Your search found 2 records
1 Pal, P. K.; Ganguly, B.; Roy, D.; Guha, A.; Hanglem, A.; Mondal, S. 2017. Social and biophysical impacts of watershed development programmes: experiences from a micro-watershed area in India. Water Policy, 19(4):773-785. [doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/wp.2017.189]
Watershed management ; Integrated management ; Development programmes ; Socioeconomic environment ; Biophysics ; Microirrigation ; Drainage ; Water conservation ; Technological changes ; Crop production ; Cropping patterns ; Agricultural productivity ; Dry farming ; Land use ; Farm area / India / West Bengal / Cooch Behar / Rangamati Micro-Watershed
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H048228)
(0.37 MB)
Rainwater conservation and soil erosion prevention are vital for the economic and financial sustainability of dry land agriculture. An integrated watershed development programme is thus a means of achieving these goals. Presently, integrated watershed management is receiving worldwide recognition as an effective model for watershed planning. A watershed is considered the basic geographical unit for developing any plan by integrating various social, economic, and policy factors with modern science. Hence, it is an approach to develop the basic resources for sustainable life support. The present study was conducted to assess the impacts of the watershed development programme on the social and biophysical aspects in a micro-watershed area of Cooch Behar district, West Bengal, India. This study confirmed that the project had positive effects that strengthened the socio-personal and economic characteristics of the farmers and improved the biophysical environment of the farms. The soil and water conservation efforts have increased the total cultivable area as well as improved the irrigation and drainage facilities in the micro-watershed units, thereby increasing the acreage and productivity of crops.
2 Leder, S.; Sugden, F.; Raut, Manita; Ray, D.; Saikia, P. 2019. Ambivalences of collective farming: feminist political ecologies from eastern India and Nepal. International Journal of the Commons, 13(1):105-129. (Special issue: Feminist Political Ecologies of the Commons and Commoning) [doi: https://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.917]
Collective farming ; Collective action ; Resource management ; Gender relations ; Women ; Political ecology ; Tenant farmers ; Land fragmentation ; Land management ; Commons ; Water management ; Dry season ; Social aspects ; Labour ; Case studies ; Villages / India / Nepal / Eastern Gangetic Plains / West Bengal / Madhubani / Cooch Behar / Alipurduar / Saptari
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H049381)
https://www.thecommonsjournal.org/articles/10.18352/ijc.917/galley/919/download/
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H049381.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H049381.pdf
(0.60 MB) (616 KB)
Collective farming has been suggested as a potentially useful approach for reducing inequality and transforming peasant agriculture. In collectives, farmers pool land, labor, irrigation infrastructure, agricultural inputs and harvest to overcome resource constraints and to increase their bargaining power. Employing a feminist political ecology lens, we reflect on the extent to which collective farming enables marginalized groups to engage in smallholder agriculture. We examine the establishment of 18 farmer collectives by an action research project in the Eastern Gangetic Plains, a region characterised by fragmented and small landholdings and a high rate of marginalised and landless farmers. We analyze ambivalances of collective farming practices with regard to (1) social relations across scales, (2) intersectionality and (3) emotional attachment. Our results in Saptari/ Eastern Terai in Nepal, Madhubani/Bihar, and Cooch Behar/West Bengal in India demonstrate how intra-household, group and community relations and emotional attachments to the family and neighbors mediate the redistribution of labor, land, produce and capital. We find that unequal gender relations, intersected by class, age, ethnicity and caste, are reproduced in collective action, land tenure and water management, and argue that a critical feminist perspective can support a more reflective and relational understanding of collective farming processes. Our analysis demonstrates that feminist political ecology can complement commons studies by providing meaningful insights on ambivalences around approaches such as collective farming.
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