Asmita KabraAmbedkar University Delhi | AUD · School of Human Ecology
Asmita Kabra
PhD
Managing Editor, Ecology Economy and Society - the INSEE Journal (https://ecoinsee.org/journal/ojs/index.php/ees)
About
29
Publications
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240
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
Asmita Kabra currently works at the School of Human Ecology, Ambedkar University Delhi. Asmita does research in political ecology, critical development studies, human ecology, land acquisition and displacement, biodiversity conservation, social impact assessment and critical agrarian studies.
Additional affiliations
July 2019 - present
July 2013 - July 2019
January 2013 - present
Education
August 2003 - November 2008
Publications
Publications (29)
In the forested landscapes of central India, elite anxieties around extinction threats to charismatic carnivores has brought about a deeply exclusionary conservationist turn in state territoriality. This article draws a conceptual distinction between territoriality for extraction (TE) and territoriality for conservation (TC) in forested landscapes,...
Boswellia serrata, or salai is a prominent NTFP species of the Kuno forests in Central India. The Sahariya tribe primarily uses it for its gum-resin (chir). A major share of household income comes from the sale of chir. Long-term association with the Kuno forests, in particular with the salai trees, has allowed the Sahariya to build a repository of...
The thought piece for Institute for Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA) reviews the state of Social Impact Assessments (SIA) in India. It underlines the possibilities and challenges associated with the practice of SIA in the context of the national safeguard legislation for involuntary acquisition, The Right to Fair Compensation and Tran...
Dispossession of rural populations to create inviolate Protected Areas for biodiversity conservation is a shared concern in BRICS countries. This article explores the distinctive ideology, institutions, and actors that constitute the regime of dispossession for conservation (DfC) in India’s tiger reserves. It investigates the reasons for the regime...
The right to compensation and rehabilitation for those displaced by projects is a generally recognised principle of multilateral development institutions and, increasingly, of national governments. There is no such consensus of the concept of benefit-sharing—neither its definition nor realisation. This paper advances this discussion: reviewing past...
Postcolonial South Asia has seen massive forced displacement due to development and infrastructure projects, urbanization and biodiversity conservation, driven by state and private entities. In India alone, displacement figures are pegged at over 70 million people, mostly rural, and resettlement outcomes have been mostly reported as negative. Liter...
This article explores the caste and class dimensions of the local resource politics of conservation displacement. Through long-term study of a conservation displacement site in central India, it interrogates how alliances and rivalries contoured along historical class-caste contestations result in differential patterns of recovery from “green grabb...
India is transitioning to a more stringent legal framework for land acquisition and rehabilitation of those displaced by development. The new law, enacted in 2013, replaced a century-old law on land acquisition and has greater safeguards for ensuring prior consent, justice and economic well-being of displaced peoples. This chapter presents a case s...
In this article, I argue that the conservation versus human rights binary tends to obliterate important debates within the ecological sciences over the theoretical foundations of exclusionary conservation. I highlight the internal critiques within the ecological sciences of the advisability of creating inviolate protected areas as the best strategy...
This article presents a study of the micropolitics of dispossession for a proposed medium‐sized irrigation project in an Adivasi region of Central India. The article explores the complex micropolitics of dispossession and collective action in the project planning stage, long before the formal processes of land acquisition actually begin. It highlig...
This is a Social Impact Assessment report for an elevated highway project, created for the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi, India as a mandatory requirement under the Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Act, 2013A
This paper is a case study of development practice based on my experience of designing a livelihood restoration plan and monitoring its implementation. The plan was based on safeguard standards of a
multilateral development bank that funded a private sector renewable energy project on land belonging to a vulnerable community in Central India. Illus...
Conservation inherently involves place-based resource governance which places restrictions on resource use by local people living around biodiversity-rich areas. Conservation displacement (CD) is the most extreme form of such restriction, causing physical eviction of erstwhile residents from land designated as Protected Areas (PAs). Conservation-li...
In India, the 21st century saw major policy reform in land acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation, culminating in the enactment of new law known popularly as the Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Act (LARR) 2013. This law is far more progressive than the previous Land Acquisition Act of 1894. This paper examines the changing c...
A documentary film (~19 minutes) on displacement, livelihood risks and the ground level working of safeguard laws and policies
This is a short documentary film (~31 minutes) on conservation displacement, available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1gJ7zPrYb4
'Make Way! : The Kuno story' - a film by Shankar Chandra - is shot in and around the Kuno wildlife sanctuary in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. The film explores multiple meanings of forests for local, re...
This paper sets out a qualitative rapid research framework for designing and conducting field-based studies of the livelihood risks and opportunities (LRO) arising from involuntary displacement and resettlement. The ‘livelihood risks and opportunities’ framework combines insights from the ‘impoverishment risks and returns’ framework and the ‘sustai...
Studies of development-induced displacement and resettlement (DIDR) and conservation-induced displacement argue that when displaced people are resettled at a new location, their ‘hosts’ suffer impoverishment risks due to loss of common property resources to resettlers. Compensation for host communities, though acknowledged increasingly in policy, i...
India's wildlife conservation strategy relies on creating 'inviolate' protected areas (PAs) free from human disturbance, using policing of PAs and physical displacement of human populations as the preferred tools to do so. Conservation-induced displacement causes not just loss of livelihood and dwellings, but also increases vulnerability and impove...
Attempts at ′preservation via displacement′ are an extreme manifestation of the ′fortress′ or an exclusionary conservation paradigm, support for which has increased lately due to escalating conservation threats. While the policies and processes emanating from this paradigm have produced positive conservation outcomes for some Protected Areas, livel...
Wildlife today is competing with some of India’s most underprivileged people for survival. This apart, commercial and industrial pressures from far outside park boundaries reverberate within these fragile ecological oases, making them vulnerable in a way they never have been before. Reconciling the question of preserving what little wildlife remain...
Designating national parks and sanctuaries as "protected areas" involves the elaborate relocation and resettlement of communities once resident within these areas. However, as an instance of community relocation from the Kuno sanctuary bears out, resettlement has not led to improved living standards for the affected community; neither has it afford...
This paper describes the process of relocation and rehabilitation of villages populated primarily by sahariya tribals in Sheopur district of Madhya Pradesh. It examines the rehabilitation package offered, the process followed for relocation and resettlement and the impact that this shift has had on the livelihood of the affected people. While the r...
Projects
Projects (6)
1) To exchange knowledge, lessons and experiences in Development induced Displacement and Resettlement
2) Display and share the academic research paper, books and reports worldwide
To share ongoing and past work done by the State Social Impact Assessment Unit of the Government of NCT of Delhi
India's land acquisition law stipulates that a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) study will be carried out before any public project involving forced acquisition is undertaken by the government. The School of Human Ecology at AUD is one of the three state SIA Units of the Delhi state government. We have already carried out the first two SIAs for the state government, in March 2018 and in Feb 2020.
This project uses political ecology frameworks to examine the knowledges, discourses and uneven socio-ecological outcomes of biodiversity conservation through protected areas, with special reference to India. It examines critically the diverse and multi-scale linkages between biodiversity conservation and local livelihoods, with special reference to the impacts of such conservation efforts across species, ecosystems and landscapes.
