Keynote Address by Prof R. Sudarshan
Rural Transitions and Contemporary Public Policy in the Global South
This instructive session threw light on the colonial and post-colonial trajectories of the state performing selective legal empowerment in its own interest and the interest of the few, while redistributing the burden that comes with such policies downwards. It clearly underlined where a portion of research and action is supposed to look to counter this.
Distinguished Lecture by Shri Nabin Kumar Roy
Rural Transitions in India: The Role of Development Finance, Livelihoods and Public Policy
The lecture highlighted NABARD’s role in skilling workers through its various programmes, importance of self-help groups in the rural economy, institutionalization of rural agri-finance and the overall impact of digitization in promoting transparency and faster adoption of modern techniques as well as economic assessment.
Panel Discussion by Syamal Sarkar, Nikhil Raj and Anita Pinheiro
Sustainable Agriculture, Livelihoods and Regenerative Strategies
The discussion brought forth the crisis of water conservation in India, specifically in agriculture where irrigation inefficiency, crop diversification bottlenecks and lack of adoption of argi-tech related to water conservation makes the future of water security in India very dubious. Specific to the rainfed areas, which constitutes more than half the agriculture landscape, the challenges are persistent, not just because of the lack of coordinated intervention but also due to lack of targeted evidence and data itself. Further, it delved into the need of optimizing knowledge dissemination channels for farmers to address a myriad of these challenges and more, while acknowledging the heterogeneity of the farming communities, their differing requirements and the overall change in outlook required to view farmers as decision making entities.
Panel Discussion by Smita Gupta and Max Ajl
Political Economy of Rural Transition and Social Protection
The discussion spanned across two very diverse but very timely topics for the assessment of political economy of rural transition. The crisis of the Adivasi people of India due to forces of primitive accumulation, reversing hard fought legislative protections is echoed in the struggles of Hasdeo in Odisha and Ken-Betwa in Madhya Pradesh, and now Siang in Arunachal. These areas are bearing the costs of environmental crisis on top of displacement and absolute dearth of alternative livelihood opportunities, forcing them into permanent pauperization and reversing social development. On the other hand, but on a comparable note, today there is a systemic policy of destruction of olive cultivation by Israeli settlers in Palestine to permanently cripple the people and force displacement of an already displaced population. Beyond Palestine, the agriculture landscape of the MENA region continues to suffer at the hands of capital intensification. It sought to ask the questions of selective enforcement of state sovereignty at the hands of imperialism which is causing de-development of the Arab region and restructuring rural economy to its detriment.
