commons by an individual.29 ranging between 26 and 63 percentage points across different regions, between 1950 and 1984. This is attributablemainly to statepolicy actingto benefitselectedgroupsover others,including illegal encroachmentsby farmers,made legal over time; the aucA TheProcessof Privatization. growing privatizationof community

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Table 2 Distribution of Privatized Village Commons in Selected Districts of India Stateand Districts VCs as percentof village area, 1982-84 Percent Percentof Percentof Per householdarea owned decline in land to: recipients (ha) VC area, among: 1950-84 PoorOthers PoorOthers Poor Others Before1 After2 Before After 43 45 49 37 46 41 43 32 34 47 32 42 30 26 37 58 63 47 52 50 51 18 20 28 39 43 44 45 42 38 39 30 42 14 24 21 50 49 50 49 82 80 72 61 57 56 55 58 62 61 70 58 86 76 79 50 51 76 59 38 36 55 64 60 67 75 68 48 58 42 53 37 35 41 75 55 24 41 62 64 45 36 40 33 25 32 52 42 58 47 63 65 59 25 45 0.3 1.0 0.8 1.0 0.5 1.0 0.8 0.9 1.2 1.3 1.3 1.0 1.1 0.7 0.3 0.4 1.3 0.8 1.0 0.9 2.2 2.0 1.7 1.1 2.0 2.4 1.9 2.5 2.2 2.5 1.6 2.2 2.2 1.7 1.3 2.5 2.5 1.9 3.0 3.1 5.4 8.0 7.0 6.4 4.5 4.1 7.7 6.2 4.9 3.1 6.4 3.4 7.2 2.3 2.4 3.8 4.6 5.1 4.6 8.8 9.8 9.8 9.2 7.7 11.6 12.4 9.0 6.8 4.6 6.3 5.6 12.5 3.8 5.2 5.8 7.5

Andhra Pradesh Mahbubnagar Medak Gujarat Banaskantha Mehsana Sabarkantha Karataka Bidar Gulbarga Mysore Pradesh Madhya Mandsaur Raisen Vidisha Maharashtra Akola Aurangabad Sholapur Rajasthan Jalore Jodhpur Nagaur TamilNadu Coimbatore Dharmapuri

9 11 9 11 12 12 9 18 22 23 28 11 15 19 18 16 15 9 12

Source: N.S. Jodha, "Common Property Resources and Rural Poor," Economic and Political Weekly, 5 July 1986, 1177-78. 1 Before the distribution of VC land. 2 After the distribution of VC land.

tioning of parts of commons by the governmentto private conand tractorsfor commercialexploitation; governmentdistribution of common land to individuals under various schemes which were, in theory, initiatedfor benefitingthe poor but in practice For benefited the well-off farmers.30 sixteen of the nineteen districts covered,the shareof the poor was less than that of the nonpoor (table2). Hence the poor lost out collectivelywhile gaining little individually. Similarly,in the tapping of groundwaterthrough tubewells,

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there are dramaticinequalitiesin the distribution what is effecof an undergroundcommons. Tubewells are concentratedin tively the hands of the rich and the noted associatedfall in water tables and has, in many areas,driedup many shallowirrigation drinking water wells used by the poor. In some regions,they have also depleted soil moisturefrom land used by poor households.31 Now consider the intermediaryfactors mentioned earlier:the erosion of community managementsystems, populationgrowth, and choice of agricultural technologyand localknowledgesystems. The Erosionof Community ResourceManagement Systems.The statization privatization communalresourceshave, in turn, of and systematicallyunderminedtraditionalinstitutionalarrangements of resource use and management.The documentationon this is growing,but even existingwork revealssystems of watermanagefirewoodand fodder,and practicesof ment, methodsof gathering shifting agriculture which were typically not destructive of nature.32 Some traditional religiousand folk beliefs also (asnoted) contributedto the preservationof nature, especially trees or orchardsdeemed sacred.33 Of course, much more empiricaldocumentationis needed on how regionallywidespreadthese traditionalsystems of management were and the contextsin which they were successfulin ensuring community cooperation.However, the basic point is that where traditionalcommunity managementexisted, as it did in was for many areas, responsibility resourcemanagement linkedto resource via local communityinstitutions.Where controlover use these resourcespassed from the hands of the communityto those of the state or of individuals,this link was effectivelybroken. In turn, the shift from communitycontroland managementof common property,to state or individualownership and control, has increasedenvironmental As degradation.34 DanielW. Bromley and Michael M. Cernea note "theappearance environmental of created through the establishmentof government management agencies, and the aura of coherentpolicy by issuance of decrees prohibiting entryto - and harvestingfrom- Stateproperty,has led to continued degradationof resourcesunder the toleranteye of governmentagencies."35 Propertyrightsvested in individualsare also no guaranteefor environmental regeneration. Indeed, as will be discussed at tree greaterlengthlater,individualfarmersattempting plantingfor

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short-term commercial profitshave tended to plantquick-growing trees such as eucalyptus,which can prove environmentally costly. Growth. Excessivepopulationgrowthhas often been Population identified as the primary culprit of environmentaldegradation. And undoubtedly,a rapidlygrowing populationimpingingover base time on a limitedland/water/forest is likely to degradethe environment. However, political economy dimensions clearly underliethe pace at which this processoccursand howthecostsof The it are distributed. continuing(legaland illegal)exploitationof of forests, and the increasingappropriation village commons and to resourcesby a few, leave the vast majority subsist groundwater on a shrinking natural resource base. Added to this is the noted erosionof communityresourcemanagement systemswhich had enforcedlimitationson what people could and did take from communal resources, and which could perhaps have ensured their protection,despite populationpressure.36 a Populationgrowth can thus be seen as exacerbating given situationbut not necessarilyas its primarycause. It is questionable that interventionsto control population growth can, in themselves, stem environmental althoughclearly,as Paul degradation, Shawargues,they can "buycrucialtime untilwe figureout how to dismantlemore ultimatecauses."37 Whatadds complexityto even this possibilityis that in the link between environmentaldegradationand populationgrowth, the causalitycan also run in the oppositedirection.Forinstance,poverty associated with environmentaldegradationcould induce a responses- reduced education for range of fertility-increasing as they devotemoretime to collectingfuel, fodder,and young girls so on, leadingto higher fertilityin the long term, given the negative correlation between female educationand fertility;higherinfant mortalityratesinducinghigherfertilityto ensurea given completed family size; and people having more childrento enable the mechanismin envifamily to diversifyincomes as a risk-reducing These links are another reminder areas.38 ronmentallyhigh-risk that it is critical to focus on women's status when formulating protection. policies for environmental and Choiceof Agricultural of Technology Erosion LocalKnowledge of the noted forms of environmentaldegradation Many Systems. are associatedwith the Green Revolutiontechnologyadoptedto successfulin the latincreasecrop output.Althoughdramatically

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ter objective in the short run, it has had high environmental costs, such as fallingwater tables due to tubewells, waterlogged and saline soils from most largeirrigation schemes, decliningsoil excessive chemicalfertilizeruse, and waterpollution fertilitywith of with pesticides.Moreover,the long-termsustainability the output increases achieved so far, itself appears doubtful. Deteriorating soil and water conditions are already being reflected in Geneticvarietyhas also shrunk,and many decliningcropyields.39 of the indigenously developed crop varieties (long-testedand have been replacedby improvedseeds adaptedto localconditions) which are more susceptibleto pest attacks.The long-termannual productionin India over 1968-85was growth rate of agricultural 2.6 percent,that is, slightly lowerthan the pre-GreenRevolution, All 1950-65,rateof 3.08. Cropyields are also more unstable.40 this of raises questionsabout the long-termsustainability agricultural growth, and more generallyof rural productionsystems, under present forms of technologyand resourcemanagementin India, and indeed in south Asia. The choice of agricultural technology and productionsystems cannot be separatedfrom the dominantview of what constitutes The Green Revolutionembodies a technolscientific agriculture. researchand mix which gives primacyto laboratory-based ogical as and treatsagriculture an isolatedproducmanufactured inputs tion system. Indeed, indiscriminateagricultural expansion,with little attempt to maintaina balance between forests, fields, and grazinglands, assumes that the relationshipbetween agriculture, ratherthan a comforests,and villagecommonsis an antagonistic, one. By contrast,organicfarmingsystems (nowrapidplementary, ly being eclipsed) are dependent on maintainingjust such a balance.Moregenerally,over the years,there has been a systematic devaluation and marginalizationof indigenous knowledge about species varieties,nature'sprocesses (how forests, soils, and and sustainable water are formed and sustained interrelatedly), forms of interaction between people and nature.These trendsare not confined to countries operatingwithin the capitalistmode. Similar problems of deforestation, desertification, salination, recurrent secondary pest attacks on crops, and pesticide contaminationare emergingin China.41 Whatis at issue here is not moder science in itself but the process by which what is regardedas "scientific is knowledge" gen-

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eratedand appliedand how the fruits of that applicationare distributed. Within the hierarchyof knowledge, that acquiredvia traditionalforms of interactingwith nature tends to be deemed And the people who use this knowledge in their less valuable.42 lives-farmers and forest dwellers and especiallywomen of daily these communities-tend to be excluded from the institutions which create what is seen as scientific knowledge. These boundaries are not inevitable.In MeijiJapan,the farmer's knowledge and innovative skills were incorporatedin the broaderbody of scientific knowledge by a systematizedinteractionbetween the farmer,the village extension worker, and the scientist. This enfrom the farmerto the scienabled a two-way flow of information tist and vice-versa:"Intimate knowledge of the best of traditional farming methods was thus the starting point for agricultural researchand extensionactivities.43 Such attemptscontrastsharplywith the more typicaltop-down flow of informationfrom those deemed experts (the scientists/ professionals)to those deemed ignorant (the village users). The problem here is only partly one of class differences.Underlying the divide between the scientists/professionals (usually urbanbased) and the ruralusers of innovations(includinguser-innovators) whose knowledge comes more from field experience than from formaleducation,are also usuallythe dividesbetween intellectual and physicallabor,between city and countryside,and between women and men. CLASS-GENDER EFFECTS We come then to the class-gendereffects of the processes of degradation,statizationand privatizationof nature'sresources, and the erosionof traditional systems of knowledgeand resource These processes have had particularly adverse efmanagement. fects on poor households because of the noted greaterdependency of such householdson communalresources.However, focusing on the class significanceof communalresourcesprovidesonly a partial picture-there is also a critical gender dimension, for women and female childrenare the ones most adverselyaffected The reasonsfor this are primarily by environmentaldegradation. threefold.First,there is a preexistinggenderdivisionof labor.It is women in poorpeasantand tribalhouseholdswho do much of the

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gatheringand fetching from the forests, village commons, rivers, and wells. In addition,women of such householdsare burdened with a significantresponsibilityfor family subsistence and they are often the primary,and in many female-headed householdsthe economic providers. sole, Second,there are systematicgenderdifferencesin the distribution of subsistence resources (includingfood and health care) within rural households, as revealed by a range of indicators: anthropometricindices, morbidity and mortalityrates, hospital admissionsdata, and the sex ratio (which is 93 females per 100 males for all-India).44 These differences,especiallyin health care, are widespreadin India (andindeed in south Asia).45 Third, there are significantinequalitiesin women's and men's access to the most criticalproductiveresourcein ruraleconomies, Women land, and associatedproduction agricultural technology.46 also have a systematicallydisadvantagedposition in the labor market.They have fewer employmentopportunities, occupaless tional mobility, lower levels of training,and lower payments for same or similarwork.47 Due to the greatertask specificityof their in work, they also face much greaterseasonalfluctuations employment and earningsthan do men, with sharperpeaks and longer slack periodsin many regionsand less chance of findingemployment in the slack seasons.48 Given their limited rightsin privatepropertyresourcessuch as land, rightsto communalresourcessuch as the village agricultural commons have always providedruralwomen and children(especially those of tribal,landless, or marginalpeasanthouseholds)a source of subsistence, unmediatedby dependencyrelationships on adultmales. Forinstance,access to villagecommonsis usually linked to membership in the village community and therefore women are not excludedin the way they may be in a system of individualizedprivate land rights. This acquires additionalimportance in regions with strong norms of female seclusion (as in northwest India)where women's access to the cash economy, to markets,and to the marketplaceitself is constrainedand dependent on the mediationof male relatives.49 It is againstthis analyticalbackdropthat we need to examine what I term the "class-gender effects"(thegendereffects mediated statization by class)of the processesof environmental degradation, and privatization. These effects relateto at least six criticalaspects:

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and time, income, nutrition,health, social-survival-networks, indigenous knowledge. Each of these effects is importantacross ruralIndia. However, their intensityand interlinkages would differ cross-regionally, with variations in ecology, agricultural technology, land distribution,and social structures, associated with which are variationsin the gender division of labor, social relations,livelihoodpossibilities,and kinshipsystems.50 Although a systematic regional decompositionof effects is not attempted below, all the illustrativeexamplesare regionallycontextualized. of On Time.Becausewomen are the main gatherers fuel, fodder, ten and water,it is primarily theirworkingday (already averaging to twelve hours) that is lengthened with the depletion of and reduced access to forests, waters, and soils. Firewood, for instance, is the single most importantsource of domestic energy in more than 65 percent of domestic energy in the India (providing hills and deserts of the north).Much of this is gatheredand not purchased,especiallyby the poor. In recentyears, there has been a severalfoldincreasein firewoodcollectiontime (see table 3). In in some villagesof Gujarat, westernIndia,even a four-to-five-hour little apartfrom shrubs,weeds, and tree rootswhich searchyields do not provide adequateheat. Similarly,fodder collection takes longer with a decline in the villagecommons.As a woman in the hills of UttarPradesh(northwest India)puts it:
When we were young, we used to go to the forest early in the morning without eating anything. There we would eat plenty of berries and wild fruits ... drink the cold sweet [water] of the Banj [oak] roots. ... In a short while we would gather all the fodder and firewood we needed, rest under the shade of some huge tree and then go home. Now, with the going of the trees, everything else has gone too.51

The shortageof drinkingwater has exacerbatedthe burden of time and energy on women and young girls. Where low-caste women often have access to only one well, its drying up could mean an endless wait for their vessels to be filled by upper-caste A women, as was noted to have happened in Orissa.52 similar ariseswhen drinkingwaterwells go salinenearirrigation problem works.53 In UttarPradesh,accordingto a woman grassroots activist,the of young women'slives with ecologicaldegradagrowinghardship tion has led to an increasednumberof suicidesamongthem in re-

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Table 3 Time Taken and Distance Travelled for Firewood Collection Country/Region Year of Data Firewoodcollection* Time taken India Chamoli(hills) (a) Dwing (b) Pakhi Gujarat(plains) (a) Forested (b) Depleted (c) Severelydepleted MadhyaPradesh(plains) Kumaon(hills) Karnataka (plains) Garhwal(hills) Bihar(plains) Rajasthan (plains) Nepal Tinan (hills) Pangua(hills) WDA**(lowlands) (a) low deforestation (b) high deforestation Distance travelled Data Source

}1982 } } }1980 } 1980 1982 n.a. n.a. c. 1972 1980 1988

5 hr/day@ 4 hr/day once every4 days once every 2 days 4-5 hr/day 1-2 times/week 3 days/week 1 hr/day 5 hr/day n.a. n.a. 5 hr/day(winter)

over 5 km

}Swaminathan }(1984)

n.a. 4-5 km & }Nagbrahman n.a. }Sambrani (1983) 5 km Chand& Bezboruah(1980) 5-7 km Folger& Dewan (1983) 5.4 km/trip Batliwala(1983) 10 km Agarwal(1983) 1-2 km/day }Bhaduri& Surin(1980) 8-10 km/day } 4 km personalobservation n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. Stone (1982) (1983) Bajracharya }Kumar& Hotchkiss (1988) }

3 hr/day 1978 late 1970s 4-5 hr/bundle } 1982-83 1.5 hr/day 3 hr/day }

Sources: Madhura Swaminathan, "Eight Hours a Day for Fuel Collection," Manushi (March-April 1984); D. Nagbrahman and S. Sambrani, "Women's Drudgery in Firewood Collection," Economic and Political Weekly, 1-8 Jan. 1983; Malini Chand and Rita Bezboruah, "Employment Opportunities for Women in Forestry" in CommunityForestryand People'sParticipation,Seminar Report, Ranchi Consortium for Community Forestry, 20-22 Nov. 1980; Bonnie Folger and Meera Dewan, "Kumaon Hills Reclamation: End of Year Site Visit," (Delhi, OXFAM America, 1983); Srilata Batliwala, "Women and Cooking Energy," Economic and Political Weekly, 24-31 Dec. 1983; Anil Agarwal, "The Cooking Energy Systems-Problems and Opportunities," (Center for Science and Environment, Delhi); T. Bhadhuri and V. Surin, "Community Forestry and Women Headloaders," in CommunityForestryand People's Participation, Seminar Report; Linda Stone, "Women and Natural Resources: Perspectives from Nepal," in Women in Natural Resources: An International Perspective, ed. Molly Stock, Jo Ellen Force, and Dixie Ehrenreich (Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1982); Deepak Bajracharya, "Deforestation in the Food/Fuel Context: Historical and Political Perspectives from Nepal," Mountain Research and Development 3, no. 3 (1983); Shubh Kumar and David Hotchkiss, "Consequences of Deforestation for Women's Time Allocation, Agricultural Production, and Nutrition in Hill Areas of Nepal," Research Report, no. 69 (Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute, 1988). * Firewood collected mainly by women and children. @ Average computed from information given in the study. n.a. Information not available. * * Western Development Area.

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cent years. Their inabilityto obtainadequatequantitiesof water, fodder, and fuel causes tensions with their mothers-in-law(in whose youth forests were plentiful), and soil erosion has compoundedthe difficultyof producingenough grainfor subsistence in a region of high male outmigration.54 On Income.The decline in gathereditems from forests and village commonshas reducedincomesdirectly.In addition,the extra time needed for gatheringreduces time availableto women for cropproductionand can adverselyaffect cropincomes, especially due in hill communitieswhere women are the primarycultivators to high male outmigration. instance, a recent study in Nepal For increasein firewoodcollectiontime due found thatthe substantial to deforestationhas significantlyreduced women's crop cultivation time, leadingto an associatedfall in the productionof maize, wheat, and mustard which are primarilydependent on female labor in the region. These are all crops grown in the dry season when there is increasedneed for collectingfuel and otheritems.55 The same is likely to be happeningin the hills of India. Similarimplicationsfor women'sincome arise with the decline in common grazingland and associated fodder shortage.Many landlesswidows I spoke to in Rajasthan (northwestIndia)in 1988 said they could not venture to apply for a loan to purchasea buffalo underthe government's programas they had noanti-poverty where to grazethe animaland no cash to buy fodder. As other sources of livelihood are eroded, selling firewood is becomingincreasinglycommon, especiallyin easternand central as India.Most"headloaders," they are called,arewomen, earninga meager5.50 rupees a day for twenty kilogramsof wood.56Deforestationdirectlyimpingeson this source of livelihoodas well. As On Nutrition. the area and productivityof village commons and forests fall, so does the contributionof gatheredfood in the diets of poor households. The declining availabilityof fuelwood effects. Effortsto economizeinducepeonutritional has additional nutritiousfoods which need less fuel to cook or ple to shift to less cookedfood which can be eaten raw, or forcethem to eat partially which could be toxic, or eat leftoversthat could rot in a tropical climate,or to miss meals altogether.Althoughas yet there are no are systematicstudieson India,some studieson ruralBangladesh indicativeand show that the totalnumberof meals eaten strongly daily as well as the numberof cooked meals eaten in poor house-

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holds is already declining.57 The fact that malnutritioncan be caused as much by shortagesof fuel as of food has long been part of the conventionalwisdom of ruralwomen who observe:"It's not what'sin the pot that worriesyou, but what'sunderit."A tradeoff between the time spent in fuel gatheringversus cookingcan also adverselyaffect the meal'snutritionalquality. effects impingeon the whole Althoughthese adversenutritional burden household,women and female childrenbearan additional because of the noted gender biases in intrafamilydistributionof food and health care.Thereis also little likelihoodof poor women being able to affordthe extracaloriesfor the additionalenergyexpended in fuel collection. OnHealth.Apartfromthe healthconsequencesof nutritional inadequacies,poor ruralwomen are also more directlyexposedthan are men to waterbornediseasesand to the pollutionof riversand ponds with fertilizerand pesticide runoffs,because of the nature of the tasks they perform, such as fetching water for various domestic uses and animal care, and washing clothes near ponds, The canals, and streams.58 burden of family ill-healthassociated with water pollutionalso falls largelyon women who take care of the sick. An additionalsource of vulnerabilityis the agricultural tasks women perform.For instance, rice transplanting, which is usually a woman'stask in most partsof Asia, is associatedwith a and ailments.59 rangeof diseases,includingarthritis gynecological and other tasks done mainly by women in cotton Cottonpicking cultivationexpose them to pesticides which are widely used for this crop.In China,severaltimes the acceptablelevels of DDT and BHC residues have been found in the milk of nursing mothers, among women agriculturalworkers.60In India, pesticides are associatedwith limb and visual disabilities.61 On SocialSupport Networks.The considerabledisplacementof that resultsfrom the submersionof villagesin the building people of major irrigationand hydroelectricworks, or from large-scale deforestationin itself, has another (little recognized)class and gender implication-the disruption of social support networks. Social relationshipswith kin, and with villagersoutside the kin to network,provideeconomicand social supportthat is important all ruralhouseholdsbut especiallyto poor householdsand to the women.62 This includes reciprocal labor-sharingarrangements seasons;loans taken in cash or kind durduringpeak agricultural

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ing severe crises such as droughts;and the borrowingof small amounts of food stuffs, fuel, fodder, and so on, even in normal times. Womentypicallydependa greatdeal on such informalsupportnetworks,which they alsohelp to buildthroughdailysocialinalliancesthat they are frequentlyinstrumental teraction,marriage in arranging, complexgift exchanges.63 the socialand ecoand Also in termsof strengthening nomic supportthis represents women for even theirbargaining powerwithinfamiliesneeds to be recognized, if it is not easy to quantify.64 Thesenetworks,spreadovera rangeof easily,an aspectignoredby nearbyvillages,cannotbe reconstituted rehabilitation planners. Moreoverfor forestdwellers,the relationship with forestsis not functionalor economic but also symbolic, suffusedwith culjust turalmeaningsand nuances, and woven into their songs and legends of origin. Large-scale deforestation,whether or not due to schemes, has erodeda whole way of livingand thinking. irrigation Two close observersof life among the tribalpeople of Orissa in eastern India note that "the earlier sense of sharing has disapwomen would rely on theirneighborsin times peared.... Earlier of need. Today this has been replacedwith a sense of alienation and helplessness ... the trend is to leave each family to its own fate."65 Widows and the aged are the most neglected. The On Women's Indigenous Knowledge. gatheringof food alone and demandsan elaborateknowledgeof the nutritional medicinal of plants, roots, and trees, including a wide reserve properties knowledgeof edible plantsnot normallyused but criticalfor copAn duringclimaticdisasters. examinashortages ing with prolonged tion of householdcoping mechanismsduringdroughtand famine revealsa significantdependenceon faminefoods gatheredmainly by women and childrenfor survival.Also amonghill communities it is usuallywomen who do the seed selectionwork and have the This knowledge most detailed knowledge about crop varieties.66 ruralwomen in the aboutnatureand agriculture, acquiredby poor processof theireverydaycontactwith and dependenceon nature's resources,has a class and gender specificityand is linked to the class specificityand genderingof the division of labor. The impactof existingforms of developmenton this knowledge has been twofold. First,the processof devaluationand marginalization of indigenousknowledge and skills, discussed earlier,impinges especially on the knowledge that poor peasant and tribal

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women usually possess. Existing development strategies have made little attemptto tap or enhance this knowledge and understanding.At the same time, women have been excludedfrom the institutionsthroughwhich modernscientificknowledgeis created of and transmitted. Second,the degradation naturalresourcesand their appropriation a minorityresultsin the destructionof the by materialbasis on which women'sknowledgeof naturalresources and processes is founded and kept alive, leading to its gradual eclipse. RESPONSES:STATEAND GRASSROOTS Both the state and the people most immediatelyaffectedby environmentaldegradation have respondedto these processes,but in different ways. The state's recognition that environmental degradation may be acquiringcrisis proportionsis recent and as and, as we have seen, state developmental yet partial; policies are themselves a significant cause of the crisis. Not surprisingly, therefore, the state's response has been piecemeal rather than comprehensive.For instance, the problem of deforestationand fuelwood shortagehas been addressedmainly by initiatingtreeplanting schemes either directly or by encouragingvillage communities and individualfarmersto do so. in However, most state ventures67 the form of direct planting have had high failureratesin terms of both tree plantingand surto with monovival, attributable severalcauses-a preoccupation culturalplantations for commercialuse, which at times principally have even replacedmixed forests;the takeoverof land used for variousother purposesby the local population; top-downimand plementation.Hence, in many cases, far from benefitingthe poor these schemes have taken away even existing rights and resources, leading to widespread local resistance. Also, women either do not featureat all in such schemes or, at best, tend to be allottedthe role of caretakers tree nurseries,with littlesay in the in choice of species or in any otheraspectof the project.Community forestryschemes, on the other hand, are often obstructedby economic inequalitiesin the village community and the associated mistrustamongthe poor of a system that cannot ensure equitable access to the productsof the trees planted. stories,with plantingsfar exceeding Ironically,the real"success"

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farmerswho, in many regions,have targets,relateto the better-off sought to reap quick profits by allottingfertile croplandto commercialtrees.As a result,employment,cropoutput,and cropresidues for fuel have declined, often dramatically,and the trees planted, such as eucalyptus,provide no fodder and poor fuel.68 The recent governmentpolicy in West Bengal (easternIndia)of leasing sections of degradedforest land to local communitiesfor collectively planting, managing,and monitoringtree plantations for local use, holds promise.But in severalotherpartsof the country largetractsof such land have also been given to papermanufacturersfor plantingcommercialspecies. As some environmentalists have rightly argued, this predominantly commercialapproachto forestry,promoted as "scientific forestry,"is reductionist-it is nature seen as individual parts ratherthan as an interconnectedsystem of vegetation,soil, and water;the forest is reducedto trees, the trees to biomass. For instance, Shivanotes that in the reductionistworldview only those propertiesof a resourcesystem are taken into accountwhich generateprofits,whereas those that stabilizeecologicalprocesses,but are commercially nonexploitable, are ignored and eventually destroyed.69 Indeed, the noted effects of developmentpolicies on the envior ronment-be they policies relatingto agriculture more directly to forests and water use-point to a strategywhich has been extractive/destructive natureratherthan conserving/regenerative. of The strategydoes not explicitlytakeaccountof the long-term complementaritybetween agricultureand naturalresourcepreservation and thereforeraisesseriousquestionsaboutthe abilityof the system both to sustainlong-termincreasesin agricultural productivity and to provide sustenancefor the people. But should we see people in generaland women in particular solely as victims of environmental degradation and of illconceived top-down state policies?The emergence of grassroots ecology movementsacrossthe subcontinent(andespeciallyIndia) suggestsotherwise.These movementsindicatethat althoughpoor peasant and tribal communities in general, and women among them in particular, being severely affectedby environmental are and appropriation, they are today also criticalagents degradation interactionwith of change. Further,embodiedin their traditional the environmentare practicesand perspectiveswhich can prove

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importantfor defining alternatives. The past decade, in particular, seen an increasingresistance has to ecological destructionin India, whether caused by direct deforestation (which is being resisted through nonviolent movements such as Chipko in the Himalayanfoothills and Appiko in or and works, such as Karnataka) by largeirrigation hydroelectric the NarmadaValley Projectcoveringthree regions in centralInin dia, the Koel-Karo Bihar, the Silent Valley Projectin Kerala (whichwas shelved throughcentralgovernmentinterventionand local protestsin 1983),the Inchampalliand Bhopalpatnam dams in AndhraPradesh(against which 5,000 tribalpeople,with women in the vanguard,protestedin 1984), and the controversialTehri in dam in Garwal.Women have been active participants most of these protests. Althoughfueled by differingideologicalstreams,which Ramachandra Guha identifies as Crusading Gandhian, Appropriate Marxism,these resistancemovements Technology,and Ecological that those affected can also be criticalagents of change. suggest Common to these streams is the recognitionthat the present model of developmenthas not succeeded either in providingsustenance or in ensuring sustainability.However, the points from which the differingideologiesinitiatethis critiqueare widely dispersed. In particular,they differ in their attitudes to modern science and to socioeconomicinequalities.As Guhaputs it, under the crusadingGandhianapproach,"modern science is seen as refor industrialsociety'sworst excesses,"70 socioecoand sponsible nomic inequalitieswithin village communitiestend to get glossed over. EcologicalMarxismsees modern science and the "scientific as a temper" indispensablefor constructing new social order,and thereis a clearrecognition and attackon class and caste inequalof ities (althoughthe position on genderis ambiguous).Appropriate Technologythinking,which falls within these two strands,is not as well-worked-out philosophicand theoreticalpositionas Gana dhism and Marxism.It is pragmaticin its approachto modern science and emphasizes the need to synthesize traditionaland modern technologicaltraditions.Although problems relating to socioeconomichierarchiesare recognized,there is no clear programfor tacklingthem. Overthe past decadetherehas been some cross-fertilization thinking across these different ideological of streams.

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However, it is importantto distinguishhere between the perwithin the envispectives revealedby an examinationof practice ronmentalmovementand the explicittheoretical of formulation an environmentalperspective.Althoughdialecticallyinterlinkedthe two do not entirelyoverlap.The threeideologicalstreams,as identified by Guha, relateto differentways in which groupsadhering to preexistingideologicaland philosophicpositions(Marxist, Ganin their pracdhian) have incorporatedenvironmentalconcerns tice. In a sense environmenthas been addedon to theirotherconcerns by these groups.This does not as yet representthe formulation of a new theoreticalperspective(thatan environmentalapproachto developmentneeds) by any of these groups. In terms of practicewithin the movement,women have been a visible part of most ruralgrassrootsecologicalinitiatives(as they have of peasantmovementsin general).This visibilityis most apparentin the Chipkomovementdescribedbelow. However,womin en'sparticipation a movementdoes not in itselfrepresentan explicit incorporationof a gender perspective, in either theory or is practice,within that movement.Yet such a formulation clearly as needed. Feministenvironmentalism spelled out earlierin this paper is an attemptin this direction. I To restatein this context, in feminist environmentalism have sought to provide a theoreticalperspectivethat locates both the symbolicand materiallinks between people and the environment with it, and tracesgenderand in theirspecificformsof interaction in class differentiation these links to a given genderand class division of labor,property,and power. Unlike Gandhismand Marxis ism, feminist environmentalism not a perspectivethat is consubscribed to by an identifiable set of individuals or sciously groups.However, insofaras tribaland poor peasantwomen'sspeis cial concernwith environmental degradation rootedin this material reality, their responses to it, which have been articulated terms to the other ideolboth in complementary oppositional and ogicalstreams,could be seen as consistentwith the feministenvironmentalistframework. The Chipkomovementis an interestingexamplein this respect. in Althoughit emergedfromthe Gandhiantradition, the courseof its growthit has broughtto light some of the limitationsof an approach that does not explicitlytake account of class and gender hisconcerns.Moregenerallytoo it is a movementof considerable

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toricalsignificance whose importance goes beyondlocational speciand is a noteworthyexpressionof hill women'sspecificunficity, of regeneration.71 derstanding forestprotectionand environmental The movement was sparkedoff in 1972-73when the people of Chamolidistrictin northwestIndiaprotestedthe auctioningof 300 ash trees to a sports good manufacturer,while the local labor cooperativewas refused permission by the government to cut even a few trees to make agricultural implementsfor the commuSince then the movement has spreadnot only within the renity. gion but its methodsand messagehave also reachedotherpartsof the country (Appikoin Karnataka an offshoot).72 is Further,the context of local resistancehas widened. Tree felling is being resisted also to prevent disasterssuch as landslides,and there has been protestagainstlimestoneminingin the hills for which the viland lagershad to face violence from contractors theirhiredthugs. Women'sactive involvementin the Chipkomovement has several noteworthyfeaturesthat need highlightinghere. First,their protestagainstthe commercialexploitationof the Himalayanforests has been not only jointly with the men of their community nonlocalcontractors also, in sevbut when they were confronting eral subsequentinstances,even in oppositionto village men due to differences in prioritiesabout resource use. Time and again, women have clear-sightedly opted for savingforestsand the environment over the short-termgains of developmentprojectswith farmwas costs. In one instance,a potato-seed high environmental to be establishedby cuttingdown a tract of oak forest in Dongri Paintolivillage. The men supportedthe scheme because it would bringin cash income. The women protestedbecauseit would take away their only local source of fuel and fodderand add five kilometers to their fuel-collectingjourneys, but cash in the men's hands would not necessarilybenefit them or their children.73 The was successful. protest Second, women have been active and frequentlysuccessful in protectingthe trees, stopping tree auctions, and keeping a vigil againstillegalfelling. In Gopeshwartown, a local women'sgroup has appointedwatchwomenwho receive a wage in kind to guard the surrounding of forest,and to regulatethe extraction forestproduce by villagers.Twigs can be collectedfreely, but any harm to the trees is liable to punishment. Third,replantingis a significantcomponentof the movement.

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But in their choice of trees the prioritiesof women and men don't always coincide-women typicallyprefertrees that provide fuel, fodder, and daily needs, the men prefer commerciallyprofitable ones.74 Once againthis pointsto the association between gendered for providinga family'ssubsistenceneeds and genresponsibility dered responsesto threatsagainstthe resourcesthat fulfill those needs. Fourth,Chipko today is more than an ecology movement and has the potentialfor becominga wider movementagainstgendermobilrelatedinequalities.Forinstance,therehas been large-scale izationagainstmale alcoholismand associateddomesticviolence Thereis also a shift in self-perception. and wastefulexpenditure. I have seen women stand up in public meetings of the movement and forcefullyaddressthe gathering.Many of them are also asking: Why aren'twe membersof the village councils? of Fifth,implicitin the movementis a holisticunderstanding the The women, for environmentin generaland forestsin particular. instance, have constructeda poetic dialogue illustratingthe difference between their own perspectiveand that of the foresters.75 Foresters: What do the forests bear? Profits,resin and timber. Women (Chorus):What do the forestsbear? Soil, water and pure air. Soil, water and pure air, Sustainthe earth and all she bears. In other words, the women recognize that forests cannot be reducedmerelyto trees and the trees to wood for commercialuse, that vegetation,soil, and water form part of a complex and interrelatedecosystem.This recognitionof the interrelatedness inand terdependence between the various material components of nature,and between natureand human sustenance,is criticalfor evolving a strategyof sustainableenvironmentalprotectionand regeneration. Althoughthe movement draws upon, indeed is rooted in, the region's Gandhian tradition which predates Chipko, women's responses go beyond the frameworkof that traditionand come close to feminist environmentalism their perspective.This is in their beginningto confrontgender and class issues suggestedby in a number of small but significantways. For instance, gender

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relations are called into question in their taking oppositional stands to the village men on several occasions, in asking to be membersof village councils, and in resistingmale alcoholismand there is clearlya class confrontation domesticviolence. Similarly, involved in their resistance(togetherwith the men of their comholdinglicenses for mining and felling munity)to the contractors in the area. At the same time, ecology movements such as Chipkoneed to be contextualized.Althoughlocalizedresistanceto the processes and degradationin India has of natural resource appropriation taken many differentforms, and arisen in diverse regionalcontexts, resistancesin which entire communitiesand villages have participatedto constitutea movement (such as Chipko, Appiko, and Jharkhand)have emerged primarilyin hill or tribal comto munities.This may be attributable particularly two factors:the immediacyof the threatfrom these processesto people'ssurvival, and these communitiesbeing markedby relativelylow levels of the class and social differentiationthat usually splinter village communitiesin south Asia. They thereforehave a greaterpotential for wider community participation than is possible in more and socially stratifiedcontexts. Further, in these economically communities,women'srole in agricultural productionhas always been visibly substantialand often primary-an aspect more conducive to their public participationthan in many other communities of northernIndia practicingfemale seclusion. In emphasizingthe role of poor peasant and tribal women in ecology movements, I am not arguing,as do some feminist scholars, that women possess a specifically feminine sensibility or cognitive temperament,or that women qua womenhave certain to traitsthat predisposethem to attend to particulars, be interactive ratherthan individualist, to understand true character and the of complex naturalprocesses in holistic terms.76 Rather,I locate the perspectivesand responsesof poor peasantand tribalwomen (perspectiveswhich are indeed often interactiveand holistic) in their materialreality-in their dependence on and actual use of naturalresourcesfor survival,the knowledgeof naturegainedin that process, and the broaderculturalparameterswhich define people'sactivitiesand modes of thinkingin these communities.By this count, the perspectivesand responsesof men belongingto hill or tribalcommunitieswould also be more conducive to environ-

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than those of men elsewhere, mentalprotectionand regeneration but not more than those of the women of such communities.This is because hill and tribal women, perhaps more than any other group, still maintaina reciprocallink with nature'sresources-a of link that stems from a given organization production,reproduca given gender division of labor. tion, and distribution, including At the same time, the positive aspects of this link should not serve as an argumentfor the continuedentrenchmentof women within a given division of labor. Rather,they should serve as an argumentfor creatingthe conditionsthat would help universalize and this link with nature, for instance, by declassing degendering in which productive and reproductiveactivities are the ways organized(within and outside the home) and how property,resources, knowledge,and power are distributed. CONCLUSION The Indian experience offers several insights and lessons. First, of and appropriation the processes of environmentaldegradation well as naturalresourcesby a few have specific class-genderas locational implications-it is women of poor, rural households who are most adversely affected and who have participatedacthereforecannot be postively in ecology movements. "Women" discoursehas typicallydone) as a unitary ited (as the ecofeminist category,even within a country,let alone acrossthe ThirdWorld effects of these proor globally.Second,the adverse class-gender cesses are manifest in the erosion of both the livelihood systems and the knowledgesystems on which poor ruralwomen depend. Third,the natureand impact of these processes are rooted interactively,on the one hand, in ideology- (in notionsaboutdevelopment, scientific knowledge, the appropriategender division of labor,and so on) and, on the other hand, in the economic advantage and politicalpower predicatedespecially,but by no means between householdsand between only, on propertydifferentials resistance women and men. Fourth,thereis a spreading grassroots to such inequality and environmentaldestruction-to the processes, products,people, property,power, and profit-orientation that underliethem. Althoughthe voices of this resistanceare yet scatteredand localized,their message is a vital one, even from a purely growth and productivityconcern and more so if our con-

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cern is with people'ssustenanceand survival. the In particular, experiencesof women'sinitiativeswithin the environmental movements suggests that women's militancy is much more closely linked to family survivalissues than is men's. Implicitin these strugglesis the attemptto carveout a spacefor an alternative existencethatis based on equality,not dominanceover people, and on cooperationwith and not dominanceover nature. Indeed what is (implicitlyor explicitly)being called into question in various ways by the movements is the existing development paradigm-with its particularproduct and technological of mix, its forms of exploitation naturaland humanresources,and of its conceptualizaton relationshipsamong people and between people and nature. However, a mere recognitionthat there are deep inequalities and destructivenessinherent in present processes of developmentis not enough.Thereis a need for policy to shift away from its present relief-oriented approach toward ills nature's and people'swelfarein which the solutionto nutrientdepleted soils is seen to lie entirely in externallyadded chemical nutrients, to depleting forests in monoculture plantations, to to droughtstarvationin food-for-work programs, genderinequalities in ad hoc income-generating schemes for women, and so on. These solutionsreflectan aspirinapproachto development-they are neither curative nor preventive, they merely suppress the symptomsfor a while. The realisticposing of an alternative(quiteapartfrom its implementation)is of coursenot easy, nor is it the purposeof this paper to providea blueprint.Whatis clearso far are the broadcontours. An alternative approach,suggestedby feministenvironmentalism, needs to be transformational ratherthan welfarist-where developand ecology link in mutually regenerative ment, redistribution, ways. This would necessitate complex and interrelatedchanges such as in the composition what is produced, the technologies of used to produceit, the processes which decisions on products by and technologiesare arrivedat, the knowledge systemson which such choices are based, and the class and gender distribution of productsand tasks. For instance, in the context of forestry programs,a different compositionof the productmay imply a shift from the currently favored monoculturaland commercialtree species to mixed species criticalfor local subsistence.An alternativeagricultural tech-

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nology may entailshiftingfrommainlychemical-based farmingto more organicmethods, from monoculturalhigh-yieldingvariety seeds to mixed cropping with indigenouslyproduced varieties, from the emphasis on large irrigationschemes to a pluralityof water-provisioning systems, and from a preoccupationwith irrigated crops to a greater focus on dryland crops. A change in decision-making processes would imply a shift from the present democratop-downapproachto one that ensuresthe broad-based tic participation disadvantaged of Indeed, insofar as the groups. success storiesof reforestation today relateto localizedcommunities taking charge of their environmentalbase, a viable solution would need decentralizedplanningand control and institutional that ensure the involvementof the ruralpoor, and arrangements especiallywomen, in decisions about what trees are plantedand to how the associatedbenefitsare shared.Similarly, encouragethe continued use and growth of local knowledge about plants and we species in the process of environmentalregeneration, would new formsof interaction between localpeople and trained require to scientistsand a wideningof the definitionof "scientific" include plural sources of knowledgeand innovations,ratherthan merely those generatedin universitiesand laboratories. This last is not without precedent,as is apparentfrom the earlierdiscussion on MeijiJapan'sinteractiveteams which allowed a flow of information not only from the agricultural scientistto the farmerbut also the reverse. The most complex, difficult,and necessaryto transform is of course the class and gender division of labor and resources and the associatedsocial relations.Here it is the emergence of new social movementsin Indiaaroundissues of gender, environment,and democraticrights,and especiallythe formation of joint fronts between these movements on a number of recent occasions, that point the direction for change and provide the points of hope. Indeed, environmental and gender concerns taken together open up both the need for reexamining,and the possibility of throwing new light on, many long-standingissues relating to and development,redistribution, institutionalchange. That these concerns preclude easy policy solutions underlinesthe deep entrenchment(bothideologicaland material)of interestsin existing and models of development.It also underlinesthe critistructures of cal importanceof grassroots politicalorgani7ation the poor and

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of women as a necessary conditionfor their voices to be heeded and for the entrenchedintereststo be undermined.Most of all it stresses the need for a sharedalternativevision that can channel dispersedrivuletsof resistanceinto a creative,tumultuousflow. In short, an alternative,transformational approachto development would involve both ways of thinking about things and ways of actingon them. In the present context it would concern both how gender relationsand relationsbetween people and the nonhuman world are conceptualized, how they are concretizedin and terms of the distribution property,power, and knowledge,and of in the formulationof developmentpolicies and programs. It is in its failureto explicitlyconfrontthese politicaleconomy issues that the ecofeminist analysis remains a critique without threatto the establishedorder. NOTES
This is a substantiallyrevisedand abridgedversion of a paperpresentedat a conference on "TheEnvironmentand EmergingDevelopment Issues,"at the World Institute of Development Economics Research,Helsinki, 3-7 Sept. 1990. A longer version is also available as Discussion Paper No. 8: "Engendering EnvironmentDebate: Lessons the from the Indian Subcontinent," CASIDDistinguishedSpeakerSeries (MichiganState University, 1991). I am grateful to several people for comments on the earlier versions: Janet Seiz, Gillian Hart, Nancy Folbre, Jean Dreze, Lourdes Beneria, Gail Hershatter,Pauline Peters, Tariq Banuri, Myra Buvinic, and FeministStudies'editors and anonymous reviewers. I also gained from some lively discussions following seminarpresentations of the paperat the Centerfor Populationand DevelopmentStudies,HarvardUniversity, February 1991; the Center for Advanced Study in InternationalDevelopment, Michigan State University, April 1990; the Hubert HumphreyInstitute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota,April 1990; and the departmentsof City and Regional Planningand RuralSociology,CornellUniversity, May 1990. 1. See especially Ynestra King, "Feminism and the Revolt,"Heresies,no. 13, "Special Issue on Feminismand Ecology" (1981):12-16,"TheEcologyof Feminismand the Feminism of Ecology," in Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism, ed. Judith Plant Ecology, and the Nature/Culture Dualism," in Reweaving the World: The Emergence of

New Society Publishers, 1989), 18-28, "Healing Wounds:Feminism, the (Philadelphia:

ed. Ecofeminism, Irene Diamond and Gloria Orenstein (San Francisco: Sierra Club Than Deep Ecology:The Eco-Feminist Books, 1990), 98-112;Ariel Kay Salleh,"Deeper Environmental Ethics 16 (Winter 1984): 339-45; Carolyn Merchant, The Connection,"
Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980); and Susan Griffin, Women and Nature: The Roaring within Her (New York:

Harper& Row, 1978). Also see discussions and critiquesby Michael E. Zimmerman, Ethics" 21-44)and KarenJ. Warren, "Feminism, Deep Ecology,and Environmental (pp. "Feminism Ecology:MakingConnections" 3-20),both in Environmental and Ethics9 (pp.

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Environmental Ethics9 and Deep Ecology," (Spring1987);Jim Cheney, "Ecofeminism (Summer1987): 115-45;and Helen E. Longino'sreview of Merchantin Environmental Ethics3 (Winter1981):365-69. 2. King,"Ecology Feminism,"18. of in and 3. SherryOrtner,"IsMale to FemaleAs NatureIs to Culture?" Women, Culture, StanfordUniversity Society,ed. Michelle Z. Rosaldoand Louise Lamphere(Stanford: Press, 1974), quotes on pp. 72, 73. 4. See the case studies, and especially Carol P. MacCormack's introductoryessay in and Marilyn Strathern(CamNature, Culture,and Gender,ed. Carol P. MacCormack bridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1980), 13. Also see HenriettaL. Moore,Feminism andAnthropology (Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, 1989). 5. Salleh, 340. 6. See Merchant,144. 7. Ibid., 2, 3. 8. For this and the previous quote see ibid., xx-xxi,xix. 9. King in "Feminismand the Revolt"(unlike in her earlier work) does mention the necessity of such a differentiationbut does not discuss how a recognitionof this difference would affect her basic analysis. 10. For an illuminatingdiscussion of the debate on essentialismand constructionism within feminist theory, see Diane Fuss, Essentially Speaking(New York: Routledge, 1989). and 11. See case studies in Nature,Culture, Gender. 12. VandanaShiva, Staying Alive: Women,Ecology,and Survival(London:Zed Books, 1988), quotes on pp. 39, 42. 13. Ibid., 14-15. for BookReview," Eco14. Also see the discussionby GabrielleDietrich,"Plea Survival: of nomicand PoliticalWeekly,18 Feb. 1989, 353-54. Apartfrom the religion-specificity the discourseon the feminine principle,an interestingexample of the relationshipbetween differentreligioustraditionsand the environmentis that of sacredgroves. These groves, dedicatedto local deities and sometimesspreadover 100 acres, were traditionally preservedby local Hinduand tribalcommunitiesand could be found in severalparts of the country. Entryinto them was severely restrictedand tree cuttingusually forbidden. (See Madhav Gadgiland V.D. Vartak,"Sacred Groves of India:A Plea for Continued Conservation," Journalof the BombayNaturalHistorySociety72, no. 2 [1975].) These groves are now disappearing. Among the Khasitribe of northeastIndia, elderly non-ChristianKhasis I spoke to identify the main cause of this destructionto be the beliefs in which underminedtraditional large-scaleconversionof Khasisto Christianity deities and so removedthe main obstacleto the exploitationof these grovesfor personal gain. the 15. Forinstance,the Rig-Veda, collectionof sacredSanskirt hymns preservedorally for over 3,000 years, which constitutes the roots of BrahmanicHinduism, is said to inaccessibleto women and untouchablecastes, both of whom have been traditionally were forbiddento recite the hymns on the ground that they would defile the magic OtherPeople's Myths[New power of the words (forelaborationsee WendyO. Flaherty's York and London:Macmillan,1990]).In contrast,the Bhaktimovement, which began aroundthe sixth century, sought to establisha directrelationshipbetween God and the individual (withoutthe mediationof Brahminpriests)irrespectiveof sex or caste and gave rise to numerousdevotionalsongs and poems in the vernacularlanguages.Many women are associatedwith the movement, one of the best-knownbeing the sixteenthcenturypoet-saint,Mirabai.Todaythe Bhaktitraditioncoexistswith the more ritualistic tradition.In fact a significantdimensionof the growingHindufunand rigidBrahmanic damentalismin India in recent years is precisely the attempt by some to give promi-

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of nence to one interpretation Hinduismover others-a visible, contemporary struggle over meanings. have existed historically,inSimilarly,several versions of the great epic, Ramayana cluding versions where the central female character,Sita, displays none of the subservience to her husbandthat is emphasizedin the popularversion (treatedas sacred text) and which has molded the image of the ideal Indianwoman in the modern mass media. Feminist resistance to such gender constructionshas taken various forms, inof cluding challengingpopularinterpretations female charactersin the epics and drawSee ing attentionto alternativeinterpretations. for instance, Uma Chakravarty's essay In"TheSita Myth," SamyaShakti1 (July1983);and Bina Agarwal's poem, "SitaSpeak,"
dian Express, 17 Nov. 1985.

and in 16. See IrfanHabib,"Peasant ArtisanResistancein MughalIndia," McGillStudies International Developmentno. 34 (McGill University, Center for Developing Area
Studies, 1984), and his essay in Cambridge Economic History of India, ed. Tapan Ray Man-Forest Interaction and Its Implications for Ecology and Management (Trivandrum,

Chaudhuriand Irfan Habib (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1982). in Patterns 17. See especiallyKeralaForestryResearchInstitute,Studies the Changing of 1980), 235. 18. It is estimatedthat in 1981-82,66.6 percent of landowninghouseholds in ruralIndia owned 1 hectare or less and accountedfor only 12.2 percent of all land owned by ruralhouseholds (NationalSampleSurveyOrganisation, on Round Report Thirty-seventh tics, Governmentof India, 1987). The distributionof operationalholdingsis almost as skewed. 19. See N.S. Jodha, "CommonProperty Resources and Rural Poor,"Economicand 20. SharadKulkarni, a "Towards SocialForestryPolicy," Economic PoliticalWeekly, and 5 Feb. 1983, 191-96. 21. See V. Pingle, "SomeStudiesof Two TribalGroupsof CentralIndia,pt. 2: The ImPlantFoodforMan 1 (1975);and portanceof FoodConsumedin Two DifferentSeasons," BinaAgarwal,"Social and Securityand the Family:Copingwith Seasonality Calamityin
Rural India,"Journal of Peasant Studies 17 (April 1990): 341-412.

Land Holdings-I, Some Aspects of Household Ownership Holdings (Department of Statis-

Political Weekly, 5 July 1986, 1169-81; and Piers Blaikie, The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries (London and New York: Longman, 1985).

22. I preferto use the term "control here, ratherthan the commonly used term rights" "property rights,"because what appears critical in this context is less who owns the resources than who has control over them. Hence, for instance, the control of stateowned resourcescould effectively rest with the village community. 23. ForestSurvey India (New Delhi: Ministryof Environmentand Forests, Governof ment of India, 1990). 24. P.K.Joshi and A.K. Agnihotri,"AnAssessment of the AdverseEffects of CanalIr528-36. 25. See, for instance, Jayanta Bandyopadhyay,"A Case Study of Environmental in Degradation Karnataka." (Paperpresentedat a workshopon Droughtand Desertification, India InternationalCenter, 17-18 May 1986);and B.D. Dhawan, Development of
Tubewell Irrigation in India (Delhi: Agricole Publishing Academy, 1982). 26. Center for Science and Environment, The State of India's Environment: A Citizen's Historical Analysis," Economic and Political Weekly, 29 Oct. 1983, 1882-96. rigation in India," Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics 39 July-September 1984):

Report,1985-86(Delhi:Center for Science and Environment,1986). 27. See especially, Ramachandra in Guha, "Forestry Britishand Post-BritishIndia:A 28. See Malini Chandand Rita Bezboruah,"Employment for Opportunities Women in
Forestry," in CommunityForestryand People's Participation-Seminar Report (Ranchi Con-

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"Environsortiumfor CommunityForestry,20-22Nov. 1980);and SrilataSwaminathan, ment: Tree versus Man,"IndiaInternational CenterQuarterly nos. 3 and 4 (1982). 9, 29. However,the degreeto which the villagecommunityacted as a cohesive groupand the extent of controlit exercisedover communallandsvariedacrossundividedIndia:it was much greaterin the northwestthan elsewhere (see B.H. Baden-Powell,TheIndian VillageCommunity [New Haven, Conn.: HRAFPress, 1957]). 30. For a detailed discussion on these causes, see Jodha. 31. Bandyopadhyay. 32. On traditional systems of communitywater managementsee NirmalSengupta,"Irrigation: Traditional vs. Modern,"Economicand Political Weekly,Special Number in A (November1985):1919-38;EdmundR. Leach,Pul Eliya-A Village Ceylon: Studyof Land Tenureand Kinship(Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1967); and David in Seklar,"TheNew Eraof Irrigation Management India" (photocopy,FordFoundation, Delhi, 1981). On communal management of forests and village commons, see RamachandraGuha, "ScientificForestry and Social Change in Uttarakhand" (pp. an 1939-52),and MadhavGadgil,"Towards EcologicalHistory of India"(pp. 1909-38), both in Economicand Political Weekly,Special Number (November 1985); and M. Moench, 'Turf and Forest Managementin a Garhwal Hill Village,"in WhoseTrees? ed. Dimensions Forestry, Louise Fortmannand John W. Bruce (Boulder, of Proprietary Colo.: Westview Press, 1988). On firewood gathering practices, see Bina Agarwal, "Underthe Cooking Pot: The PoliticalEconomy of the Domestic Fuel Crisis in Rural South Asia,"IDS Bulletin18, no. 1 (1987): 11-22. Firewood for domestic use in rural households was customarilycollected in the form of twigs and fallen branches,which did not destroy the trees. Even today, 75 percent of firewood used as domestic fuel in northernIndia (and 100 percent in some other areas)is in this form. 33. The preservationof sacred groves describedin note 14 is one such example. 34. Also see discussion in ParthaDasguptaand Karl-Goran Maler,"TheEnvironment and EmergingDevelopmentIssues."(Paperpresentedat a conferenceon Environment and Development, Wider, Helsinki, September1990). of 35. Daniel W. Bromleyand MichaelM. Cernea,"TheManagement CommonProperWorldBank DiscussionPaperno. 57 (Washington,D.C.: World ty NaturalResources," Bank, 1989), 25. 36. Ibid. 37. Paul Shaw, "Population, Environment,and Women: An AnalyticalFramework." (Paperpreparedfor the United Nations Fundfor PopulationActivities[UNFPA],InterAgency ConsultativeMeeting, New York, 6 Mar. 1989), 7. 38. MarkRosenzweigand KennethI. Wolpin,"Specific Experience,HouseholdStrucin Transfers:Farm Family Landand LaborArrangements ture, and Intergenerational 100, supp. (1985):961-87. Journalof Economics Quarterly Developing Countries," 39. Under some large-scaleirrigationworks, crop yields are lowerthan in the period immediatelypriorto the project Joshi and Agnihotri). and 40. C.H. Hanumantha Rao, S.K. Ray, and K. Subbarao, UnstableAgriculture Drought(Delhi:Vikas Publishing,1988). in and FromChina? 41. BernhardGlaeser,ed. Learning Development Environment Third WorldCountries (London:Allen & Unwin, 1987). Touch: The CulturalConditionsof Worker 42. Also see Stephen A. Marglin,"Losing in and Accommodationand Resistance," Knowledge Power,ed. FrederiqueA. Marglin OxfordUniversity Press, 1988). and StephenA. Marglin(Oxford: 43. See BruceF. Johnston,'TheJapaneseModelof Agricultural Development:Its Relein and vance to DevelopingNations," Agriculture Economic Experience, Growth-Japan's Princeton ed. KazushiOhkawa, Bruce F. Johnston,and HiromitsuKaneda(Princeton: University Press, 1969), 61.

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44. For a review of issues and literature on this question, see Bina Agarwal, "Women, Poverty, and Agricultural Growth in India,"Journal of Peasant Studies 13 (July 1986): 165-220. 45. These sex ratios are particularly female-adverse in the agriculturally prosperous northwestern regions of Punjab and Haryana where these figures are, respectively, 88 and 87 females per 100 males. For a discussion on the causes of this regional variation see Agarwal, "Women, Poverty, and Agricultural Growth in India" and Barbara Miller, The Endangered Sex: Neglect of Female Children in North-West India (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981). 46. Women in India rarely own land, and in most areas also have limited access to personal assets such as cash and jewelry. See Bina Agarwal, "Who Sows? Who Reaps? Women and Land Rights in India,"Journal of Peasant Studies 15 July 1988): 531-81. 47. See discussions in Agarwal, "Women, Poverty, and Agricultural Growth in India"; Bina Agarwal, "RuralWomen and the High Yielding Variety Rice Technology in India," Economic and Political Weekly, 31 Mar. 1984, A39-A52; and Kalpana Bardhan, "Rural Employment, Welfare, and Status: Forces of Tradition and Change in India," Economic and Political Weekly, 25 June 1977, A34-A48; 2 July 1977, 1062-74; 9 July 1977, 1101-18. 48. See Agarwal, "RuralWomen and the High Yielding Variety Rice Technology"; and James G. Ryan and R.D. Ghodake, "LabourMarket Behaviour in Rural Villages in South India: Effects of Season, Sex, and Socio-Economic Status," Progress Report, Economic Programme 14, International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderbad (1980). 49. See Bina Agarwal, "Women, Land, and Ideology in India," in Women, Poverty, and Ideology: ContradictoryPressures, Uneasy Resolutions, ed. Haleh Afshar and Bina Agarwal (London: Macmillan, 1989); and Ursula Sharma, Women, Work, and Property in NorthWest India (London: Tavistock, 1980). 50. For a detailed cross-regional mapping of some of these variables in the context of women's land rights in South Asia, see Bina Agarwal, Who Sows? Who Reaps? Gender and Land Rights in South Asia, forthcoming (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 51. Quoted in Sundarlal Bahuguna, "Women's Non-violent Power in the Chipko Moveed. ment," in In Search of Answers: Indian Women's Voices in "Manushi," Madhu Kishwar and Ruth Vanita (London: Zed Books, 1984), 132. 52. Personal communication, Chitra Sundaram, Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), Delhi, 1981. 53. Bina Agarwal, "Women and Water Resource Development," photocopy, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, 1981. 54. Bahuguna. 55. Shubh Kumar and David Hotchkiss, "Consequences of Deforestation for Women's Time Allocation, Agricultural Production, and Nutrition in Hill Areas of Nepal," Research Report 69 (Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute, 1988). 56. See T. Bhaduri and V. Surin, "Community Forestry and Women Headloaders," in Community Forestry and People's Participation Seminar Report (Ranchi Consortium for Community Forestry, 20-22 Nov. 1980). 57. Michael Howes and M.A. Jabbar, "Rural Fuel Shortages in Bangladesh: The Evidence from Four Villages," Discussion Paper 213 (Sussex, England: Institute of Development Studies, 1986). 58. Agarwal, "Women and Water Resource Development." 59. Joan P. Mencher and K. Saradamoni, "Muddy Feet and Dirty Hands: Rice Production and Female Agricultural Labour," Economic and Political Weekly, 25 Dec. 1982, A149-A167; and United Nations Development Program, Rural Women's Participation in Development, Evaluation Study, no. 3, UNDP, New York June 1979).

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in 60. RudolfG. Wagner,"Agriculture Environmental and Protectionin China," Learning fromChina? 61. Dinesh Mohan, "Food vs Limbs: Pesticides and Physical Disability in India," Economic PoliticalWeekly, Mar. 1987, A23-A29. and 28 62. These are apartfrom the widely documentedpatron-clienttypes of relationships. in 63. See Sharma, Women,Work,and Property North-West India;and Sylvia Vatuk, "Sharing, (Universityof IlGiving, and Exchangingof Foods in South Asian Societies," linois at ChicagoCircle, October 1981). in and Cooperative-Conflict," Persistent ed. 64. See AmartyaSen, "Gender Inequalities, IreneTinker(New York:OxfordUniversityPress, 1990)for a discussionon the bargaining approachto conceptualizingintrahouseholdgender relations,and Agarwal,"Social Security and the Family,"for a discussion on the factors that affect intrahousehold bargainingpower. 65. WalterFernandesand Geeta Menon, TribalWomen ForestEconomy: and Deforestaand tion, Exploitation, StatusChange(Delhi:Indian Social Institute, 1987), 115. 66. Amongthe Garotribalsof northeastIndiain the early 1960s,Burlingfound that the men always deferredon this count to the women, who knew of approximately indi300 Familyand Kinship genously cultivatedrice varieties. See RobbinsBurling,Rensanggri: in a GaroVillage(Philadelphia: PennsylvaniaUniversityPress, 1963).In Nepal even today it is women who do the seed selection work among virtuallyall communities.See Meena Acharya and Lynn Bennett, "Womenand the Subsistence Sector in Nepal," WorldBankStaffWorking D.C.: WorldBank, 1981). Paperno. 526 (Washington, 67. For a detaileddiscussion on these schemes and their shortcomings,see Bina AgarZed World(London: and Crisisin the Third wal, ColdHearths Barren Slopes:TheWoodfuel Books, 1986). B.V. KrishnaMurti,and S.R. Ramaswamy,"Social 68. D.M. Chandrashekar, Forestry and in Karnataka: ImpactAnalysis," An Economic PoliticalWeekly,13June 1987, 935-41; and Shiva. 11 Movements in India," Alternatives (1987):255-73. 69. VandanaShiva, "Ecology Economic Trends in Indian Environmentalism," 70. Ramachandra Guha, "Ideological and PoliticalWeekly,3 Dec. 1988, 2578-81. 71. Amongthe many writingson the Chipkomovement,see especiallyJayantaBandyono. Seminar, 330 (February 1987);Shiva;Shobhita padhyayand VandanaShiva,"Chipko," Movement:A Case Studyof Women'sRole in the Jain,'Womenand People'sEcological Economicand Political Weekly, 13 Oct. 1984, Chipko Movement in Uttar Pradesh," and 1788-94;and BharatDogra,Forests People,publishedby the author(Delhi, 1984). therehave also been cases of peoplehuggingtreesto protectthem from 72. I understand link with Chipko. loggersin the United States,althoughthey appearto have no apparent 73. There is a growing literature indicating significant gender differences in cashspendingpatterns,with a considerablepercentage(at times up to 40 percent)of what men earn in poor ruralhouseholdsoften goingtowardthe purchaseof items they alone consume, such as liquor,tobacco,and clothes, and much of what the women earngoing Work and toward the family's basic needs. See especially Joan Mencher, "Women's Poverty:Women'sContributionto Household Maintenancein Two Regionsof South and in Women Incomein the ThirdWorld,ed. Daisy Dwyer and India," A HomeDivided: StanfordUniversity Press, 1988). JudithBruce (Stanford: 74. This gender divergencehas also been noted elsewhere. See RitaBrara,"Commons and Economic PoliticalWeekly,7 Policy As Process:The Case of Rajasthan,1955-85," Oct. 1987, 2247-54. 75. Quoted in Shiva. 76. For a critique of these lines of argument,see Helen E. Longino,"CanThere Be a Feminist Science?" Hypatia2 (Fall 1987):51-64.