Schedule

Abstract

Dr Sudha Vasan (Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay , Mumbai) e.mail: "sudha vasan" , Forest settlements in the Raj: Persistent diversity in forest property regimes in Himachal Pradesh The forest territorial landscape of India is shaped by colossal settlement efforts that were undertaken by the colonial forest department in later half of the nineteenth century. In principle this was a systematic, comprehensive and rational process designed to make legible the complex pattern of property relations that existed over forests. However, in practice, forest settlements in colonial India were often a process of struggle and interaction between diverse economic, political and ideological forces that resulted in heterogeneous outcomes, only sometimes intended. Forest settlements in a small region of the present state of Himachal Pradesh reflect this struggle between the ideology of homogeneity and legibility on one hand and the persistent and thriving diversity of property regimes on the other. Actual settlement records reflect the perspectives and differences of individual settlement officers, influence of local power centers, different political incentives, and particular local political-economic concerns at specific points of time when the settlements were undertaken. This paper discusses the patchwork of diverse property regimes that were created in Himachal Pradesh’s forests by divergent interests that defied any attempts at homogeneity. VELAYUTHAM SARAVANAN (Fellow/Reader), Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), Email: saro@cess.ac.in; Velayutham_Saravanan@hotmail.com COLONIALISM AND ENVIRONMENT: COMMERCIALISATION OF FORESTS AND DECLINE OF TRIBALS IN MADRAS PRESIDENCY, 1882-1947 This paper attempts to analyse colonial forest policy and its impacts on the environment and tribals in the Madras Presidency, during the postForest Act period (1882-1947). It argues that the post-Forest Act colonial regime actively encouraged the commercialisation of forest resources while simultaneously imposing several restrictions on tribal populations and other forest users. Further, it argues that the conservation initiatives made by the government was essentially intended to curtail the access of the tribals and other forest users so that the colonial regime could extract these resources for commercial purposes. In short, post-Forest Act colonial forest policies that were allegedly intended to conserve the forests ended up enabling the colonial government to systematically extract forest resources; resulting in the emaciation of the tribal populace and the transformation of the forest environment in the Madras Presidency. Dr. Adhya Bharti Saxena (Associate Professor in History) Dr. Hitendra J. Maurya (Assistant Professor in History) (The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara) E.Mails: "adhya saxena" adhyasaxena@yahoo.com Hitendra J. Maurya hijmaurya@yahoo.co.in Mapping The Use And Abuse Of Nature In The Territory Of The Princely States Of South Gujarat: A Study In Their Flora –Fauna Potentialities And The Process Of Deforestation And Conservation c. 1750c. 1960 Princely States have attracted considerable scholarly attention on issues related to sovereignty and integration. However, even a cursory survey of literature on the princely states will suggest that environmental history is less explored. The post colonial state of Gujarat, in fact, was carved out of a number of princely states. Large states such as the Gaekwad’s of Baroda and the Dang sub-region has received attention from scholars like Ian Copland and Ajay Sakaria but the lesser princely states do not find much space either in their or other scholarly writings. Our travel in Southern Gujarat, particularly in those sub-regions which were under the political control of rulers other than that of the Gaekwad’s during the nineteenth century, suggests immense research possibilities for documenting the intertwined social and environmental legacies of the region. The south of Gujarat had 14 states in the Dang sub-region and five states namely Surgana, Sachin, Bansda, Dharampur and Rajpipla other than the British and Gaekwad’s Navsari prant. Bansda today has a National Park, a Botanical Garden in its surroundings at Waghai and Shulpaneshwar and a Sanctuary at Dedia Pada. The region has been witness to several processes of deforestation on one hand while on the other a strong reaction for conservation had also set in. Our explorations will be based on archival material and supplemented with interviews from senior informants in the Bansda, Rajpipla and Dang territory. Debojyoti Das (PhD candidate, CSSP) JNU, New Delhi. e.mail : debojyoti.das@gmail.com NATURAL HAZARD AND THE BRAHMAPUTRA RIVER BASIN: STATE DESIGN, FLOODS AND PEOPLE’S PERCEPTIONS IN MAJULI ISLAND. This paper tries to analyse policy discourses on ‘flood management’ in Majuli ─ one of the largest river islands that is prone to flood and bank erosion. The public policy on flood mitigation in the country in general and in the Brahmaputra Basin in particular has been overwhelmingly motivated by technocratic interventions such as embankments and large dams. In recent years, this structural model has been criticized for causing adverse impacts on river regimes and the flood plains. While the proponents of the techno-centric approach see the populations occupying the flood plain as being subject to natural hazards they tend to ignore the technological risk’s and hazards that have been brought on by the embankments. Thus, these floods are perceived as being inherent natural hazards that can only be controlled by regulating the flow regime of the river through engineering measures. A strong emerging counter argument that is echoed today by neoindigenestas is the claim for the relevance of traditional ecological knowledge or Indigenous Knowledge (IK) of the local people. This discourse has sought to ground itself in knowledges involving ‘adaptive management’ that has been oriented towards creating social ‘resilience’ in the face of the annual flooding and erosion. IK, moreover,. is based on community participation and advocates the replacement of state led interventions that tend to privilege institutional or big science and technical expertise. Thus, the emphasis in IK is for democratic and participatory risk assessment based on community perceptions and choices. For IK advocates, moreover, the complexities brought on by the floods are not revealed merely by the limitations of cost-benefit analysis nor by the mapping of hazards, through sophisticated cartographic implements such as G.I.S (Geographical Information System) or Remote Sensing; instead it is argued that these tools are intricately embedded in power structures and development goals of the state. In contrast what is suggested is for a “non-technical” and “non-scientific” understanding of flood hazard that draws from local little traditions, folklore and aphorisms. This paper will explore the credibility of this seemingly sharp divide between big science and little traditions. Gopinath Sricandan (Foundation for Ecological Research, Advocacy and Learning) e.mail: gopisri@gmail.com COLONIAL NATURALISTS, INDEPENDENT INDIANS AND THE EXOTIC WILDLIFE – A PHOTOGRAPHER'S VIEW This visual presentation will largely argue that Colonial Naturalist writings on Indian wildlife had a strong element of exoticism. This trend, I will hope to show, continues to resonant and is driven in contemporary times by the western media (National Geographic and the Discovery Channel etc). In part, such visual exoticism, I will hope to show is also driven by the emergence of several "pro environment" groups in young urban India. In effect, this urban grouping in their quest for the ‘exotic’ in wildlife, chooses to remain oblivious to various types of social, political and environmental complexities on the ground. Within wildlife photography, photographs that have an "exotic" element are appreciated more than photographs that reveal the less romantic aspects element of ‘wild India’. Harsh Dobhal (editor, Combat Law) e.mail: harshdobhal@gmail.com Photography and Environmental History: Documenting the Memory of Tehri. This visual presentation is based on a series of photographs taken between 1988 and 2006 on the submergence of Tehri town and its surrounding environs (Uttarakhand, India) by the Tehri dam. My attempt will be to explore the idea of using contemporary photography as a format for environmental documentation and the shaping of memory for environmental activism. In other words, the meticulous and careful compilation of environmental change through photography offers not only a credible means of recording landscapes for posterity but critically as well for shaping ‘memory’ as a volatile element to environmental politics. Mayank Kumar (Delhi University) e.mail: mayankjnu@gmail.com Water, State and Society in pre-colonial Rajasthan Despite the fact that water is central to making agriculture possible, the political and social relations of water use and abuse in Indian society have only recently been scrutinised by historians. The pre-colonial state in India is widely viewed as being passive in this regard; exercising only a limited set of interventions for the manipulation or control of water in rural society. The belief is that the actual practices of water management was largely run by communities and their conventions and norms. In contrast, this paper argues that the pre-colonial state in Rajasthan was an active agent in creating and enabling the hydraulic conditions for agrarian production; especially with regard to responding to the complexities of drought and environmental distress. Thus this paper questions the dominant assumption(s) about the ‘relative apathy’ of the precolonial state towards ‘environmental uncertainty’ in agricultural production. Dr Praveen Singh (CISED Bangalore) e.mail: psingh@isec.ac.in Colonial